The member of the Ladies in White was only 59 years old.
MIAMI, United States. – The Ladies in White announced this Sunday the death of the opposition member Mercedes de la Guardia Hernández, a member of the Cárdenas, Matanzas delegation. The death was announced by the leader of the movement, Berta Soler, on your Facebook profilewhere it reported that the activist died “around 6:00 am” at the age of 59, in the city of Cárdenas.
“We give our deepest condolences to her family and friends. We have lost a brave Lady in White fighter. May God bless her,” Soler also wrote.
The opposition leader also confirmed the death in statements to Martí News and recalled that the woman from Matanzas had been a member of the organization since November 2011, as one of the most visible figures of the group in Cárdenas.
Soler highlighted that, despite suffering from diabetes and hypertension, De la Guardia remained active in the movement’s Sunday masses and actions. “She was a very happy woman despite her illness, very strong, very combative, very smiling,” said Soler. He added that the activist lost her vision due to diabetes, but continued to attend mass with the help of a cane and that, when the authorities prevented her from reaching the church, “they detained her and left her thrown away from her house.”
Soler also explained that, days before his death, De la Guardia suffered a fall after having suffered a virus, which would have aggravated his general condition. “From then on he began to lose his appetite until it went away,” the leader told Martí News.
Another of the central figures of the Ladies in White in Matanzas, the exiled activist Leticia Ramos Herrería, described De la Guardia as a “brave Cuban” who, despite the deterioration of her health, remained on the front line of opposition activity. “Mercy, as we affectionately called her, was the soul of the Cárdenas delegation; despite the repression, the dungeons and the beatings, she always brought out her charisma and made us laugh,” wrote the opponent.
According to reports from the Ladies in White and human rights NGOs, Mercedes de la Guardia was subject to arrests and repressive acts for years for her activism.
During a peaceful demonstration in August 2013, “they hit her a lot to put her in the patrol car,” he then told Martí News Leticia Ramos Herrería herself.
In addition, reports of repression in Cuba Disseminated by organizations such as the Legal Rescue Foundation and other human rights observatories, they record repeated arrests of De la Guardia when he tried to participate in masses or Sunday activities of the group in Matanzas. In several of these reports she is mentioned as having been detained when leaving her home in Cárdenas and taken to police units or state facilities, with subsequent releases several kilometers from her home.
In one of these reportsdated 2014, the Ladies in White state that De la Guardia was detained after attending mass at the La Purísima Concepción church and that, along with other activists, she suffered arrests and beatings to prevent her participation in the group’s religious and civic activities.
More recently, reports from the movement itselfbroadcast in 2019 and 2020, once again place De la Guardia among the Ladies in White of Matanzas subjected to surveillance, police “sieges” in her home and arrests to prevent her from leaving for the church or the group’s national headquarters in Havana.
The Ladies in White, to which Mercedes de la Guardia belonged, emerged in 2003 after the so-called “Black Spring” in Cuba, as a movement initially made up of wives and relatives of political prisoners who began to march dressed in white towards the church of Santa Rita in Havana to demand the release of their loved ones.
In 2005, the European Parliament awarded them the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Conscience, in recognition of their defense of human rights, a distinction that the group collected in 2013, when the island’s regime allowed them to leave for the first time to participate in the ceremony in Strasbourg.
