BY ELAINE DE VALLE

 Cuban dissident and former political prisoner Maritza Lugo Fernández -- a prominent figure in the internal opposition to the Fidel Castro government -- could arrive as early as today at Miami International Airport with her 11-year-old daughter, exile activists said Thursday.

 An older daughter, 18-year-old Gladys Ibarra Lugo, is expected to arrive Jan. 18 with her husband and newborn son, said Israel Abreu, who heads an exile group in New Jersey.

 But Lugo's husband, Rafael Ibarra Roque, will not join his family. The president of the Frank Pais November 30 Democratic Party is serving a 20-year sentence for
 sabotage. He was falsely accused, exile activists say, of setting a police station on fire in 1994.

 Maritza Lugo Fernández -- who served as vice president of the dissident group the couple founded in 1991 -- has herself been jailed more than 30 times for protesting
 against human rights violations and the Fidel Castro regime, said Abreu.

 He expects Lugo and 11-year-old Rosalia de las Nieves Ibarra to settle in New Jersey, although Lugo has several siblings in South Florida and a father, Secundino Lugo, who lives in Georgia.

 Lugo, 38, first came into the international spotlight in July 1996, when she was arrested on charges of ``attempting to harm the nation's economy'' after state security
 agents raided her home and found a letter to President Bill Clinton in support of the Helms-Burton Act.

 But Abreu said Lugo had already been targeted many times by Cuban officials.

 ``Even before that they had detained her and held her for hours or days at a time with no formal charges.''

 In 1998, Lugo defied a house arrest order to attend Pope John Paul II's Mass in Havana, where she wore a white T-shirt that read ``Be not afraid'' -- a message the pope had delivered on the island -- and handed foreign reporters photographs of political prisoners.

 A year later, while Lugo was imprisoned at the women's prison Manto Negro, or Black Cloak, she went on a hunger strike, gaining the support of Elena Bonner, widow of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, and Chilean senator Carmen Frei, sister of President Eduardo Frei.

 Last April, she smuggled a letter titled I Accuse out of the prison. The letter denounced the Cuban regime and conditions at the prison in anticipation of a United Nations vote to censure Cuba on human rights violations.

 Abreu said Lugo didn't want to leave Cuba, but her younger daughter was suffering immensely.

 ``The littler girl was in a terrible state of nerves. Every time state security came to the house, she would start screaming and crying,'' Abreu said.

 He went on to say that the Cuban government had been asking Lugo to leave the country for years, but Lugo said she wouldn't leave without her husband. ``Finally, her husband told her she had to leave for the girl's sake. She couldn't do anything more for him there,'' Abreu said.

 Her arrival comes on the heels of several other Cuban dissidents who have recently left the island. Salvador Mesa, the Frank Pais November 30 Democratic Party delegate in Manzanillo, flew in three weeks ago, Abreu said. And Berta Mexidor Vazquez and Ramon Humberto Colas Castillo, who together founded Cuba's independent library movement in 1998, arrived in Miami Dec. 27.

 Abreu said Lugo would continue to struggle against the Castro dictatorship from exile. And the dissident group on the island would continue its efforts, he said, under the leadership of Luis Osvaldo Manzaneira Cúcalo, who replaces Lugo as vice president.

 Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.

                                    © 2002