HAVANA -- In a rare public challenge to the Cuban government, 15 of the wives, mothers and partners of political prisoners arrested a year ago this week chanted "Libertad, Libertad!" in front of Havana's National Assembly building after delivering a letter to assembly president Ricardo Alarcon requesting amnesty for the 75 jailed dissidents.

Wearing white T-shirts printed with color photos of their husbands and sons, the women walked silently for almost two miles to the assembly building on Friday morning through an upscale neighborhood of diplomatic compounds, prompting stares from many residents who did not know who they were.

In Cuba, where the opposition movement exists only behind closed doors and where dissident leaders rarely make public appearances, the women's modest protest marked a milestone in their mission to free the dissidents convicted last April of trying to destabilize President Fidel Castro's government and foment counterrevolution. The dissidents -- including many independent journalists and human rights advocates -- were sentenced in one-day trials to between six and 28 years in prison.

For some of the women who had never before been politically active, the walk meant overcoming a hurdle of fear and uncertainty.

"If we keep quiet, our husbands will rot in jail. We are their voices," said Maria de la Caridad Noa, who traveled from her coastal hometown of Caibarien, 200 miles east of Havana, to represent her husband Margarito Broche, sentenced to 25 years. "You fill a bucket drop by drop. If they don't pay attention to us today, little by little we will make the Cuban government understand that these prisoners are unjustly jailed."

Jail discipline

Earlier Friday morning the women also delivered a letter to the headquarters of Cuba's prison system, where they shouted "Freedom for the 75!"

Officials at both locations received the letters cordially and without incident.

Alarcon and his adviser, Miguel Alvarez, could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon. Speaking in Geneva this week at the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called the dissidents "mercenaries that contribute to the [U.S. economic] blockade and the aggressive policy of the superpower."

"Cuba will not surrender. … Nor will it give in to pressures," Perez Roque told the commission.

Barbara Rojo Arias, wife of Omar Moises Ruiz, a dissident sentenced to 18 years, traveled to Cuba from the central city of Santa Clara to mark the first anniversary of her husband's arrest along with the other wives. Earlier this week, before coming to Havana, Rojo was visited by a state security agent.

"He told me that my husband is well disciplined in jail and it would be a shame if I damaged that," said Rojo as she stood before the assembly building with her 5-year-old son, Frank. "I told him [the state security officer] that I would continue to do what I could for [Ruiz] because he was unjustly imprisoned."

Rojo said she had feared authorities would detain her and the other women before they reached the assembly building. An unmarked Peugeot was seen following the slow march at times. "I was walking, but I didn't think we would arrive," Rojo said. "I asked God for the strength to come here and make a request for my family."

Along several busy blocks in the Miramar neighborhood the women caught the attention of some curious passers-by who stopped to ask about their cause. After hearing that they were walking for political prisoners, one woman, Irma Perez, 75, shrugged her shoulders.

"If they are in prison they must have done something wrong against the principals of the Cuban people," Perez said.

Others falsely speculated that the women represented inmates jailed for drug possession or a group of Cubans who commandeered a city bus in 2002 and crashed through the gates of the Mexican Embassy.

At the time of the crackdown last year, the Cuban government had said the dissidents received money from U.S. diplomats to subvert the island's socialist system. Although arrests and detentions had periodically taken place, longtime activists say the size and scope of the crackdown -- and the severity of sentences that average 19 years -- were unheard of in Cuba.

The women on Friday compared their cause to a campaign spearheaded in 1954 by a group of relatives and friends of the Castro-led rebels who were jailed after staging an armed uprising at a police barracks in July 1953. The Relatives' Amnesty Committee for Political Prisoners, led by Castro's sister Lidia and his brother Raul's future wife, Vilma Espin, gained a groundswell of public support and pressured former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista to approve an amnesty bill that freed Castro and the other rebels less than two years after their failed attack.

A letter's plea

In their letter to Gen. Rafael Calderin Tamayo, director of Cuba's penal system, the wives on Friday asked for better prison conditions for the dissidents, many of whom are housed in faraway provinces.

The women want their husbands to be moved to prisons closer to home and housed with other political prisoners, not inmates convicted of common crimes. "General, all these people are honest; they have not committed the slightest real crime and they deserve a humane and just treatment," the letter stated.

Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com.

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