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The alleged infiltrator not only spread the gossip about infidelities but sold end-of-year school exams and offered to obtain U.S. visas for $3,000, two Ladies in White said, both crimes that real dissidents know too well would immediately land them in jail.
“Since she joined us [in August] the bickering started. We have no doubts about her,” said Yelena Garcés, who with her sister Aimee led the group of women that resigned.
“We have no doubts that she and her husband work for the political police, and that their principal mission … is to divide” the opposition, Ferrer said by phone from his home in the small Santiago town of Palmarito de Cauto.
Ferrer said UNPACU expelled the woman several months ago, but the Ladies in White remain “incapable of realizing that she … is creating problems.” El Nuevo knows her name, but will not print it because it has been unable to reach her for comment.
Some of the women who resigned said Soler made the dispute worse during the June 18 meeting by telephoning the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana to report their separation, a call they took as a threat to deny them U.S. visas. Soler told El Nuevo she would not comment on that allegation. Radio Martí reported last week that she hung up when one of its reporters asked her about it.
The Ladies in White was founded by female relatives of 75 dissidents jailed during a 2003 crackdown to demand their freedom. The government freed the last of the 75 still in prison in 2010-2011 — but forced most to go into exile in Spain.
Only a dozen insisted on staying in Cuba to continue their opposition activism, including Ferrer and Angel Moya, Soler’s husband. The Ladies in White vowed to remain together to push for human rights and democracy.
Ferrer himself as come under harsh attacks from Raumel Vinajera, a former UNPACU activist now living in the United States who has accused him of being a “slave keeper” and stealing money donated for the opposition movement.
A photo of Vinajera, who is black, holding an umbrella over the light-skinned Ferrer while the UNPACU leader speaks on a cellphone has been spread on the Internet, especially by Ernesto Vera, a Santiago lawyer and self-described dissident who regularly attacks UNPACU, the Ladies in White and blogger Yoani Sanchez.
Ferrer said the photo was snapped when it was raining and he went to his patio to get better reception on his cellphone. He added that police seized that photo and several others during a raid of his home in July of last year.
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