CUBA:Vilma Espin, the wife of acting Cuban president Raul Castro and one of the most powerful women in Cuba long before her husband took over office from his convalescing brother Fidel Castro, died on Monday. She was 77.
State-run television said Espin died from complications from a long illness. The Cuban government declared one day of official mourning.
A key figure in advancing equality for women in communist Cuba, Espin was rumoured to have been ill for more than a year. She was Cuba's unofficial first lady because Fidel Castro has always kept his private life out of the public limelight and his wife, Dalia Soto del Valle, has never played any official role.
Espin is the most important symbol of the Cuban revolution to die since Celia Sanchez, one of Castros closest confidantes, passed away in 1980.
Espin earned her revolutionary credentials by joining the armed struggle against right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista in her home town of Santiago, on Cuba's eastern coast, in 1956. Rebelling against her wealthy upbringing - her father was an executive at the Bacardi rum distillery - Espin joined Castro's guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra mountains and fell in love with his younger brother in the heat of the fighting.
They were married in 1959 in Havana after Batista fled Cuba and the bearded guerrillas marched into the Cuban capital in triumph.
A year later, Dr Castro asked her to found the Cuban Women's Federation, a mass organisation that mobilised women for the revolutionary cause and advanced gender equality. The federation has about 3.6 million members, or 85 per cent of the island's women.
She was one of the first Cuban women to earn a chemical engineering degree, and did graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the revolutionary cause. She had four children with Raul Castro.
A British diplomatic report in 1967 described Espin as a "strikingly handsome and even attractive woman, who uses much more make-up and other aids than is the revolutionary custom and manages to make even her uniforms smart and feminine".
l Fidel Castro may have undergone more than 10 operations for a serious intestinal illness last year, Bolivian president Evo Morales said yesterday.
Mr Morales, a close left-wing ally of Dr Castro, who visited Havana two weeks ago, said Dr Castro spends most of his time studying environmental issues and has recovered well from the health crisis that led him to hand over power temporarily to his younger brother Raul 11 months ago. - (Reuters)