Fior Cruz: A freedom fighter to the end

Several hundred members of New York’s progressive movement gathered to celebrate the life of Fior Cruz on June 3 at Riverside Church. Cruz lost her battle with breast cancer this past May 26. She was 52 years old.

Friends and family paid tribute to her with heart-felt words, a video chronicling her life, drumming, singing, libation, meditation, a banquet and a fashion show of Cruz’s Afro-centric couture.

Born in the Dominican Republic in 1954, Cruz was one of the founders of the Dominican Women’s Development Center over 16 years ago and served on its board of directors.

She contributed her political vision and organizational skills to the International Working Women’s Day Committee, which organized multinational events each year in New York City beginning in 1983 and continuing through the mid-1990s.

In 1991, for instance, the committee called a women’s march from Times Square to Union Square to protest the first U.S. war on Iraq. Cruz’s political and social activism encompassed many struggles, from fighting apartheid to showing solidarity with Cuba to fighting to free Mumia Abu-Jamal from Pennsylvania’s death row.

Suzanne Ross, co-chair of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition of New York, wrote in a May 28 e-mail that Cruz “gave a wonderful statement to the press, quoted in the Amsterdam News,” at Pam Africa’s birthday party last fall. “Within the past year, she protested the Dominican Republic’s racist practices at the border with Haiti and [its policy of] brutally sending Haitian workers back to Haiti.”

When Cruz was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993, she chose to fight it with alternative medicine because she did not trust the profit-based medical establishment. “Fior saw cancer as internalized oppression of capitalism,” noted Puerto Rican activist, Esperanza Martell.

Thanks to non-Western practices like acupuncture, meditation and Reiki, Cruz lived cancer-free for many years.

In 2002 Cruz received the self-healing award from the Mutulu Shakur Defense Committee. In a speech given when she received the award, she said, “We have all been lied to, and those lies have made us and the planet sick. We are living with different kinds of diseases and we cannot escape seeing and feeling each others’ pains and suffering. Common sense demands of us to get involved and participate in the struggle to help bring peace, justice, equality and healing to our fellow sentient beings. ...we know without a doubt that victory is certain.”

After the cancer returned, one of Cruz’s fondest wishes was to see her 18-year-old son, Ola Cruz, graduate from high school. She was so proud that he will enter City College in the fall. Speakers described Cruz as a freedom fighter, a warrior, a pioneer, a revolutionary and a wise sister. As Ross noted, “We will miss Fior for her loving spirit, her stubbornness, her humor and her powerful presence.” Fior Cruz presente!

The writer worked with Cruz in the International Working Women’s Day Committee.