BY ROSE ANA DUEÑAS—Special for Granma International—

ANONYMOUS women. You may see them at the market, or standing in line to get on the bus, or watering their garden. They are as anonymous as they were 50 years ago during Cuba’s revolutionary struggle, when they were combatants with the guerrilla forces in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, many after having been part of the urban underground movement.

"They are heroines, and there are so many of them," affirms Consuelo Elba Alvarez, a Cuban television screenwriter and director who has brought some of these stories to light in her documentary Mujeres de la Guerrilla (Women Guerrilla Fighters).

The 2005 film, directed, written and produced by Elba; shot and edited by Fermín Domínguez, David Rabelo and Alberto Inerarity; and with a beautiful soundtrack and theme song by Silvio Rodríguez, is simple but powerful in its contribution to preserving the history of the thousands of ordinary men and women who changed their country’s destiny.

Generally, it is not very well known that many women were among the guerrilla troops that united under the leadership of the July 26th movement and Fidel Castro to overthrow the Batista dictatorship on January 1, 1959.

It is known that the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon was formed in September 1958 under Fidel, and fought as part of his Column One of the Rebel Army. One of its 13 members, Delsa Esther Puebla, "Teté," is now a brigadier general – the highest-ranking female – in the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).

But much history remains to be told. After six years of research, and with the help of the Council of State and the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution – of which she is a member – Elba has located at least 300 women who were in the Sierra as guerrilla combatants. The majority were 15 to 18 years old at the time. In the photos they preserve, their faces radiate youth.

Along with being messengers, they cared for the wounded, taught other young rebels how to read and write, and helped with other tasks in the camps. They also fought.

Like Nancy Ojeda, who at just 17 was the first woman – Elba affirms – to participate in combat. She took part in an action known as the "Rescue of Nicaragua," the August 1958 rebel assault on a train in the former province of Oriente to free combatant Carlos "Nicaragua" Iglesias, in which several other rebels died. Previously, as she recounts in the film, Ojeda had been captured and tortured by Batista’s thugs.

Or Zobeida Rodríguez, "Mimí," who was forced to leave her two small children behind and take to the hills after her name appeared on a death list due to her revolutionary activities. She recalls how when she encountered her husband in the mountains, he asked her, "What are you doing here?!" Later, it was she who would take control of the 30mm gun – the most powerful weapon the rebels in her column had at the time – during a battle after her husband had fallen at her feet, wounded from a bullet to the head.

And Herenia Vázquez, who made many trips as a messenger between the sierra (the guerrillas in the mountains) and the llano (the urban underground), until one day she asked Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara if she could stay and fight with the guerrillas. When Elba went to her house to interview her for the documentary, Herenia’s daughter asked if she could stay and listen, because her mother had never told her about those events.

"Women don’t recognize their own worth. They think that they did what they did and that’s it, and they don’t realize its significance," the director says. Making Mujeres was "a moral commitment that I had to my compañeras."

She herself went to the Sierra Maestra "ready to do whatever was necessary" in 1958, when she was only 15 years old, after things became too dangerous for her as a member of a 26th of July Movement underground cell at CMQ Television, where she was a teen-age actress. She had been jailed twice for her activities in the struggle since joining it at the age of 13.

In the nearly 50 years that have passed, she has written and directed TV soap operas, series, a theater space, and other programs. She first began thinking about making Mujeres in 1998, and in ’99, U.S. political science professor August Nimtz of the University of Minnesota, who is also coordinator of the solidarity group Minnesota Cuba Committee, helped her obtain a grant from that school for the filming equipment.

The camera follows these women in their environments: the house, the street, the local offices where several are active in organizations like the Federation of Cuban Women and the Defense Council.

But Elba’s search has not ended. After Mujeres premiered in the theater on March 3 and Cuban television’s "Roundtable" program on March 8 (International Women’s Day), she began receiving phone calls from other comrades. With the help of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC), she plans to make another documentary, focused this time on the underground struggle. And she is working with Prof. Nimtz on a book that includes more of the women combatants’ histories.