(see rest of story link below for video)
Published Fri December 28, 2007 by Publisher in Cuba Culture.
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(see rest of story link below for video)
Wall Street Journal
On a recent morning, Yoani Sánchez took a deep breath and gathered her nerve for an undercover mission: posting an Internet chronicle about life in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
To get around Cuba’s restrictions on Web access, the waif-like 32-year-old posed as a tourist to slip into an Internet cafe in one of the city’s luxury hotels, which normally bar Cubans. Dressed in gray surf shorts, T-shirt and lime-green espadrilles, she strode toward a guard at the hotel’s threshold and flashed a wide smile. The guard, a towering man with a shaved head, stepped aside.
“I think I’m able to do this because I look so harmless,” says Ms. Sánchez, who says she is sometimes mistaken for a teenager. Once inside the cafe, she attached a flash memory drive to the hotel computer and, in quick, intense movements, uploaded her material. Time matters: The $3 she paid for a half-hour is nearly a week’s wage for many Cubans.
Ms. Sánchez has done this cloak-and-dagger routine since April, publishing essays that capture the privation, irony and even humor of Cuba’s tropical Communism—“Stalinism with conga drums,” as she and her husband jokingly call it. From writing about the book fair that blacklisted her favorite authors to the schoolyard where parents smuggle food to their hungry children, Ms. Sánchez paints an unflinching, and deeply personal, portrait of the Cuban experience.
While there are plenty of bloggers who dish out harsh opinions on Mr. Castro, most do so from the cozy confines of Miami. Ms. Sánchez is one of the few who do so from Havana.
“What makes her so special is that she is fresh, observant and on-the-scene,” says Philip Peters, a former Latin America official at the State Department who now studies Cuba at the Lexington Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “Almost all of the Cuba blogs are written by people who travel there occasionally, or by people who haven’t seen the island in 40 years, if ever,” he says.
Not only does she write from Cuba, she even signs her name and posts a photo of herself on her Web site. Most Havana bloggers are anonymous. “Once you experience the flavor of saying what you think, of publishing it and signing it with your name, well, there’s no turning back,” she says. “One of the first things we have to do, a great way to begin to change, is to be more honest about saying what you think.”
The problem is, saying what you think in Cuba can be dangerous. In 2002, Cuba imprisoned dozens of journalists who declared themselves dissidents and published criticisms of the regime—many are still there. Most Cubans are so afraid of being labeled a critic that they are reluctant to utter the words “Fidel Castro” in public. Instead, they silently pantomime stroking a beard when referring to their leader.
Direct Writing
Ms. Sánchez’s writing is direct. On Oct. 5, she wrote about Mr. Castro’s regular newspaper editorials, which usually focus on international politics rather than the problems of Cuba.
“The latest reflections of Fidel Castro have ended my patience,” she wrote. “To try to evade or distance oneself from our problems and theorize about things that occurred thousands of kilometers away, or many years ago, is to multiply by zero the demands of a population that is tired, disenchanted and in need today of measures that alleviate its precariousness.”
The fact that Ms. Sánchez has avoided jail is a source of great intrigue for global Cuba watchers and the Cuban exile community in Miami. Some experts say it signals new tolerance by Raúl Castro, who has taken over day-to-day leadership from his brother because of Fidel’s deteriorating health. Since taking temporary power in July 2006, Raúl Castro has called for an “open debate” on the country’s economic policies, and promised agricultural reforms to bolster the food supply. Cuba experts debate whether Raúl’s promises suggest a true re-examination of Cuba’s economic model, or are simply rhetoric.
Others, especially the exile community, can’t quite believe Ms. Sánchez gets away with what she does. They wonder if she is an unwitting dupe—or a complicit agent—in a campaign to make Raúl Castro appear more tolerant as he seeks greater foreign aid.
“From the bottom of my heart, I want her blog to be legitimate and be the seed that grows into something in Cuba,” says Val Prieto, a 42-year-old Miami-based architect who edits an anti-Castro blog called Babalu. “The reason the exile community is wary is that we’ve been bamboozled time and time again. You never can tell when it comes to Castro.”
There may be a simpler explanation. Some experts say Cuban authorities are mainly concerned about what people on the island think, and since the vast majority of Cubans don’t have Internet access, the government is less alarmed by a Web site available primarily to outsiders.
Taken Aback
READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE
Read her blog in Spanish here http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/
Read her blog in English here http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/
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On Fri December 28, 2007, Publisher wrote:
The Havana Journal has supported her efforts ever since it was first learned that she was writing from Havana.
I understand Val Prieto’s concern but I think Ms. Sanchez is genuine because she said “The latest reflections of Fidel Castro have ended my patience”.
I have felt that and I think the younger generation of Cubans have felt that way too. This is not a feeling that the Cuban government would understand so I don’t think it is crafted.
In the past I hesitated to actively promote her blog thinking that maybe she didn’t want too much press. Well, if she’s sitting with an interview for the Wall Street Journal, I don’t think a little more “ink” from the Havana Journal would do her any harm.
So, Yoani, I wish you the best of luck and much success.
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On Sun December 30, 2007, Yeyo wrote:
I also feel that she is genuine. Even if the government is more tolerant many brave people are still in jail just for talking in favor of the human rights. She is very brave in talking about the real problems in todays Cuba.
We all should praise the extremely brave job of this courageous young Cuban.
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On Tue March 25, 2008, nelson ruiz wrote:
como estan i just wanted to say to anyone hello i hope you all in cuba are doing ok
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On Mon May 05, 2008, Alex el que el sistema actual de cuba trata de des wrote:
Nueva desinformacion del estado Cubano para detectar enlaces con YAONI SANCHEZ
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El gobieno del actual presidente por Raul Castro despues de aprovecharse de las falsas insinuaciones de mostrar cambio sobre la sitema dictatorial heredado por su hermano Fidel Castro a mostrado su naturaleza de no acceder a tales cambios.
El estado cubano (a intereses de una sola persona “su presidente militar") ademas de mostrar abiertamente su posicion intransigente como el anterior gobernador cubano Fidel Castro no permitiendo la salida de la ciudadana Yoani Sanchez, se ha dedicado a bloquear dentro de Cuba el blog mas visitado en toda la historia de ese pais, para mas con una paciencia de parte del lector si visita dicho blog se vera como el estado cubano ha plagado de “trolles internautas” dicho Blog, sembrando el desanimo y la contienda de dichos participantes mediante supuestos “no cubanos opinando o atacando a yoani por su premio” o simplemente ofendiendo directamente a sus participantes
http://desdecuba.com/generaciony/?p=254#comment-125061
Asi mismo tambien estan apareciendo links de contactos para Yoani Sanchez como el siguiente
http://www.camagueyanos.com/wwwboard/mensajes/74880.html
Una de las estratagemas del actual sistema de trolles para sembrar la confucion es copiar los nick de los participantes y dar mensages con intenciones a la contienda.
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On Thu May 08, 2008, Dennis Vaughn wrote:
We in America have forgotten that in our infantsy, our citizens were jailed and hung for the thoughts, writings, and actions againts opression. Cuban citizens want these same things, for it is true that mankind everywhere want these things of freedom of thought, action, movement, and happiness.
The Cuban government has heard all this before and someday may realize the tastlessness of separation. Until then voices like Yoani and others must continue to speak and be heard. Throught time all things are brought in judgement, and throught judgement, then justice.
dennis vaughn
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On Wed June 18, 2008, Publisher wrote:
The Associated Press has just released a story stating that Fidel Castro says that Yoani Sanchez’s comments “only add fuel to attacks” against Cuba by its enemies.
Without mentioning Yoani’s name, he said “What is grave isn’t so much affirmations of this type that are divulged immediately by imperialism’s mass media,” and that she is one of many who “assume the job of those who undermine, and of the neocolonial press of the ancient Spanish metropolis that awards them.”
END
Might I say that Fidel Castro is the one who “undermines” the hopes of freedom for the Cuban people?
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On Wed June 18, 2008, Mako wrote:
Fidel is the past; Yoani is the future
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On Wed June 25, 2008, Reinaldo Escobar wrote:
ABOUT THE GLASS ROOF
Written by:Reinaldo Escobar in Desde Aquí
The ex-president Fidel Castro has just published a prologue of the book “Fidel, Bolivia and Something More” in which he denigrates the blog Generación Y, which my wife writes on the internet. From the first day she has put her full name (which he omits) with her photo in view of the readers in order to sign the texts that she writes for the sole purpose, confessed repeated times, of vomiting everything in our reality that nauseates her.
The ex-president disapproves of the fact that Yoani has accepted this year’s Ortega and Gasset prize for digital journalism. arguing that this is something fostered by imperialism in order to drive the waters of it’s mill. I recognize the right of this man to make this comment, but I permit myself to make the observation that the responsibility implied in receiving a prize will never be comparable to that of awarding it, and Yoani, at least, has never placed a medal on the chest of any corrupt official, traitor, dictator or murderer.
I make this clarification because I remember perfectly well that it was the author of these reproaches who put (or ordered put) the Order of José Martí on the most terrible and undeserving of all possible lapels: Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, Nicolae Ceausescu, Todor Yivkov, Gustav Husak, Janos Kadar, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Robert Mugabe, Heng Samrin, Erich Honecker and others that I have forgotten. I would like to read, in the light of these times, a reflection that justifies those inappropriate honors that, to drive the water of other mills, sullied the name of our apostle.
It’s true that the name of the philosopher Ortega y Gasset can be equated with elitist and even reactionary ideas, but at least, in difference from those decorated by the author of the prologue, he never launched tanks against his nonconformist neighbors, or built palaces, or imprisoned anybody that thought differently than him, or left his followers in the stockade, or amassed fortunes with the misery of his people, or constructed camps of extermination, or gave the order to shoot those who, in order to escape, jumped over the wall of their patio.