Mariela Castro Espin, Raul Castro's Daughter Engages In Twitter Fight With Dissident Blogger, Yoani Sanchez

Raul Castro's Daughter Engages In Twitter Fight With Dissident Blogger

Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela Castro Espin, and Cuban dissident/HuffPost blogger Yoani Sanchez got into a pretty gnarly Twitter spat yesterday shortly after Castro Espin joined Twitter.

Sanchez threw the first proverbial first punch, with a tweet directed towards Castro Espin that read "Welcome to the plurality of Twitter... Here no one can shut me up, or deny me permission to travel or block my entry." Sanchez's tweet has been retweeted by more than one hundred other Twitter users.

Castro Espin then responded in turn by telling Sanchez that she needed to hit the books. "Your focus on tolerance reproduces the old mechanisms of power. To improve your 'services' you need to study," she tweeted to Sanchez. Over forty users retweeted this message.

Sanchez, a well-known critic of the Castro regime, uses Twitter and her blog Generation Y as a means of spreading critiques of the island nation's government. Because Internet access is limited in Cuba, Twitter is popular because tweets can be sent through text message. Sanchez continued goading the Twitter spat, by asking Castro Espin, a gay rights activist, how she could "ask for acceptance just for one issue." "Is tolerance universal or not?" Sanchez asked.

Castro Espin, presumably bombarded by other critical tweets after Sanchez's message, shot back in 140-characters that echoed the tone of her father's regime - implicating capitalist motivations from her critics.

"Despicable parasites," she tweeted, "Did you receive the order from your employers to respond in unison and with the same predetermined script? Be creative."

Earlier this year, Fidel Castro himself joined Twitter. Watch:

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