After an attack there are certain myopics who blame the victim herself for what happened. If it is a woman who has been raped, someone explains that her skirt was very short or that she strutted provocatively. If it is a robbery,...

Near 23rd Street, just at the Avenida de los Presidentes roundabout, we saw a black car, made in China, pull up with three heavily built strangers. "Yoani, get in the car," one told me while grabbing me forcefully by the wrist. The other two surrounded Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo...

"I stopped for you because you're white," the taxi driver tells me after the tires screech in Reina Street around midnight. From his wide mulatto lips come the justifications, one after another, for why he doesn't accept clients "of color" at this...

We are in the middle of a theater festival and this helps us escape the boring programming on television and the limited recreational choices, almost all in convertible pesos, of the Havana night. Guided by the drama and comedy, we try to...

I do not know where to begin to tell what happened in the debate about the Internet that took place yesterday, organized by the magazine Temas. Undoubtedly, the blonde wig I put on allowed me to slip through the controlled entrance of the Fresa y Chocolate Cultural Center. That and...

Translator's note: The Cuban Art and Film Institute sponsored a debate about the Internet at the Fresa y Chocolate Center, but barred the gate against Havana's independent bloggers. Yoani managed to enter the debate

I've forgotten the last time I cried, even though I'm not particularly strong when faced with the vagaries of life; on the contrary, I consider myself overly sentimental and given to tears. However, for more than a year I have decided to be happy at any cost, inoculating myself with...

I wore a red and white uniform, I was ten years old, and the subject of the "blockade" was barely mentioned in the ideological books they gave me at school. Those were optimistic times and we believed that the F1 cows* would give enough milk to flood the streets of...

How I wish Generation Y could have one of the ".cu" domains indicating its origin within this country. I would give my mouse and half another one to go to an office and say, "Please, Miss, I have come to have my blog...

Mail boxes look like ballot boxes; they have a slot to insert the paper and its contents, it could be a letter or a ballot, which receive similar respect on this island. Despite the limitations on correspondence, it turns out that it...

No one knows the mechanisms of censorship in Cuba better than those who write in the few newspapers of national circulation. The press here has been turned into a delicate profession required to measure adjectives, carefully weigh topics and often to hide personal opinions in order to keep a job....

"How do you shout on Twitter?" That was one of the first messages I sent to explore the potential to express myself in one hundred and forty characters.

Today I have to ask: how do you sing the anthem mobilized by a people on the net, how do you broadcast...

In the snapshot of the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos which will be taken of his visit to Cuba, there will be no room for nonconformist relatives. In front of the lens there will be the forced smiles of the ministers, the luster of the ministries and the feigned...

I am a little delusional. Until a minute before the Maria Moors Cabot prize ceremony - held yesterday - I thought the Cuban government would change its decision and let me leave. So I saved the recording I made at the Immigration Office on Monday, October 12. Today, seeing that...

Lessons from biology

Bypass machines that disconnect, the cries of babies that echo. Stamps that mark papers to deny and condemn; kilobytes that carry my voice on the Internet without my needing to move. Someone who frowns at me while talking on the walkie-talkie of control. A bird called...

In the early morning they removed the first bricks from the exterior wall to sell--each one--at three pesos on the black market. Like an army of ants, the poorest people in the area took the old closed factory and began to dismantle it. On the corner some kids watched in...

In all the schools in the country, today is the ceremony for the first grade students to enroll in the Pioneer organization. The morning assembly lasts longer than usual, the parents accompany their children while they put on the neckerchiefs and shout, for the first time, the slogan, "Pioneers for...

I search, without success, for a bottle of detergent to wash the glasses smeared with grease and fingerprints, which don't yield to water and the dishcloth. Looking for the soapy liquid, I have walked part of Havana today, as the television announcers call on us to strengthen our hygiene before...

Until the mid-eighties, one could find them find them throughout the national territory. For a quarter century they asserted their presence, aggressive exhibitionists. They seemed absolutely convinced. Optimists impervious to any discouragement, they always had the precise argument on hand to close the door to any defeatism, the tendentious commentary...

"It will be resolved in another way," Jorge told his brother when he learned of the abolition of lunch at several workplaces. His job as a cook in a state agency had made him live on the margin of the symbolic salary he received every month. Thanks to the diversion...