A child of five starts school, but a blog of the same age has already taken more daring steps. Today, I am making an effort to remember that quiet and fearful woman, from before April 9, 2007, who created Generation Y. But I can't. Her face disappears, dissolving among all the beautiful and difficult moments I've experienced since I posted my first text on the web. I can no longer imagine myself without this accidental and personal diary. I have the impression that I have always, in one way or another, been writing a blog. When the indoctrination and the injustice reached intolerable points, my childish head glossed the reality -- from the fringes-- in ways I could never say out loud. The evasive adolescent I became did the same thing: narrating her daily life, trying to explain it and trying to escape it.
The truth is that when I left home that morning to hang my virtual page on the Internet, I never could have imagined how much this action would transform me. Now, whenever the apprehension that the Cuban political police are "infallible" assaults me, I exorcise this thought by telling myself that "they didn't know, that day, they couldn't even guess that I would create this site." What happened afterwards is already well known: the readers arrived and took over this space like citizens take over a public plaza; many others knocked on my door wanting help to create their own spaces of opinion; the first attacks appeared, as did the recognitions. Along the way I lost that 32-year-old mother who only spoke about "complicated issues" in a whisper, I misplaced the compulsive woman who barely knew how to debate or listen. This blog has been like experiencing -- in the time and space of a single life -- an infinity of parallel existences.
I have never again been able to walk the streets incognito. That gift of invisibility that I boasted of possessing fell by the wayside, between the hugs of those who recognized me and the attentive eyes of those whose job it is to watch me. I have paid an enormous personal and social price for these little vignettes of reality and yet I would do it again, taking my flash memory to the lobby of that hotel where I launched my inaugural post on the great world wide web.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Translating Cuba is a compilation blog with Yoani and other Cuban bloggers in English.
Yoani's new book in English, Havana Real, can be ordered here.
Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanifromcuba
Interestingly enough, the fees for these servers are paid by credit card. If the card belongs to Sánchez, then someone very high up in the US administration has made an exception for her, living as she does in Cuba.
If it isn't Sánchez, then who? Once again, the assumption must be that the US administration is involved, the cost of high quality translation and distribution presumably being far beyond the pocket of Sánchez, even if she could pay from Cuba.
Come on, Yoani. You can tell us. You're among friends.
A subsequent perusal of Wikileaks documents exposed the fact that Obama's replies were authored at the US Interests Section in Havana. There can be little doubt that she is managed and supported by the CIA.
"... USIS supplied the President of the United States an English translation of the questions, and then it supplied his answers. When the 'interview' finally appeared in the Huffington Post and other outlets, Obama’s answers bore little difference from the ones created by USIS." ....
Obeying the first rule of the propagandist, Sánchez has yet to acknowledge or apologise for her duplicity.
How does it feel to be duped, Sigmund?
After 5 years working restless for your country your efforts has been prized with a prize much more valuable than all prizes you won under this time: The gratitude of the Cubans!!!!
Thanks to your work and the work of all Cuban bloggers Cuba’s problems and suffering are today much more visible to the World. Thanks to this effort of you and your colleagues placing the fight of our people seeking freedom and democracy as primary condition and motor to solve all other problems Cubans fighting castrofascism are today more protected because the world is watching the criminal tyranny through your eyes. Thanks to your work castrofascism has been pushed to lower repression intensity and put aside the traditional killing in fire squads, the usual jail condemns to 30-40 year, the bloody repression that brought mourning and sadness to many Cuban families.
Keep working, with your help and the increasing civil disobedience going on nowadays Cubans will get rid this criminal regime that not only destroyed our country economically giving up our richness to USA and international capital but also has given up 20% of our nation best children to the empire this regime simulates to fight becoming in such way the regime that more dependable and dominated by USA has done our country, the regime that took by force and blood our country’s richness and gave it up to foreigners. Keep working and we will soon wake up out this nightmare.
Thanks
Such a dictatorship, the world has never seen before. Its most bitter domestic opponent attacks it without limits through the Internet, and the government seems to do nothing about it. What a monstrously repressive regime!?!?!?!?
Imaginate! She complains about the high price she has paid FOR the work she has done. But what about the high PAYMENT she has received FOR her work writings attacking Cuba?
Someone should total up all of the payments she has received, in the form of "prize" money for her writings against her homeland. It probably totals something like $100,000.00 dollars if you add them all up. The Spanish Ortega y Gasset award alone was 16,000 Euros.
Keep in mind that she left Cuba with permission. Then she asked permission to return and was allowed to return. They gave her permission to return to the country, and now she makes big bucks attacking the country like this.
Also keep in mind that in addition to the big bucks she has received, she pays NO rent, NOTHING for health care for herself, her husband and child, and she pays NOTHING for her son's education beyond literally the clothing on his back. What has she really got to complain about?
Really, it's an Alice-in-Wonderland world. Imaginate!
Perhaps someone will do a quick calculation of all the "prize" money she has been paid. I bet it's close to $100,000.00 (one hundred thousand dollars), all for writing about how rotten life is supposed to be in the country which she VOLUNTARILY and WITH PERMISSION left, and then VOLUNTARILY, and with the GOVERNMENT'S PERMISSION, returned to live in.
This is someone who writes poisonous bilge about the country she lives in and was born in, is paid handsomely for her whinings, and then complains bitterly that she's not publicly embraced for what she does.
Life is so hard when you receive tens of thousands of dollars from foreign sources, pay no rent, pay nothing for medical care for yourself and your family, nothing for your child's education beyond literally the clothes on his back!
Life is HARD, isn't it?!?!?!?
Sure, Cuba has innumerable problems, and they can't ALL be attributed to Washington's constant efforts to over throw the Cuban system and re-impose capitalism on the country, but this woman cannot say one single solitary thing which is good about her own country. It's pitiful, truly pitiful. While I'm very critical of life in the United States, and especially US policy toward Cuba, there's lots of good and wonderful things I have no difficulty finding and saying about life in this country.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: DOCUMENT - CUBA: ROUTINE REPRESSION: POLITICAL SHORT-TERM DETENTIONS AND HARASSMENT IN CUBA- 2012
The Cuban government wages a permanent campaign of harassment and short-term detentions of political opponents to stop them from demanding respect for civil and political rights. Since Amnesty International’s last report on the respect for the freedom of expression in Cuba, published in June 2010, the situation has further deteriorated with a steady increase in the number of arbitrary detentions. Criticism of the government is not tolerated in Cuba and it is routinely punished with arbitrary and short-term detentions, “acts of repudiation”, intimidation, harassment and politically motivated criminal prosecutions.
The authorities continue to deny those wanting political change in Cuba their right to express and share their ideas freely and without reprisal or retaliation. Repression is routine. Peaceful demonstrators, independent journalists and human rights activists are routinely detained for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement. Activists are often detained as a preventive measure to stop them from attending public demonstrations or private meetings.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE REPORT!
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR25/007/2012/en/ccc6aeba-e892-4079-9e4a-63eebecd8a76/amr250072012en.html