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 Lazo, and a friend who was accompanying us to the march against violence. The ironies of life, it was an evening filled with punches, shouts and obscenities on what should have passed as a day of peace and harmony. The same "aggressors" called for a patrol car which took my other two companions, Orlando and I were condemned to the car with yellow plates, the terrifying world of lawlessness and the impunity of Armageddon.
I refused to get into the bright Geely-made car and we demanded they show us identification or a warrant to take us. Of course they didn't show us any papers to prove the legitimacy of our arrest. The curious crowded around and I shouted, "Help, these men want to kidnap us," but they stopped those who wanted to intervene with a shout that revealed the whole ideological background of the operation, "Don't mess with it, these are counterrevolutionaries." In the face of our verbal resistance they made a phone call and said to someone who must have been the boss, "What do we do? They don't want to get in the car." I imagine the answer from the other side was unequivocal, because then came a flurry of punches and pushes, they got me with my head down and tried to push me into the car. I held onto the door... blows to my knuckles... I managed to take a paper one of them had in his pocket and put it in my mouth. Another flurry of punches so I would return the document to them.
Orlando was already inside, immobilized by a karate hold that kept his head pushed to the floor. One put his knee in my chest and the other, from the front seat, hit me in my kidneys and punched me in the head so I would open my mouth and spit out the paper. At one point I felt I would never leave that car. "This is as far as you're going, Yoani," "I've had enough of your antics," said the one sitting beside the driver who was pulling my hair. In the back seat a rare spectacle was taking place: my legs were pointing up, my face reddened by the pressure and my aching body, on the other side Orlando brought down by a professional at beating people up. I just managed to grab, through his trousers, one's testicles, in an act of desperation. I dug my nails in, thinking he was going to crush my chest until the last breath. "Kill me now," I screamed, with the last inhalation I had left in me, and the one in front warned the younger one, "Let her breathe."
I was listening to Orlando panting and the blows continued to rain down on us, I planned to open the door and throw myself out but there was no handle on the inside. We were at their mercy and hearing Orlando's voice encouraged me. Later he told me it was the same for him hearing my choking words... they let him know, "Yoani is still alive." We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, "What has happened?"... "A kidnapping," I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God's sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.
I managed to see, however, the degree of fright of our assailants, the fear of the new, of what they cannot destroy because they don't understand, the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered.
The following video is from the peaceful march Yoani was prevented from attending.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanisanchez
People need to separate America the nation from the Neo-conservative ideologues that pimp really bad foriegn policy and neo-liberalism that pimps really bad economic policies. By neo-liberalism I don't mean American liberals, but free market ideology.
American government and American society pre-dates the creation of both ideologies as Cuban society pre-dates communism. In other words Americans are not solely defined by capitalism and Cubans are not solely defined by communism. Those are economic systems not people.
To those who think Castro is so bad, read a bit of history on what was there beforehand and the role the very powerful and rich Cubans that fled ( instead of staying behind and fighting against the Castro regime) had in the malaised, corrupt,brutal whorehouse that was Cuba during the Prio and Batista regimes. These same powerful rightwingnuts have highjacked US policy towards Cuba and made any diplomatic talks and removal of the inmoral embargo impossible for over 50 years.
The good news is that they are slowly dying out and that perhaps, the second and third generation Cuban-Americans will open their hearts and minds.
Look at it this way Yoani, not only are you able to tell the world about it, you are doing it on Huffington Post still alive, coherent and in perfect English.
I was born in Cuba, left (not of my own decision) with my parents in 1961 and have been back to Cuba since then. I remember the entire revolution and had family members that were an integral part of many sides during the same. Trust me, Cuba prior to Castro was good for a select few. If you were black, mullato or poor, not so good.
I suspect that a huge percentage of that 1MM that cut and ran were under the age of 10 when they left and /or have been born in exile.
By the way, were you born in Cuba or just drinking the Kool Aid with no real reference point?
The whole world has agreed it was a flagrant violation of hers human rights, almost every single paper and TV channel or radio station in the world denounced this barbaric act, several government and all human right organization has denounced the criminal deed and the tyranny has not deny nothing, nada, zero,.......... today the aggressor was identified (is not the first time this thug is involved in a violent incident) and his photo publicized around the world..... the tyranny is still quiet!!!!!
Perhaps we should stand up for once for individual freedom and stop acting like sheep expecting government to solve our problems.
The scary part is that Ahmadinejad, Gadhafi and Chavez have followed the same script with success-and agin the educated elite nod their heads.
When Castro visited New York in 1995 for the UN's 50th Anniversary bash, not only did he get an ovation from the General Assembly, but Time magazine hailed him as "The Toast of Manhattan!" and Newsweek as "The Hottest Ticket in Manhattan!"
And a whole new generation of idiots like Sean Penn lines up to lick their boots.
And anytime someone starts using words like "elite" my Foxdar goes off.
This country does not support Castro, never has.
Castro does fear that.
Why America has not done this lends question to the USAs real motives behind all these restrictions?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/15/iraqi-shoe-thrower-freed
You would see that broken ribs, electric shock "therapy" and a few missing teeth were involved. Would you want a similar regime to be established in your homeland?
YES,ANY THUG/GOON IN CUBA, STILL DOING THE DIRTY WORK,FOR CASTRO , HAS HIS 'DAYS-NUMBERED', AND CASTRO STYLE 'COMMUNISM' IS AN ABJECT FAILURE,SO ADIOS CASTRO GOONS,MAY YOU ROT IN GUANTANAMO,AS STATE CONVICTED TERROISTS,WHEN DEMOCRACY WINS !! AND YOU CAN SHARE A CELL WITH BUSH-CHENY-RUMSFIELD-GONZALES WHO ALSO VIOLATED STATE INTERNATIONAL LAWS.
We made Cuba what it is today by licking the boots of these Floridian exiles for a few extra votes in federal, state, and local elections and gave them an inordinate amount of power in the Miami area where they created an area known as Little Havana.. Rather than try to build a dialog with Castro, the US government sought continued isolation after the Cuban Missle Crisis and pushed Castro even further into the arms of communism... lets not pretend that America never coddled up to other dictators in the past and present.. Let's not forget how we "adopted" Sadam Hussein when it was in the US interest... as well as Castro's predicessor Batista.
I applaud this woman's effort to bring whatever she can about everyday life in Cuba to light...
Will democracy come to Cuba after the Castro brothers are gone... I think not.. still waiting in the wings are the Florida exiles, or rather the children in most cases of these former Batista supporters... They will look to reclaim lost property and lands and will look to the US government to support their claims.. They will also influence a new government, one that will turn into another puppet state and how quickly will we see new resorts for the vacationers to escape the northern winters.. as the Europeans are doing now in Cuba... the Cuban people will then have jobs in these resorts...chambermaids, waiters, etc....
But yes, certainly is badly managed on many levels..