Very good article by Fabiola Santiago about the three Cuban bloggers traveling around the world and their international impact. The Castroit regime made a big mistake allowing these bloggers to travel abroad and they are paying a big price for it. The regime is discredited now more than ever.Fabiola Santiago: Cuba’s bloggers are as sharp abroad as at home
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/08/3275068/fabiola-santiago-cubas-bloggers.html
By Fabiola Santiago
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
Posted on Friday, 03.08.13
The Cuban bloggers, bold chroniclers of totalitarian rule, are traveling in winter, an apt metaphor for the old order they’re challenging back home, and to a smaller but no less significant extent, for that of the traditional exile.
Yoani Sánchez. Eliécer Avila. Orlando Luis Pardo
The weather casts a gray patina on their photos from Europe and New York, but their tongues are as sharp abroad as they are inside Cuba when they denounce the arrests of dissidents or illustrate — as they’re doing now with Cuba’s new travel policy — what it’s like to live in their world.
In one word: Treacherous. Whether inside Cuba or out.
Their words are dissected: Do they call it “the embargo,” as in the United States, or “the blockade,” as in Cuba?
Their motives are questioned: Are they true opponents of the regime, or useful fools?
Criticism comes at the ready from all sides, including from Cuban-government-planted bloggers and from those competing for attention and prominence — some of them exiles who were once branded Communist sympathizers themselves.
It’s nasty and dangerous out there, yet the bloggers cross borders, participate in panels, collect prizes for their work that they were given years ago, when the government denied them permission to leave.
The Castroit regime is starting to break down, more and more Cubans are losing their fear. New technologies like cell phones, flash drive, Bluetooth, etc, are helping accelerate the process.Yoani Expression thrives thanks to flash drives
PUEBLA, Mexico: Yoani: Expression thrives thanks to flash drives - Cuba - MiamiHerald.com
Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, speaking at a media forum in Mexico, said Cubans use computer memory sticks to evade Internet censorship.
BY TIM JOHNSON
McClatchy News Service
Speaking at a media forum in Mexico, Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez talks about how memory sticks help Cubans evade Internet censorship. "Information circulates hand-to-hand through this wonderful gadget known as the memory stick," Sánchez said. “And it is difficult for the government to intercept them."
PUEBLA, Mexico -- Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez on Saturday told newspaper publishers from around the Western Hemisphere that “nothing is changing” in Cuba’s ossified political system and that “the situation of press freedom in my country is calamitous.”
But Sánchez said underground blogs, digital portals and illicit e-magazines proliferate, passed around on removable computer drives known as memory sticks. The small computer memories, also known as flash drives or thumb drives, are dropped into friendly hands on buses and along street corners, offering a surprising number of Cubans access to information.
Most Cubans long ago realized that the main cause of their calamity is not the external U.S. embargo, but the internal government embargo.Yoani Rejects Unconditional Lifting of Sanctions
Capitol Hill Cubans: Yoani Rejects Unconditional Lifting of Sanctions
at 10:08 AM Thursday, March 21, 2013
In an interview with TV Marti, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez clarified that she supports the lifting of U.S. sanctions -- but not without pre-conditions.
Q: Are you in favor of lifting the embargo without conditions?
Yoani: I am not if favor of that, I think that it is clear that there should be conditions [for the lifting the embargo] and that there should be a long process of debate before doing so.
Moreover, she stated her satisfaction in meeting with U.S. Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) and their understanding of the need to help the Cuban people find ways to freely access the Internet.
See video at: Capitol Hill Cubans: Yoani Rejects Unconditional Lifting of Sanctions
Maria Werlau, Executive Director of the nonprofit CubaArchive.org, was instrumental in getting the United Nations Correspondences Association’s (UNCA) to invite Yoani to speak at the UN. The article recount step by step Yoani visit to the UNCuban blogger, "citizen Yoani," at the UN
Maria Werlau: Cuban blogger, ‘citizen Yoani,’ at the UN | Babalú Blog
By Maria Werlau
She was delayed from filming a last-minute CNN interview, so I was anxious to rush her through the next steps. Passes were secured at the information desk --she used her Cuban passport as ID and was photographed like any other visitor. We hurried downstairs and through the basement parking lot to the Library building where journalists’ and UNCA offices are located during the main building renovation. As we walked fast and through successive security points, I told her the Cuban government had blocked our plan and we would have to improvise. We agreed it did not matter, she was at the UN and she was going to speak regardless. Just minutes before, I had read on my phone that the tantrum had played out at the highest levels; Cuba’s Ambassador had filed an official protest asking the UN Secretary General to call off the “grave attack.”
Cuba is very influential at the UN, it has one of the largest and most active representations. China, Russia, Iran, and the likes are strong supporters, plus it exerts great influence over many other governments --many opportunely host Cuban medical missions or share "revolutionary" sympathies, others just want to avoid trouble. Cuba’s diplomats are known for expertly working the UN bureaucracy and rules. The room change was the least of my worries. At any moment, I feared, we could be stopped at a security check, escorted out of the building, or attacked by Cuba’s diplomat-thugs. These things have actually happened at the UN in New York and Geneva.
The myth of the success of the Cuban Health Care SystemCubans Are Trapped In A Myth
Yoani Sanchez: Cubans Are Trapped In A Myth
Yoani Sanchez
Posted: 03/26/2013 8:24 pm
It's cold in the Hague. Through the window I can see a seagull find a piece of a cookie on the sidewalk. In the warmth of a local bar several activists are speaking of their respective realities. From one corner of the table a Mexican journalist explains the risk of exercising the profession of reporter in a reality where words can cost you your life. We all listen in silence, imagining the newsroom shot up, his colleagues kidnapped or killed, the impunity.
Then a colleague from the Sahara speaks up and his words are like sand in your eyes, reddening them until the tears flow. The anecdotes from the North Korean also make me cringe. He was born in a prison camp from which he escaped at age 14. I follow each of these stories, I could live them. From whatever culture and geography, pain is pain anywhere. Within the space of a few minutes we pass from the midst of a shootout between cartels to a tent in the desert and then to the body of a boy behind barbed wire. I manage to put myself in the skin of all of them.
I hold my breath. It's my turn to speak. I tell about the acts of repudiation, the arbitrary arrests, the assassination of reputations and a nation on rafts crossing the Florida Straits. I tell them of divided families, intolerance, of a country where power is inherited through blood and our children dream of escape. And then come all the phrases I've heard hundreds, thousands of times.
I've barely said the first words and I already know what is coming: "But you can't complain, you have the best educational system on the continent"... "Yes, it might be, but you can't deny that Cuba has confronted the United States for half a century"... "OK, you don't have freedom, but you have a public health system"... and a long repertoire of stereotypes and false conclusions taken from official propaganda. Communication breaks down, the myth prevails.
A myth fed by five decades of distortion of our national history. A myth that no longer appeals to reason, only to blind belief, a myth that accepts no critics, only fans. A myth that makes it impossible for so many to understand us, to be in tune with our problems. A myth that has managed to make many perceive as good things in our nation that they would never accept in their own. A myth that has broken the channel of ordinary sympathy generated for any human being who is a victim. A myth that traps us more strongly than the totalitarianism under which we live.
The seagull takes a piece of candy in his beak. At the table the talk turns back to North Africa and Mexico. The sense of explaining my Island to them is lost. Why, if the whole world seems to know everything about us, without ever having lived in Cuba. I cringe again on hearing of the harsh lives of these activists, I again put myself in their place. And who puts themselves in ours? Who unravels this myth in which we are trapped?
“Conducting qualitative ethnographic research in Cuba is not easy. North American anthropologists have historically been viewed with suspicion by the Cuban government, and in some cases research permission has been revoked for individuals who took a critical perspective or inadvertently broached the issue of political dissent (Lewis, 1977; Rosendahl, 1997). In my own case, the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of Cuba in the medical anthropology and public health literature meant that I arrived on the island with very favorable expectations. I never anticipated my research would evolve into a critique.(…)' Re-examining the Cuban Health Care System, http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/website_documents/article-hirschfeld-press.pdf, Vol. 2, Issue 3-July 2007.
The Cuban Ministry of Health [MINSAP] expects physicians to structure their clinical interventions to achieve the Ministry’s annual health goals. As with other sectors of the economy, MINSAP sets statistical targets that are viewed as the equivalent of production quotas. The most carefully guarded of these health targets is the infant mortality rate. Any doctor who had an unusually high rate of infant deaths in his or her jurisdiction would be viewed as having failed in a number of critical respects.
Castro ran off the people who could make Cuba grow, the people the nation needed to feed everyone else. These same cast-off exiles through their own efforts, blood, sweat and tears, turned Miami into a world-class bustling metropolis, a paragon of International business success and prosperity.B]Finding Cuba Outside of Cuba, My Nation Safeguarded by Its Exiles[/B]
Yoani Sanchez: Finding Cuba Outside of Cuba, My Nation Safeguarded by Its Exiles
Yoani Sanchez
Posted: 03/30/2013 11:57 am
I've found a Cuba outside of Cuba, I told a friend a few days ago. He laughed at my play on words, thinking I was trying to create literature. But no. In Brazil, a septuagenarian excitedly gave me a medal of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre. "I have not been back since I left in 1964," she confirmed as she handed me this little gem that had belonged to her mother. During my stay in Prague, a group of compatriots living there seemed to be more aware of what was happening in our country than many who vegetate, inside it, in apathy. Amid the tall buildings of New York a family invited me to their house and their grandmother made a "coconut flan" in the style of our traditional cuisine, so damaged on the island by the shortages and scarcities.
Our diaspora, our exile, is conserving Cuba outside of Cuba. Along with their suitcases and the pain of distance, they have preserved pieces of our national history that were deleted from the textbooks with which several generations have been educated or rather, raised to be mediocre. I'm rediscovering my own country in each of these Cubans dispersed around the world. When I confirm what they have really accomplished, the contrast with what official propaganda tells me about them leaves me with an enormous sadness for my country. For all this human wealth that we have lost, for all this talent that has had to wash up outside our borders and for all the seeds that have germinated in other lands. How did we allow one ideology, one party, one man, to have felt the "divine" power to decide who could or could not carry the adjective "Cuban"?
Now I have proof that they lied to me, they lied to us. Nobody has had to tell me, I can grasp it for myself on seeing all this Cuba that is outside of Cuba, an immense country that they have been safeguarding for us.
Comparative Study Of Cuba’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Based On Existing Statistical Data During The Republic And Today’s Communist System
LA NUEVA CUBA
Excerpts
In 1958 the Cuban peso and the dollar circulated in Cuba on a par-basis. Between the 1960’s and the 1990’s, the inflation index (consumer price index, CPI) changed to 5.96 (4). In other words an item that cost $1.00 in 1958 will cost $5.96 in the year 2000. For example a gallon of milk that cost $0.47 in 1958 in the U.S. cost $2.80 in 2000.
At the end of November 2001 the official exchange rate of the convertible Cuban peso (equivalent to the dollar) was 27 units of the Cuban peso in circulation. In the year 2001 Cuba’s monthly average was 230 pesos per capita, which at the exchange rate prevailing for that year would be equivalent to $8.52 per month. In 1958 Cuba’s monthly average was $110 per capita, 12.9 times larger than in 2001.
The combined effect of the devalued Cuban peso with respect to the dollar, and the rate of inflation for the last 40 years (27x5.96) have been devastating to the standard of living experienced in Cuba from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. To remain at the same purchasing power, the average salary would have to be 161x110=17710 pesos today. Current per capita figures represent only 1.3% of the 1958 per capita.
As George Gilder wrote in "The Spirit of Enterprise" 20 years ago:Cubans on the Island and Cubans Around the World: We Are All Just Cubans, Period
Yoani Sanchez: Cubans on the Island and Cubans Around the World: We Are All Just Cubans, Period
Yoani Sanchez
Posted 04/01/2013
Years ago, when I left Cuba for the first time, I was in a train leaving from the city of Berlin heading north. A Berlin already reunified but preserving fragments of the ugly scar, that wall that had divided a nation. In the compartment of that train, while thinking about my father and grandfather -- both engineers -- who would have given anything to ride on this marvel of cars and a locomotive, I struck up a conversation with the young man sitting directly across from me.
After the first exchange of greetings, of mistreating the German language with "Guten Tag" and clarifying that "Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch," the man immediately asked me where I came from. So I replied with "Ich komme aus Kuba."
As always happens after the phrase saying you come from the largest of the Antilles, the interlocutor tries to show how much he knows about our country. "Ah.... Cuba, yes, Varadero, rum, salsa music." I even ran into a couple of cases where the only reference they seemed to have for our nation was the album "BuenaVista Social Club," which in those years was rising in popularity on the charts.
Carlos Erie, Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, wrote:
Cuban exiles are among the eight groups identified as superior.
I could be wrong about this, but I think that there is no other group of immigrants or subculture other than Cuban exiles that is so open to criticism, denigration, or open hatred or ridicule.
Imagine anyone publicly denigrating any of the other seven groups singled out by Amy Chua: Jews, Chinese, Iranians, Indians, Lebanese, Nigerians, or even Mormons.
Very good article by Fabiola Santiago about the three Cuban bloggers traveling around the world and their international impact. The Castroit regime made a big mistake allowing these bloggers to travel abroad and they are paying a big price for it. The regime is discredited now more than ever.
blog “Generación Y” describing daily life in her home country has made Sánchez a well know figure.
Yoani participated in the conference at the Institute Cervantes in Berlin on May 5 about new trends in digital technologies, where she talked about her experiences.http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/644336/normal/179649/130507-BM-Sanchez.jpg
Sánchez at the Federal Foreign Office
© AA
The blog is often attacked by hackers. Sánchez has repeatedly been publicly vilified and even arrested. In 2008, she received the Ortega y Gasset journalism award given by the Spanish newspaper El Pais. For years she had been prevented from traveling abroad, but a change in Cuba’s travel laws in 2013 brought relief.
Since then she has visited eight countries. In Berlin, she is currently taking part in the reublica conference, which deals with new trends in digital society. It is an ideal stage for Yoani Sánchez to speak openly and freely with other international internet activists and to spend time networking with them.
She is also taking time to get to know Berlin. On her twitter account @yoanisanchez she has described her visit to the Jewish Museum and many of the city’s galleries.
In the 1950s La Habana was the second city in the world to install in the Radiocentro’s theatre the 3D system and multiple screens with stereophonic sound. The movie Bwana Devil was the first 3D movie projected in that theatre.3D Finally Comes to Cuba
Yoani Sanchez: 3D Finally Comes to Cuba
Yoani Sanchez
Posted: 04/09/2013 4:54 pm
http://translatingcuba.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/148883_10151170016374344_284042769_n.jpg
Poster for the Young Filmmakers Festival in Havana
They stretch out their hands to touch the creature that seems to emerge from the screen. They scream when the dragon opens its mouth and even cringe when the trees of the ancient magic forest surround them. They are the first viewers of 3D movies in Cuba, the first travelers on an optical adventure. Teenagers, for the most part, who want to appreciate the sensation of three dimensions in the movies. They put on their special glasses and when the film ends, they always want to see it again, to re-experience those visual effects.
In my neighborhood they've opened a 3D theater. A tiny place run by a family where you can watch the latest movies with this technology that have been released to the world movie market. At first, no one knew precisely what it was all about, but little by little the enthusiasm has been spreading among younger people and now there is a line outside the place to get a seat in front of that fantastic screen. This week they are showing The Hobbit, a lavish production based on the work of the novelist and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien.
The State hasn't wanted to be left behind and during the Young Filmmakers Festival in Havana they programmed, for the first time, a series of film showings in 3D. The projections took place in a room accommodating only 45 viewers and the tickets sold out in advance. The glasses and TVs that allow you to enjoy this technology have never been sold in Cuban stores, but the wide variety of these gadgets that show up in the underground market is surprising. On the illegal networks you can find everything you need to enjoy this new entertainment. No one wants to miss the experience, even though it only lasts a few minutes.
The National Capitol Building in Havana, the Palace of the Laws, has an externally superficially resemblance to the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. Its Cupola resembles the one at the Pantheon in Paris. At the time of its construction the cupola at 92 m (302 feet) high was the third highest in the world. The Statue of the Republic located in the main hall of the long steps under the cupola, at 49 feet high is the third larger statue indoors in the world. It is covered with 22 carat (92%) gold leaf and weighs 49 tons. This hall leads to the two chambers that used to house the Senate and Chamber of Representatives. The 1940 constitution was discussed and approved on those chambers. It will be reinstalled in the same chambers, in a near future, by a Congress chosen in free election by the Cuban people.Cuba's National Assembly to Return to Capitol After 54 Years
Yoani Sanchez: Cuba's National Assembly to Return to Capitol After 54 Years
Yoani Sanchez
Posted: 04/30/2013
Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
The Capitol building in Havana is beginning to emerge from its long punishment. Like a penitent child, it has waited 54 years to return to its status as the site of the Cuban parliament. Visited by everyone, it was a natural sciences museum with stuffed animals -- plagued with moths -- and in one of its hallways the first public internet site in the Cuban capital opened. While the tourists photographed the enormous statue of the Republic, thousands of bats hung from its highest decorated ceilings. They slept upside down during the day, but at night they swooped around leaving their feces on the walls and cornices. It accumulated there for decades, amid the indifference of the employees and the giggles of teenagers who pointed at the waste saying, "Look, ****, ****." This is the building I have known since my childhood, fallen into disgrace but still impressive.
Visitors are always captivated by the history of the diamond that marks the starting point of the Central Highway, with its share of cursing and greed. And on observing this neoclassical colossus, these same travelers confirm -- what we all know but no one says out loud -- "It looks a lot like the Capitol in Washington." In this similarity lies part of the reason of the political exile suffered by our flagship building. It is too reminiscent of that other one; an obvious first cousin of what has come to pass for the image of the enemy. But since, by decree, no architectural symbols are erected in any city, its dome continues to define the face of Havana, along with the Malecón and el Morro which stand at the entrance to the Bay. For those arriving from the provinces, the photo in front of the wide staircase of this grand palace is obligatory. Its dome is also the most common reference point in paintings, photos, crafts, and whatever trinket someone wants to take back home to say: I was in Havana. While they insisted on downplaying its importance, it only became more prominent. The greater the stigma attached to it, the more enthralling its mixture of beauty and decay. Among other reasons because in the decades after its construction -- right up to today -- no other construction on the Island has managed to surpass it in splendor.
Now, the National Assembly of People's Power will begin to sit exactly where the Congress of the Republic of Cuba once met, a congress the official history books speak so badly of. I imagine our parliamentarians meeting in the chamber of upholstered seats, surrounded by the large windows with their regal bearing, under the finely decorated ceilings. I see them, as well, raising every hand to unanimously -- or by huge majorities -- approve every law. Silent, tame, uniform in their political ideas, eager not to offend the real power. And I don't know what to think; whether, in reality, this is a new humiliation -- a more elaborate punishment -- in store for the Havana Capitol; or if, on the contrary, it is a victory, the triumphant caress it has been waiting for more than half a century.
Yoani participated in the conference at the Institute Cervantes in Berlin on May 5 about new trends in digital technologies, where she talked about her experiences.Yoani Sánchez at the Federal Foreign Office
Auswärtiges Amt - Federal Foreign Office - Yoani Sánchez at the Federal Foreign Office
Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle met with Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez in Berlin on 7 May. Her blog “Generación Y” describing daily life in her home country has made Sánchez a well know figure.
Sánchez at the Federal Foreign Office © AA
The blog is often attacked by hackers. Sánchez has repeatedly been publicly vilified and even arrested. In 2008, she received the Ortega y Gasset journalism award given by the Spanish newspaper El Pais. For years she had been prevented from traveling abroad, but a change in Cuba’s travel laws in 2013 brought relief.
Since then she has visited eight countries. In Berlin, she is currently taking part in the reublica conference, which deals with new trends in digital society. It is an ideal stage for Yoani Sánchez to speak openly and freely with other international internet activists and to spend time networking with them.
She is also taking time to get to know Berlin. On her twitter account @yoanisanchez she has described her visit to the Jewish Museum and many of the city’s galleries.
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