Cuba Libre
Here's an interesting article from The Guardian which tells the story of a young Cuban blogger, Yoani Sanchez, who has set herself on a collision course with the state controlled media in Cuba.
I wish her well because Yoani has a tough fight on her hands and may end up going to jail for her belief in freedom of speech.
Cuban blogger to launch island's first independent digital newspaper
Yoani Sánchez's online publication called 14ymedio will challenge communist-ruled country's state-controlled media
Reuters in Miami - The Guardian
Yoani Sánchez will use online journalism to voice her criticism of Cuba’s one-party system. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Cuba's prize-winning blogger, Yoani Sánchez, is launching the island's first independent digital newspaper next week to challenge the communist-ruled country's state-controlled media.
Sánchez said the online publication will be named 14ymedio, in honour of the year of its launch and the 14th-floor Havana apartment where she writes her popular Generation Y blog on daily life and politics in Cuba.
Going up against Cuba's heavy media restrictions will not be easy, she admitted in an announcement on her blog on Wednesday.
"It will be a difficult road. In recent weeks we have seen a preview of how official propaganda will demonize us for creating this medium," Sánchez wrote, adding that several of her online team have already received warning calls from Cuban state security officials prior to the official launch on 21 May. Public criticism of Cuba's communist system can be considered enemy propaganda, punishable by jail sentences.
Sánchez, 38, has won several prestigious media awards in the United States and Europe and has been included on Time magazine's annual list of 100 most influential people.
Vowing to be totally independent and transparent, Sánchez said she opted for online journalism to voice her criticism of Cuba's one-party system, rather than becoming an opposition politician. "A reporter should not have any kind of militancy," she said.
Instead, she hopes 14ymedio "will support and accompany the necessary transition that is going to take place in our country".
Cuban blogger to launch island's first independent digital newspaper
Yoani Sánchez's online publication called 14ymedio will challenge communist-ruled country's state-controlled media
Reuters in Miami - The Guardian
Yoani Sánchez will use online journalism to voice her criticism of Cuba’s one-party system. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Cuba's prize-winning blogger, Yoani Sánchez, is launching the island's first independent digital newspaper next week to challenge the communist-ruled country's state-controlled media.
Sánchez said the online publication will be named 14ymedio, in honour of the year of its launch and the 14th-floor Havana apartment where she writes her popular Generation Y blog on daily life and politics in Cuba.
Going up against Cuba's heavy media restrictions will not be easy, she admitted in an announcement on her blog on Wednesday.
"It will be a difficult road. In recent weeks we have seen a preview of how official propaganda will demonize us for creating this medium," Sánchez wrote, adding that several of her online team have already received warning calls from Cuban state security officials prior to the official launch on 21 May. Public criticism of Cuba's communist system can be considered enemy propaganda, punishable by jail sentences.
Sánchez, 38, has won several prestigious media awards in the United States and Europe and has been included on Time magazine's annual list of 100 most influential people.
Vowing to be totally independent and transparent, Sánchez said she opted for online journalism to voice her criticism of Cuba's one-party system, rather than becoming an opposition politician. "A reporter should not have any kind of militancy," she said.
Instead, she hopes 14ymedio "will support and accompany the necessary transition that is going to take place in our country".
Raul Castro: Man Alone in the Crowd
Raul Castro during a public event
The shouts, the posters, the slogans in a million voice chorus, awaken dormant, extinct sensations. Seeing the sea of people passing in front of the platform, his heart skips a beat in his chest. The red face, dilated pupils, goosebumps and tension in the jaw. They are the first symptoms of the excitement crowds provoke incaudillos. A ritual they need to dip their hand into from time to time, to avoid the solitude of power.
Autocrats invent marches, huge processions, lavish parades–”the biggest in the world”–to rejoice in their own authority. They know that they, and only they, can force a million people out of their beds in the early hours, load them onto buses, write down the names of every attendee, and set them to marching through a great plaza. To make it clear who’s the boss, to send a message by way of a crowd chanting their name, worshiping them and giving thanks. A “mass” that would never dare to stand down, people whom they don’t rub shoulders with, whom they fear and who–deep inside–they despise.
Today, in the Plaza of the Revolution, an elderly man in sunglasses will preside over the May Day event. Days ahead of time every rooftop near the place has been checked out and guards have been posted at the highest points in the city, calculating how a shot could be fired at the platform. His own grandson will remain close to protect him and a fleet of cars will be waiting “in case something happens” and he has to escape. He doesn’t trust the very crowd that he himself has summoned.
The autocrat is afraid of his own people. Fear and suspicion. The feeling is mutual. He knows that the hundreds of thousands of heads he looks down upon are there… because they fear him, not because they love him.
