Some even manage not to get shot. Cuba’s blogosphere has developed a sharper edge
Carefully, but with daring determination, some Cubans whose blogs once focused largely on the frustrations of daily life are moving toward sharp-edged commentaries and activities that some fear will eventually lead to a crackdown by the communist government.
“We do not have a common position . . . but yes, some people have been doing actions that go beyond the click and the keyboard and try to exercise the rights of a free person,'’ said Reynaldo Escobar of the Havana blog Desde Aquí (From Here).
Desde Aquí in English. He used to be a Cuban “journalist”
In several of the published photos Dr. Raúl Castellanos, cousin of Carlos Lage, appears. At first I didn’t connect him with the impeccable bureaucrat of the Revolutionary Orientation Department who had the kindness to tell me the truth: “Do not defend yourself from any accusation, you are leaving journalism simply because you do not think like us.”
His attacks are not exactly direct attacks. A good example It’s not funny which questions the wisdom of Castro nationalizing US corporations property after the “revolution”. After every paragraph he stresses “I do not agree with the blockade.”
Three others with English versions.
Voices through the Bars
I believe that in order to criticize one must earn the right. Not all prisons are the same, and for that reason I can’t imagine the international community thinking that Cuban prisons are a paradise. Only we, the political prisoners, especially those of the cause of the 75, know what it’s like to live, if you can call it living, in solitary and enclosed cells without being exposed to the sun for 18 months, with visits allowed only every three months, and matrimonial encounters every five. In other words, we have sex with our wives twice a year.
Bags weighing 30 pounds. No telephone. Two religious meetings in about two years. Enduring the crazed screams of those condemned to death. Since they won’t separate us from the common prisoners, we have learned to live in the jungle, together with the actual delinquents, rapists, child molesters, assassins, the worst of Cuban society.
I’m convinced that none of us will ever be the same again. And it is not because of weakness. Quite some time has passed and we have remained as hard as rocks. But really, we now will never return to being ourselves.
Now I have my blog, which as I always say belongs to all. If someone believes that Cuban prisons are heavenly, then please forgive me: they should cleanse their brains. There are days when I have written about a common prisoner, with my ulcer acting up and my kidney barely letting me rise from my bed. Nevertheless I continue forward. Without knowing if I will ever emerge free from this tomb of living men. My only hope is in knowing that I am a prisoner only because of my thoughts and my desire to be a free man. Then it is worth it.
Pablo Pacheco, Canaleta Prison
Sin Evasion (Without Evasion)
In contrast with the ramshackled economy, the inescapable state of malaise that prevails in the island and the clear signs of the system’s breakdown, the Cuban régime has seen fit to invest in a monument to its ideology once again. This time, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Camilo Ciefuegos’s mysterious disappearance,
I wonder what the Castros know about that disappearance.
Generationy Which among other things talks about racism in the Cuban Paradise.
“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 late hour. He looks for complicity in me, who was born in a majority black neighborhood and who loves skin the color of cinnamon. I barely listen to him. Those who discriminate against people like themselves especially bother me: the hotel doorman who berates the Cuban but lets a shouting gesturing tourist pass; the prostitute who will go, for ten convertible pesos, with a Canadian twice her age but doesn’t want to seem “defeated” by accepting a fellow Cuban; the Santiaguan who, once installed in Havana, mocks the accents of people from his own city.
Not as hard-edged as the Blogs in the US and other allegedly free countries, but they do exist and are inching towards freedom.
Each day they’re online, each post and every comment is another chip in the foundation of the State.
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