Yoani Sánchez
Encyclopedia
Yoani Maria Sánchez Cordero (born September 4, 1975) is a Cuban
blog
ger who has achieved international fame and multiple international awards for her critical portrayal of life in Cuba under its current government.
Sanchez attended primary school during the affluent time when the Soviet Union was providing considerable aid to Cuba. However, her high school and university education coincided with the loss of financial aid to Cuba following the Soviet Union's collapse, creating a highly public educational system and style of living that subsequently left Sanchez with a strong need for personal privacy. Sanchez's university education left her with two understandings; first, that she had acquired a disgust for “high culture
”, and second that she no longer had an interest in philology
, her chosen field of university study.
Sánchez, disillusioned with her home country, left Cuba for Switzerland in 2002, and it was during this time that she became interested in computer science
. When she finally returned to Cuba, Sanchez helped to establish Contodos, a magazine that continues to act as a forum for Cuban free expression, and a vehicle for reporting news. Sánchez is best known for her blog, Generación Y (Generation Y); which, despite censorship in Cuba, she is able to publish by e-mailing the blog entries to friends outside the country who then post them online. The blog is translated and available in 17 languages.
Time
magazine listed her as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2008, stating that "under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot; freedom of speech". In November 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama
, wrote that her blog "provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba" and applauded her efforts to "empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology."
, Cuba, one of two daughters, to William Sánchez and Maria Eumelia Cordero. Her father worked, as his father had before him, on the state railroad system
, first as a laborer and later as an engineer. As the nation’s railroad system fell apart after the collapse of communism
in Europe, William Sánchez, out of work along with many of his colleagues, became a bicycle repairman.
Sánchez grew up and attended school in central Havana during the years when the Soviet Union
was supporting the island and its communist revolution with tangible aid, nearly $9 billion in the final year. Sánchez's secondary and university years coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its subsidies to Cuba that had for nearly three decades provided about 80 percent of Cuba’s international trade. During her high school years, she attended a "school in the countryside" about which she wrote:
Sánchez studied for two years in the Instituto Pedagógico with a major in Spanish literature
. She transferred to the Faculty of Arts and Letters in 1995, and gave birth to her son in August of that year. Sanchez graduated within five years with a degree in Hispanic philology
and a specialty in contemporary Latin American literature. Her thesis was titled Words Under Pressure. A Study of the Literature of Dictatorship in Latin America. Sanchez says that by the end of her university studies she "understood two things: the first, that the world of intellectualism and high culture disgusted me and the saddest, that I no longer wanted to be a philologist." By September 2000, she had found a job with Editorial Gente Nueva, a publisher of children's literature. After a short period of employment with Gente Nueva, Sanchez asked to be released from her position, then focused on a higher paying job as a freelance Spanish instructor for German tourists visiting Havana. According to Sánchez, this was during a time "when engineers preferred to drive taxis, teachers worked as hotel desk clerks, and store counters were tended by neurosurgeons or nuclear physicists."
In 2002, claiming disillusionment with her home country, Sánchez decided to leave Cuba and emigrated to Switzerland. She was eventually joined by her son and husband. Two years later she decided to return to Cuba citing “family reasons" However, since she had been out of the country for more than eleven months without special permission, Sánchez had lost the right to return. Sánchez states that she then flew home to Cuba "for a two-week family visit" on a round-trip ticket, and by destroying her passport was able to avoid being forced on a plane back to Switzerland. The Cuban government says that she was granted a waiver allowing her to recover her permanent resident status in Cuba. She finally resettled in Havana. During this time, Sánchez discovered her current profession, computer science
. In 2004, she founded, together with a group of Cubans – all based on the island – a magazine, Consenso, based on reflection and debate. She also helped establish the web portal Desde Cuba (From Cuba), an on-line magazine and collection of individual blogs, of which Sánchez's was the first. Sánchez began to sign her posts in 2008, abandoning anonymous blogging. That year, she requested permission to travel to Spain to receive the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award
but permission was denied. Her request for permission to travel to an international documentary film festival in Prague, of which she was a member of the jury, was also denied.
In October 2009, Sánchez was awarded Columbia University
's "Maria Moors Cabot prize
" and was invited to New York to accept the award. The Cuban government denied her permission to attend. Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, criticized the decision, stating that "The Cuban government ought to value Ms. Sanchez's work as a sign that young Cubans are ready to take Cuba into a better future — one that will have the free press the Cuban people deserve."
, and Yoani Sánchez. Sánchez is also involved with the digital magazine Convivencia.
In January–February 2007, Sánchez participated in an event referred to as the "debate of the ntellectuals", described as a "discussion among intellectuals and writers on Cuba’s repressive cultural policies." She, along with several others, was not allowed into the formal conference being held in the House of The Americas. The debate of those who were excluded, and included, in the formal sessions, was captured in a several hundred pages of emails exchanged between the participants. These emails—exchanged by over one hundred participants—are preserved in the digital magazine Contodos, under the title: Polémica Intellectual 2007.
According to Sánchez, what pushed her to write a blog was the bad taste left at the end of the controversy of the intellectuals in January 2007. The meeting in the House of the Americas would try to channel and institutionalize a debate that had been raising the temperature of Cuban emails for a couple of weeks already. A select list of guests began entering the "Che Guevara Room", while our “group of impertinents” watched, from outside, as midnight arrived. The protesters were blocked from entering by the custodians in order to keep them from debating and discussing their encounters with "censorship and dogmatism." The protesters chanted “Desiderio, Desiderio, hear my criteria,” but this had no effect, while inside, the voice of the Minister of Culture repeated the idea that in a place under siege, dissent is treason. Sánchez believed that the "debate was hijacked by the institutions, jailed by an academic world full of concepts and fancy words, and condemned to take the course of the imminent conference of the UNEAC [Cuban Writers and Artists Union].
In the end the protesters left with the conviction that they couldn't wait to be allowed inside for the next debate. For Sánchez, this added a push to start what she terms "this exorcism called Generation Y." Sánchez launched her blog, Generation Y, on April 9, 2007. The national baseball playoffs were underway, and the first post used the baseball fever to compare what Cubans are allowed to shout, and display on homemade posters, “Santiago, Go Santiago!” and what they are not: “Internet for all!” The blog was hosted in Germany on an Internet domain by Cronon AG, and was designed by Sánchez. Later, the blog was transferred to WordPress
, and was eventually upgraded to allow comments by readers.
When the blog had been active for six months, Sánchez expressed her reason for blogging, saying that her initial inspiration had been to create an aid to help her deal with the frustrations she felt with the situation in Cuba, and of trying to go along with the advice of friends who suggested she be cautious and wait, rather than more "noble motives". She tried "silence and evasion," yoga
, Tai Chi
, going to the gym, all with no results. She finally found a means to express these frustrations, by blogging. Even so, she admits "I can both get discouraged have sudden starts. I alternate between “It‘s working!” to “It’s not worth the pain”; alerting her readers to not be "surprised if the catharsis rises in tone, if I become incendiary, or show a streak of pessimism."
According to Sánchez, when she began blogging, Cubans, by law, were not allowed into tourist hotels, but with her “European” appearance, and ability to speak German, she routinely managed to get past the gatekeepers to work on her blog. Due to the difficulties in accessing the Internet, her access speed is determined by the speed of the bus that connects to La Víbora at Línea and G. "Each post depends on a countless chain of events that normally don’t go well. From my isolated PC to a flash memory and then to the public space of a cybercafé or a hotel. For this, without detailing all the complications, the elevator does not work, the gatekeeper asks me to show my passport to sit at the computer, or there are frustrations to sign on, plus the slow-speeds imposed by proxies, filters and keylogger."
, and she began writing occasional posts that described life in Cuba. Sánchez says she has strived to maintain a respectful tone, and she asks that those who leave comments on her blog do so as well.
In an interview with journalist Ted Henken published in Poder360, she explained this view, saying:
published an article about bloggers in Cuba: "Cubans go to unusual lengths to post blogs"; Sánchez featured prominently in the article. The article was republished by media around the world, and was followed by a Wall Street Journal article on December 22, 2007, called "Cuban Revolution: Yoani Sánchez fights tropical totalitarianism, one blog post at a time". Sánchez has also appeared in interviews by Spain's El País newspaper; in an article in Germany's Die Zeit
; and in the New York Times.
Sánchez was well known by this time and the attempt to censor her by the sudden government shutdown of her blog attracted more international attention than ever.
On April 2, 2008, the Washington Post devoted a long column to her, just one of hundreds of articles and blog posts appearing around the world.
On June 23, 2008, Cuba’s daily newspaper, Granma
, published a lengthy prologue, written by Fidel Castro
, to the book Fidel, Bolivia y algo más, which had been re-issued fifteen years after its initial publication. In a prologue to this new edition of a book commemorating his visit to Bolivia in 1993, Fidel Castro took the opportunity to quote a long excerpt from Sánchez's blog and, although he did not mention her name, expressed his disappointment that there are young persons in Cuba today who think as she does. Castro describes Sánchez's statements as a generalization used as a slogan.
Sánchez responded to Castro's comments by saying in her blog that she would allow her husband, journalist Reinaldo Escobar, to respond to Castro's statements because she felt it best to leave the fighting at the "macho-man-male" level, and instead continue with her "womanly" labor of weaving together the "frayed tapestry" of their society. Sánchez's husband responded with:
Escobar went on to enumerate a list of names he says are "terrible and undeserving" recipients who were awarded the Order of José Marti
by Castro, including names such as Leonid Brezhnev
, Nicolae Ceaușescu
, Gustáv Husák
, and Robert Mugabe
, among others.
As of January 2009, Generation Y (all languages) was getting about 14 million 'hits' a month. On the Spanish language site, each entry receives hundreds, if not thousands, of comments.
Given the challenges of blogging in Cuba, the number of blogs on the DesdeCuba site grew quickly. Eight months after she started Generation Y, she was joined on the Desdecuba website by her husband Reinaldo's blog, Desde Aqui (From Here), in December 2007. In January three more Desdecuba blogs were launched: Sin EVAsion (Without Evasion); El Blog de Dimas (The Blog of Dimas); and Retazos (Fragments). In March 2008, Potro Salvaje (Wild Pony) was launched, joined by La Colmena (The Beehive) in May 2008.
When the Cuban government blocked access to Sánchez's blog from the island, it also blocked access to the DesdeCuba website, where these other blogs were housed. The other bloggers faced the same challenges Sánchez had in maintaining their blogs, and also needed to find ways around the censorship—either relying on friends with access inside Cuba from their government offices, using complex and time-consuming workarounds to find 'back doors' into their blogs, or reaching out to friends and strangers abroad who volunteered to help, and who posted email blog entries they would never be able to see. With their blogs targeted to Cuban readers on the island, the discouragement was compounded by knowing that even if they could post, their readers could not read the posts. This limitation was circumvented by making copies of the blogs on CDs, either from computers on the island with access to the website, or sent from friends abroad. Although this method of disseminating the blogs was slow and delayed, and readers could not comment directly on the website, it was quite effective and continues to this day [March 2009].
On January 28, Sánchez launched Voces Cubanas. This citizen journalism project seeks to provide a multimedia platform to independent bloggers in Cuba to express the realities and hardships of everyday life there. During an interview published by Global Voices, Sánchez said this was a website "where all those who want to express ideas, put their projects online, can do so."
An article in El Nuevo Herald by Ivette Leyva Martinez, speaks to the role played by Sánchez and other young people, outside the Cuban opposition and dissidence movements, in working towards a free and democratic Cuba today. On March 29, 2009, at a performance by Tania Bruguera, a podium with an open microphone was staged for those wishing to have one minute of uncensored, public speech. Sánchez was among speakers who publicly criticized censorship and said that "the time has come to jump over the wall of control". The Communist regime dismissed the event and Sánchez without using her name.
On February 5, 2009, Father José Conrado
, Pastor of Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús in Santiago de Cuba
, wrote an open letter to Cuban president Raúl Castro Ruz which was published in the digital magazine, Contodos.
Sánchez and Reinaldo traveled to Santiago de Cuba the weekend before the letter was released and spent several days there, meeting with Father Conrado. During the same visit they held a blogger meeting with young people there, and Sánchez put her Ortega y Gasset award in the sanctuary of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, where “the long arm of the censor does not enter.” Excerpts from the letter were published on the Huffington Post.
reporter just two days later and he did not see bruises, marks or scars in her body. When asked, she said all marks on her face and body were gone, except for those on her buttocks, which she couldn't show to the reporter. She attributed that to the "skill of her captors".
. On November 18, 2009, Obama responded to these questions with a detailed expression of his support for the bloggers' work:
The day after she received the unexpected answers from President Obama, Sanchez drafted seven questions for President Castro that she left with the council of state, supreme governing body for Cuba.
Time magazine named Sánchez's blog, "Generation Y", one of the “25 Best Blogs of 2009”. The World Economic Forum
, yearly, selects a group of young global leaders of whom Sánchez was one, in 2009. In the summer of 2009, Sánchez was honored as one of the winners of the Columbia University School of Journalism's “Marie Moors Cabot Prize”. The prize is the oldest in international journalism. Sánchez was denied a visa to travel to the New York City award dinner. In 2010, Sánchez was named a "World Press Freedom Hero" by the International Press Institute
, and also received a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands' Prince Claus Fund, with an honorarium of € 25,000.
Cubans
Cubans or Cuban people are the inhabitants or citizens of Cuba. Cuba is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ger who has achieved international fame and multiple international awards for her critical portrayal of life in Cuba under its current government.
Sanchez attended primary school during the affluent time when the Soviet Union was providing considerable aid to Cuba. However, her high school and university education coincided with the loss of financial aid to Cuba following the Soviet Union's collapse, creating a highly public educational system and style of living that subsequently left Sanchez with a strong need for personal privacy. Sanchez's university education left her with two understandings; first, that she had acquired a disgust for “high culture
High culture
High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...
”, and second that she no longer had an interest in philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, her chosen field of university study.
Sánchez, disillusioned with her home country, left Cuba for Switzerland in 2002, and it was during this time that she became interested in computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. When she finally returned to Cuba, Sanchez helped to establish Contodos, a magazine that continues to act as a forum for Cuban free expression, and a vehicle for reporting news. Sánchez is best known for her blog, Generación Y (Generation Y); which, despite censorship in Cuba, she is able to publish by e-mailing the blog entries to friends outside the country who then post them online. The blog is translated and available in 17 languages.
Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine listed her as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2008, stating that "under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot; freedom of speech". In November 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, wrote that her blog "provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba" and applauded her efforts to "empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology."
Biography
Yoani Sánchez was born September 4, 1975, in central HavanaHavana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, Cuba, one of two daughters, to William Sánchez and Maria Eumelia Cordero. Her father worked, as his father had before him, on the state railroad system
Ferrocarriles de Cuba
Ferrocarriles de Cuba or Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Cuba , the only railway operating in the Caribbean islands, provides passenger and freight services for Cuba.-Route Network:...
, first as a laborer and later as an engineer. As the nation’s railroad system fell apart after the collapse of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in Europe, William Sánchez, out of work along with many of his colleagues, became a bicycle repairman.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was supporting the island and its communist revolution with tangible aid, nearly $9 billion in the final year. Sánchez's secondary and university years coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its subsidies to Cuba that had for nearly three decades provided about 80 percent of Cuba’s international trade. During her high school years, she attended a "school in the countryside" about which she wrote:
Sánchez studied for two years in the Instituto Pedagógico with a major in Spanish literature
Spanish literature
Spanish literature generally refers to literature written in the Spanish language within the territory that presently constitutes the state of Spain...
. She transferred to the Faculty of Arts and Letters in 1995, and gave birth to her son in August of that year. Sanchez graduated within five years with a degree in Hispanic philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
and a specialty in contemporary Latin American literature. Her thesis was titled Words Under Pressure. A Study of the Literature of Dictatorship in Latin America. Sanchez says that by the end of her university studies she "understood two things: the first, that the world of intellectualism and high culture disgusted me and the saddest, that I no longer wanted to be a philologist." By September 2000, she had found a job with Editorial Gente Nueva, a publisher of children's literature. After a short period of employment with Gente Nueva, Sanchez asked to be released from her position, then focused on a higher paying job as a freelance Spanish instructor for German tourists visiting Havana. According to Sánchez, this was during a time "when engineers preferred to drive taxis, teachers worked as hotel desk clerks, and store counters were tended by neurosurgeons or nuclear physicists."
In 2002, claiming disillusionment with her home country, Sánchez decided to leave Cuba and emigrated to Switzerland. She was eventually joined by her son and husband. Two years later she decided to return to Cuba citing “family reasons" However, since she had been out of the country for more than eleven months without special permission, Sánchez had lost the right to return. Sánchez states that she then flew home to Cuba "for a two-week family visit" on a round-trip ticket, and by destroying her passport was able to avoid being forced on a plane back to Switzerland. The Cuban government says that she was granted a waiver allowing her to recover her permanent resident status in Cuba. She finally resettled in Havana. During this time, Sánchez discovered her current profession, computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. In 2004, she founded, together with a group of Cubans – all based on the island – a magazine, Consenso, based on reflection and debate. She also helped establish the web portal Desde Cuba (From Cuba), an on-line magazine and collection of individual blogs, of which Sánchez's was the first. Sánchez began to sign her posts in 2008, abandoning anonymous blogging. That year, she requested permission to travel to Spain to receive the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award
Ortega y Gasset Awards
The Ortega y Gasset Journalism Awards are named after the Spanish philosopher and journalist José Ortega y Gasset. The awards were created by the newspaper El País in 1984....
but permission was denied. Her request for permission to travel to an international documentary film festival in Prague, of which she was a member of the jury, was also denied.
In October 2009, Sánchez was awarded Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
's "Maria Moors Cabot prize
Maria Moors Cabot prize
The Maria Moors Cabot Prizes are the oldest international awards in the field of journalism. They pick what the Trustees of Columbia University see as journalistic contributions to inter-American understanding.-Award:...
" and was invited to New York to accept the award. The Cuban government denied her permission to attend. Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, criticized the decision, stating that "The Cuban government ought to value Ms. Sanchez's work as a sign that young Cubans are ready to take Cuba into a better future — one that will have the free press the Cuban people deserve."
Blogging and digital publishing
Sánchez established the magazine, Consenso (later named Contodos), on her return from Switzerland. The magazine continues to be published today as a "forum for free expression" from the island, and as a vehicle for the reporting of news such as Father Jose Conrado’s February 2009 letter to Raúl Castro Ruz. The magazine's editorial board consists of Dimas Castellanos, Miriam Celaya, Marta Cortízas, Reinaldo Escobar, Eugenio LealEugenio Leal
Eugenio Leal Vargas is a retired Spanish footballer who played for Atlético Madrid and for the Spanish national team.-International goals:-Honours:Atlético Madrid*Intercontinental Cup: 1974*Spanish League: 1972–73, 1976–77...
, and Yoani Sánchez. Sánchez is also involved with the digital magazine Convivencia.
In January–February 2007, Sánchez participated in an event referred to as the "debate of the ntellectuals", described as a "discussion among intellectuals and writers on Cuba’s repressive cultural policies." She, along with several others, was not allowed into the formal conference being held in the House of The Americas. The debate of those who were excluded, and included, in the formal sessions, was captured in a several hundred pages of emails exchanged between the participants. These emails—exchanged by over one hundred participants—are preserved in the digital magazine Contodos, under the title: Polémica Intellectual 2007.
According to Sánchez, what pushed her to write a blog was the bad taste left at the end of the controversy of the intellectuals in January 2007. The meeting in the House of the Americas would try to channel and institutionalize a debate that had been raising the temperature of Cuban emails for a couple of weeks already. A select list of guests began entering the "Che Guevara Room", while our “group of impertinents” watched, from outside, as midnight arrived. The protesters were blocked from entering by the custodians in order to keep them from debating and discussing their encounters with "censorship and dogmatism." The protesters chanted “Desiderio, Desiderio, hear my criteria,” but this had no effect, while inside, the voice of the Minister of Culture repeated the idea that in a place under siege, dissent is treason. Sánchez believed that the "debate was hijacked by the institutions, jailed by an academic world full of concepts and fancy words, and condemned to take the course of the imminent conference of the UNEAC [Cuban Writers and Artists Union].
In the end the protesters left with the conviction that they couldn't wait to be allowed inside for the next debate. For Sánchez, this added a push to start what she terms "this exorcism called Generation Y." Sánchez launched her blog, Generation Y, on April 9, 2007. The national baseball playoffs were underway, and the first post used the baseball fever to compare what Cubans are allowed to shout, and display on homemade posters, “Santiago, Go Santiago!” and what they are not: “Internet for all!” The blog was hosted in Germany on an Internet domain by Cronon AG, and was designed by Sánchez. Later, the blog was transferred to WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
, and was eventually upgraded to allow comments by readers.
When the blog had been active for six months, Sánchez expressed her reason for blogging, saying that her initial inspiration had been to create an aid to help her deal with the frustrations she felt with the situation in Cuba, and of trying to go along with the advice of friends who suggested she be cautious and wait, rather than more "noble motives". She tried "silence and evasion," yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
, Tai Chi
Tai chi chih
Tai chi chih is a series of 19 movements and 1 pose that together make up a meditative form of exercise to which practitioners attribute physical and spiritual health benefits...
, going to the gym, all with no results. She finally found a means to express these frustrations, by blogging. Even so, she admits "I can both get discouraged have sudden starts. I alternate between “It‘s working!” to “It’s not worth the pain”; alerting her readers to not be "surprised if the catharsis rises in tone, if I become incendiary, or show a streak of pessimism."
According to Sánchez, when she began blogging, Cubans, by law, were not allowed into tourist hotels, but with her “European” appearance, and ability to speak German, she routinely managed to get past the gatekeepers to work on her blog. Due to the difficulties in accessing the Internet, her access speed is determined by the speed of the bus that connects to La Víbora at Línea and G. "Each post depends on a countless chain of events that normally don’t go well. From my isolated PC to a flash memory and then to the public space of a cybercafé or a hotel. For this, without detailing all the complications, the elevator does not work, the gatekeeper asks me to show my passport to sit at the computer, or there are frustrations to sign on, plus the slow-speeds imposed by proxies, filters and keylogger."
The Huffington Post blog
In November 2008, Sánchez was invited to post her blog entries on The Huffington PostThe Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
, and she began writing occasional posts that described life in Cuba. Sánchez says she has strived to maintain a respectful tone, and she asks that those who leave comments on her blog do so as well.
In an interview with journalist Ted Henken published in Poder360, she explained this view, saying:
International attention
On October 9, 2007, ReutersReuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
published an article about bloggers in Cuba: "Cubans go to unusual lengths to post blogs"; Sánchez featured prominently in the article. The article was republished by media around the world, and was followed by a Wall Street Journal article on December 22, 2007, called "Cuban Revolution: Yoani Sánchez fights tropical totalitarianism, one blog post at a time". Sánchez has also appeared in interviews by Spain's El País newspaper; in an article in Germany's Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
; and in the New York Times.
Generation Y blocked
On March 26, 2008, Sánchez announced to her readers that the recent problems accessing her blog appeared to be a deliberate action on the part of government censors to block access to her blog and the other blogs on the desdecuba.com website. While debate swirled back and forth on the web about whether the site was actually blocked, Sanchez stated that Generation Y could not be accessed in Cuba for the past several years. The debate about whether this was a year-long plus “fluke” or some “glitch” in the software, seemed to be resolved about a year after the site became unavailable. Comments made by a Cuban State Security agent in an interview published on March 19, 2009, in the digital magazine Kaos en la Red, where “Agent Miguel” stated, “I know State Security officials who literally prophesied that blocking the blog Generation Y within the country would, in a short time, cause the launching of Madame Sánchez into the stardom of the manipulative media campaign against Cuba. Regardless of these prophesies, they did it and now they’re paying the price.”Sánchez was well known by this time and the attempt to censor her by the sudden government shutdown of her blog attracted more international attention than ever.
On April 2, 2008, the Washington Post devoted a long column to her, just one of hundreds of articles and blog posts appearing around the world.
On June 23, 2008, Cuba’s daily newspaper, Granma
Granma (newspaper)
Granma is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.Its name comes from the yacht Granma that carried Fidel Castro and 81 other rebels to Cuba's shores in 1956 launching the Cuban Revolution.-Editions:...
, published a lengthy prologue, written by Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
, to the book Fidel, Bolivia y algo más, which had been re-issued fifteen years after its initial publication. In a prologue to this new edition of a book commemorating his visit to Bolivia in 1993, Fidel Castro took the opportunity to quote a long excerpt from Sánchez's blog and, although he did not mention her name, expressed his disappointment that there are young persons in Cuba today who think as she does. Castro describes Sánchez's statements as a generalization used as a slogan.
Sánchez responded to Castro's comments by saying in her blog that she would allow her husband, journalist Reinaldo Escobar, to respond to Castro's statements because she felt it best to leave the fighting at the "macho-man-male" level, and instead continue with her "womanly" labor of weaving together the "frayed tapestry" of their society. Sánchez's husband responded with:
Escobar went on to enumerate a list of names he says are "terrible and undeserving" recipients who were awarded the Order of José Marti
Order of José Marti
The Order of José Marti is a state honor in Cuba.It has been given to:* Salvadore Allende* Nicolae Ceausescu* Owen Arthur* Gustav Husak* Mengistu Haile Mariam* Robert Mugabe* Erich Honecker* Felipe González* Julius Nyerere...
by Castro, including names such as Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
, Nicolae Ceaușescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, Gustáv Husák
Gustáv Husák
Gustáv Husák was a Slovak politician, president of Czechoslovakia and a long-term Communist leader of Czechoslovakia and of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia...
, and Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
, among others.
Blogging blind
Since her blog was blocked from public Internet sites in Cuba, Sánchez has relied on Cuban friends abroad to post her texts for her, which she sends to them by email, along with the accompanying photographs. In an 2009 interview with Ted Henken published in Poder360, Sánchez commented on being a "blind blogger" by saying that the Cuban government “filtered” the DesdeCuba.com website from the Internet, including access from hotels in order to prevent Sánchez from updating her site. To combat this, Sánchez developed what she terms a “citizen network”, consisting of people outside Cuba who help distribute her posts.As of January 2009, Generation Y (all languages) was getting about 14 million 'hits' a month. On the Spanish language site, each entry receives hundreds, if not thousands, of comments.
Growing the Cuban blogosphere
Cuba has one of the lowest rates of Internet access in the world. As of the end of 2008, 2.1% of Cubans were reported to have access to the internet, compared, for example, to 11.2% of Haitians and 22% of all people worldwide.Given the challenges of blogging in Cuba, the number of blogs on the DesdeCuba site grew quickly. Eight months after she started Generation Y, she was joined on the Desdecuba website by her husband Reinaldo's blog, Desde Aqui (From Here), in December 2007. In January three more Desdecuba blogs were launched: Sin EVAsion (Without Evasion); El Blog de Dimas (The Blog of Dimas); and Retazos (Fragments). In March 2008, Potro Salvaje (Wild Pony) was launched, joined by La Colmena (The Beehive) in May 2008.
When the Cuban government blocked access to Sánchez's blog from the island, it also blocked access to the DesdeCuba website, where these other blogs were housed. The other bloggers faced the same challenges Sánchez had in maintaining their blogs, and also needed to find ways around the censorship—either relying on friends with access inside Cuba from their government offices, using complex and time-consuming workarounds to find 'back doors' into their blogs, or reaching out to friends and strangers abroad who volunteered to help, and who posted email blog entries they would never be able to see. With their blogs targeted to Cuban readers on the island, the discouragement was compounded by knowing that even if they could post, their readers could not read the posts. This limitation was circumvented by making copies of the blogs on CDs, either from computers on the island with access to the website, or sent from friends abroad. Although this method of disseminating the blogs was slow and delayed, and readers could not comment directly on the website, it was quite effective and continues to this day [March 2009].
On January 28, Sánchez launched Voces Cubanas. This citizen journalism project seeks to provide a multimedia platform to independent bloggers in Cuba to express the realities and hardships of everyday life there. During an interview published by Global Voices, Sánchez said this was a website "where all those who want to express ideas, put their projects online, can do so."
An article in El Nuevo Herald by Ivette Leyva Martinez, speaks to the role played by Sánchez and other young people, outside the Cuban opposition and dissidence movements, in working towards a free and democratic Cuba today. On March 29, 2009, at a performance by Tania Bruguera, a podium with an open microphone was staged for those wishing to have one minute of uncensored, public speech. Sánchez was among speakers who publicly criticized censorship and said that "the time has come to jump over the wall of control". The Communist regime dismissed the event and Sánchez without using her name.
Father José Conrado's letter to Raúl Castro
Father José Conrado
Father José Conrado Rodriguez, a Cuban priest from the parish of Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús, in Santiago de Cuba Province, is best known for his strongly worded open letter to Cuban President Raúl Castro...
, Pastor of Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús in Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city of Cuba and capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in the south-eastern area of the island, some south-east of the Cuban capital of Havana....
, wrote an open letter to Cuban president Raúl Castro Ruz which was published in the digital magazine, Contodos.
Sánchez and Reinaldo traveled to Santiago de Cuba the weekend before the letter was released and spent several days there, meeting with Father Conrado. During the same visit they held a blogger meeting with young people there, and Sánchez put her Ortega y Gasset award in the sanctuary of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, where “the long arm of the censor does not enter.” Excerpts from the letter were published on the Huffington Post.
Abduction claim
According to Sánchez, on November 6, 2009, she and three others were taken in her own neighborhood by men working for the Cuban government. She said that she was heading to an anti-violence demonstration and was forcefully taken into a car. She characterizes the event on her blog, Generation Y, as a "kidnapping" and describes the event in detail. Among the details she gave were that when she asked why she was being forced into an unknown person's car, and for what reason, she was accused of being a counter-revolutionary. She says that the men then proceeded to beat her in the face, body, and knuckles for resisting, and in order to teach her a lesson. She walked with a cane for a few weeks after the incident. Sánchez met a BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
reporter just two days later and he did not see bruises, marks or scars in her body. When asked, she said all marks on her face and body were gone, except for those on her buttocks, which she couldn't show to the reporter. She attributed that to the "skill of her captors".
President Obama
In 2009, Sánchez mailed seven questions to United States President Barack ObamaBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
. On November 18, 2009, Obama responded to these questions with a detailed expression of his support for the bloggers' work:
The day after she received the unexpected answers from President Obama, Sanchez drafted seven questions for President Castro that she left with the council of state, supreme governing body for Cuba.
Awards
In 2008, Sánchez was honored with awards that included Time magazine’s "One of the 100 Most Influential People in the World”, one of Foreign Policy magazine’s “10 Most Influential Latin American Intellectuals” of the year, and the El País 2008 “Ortega y Gasset Prize for Digital Journalism”. She was, as well, one of El País’ 2008 100 most notable Hispanoamericans, and one of Gatopardo’s 10 most influential people of 2008.Time magazine named Sánchez's blog, "Generation Y", one of the “25 Best Blogs of 2009”. The World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
, yearly, selects a group of young global leaders of whom Sánchez was one, in 2009. In the summer of 2009, Sánchez was honored as one of the winners of the Columbia University School of Journalism's “Marie Moors Cabot Prize”. The prize is the oldest in international journalism. Sánchez was denied a visa to travel to the New York City award dinner. In 2010, Sánchez was named a "World Press Freedom Hero" by the International Press Institute
International Press Institute
International Press Institute is a global organisation dedicated to the promotion and protection of press freedom and the improvement of journalism practices. Founded in October 1950, the IPI has members in over 120 countries....
, and also received a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands' Prince Claus Fund, with an honorarium of € 25,000.
- 2008 - Ortega y Gasset Prize for JournalismOrtega y Gasset AwardsThe Ortega y Gasset Journalism Awards are named after the Spanish philosopher and journalist José Ortega y Gasset. The awards were created by the newspaper El País in 1984....
- 2008 - "100 Most Influential People in the World” - Time magazine
- 2008 - "100 most notable Hispanoamericans" - El País newspaper
- 2008 - "10 most influential people of 2008" - Gatopardo Magazine
- 2008 - “10 Most Influential Latin American Intellectuals” of the year - Foreign PolicyForeign PolicyForeign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...
magazine - 2009 - "25 Best Blogs of 2009" - Time magazine
- 2009 - "Young Global Leader Honoree" - World Economic ForumWorld Economic ForumThe World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
- 2009 - Maria Moors Cabot prizeMaria Moors Cabot prizeThe Maria Moors Cabot Prizes are the oldest international awards in the field of journalism. They pick what the Trustees of Columbia University see as journalistic contributions to inter-American understanding.-Award:...
- Columbia University Prize - 2010 - World Press Freedom Hero - International Press InstituteInternational Press InstituteInternational Press Institute is a global organisation dedicated to the promotion and protection of press freedom and the improvement of journalism practices. Founded in October 1950, the IPI has members in over 120 countries....
- 2010 - Prince Claus Award - Prince Claus Fund