Archives » Friday, January 25, 2008
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Joseph Contreras
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Jan 25, 2008 12:05 PM
Apart from publicly known dissidents, nearly all Cubans who are
critical of their country and the Castro regime that has ruled it for
49 years hide behind a cloak of anonymity. Not so with Yoani Sanchez:
the Generacion Y blog
she launched last April displays her name and photo, even though the
32-year-old mother of one pulls no punches in her portrayals of a
decrepit and venal Communist system that has failed young Cubans.
Perhaps most surprising of all, Sanchez has yet to run afoul of the
authorities despite recent profiles that appeared in The Wall Street
Journal and on CNN en Espanol. When Fidel Castro was fully in charge,
professional independent journalists were routinely thrown into jail
for even mildly negative coverage of conditions on the island. But
since Fidel fell ill in the summer of 2006 and transferred power to his
brother Raul, Cubans have been urged to "debate fearlessly"and
come forward with solutions to the many "systemic" problems like
rampant corruption and inadequate public transportation plaguing their
country. The apparent decision to tolerate Sanchez and her unsparing
critique of what she calls "Stalinism with conga drums" is viewed by
some analysts as more evidence of a loosening of the leash under the
younger Castro.
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