by Will Cade

As my favorite Primus song goes, “Paranoia is a disease unto itself. And may I add that the person standing next to you may not be who they appear to be.” If you read my last blog, “La Bloguera,” I owe you an apology: My paranoia got the best of me.

Originally, I couldn’t find Yoani Sanchez’s blog, Generation Y, so I assumed that the Cuban Government had not only restricted her from coming to Spain to receive the Ortega and Gasset Award for Digital Journalism, but it had taken her website offline as well. After some serious, journalistic investigation, I discovered that I had actually typed in the wrong website. Ha… yea… my bad.

But I’ve found her blog today, and after reading a bit, I can see why Raul Castro doesn’t want this woman leaving the country: she reveals the inadequacies of the Cuban government with a sense of humor gentle enough to make you smile yet poignant enough to make you protest. Her honesty is literally transparent, being that she posted a digital copy of her Cuban ID card - identification number, thumb-print, and all.

Sanchez didn’t set out to become an activist blogger. At first she aspired to be a Spanish linguist. After a few years in the academic world, though, she grew tired of the abstract and ineffective (like so many that came before her) and decided to pursue technology. She became an I.T. specialist and eventually was reborn as La Bloguera, merging her areas of expertise in the most logical and effective way.

Her current profession is paying off. She is blogging in Spanish, English, and German about life under the Cuban Dictatorship, and her Spanish blogs are receiving up to 5,000 comments each, with her most recent recieving over 2,000 in under two days. She can still get the word out, even if she herself cannot.

If you’re hesitant to read her blog, expecting it to be filled with communist horror stories, fear not: Her writing style is more playful than philosophical. I once heard that a writer’s style is the candy coating that let’s you swallow the theme. It’s safe to say that after reading Yoani Sanchez, I’ve been popping back Genearation Y like a handful of skittles.

http://desdecuba.com/generaciony/

by Will Cade

Where I’m from in the States, some young people are scared to put their wild party pictures on Facebook or MySpace, in case their current or future employers frown on such things. Many of my older friends have even removed their Wall-post section, so their boss can’t read into their private life. The U.S. may be called the land of the free, but business is obviously still business. The last thing someone would be scared of, though, is having problems with the government because of a party picture, a wall post, or a blog.

I read today that the Cuban Bloguera, Yoani Sanchez, has been awarded a prestigious Spanish Journalism Award - the Ortega and Gasset Prize in digital journalism - for her blog Generation Y. In it, Sanchez recounts her frustrations living under a communist government that considers freedom of expression to be as dangerous as an outbreak of the Bubonic Plague. She will not not even be able to receive her award here in Spain, because the Cuban government has denied her an exit Visa (and I thought Visa’s were only required to enter countries?)

As a fellow blogger and human being, I was curious to see what Sanchez has to say. But when I checked her blog online (www.desdecuba.com/generaciony) the website was “currently unavailable.” A coincidence, I wondered, or can dictatorships even shut down websites? I discovered that STRATO, the Internet Service Provider which manages her website, is based in Germany, which I doubt takes orders from the Cuban Government. Still I couldn’t read Sanchez’s writing, so I did the next most informative thing I could think of: I got on Facebook.

I wasn’t even sure if Facebook was legal in Cuba, and at first I had a hard time finding real Cubanos (not just people named Cuba). I eventually found a few Cuban groups which looked both politically grounded and open minded, until I saw that they were based out of the U.S. and Sweden. Finally, I found the group “Cubans on Facebook,” but it was a closed group, so I couldn’t learn that much. After hearing what is happening with Yoani Sanchez, though, I didn’t blame them for publicly guarding their privacy: They might lose more than their jobs if word got out what they were doing in their free time.

By Helen Macrae

After 49 years in power, Fidel Castro released a statement this week announcing that due to health problems he will not be taking up another 5 year term as president when the National Assembly meets this Sunday. The information was published as a letter by Granma, the official Communist Party newspaper, in which Fidel wrote “I neither will aspire to, nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief”.

He continued: “It would betray my conscience to take up a responsibility that requires mobility and total devotion, that I am not in a physical condition to offer.” Castro, aged 81, temporarily handed power over to his brother Raul, 76, in July 2006 when he underwent intestinal surgery, and it is widely believed that it is Raul who will continue as his Castro’s successor, although Vice-President Carlos Lage Davila, 56, is also reported to be a strong contender for the role.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born in 1926 into a prosperous landowning family and began his political career at the University of Havana. After serving two years in prison for a failed attempt to overthrow Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, in 1955 he went to Mexico where he met Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who further helped to shape his political ideology. With brother Raul as his deputy and Che as third in command, Castro and his rebel forces returned to the island where they seized power with the aid of guerilla tactics, and on 16th February 1959, Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba.

Castro has ruled Cuba for almost half a century, outlasting nine US Presidents and surviving numerous CIA assassination attempts. The news of his resignation has been met with with mixed reactions, although it is thought that very little will change in Cuba as a result, at least in the short-term.