A blog from Cuba wow

[Jammyisme]

This is very very interesting. A blog site from Cuba. I was reading that she goes into a hotel dressed as a tourist to keep up with her blog. wow. 

http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/

[Jammyisme]

   so far 20 people have read this.. no comments?  Im surprised.

[flopnfly]

It's an interesting read....I found this most interesting.

I remember when, in 1994 were allowed licenses to open a private restaurant (”palate”) or a cafeteria. Havana became filled with improvised kiosks that returned us to lost flavors and desired recipes. A couple of months later all the creativity showed in hundreds of umbrellas, tables in the porches and even sophisticated places to try a mamey shake or a guava pie. The energies contained by thousands of Cubans materialized in products and services of a quality and efficiency previously unknown by my generation.

We witnessed -between astonished and happy- the rebirth of a small private enterprise that our parents had seen drowned in the Revolutionary Offensive of 1968. A stroll by the streets of my native Central Havana, was the confirmation that the previous scarcity hadn’t been born of an innate incapacity to produce, but it was caused by the ironclad State controls to private ingenuity.

>From such boom in creativity and ingenuity we also had to part company, the moment that “up there” they understood that economic freedom would imply -inevitably- political autonomy. When Cuco, the owner of the most famous “palate” in my neighborhood, wanted to invest his profits in a trip to Paris, a modern car and in creating a “gastronomic” profile magazine, he started making the public officers worried. In order to counter those “poses of middle class” they rained him with high taxes, ill-intended controls and engrossed prohibitions. He had to close the restaurant and the flavor carnival that we had rediscovered, withdrew again to the shadows.

The “small private businesses” that survived the return to centralism, reveal to us that all of those energies to produce are just waiting, crouching, for the restrictions to loosen -even one millimeter- to conquer again our streets and porches. Cuco caresses his recipe book -enhanced in these years of waiting- and projects a new restaurant in the rooftop of his house. He has already designed the Web page to promote his dishes, the presentation cards and the color of the napkins. He is waiting -in the starting line- for the race call that would allow him to compete for his dream.

[Jammyisme]

This is the first no bs article I have seen written by a Cuban in Cuba, about Cuba.   

[Bulldog]

I think it's great that they are being allowed a voice 

[Jammyisme]

Man oh  man she is so fascinating.  did anyone see this one?  Shes setting up a blog for all of her cuban friends to  use. wow .

If I’m absent for several days from cyberspace, don’t worry. Right now, I’m mounting a Blog service for people from inside Cuba who want to write their own posts. Let’s see the nut cases that want to participate… so far I have about seven people convinced…

The subjects will be varied: culture, society and personal rants like these ones I do. The comments, open and democratic, even for those who let their insults. The objectives: plurality, exercise of opinion and therapy of saying what one thinks. Sounds good, right?

[flopnfly]

Does this mean that the Cubans are now allowed free access to the internet and all that it entails including have freedom of speech?

[Jammyisme]

I dont know. I was reading that she was pretending to be a tourist and logging online at a hotel in Havana.  Now is that still necessary. I dont know.   Hey did you read her blog on last Christmas. It was jaw dropping.  My God she writes well

[flopnfly]

I don't think I got that far back....can you post some of it on here?  I'm lazy 

[Jammyisme]

this gives me shivers ....


 To non-Cubans:

Yoani expresses the feelings, ideas, dreams, frustration, hopes of our generation. what she says is exactly what I think, what I would’ve written in Cuba if I only would’ve had her courage.
Please do not think that those Cubans who write messages of hatred here are the majority. They are not.
the majority are the people who just want to live the life they have been taken away.
stop the hatred, stop the wars, stop the politicians, stop the rightist, stop the leftists, stop those who still think our government is good, because it’s not. you don’t know how Cubans live, do you still need more proof to understand that socialism is not going to work?
we are tired. we just want to LIVE. we want a normal life.

thanks for visiting and taking the time to read.

[flopnfly]

It must be so hard for the Cubans.  They have television, internet, tourists etc, so they can see how the rest of the world lives.

They must wonder why they are not entitled to everything that we have. 

[Jammyisme]

read this now .Good God.

Yoani Sanchez Generation Y Cuba blog shut down by Cuban government

Published: Mon March 24, 2008
By: Publisher in Cuba Politics > Castro’s Cuba
Tools: Tell-a-Friend | Email this author | Printer Friendly | Del.icio.us This

Reuters

The Cuban authorities have blocked access from Cuba to the country’s most-read blogger, Yoani Sanchez, she said on Monday.

Sanchez, whose critical ”Generacion Y” blog received 1.2 million hits in February, said Cubans can no longer visit her Web page and two other home-grown bloggers on the Web site on a server in Germany.

All they can see is a “error downloading” message.

“So the anonymous censors of our famished cyberspace have tried to shut me in a room, turn off the light and not let my friends in,” she wrote in her blog on Monday.

Sanchez said she cannot directly access her Web site from Cuba to update postings anymore, but has found a way to beat her Communist censors through an indirect route.

The 32-year-old philology graduate has attracted a considerable readership by writing about her daily life in Cuba and describing economic hardships and political constraints.

She has criticized Cuba’s new leader, Raul Castro, who formally took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro last month, for his vague promises of change and minimal steps to improve the standard of living of Cubans.

“Who is the last in line for a toaster?” was the title of a recent blog that satirized the lifting of a ban on sales of computers, DVD players and other appliances Cubans long for, though toasters will not be freely sold until 2010.

In a country where the press is controlled by the state and there is no independent media, Sanchez and other bloggers based in Cuba have found in the Internet an unregulated vehicle of expression.

“This breath of fresh air has dishevelled the hair of bureaucrats and censors,” she said in a telephone interview, vowing to continue her blog. “Anyone with a bit of computer skills knows how to get around them,” she said.

The aim of government censors is to block readership in Cuba, where people have limited access to Internet, she said.

“They are admitting that no alternative way of thinking can exist in Cuba, but people will continue reading us somehow,” she said. “There is no censorship that can stop people who are determined to access the Internet,” she said.

[Jammyisme]

this says so much

Today I’ll celebrate Christmas Eve with my family and friends. We’ll assemble an improvised table with the old doors of the elevator and over them a blanket will play the role of a tablecloth. Everyone will bring something to the party. We won’t have grapes, cider or turrón, but we’ll be together in harmony –which is by itself a big luxury-. The children will have their soft drinks guaranteed, while a little rum with lemon or honey will be the choice for the adults. My mother will recount how complicated it was to get tomatoes in the morning and
my niece will remind us that on Tuesday the 25th she’ll play angel in the mass at her parish.

At the head of the table, we’ll keep a chair which remains unoccupied since Christmas 2003. It is the place of Adolfo Fernández Saínz –condemned in the Black Spring to fifteen years in prison-. It will be sad to realize, for a fifth time, his absence. If his jailers allow it, we’ll be able to listen to his voice in the phone, cheering us up (How ironic is life! He, who is in jail, has the strength to infuse resiliency.)

I remember when we told my son that he was in jail. My husband told him: “Teo, your uncle Adolfo is in jail because he’s a brave man”, to which my son answered with his innocent logic: “Then you are free because you’re sort of cowards”. What a direct way of telling the truth, children have! Yes, Teo, you are right: this Christmas we warm up our chairs because we are “cowards”. We wish, in the intimacy of our family, a new year of liberty, since we can’t make those wishes a reality. We content ourselves with the myth of national fatality, because we gave up in the act of changing things.

Adolfo’s empty chair will be the freest territory in our improvised
Christmas table.

[rumrunner]

Does anyone but me wonder if this is really a girl in Cuba...  vs say perhaps Miami

[Jammyisme]

 I would be surprised. That is a different angle for looking at this. Although I was reading that the Cuban government are very concerned about her and they have been trying to block her out. THere have been tv specials about her. So I dont  know.