Welcome Home Yoani Sanchez the “Tube Worm”
Erasmo Calzadilla
HAVANA TIMES — Yoani Sanchez has completed her international tour and returned to Cuba, where, I assume, she will continue to struggle for the convictions that drive her.
I have met many intellectuals in Cuba who say disparaging things about her – intellectuals, to be sure, who are not government supporters. They think she is unintelligent, a simplistic political thinker and a mediocre chronicler or philologist, at best.
I have heard people of undeniable intelligence affirm that the blogger is the exact negative of Granma (the Cuban Communist Party’s official newspaper) or the counterpart of Yoandri (a blogger who toes the Party line).
Few of these severely harsh critics move a finger, let alone risk their domestic tranquility or careers, to promote change in Cuba.
I have moved in other circles, less intellectual and more pro-government, where it is common to foist hackneyed labels at her (“the mercenary”) or to make fun of her physical appearance. I’ve heard people refer to her as a tube worm.
Apparently insignificant, tube worms play an extremely important ecological role. They burrow into the ground, opening up holes through which oxygen can reach plant roots. Their excretions are also an excellent fertilizer for these plants.
There are many opinions I do not share with Yoani Sanchez (I don’t follow her blog much either), but if her provocations, complaints, brilliant ideas or cyber-gossip helps shake the permafrost, the frozen subsoil of Cuban politics, then, hell, my respects to the tube worm.
emagicmtman!! Apologizing again for 54 years of the Castro Oligarchy, the true mafia! Changing the subject does not become you dear!
That’s my real name right there on the link, ‘genius’.
And your whole discourse is ‘Yoani good. USA good. Cuba bad’ without any further development at all…
I’m sorry if you are still way too ignorant to understand the context of my ‘fancy words’ and thus unworthy of any kind of debate. It seems you cut off your last lag yourself, puny Monty Python Black Knight. Want to bite my knee?
You shouldn’t, after all if you’ve been so much in Cuba you’d at least read Portuguese a little bit and dispose of on-line translation tools, it’s very much like Spanish.
It’s not about ‘liking her’ or not at all – if you cannot ‘figure it out’ from what I wrote there, I’m sorry, but the only one who can burst off your own bubble is yourself. You are still part of the massive crowd of the big Spectacle.
I suspect that if Yoani somehow was able to transmogrify Cuba’s political system into the kind she wants the results would be pretty terrible. Just take a look at places like Mexico, Honduras, Santo Domingo, etc., where gangs are rampant, drugs are everywhere and violence is ubiquitous. In short, places where “the law of the jungle prevail” and where, as Hobbes says, “life would be solitary, brutish, nasty and short.” (just like the old days, under Batista, Machado, and the other pirates who robbed and misgoverned Cuba during the psuedo-republic). Still, I’m all for letting her prattle away, and even for most Cubans–instead of just estranjeros–being able to actually read Generacion Y. For the most part, however, she is merely “preaching to the choir” of embittered Miami mafia. If you dare make a comment on her blog even mildly sympathetic towards the left you are immediately attacked by a swarm of dynosaurs (like those vicious little buggers who did in the fat computer expert in Jurasic Park)!
I used an internet translator to try to understand why you don’t like her. I still can’t figure it out. She wants multiparty democracy for Cuba. She wants internet access and press freedom. She does not like the Castros. She writes a blog about her perceptions of everyday life in Cuba. She advocates change without violence. Why do you see her as a threat? You called her pathetic yet you seem to wish her ill will. Hard to figure.
I used Google Translate to read your essay, Luis. Unless a great deal was lost in the translation, Circles needn’t bother printing it here. You’ve already said it a hundred times before. I will offer this brief summary:
“Yoani bad. USA bad.” Sprinkle with a few favourite words like “spectacle” & “alienation” .
It’s charming how you are so enamoured by “retro” French Leftists like Guy Debord and their quaint cultural theories.
Luis! Why dont you use your real name? It would give you more credibility to your “arguments” dear!
I’ve written an essay on this pathetic figure here:
http://descurvo.blogspot.com.br/2013/03/yoani-e-o-triunfo-da-sociedade-do_5.html
It’s in Portuguese tough. If Circles allows me, I’d happily translate it for HT.
Your words are mean spirited, even if you’re quoting someone. Life is short dude, I would recommend kindness whenever possible.
I believe a considerable amount of the criticism that Yoani receives from the intellectual community is comes from envy. I have often heard from my Cuban friends that there are far more deserving Cuban writers whose talent eclipses that of Senora Sanchez yet they remain poor and unrecognized. Likewise, I only know one super-Fidelista, who is not afraid to talk to me, and he is convinced that Yoani is a CIA agent. When I challenge him to substantiate his claims, he retreats and simply remarks that the CIA “covers its tracks well”. The controversy that surrounds is her biggest ally. If she were as ineffective as the regime claims, they would not put so much effort into demonizing her. Instead, by making her, so far, a living martyr, the Castros efforts only serve to draw even more attention to her noble cause.