Yoani Sanchez Launches Virtual Realism in Cuba

with her Generation Y blog

Vincent Morin Aguado

HAVANA TIMES — Carpentier spoke of “magical realism,” just as people had spoken of this earlier in Europe. Similarly, Stalinists defended their grim “socialist realism.” Now, Cuba — a country with restricted internet access for its citizens — is showcasing to the world the island’s most famous blogger who is giving us “virtual realism.”

One day several months ago, when Yoani Sanchez attempted to travel to Bayamo to present herself at the trial of the unhappy car driver Angel Carromero (in the accident where Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero died), I publicly showed solidarity with the journalist because I believed and I believe that it made no sense to prevent her from attending the trial, something completely normal in almost any other country in the world.

The philologist now wanders the world, speaking as if she were the now-forgotten Hassan Perez Casabona (a Communist Youth leader and official of the Battle of Ideas), but in a different ideological sense. She fires bullets without clear direction, hoping to hit some target. With so much shooting — as they say in Cuban streets — she’s sure to hit something.

They speak of courage, “balls” according to some commentators (something which seems to me must be offensive to the young woman). She hasn’t been imprisoned, just subject to short detentions. She’s not missing any toenails, as once happened under the Batista dictatorship, when the majority of the members of the resistance were tortured.

Cuba lives with restricted access to the Internet. Even when Cubans have money to pay the prohibitive cost, the administrative authorities haven’t dared offer the service, considering the risk of free expression too high.

Despite these conditions, the girl Y, speaks directly, hurtfully and publically, without them interfering with her blog, created and transmitted from our country.

It seems, as I said in a previous comment, that times are changing in Cuba. There are the “luckies,” like the cat of what would be the English ALFT. And forgive me if there are any spelling mistakes; I don’t have the ability to try to check this in detail. I lack Internet access. And Let me clarify, as I’ve reiterated, that I don’t believe in soap operas.

For now, in terms of ideas, Yoani Sanchez hasn’t shown me anything.  However I respect her enormous popularity, ease of words and other virtues that God gave her.
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Vincent Morin Aguado. morfamily@correodecuba.cu