Cuban Blogger Yaoni Sanchez

[barbaro]

She received an award to pick up in New York City, but the Cuban government won't allow her to travel there.

A Snippet from her latest from the link below:

Octubre 11th, 2009
I had a neckerchief, so what?



In all the schools in the country, today is the ceremony for the first grade students to enroll in the Pioneer organization. The morning assembly lasts longer than usual, the parents accompany their children while they put on the neckerchiefs and shout, for the first time, the slogan, “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.” I also went through this on two occasions, once when I was enrolled in the OPJM* and the other on the day when I witnessed Teo being initiated. My recollections of the two are so different they seem to have occurred in diametrically opposite dimensions.


In my case it was the years of ideological fervor and, barely three feet tall, I was determined to give my life for the neckerchief they had just put on me. I felt touched by the hand of the Fatherland even though in reality I was only being added to the ranks of an ideology. The slogan of the organization I had just entered seemed like the magic words that would open all doors to me, though at that time I didn’t even know that the suffix “ism” forms nouns that mean “doctrine, sect, system.” Much less would I have wanted to be separated like Lybna who, because she was a Jehovah’s Witness, did not take “her vows” together with the rest of the children in the classroom. Around her hovered a cloud becoming darker, precisely because the blue cloth was not tied around her neck.



Twenty years passed and I was there with my son one morning in October to see him initiated into the Pioneer movement in which I no longer believed. The teacher walked up and down the ranks and asked the children to repeat the slogan about Che Guevara. Teo remained silent, with a pout that didn’t escape the eagle eyes of the principal. When they asked him why he didn’t say the slogan like the rest of the students he pointed out, with childish simplicity, “Because Che is dead and I don’t want to be dead.” I assumed my son was about to be entered into the ideological catalog under the worst of the letters, the “C” for counterrevolutionay. But no, the teacher laughed and gave him his first lesson in opportunism, “Ah Teo, repeat the slogan now, why make problems for yourself.”

Her Blog: Generation Y

[Muadib]

She is on a recent edition of HD World Report as part of a story about a free concert organized in Cuba by Juanes... 10% of Cuba's population turned out for the music festival, even though instructed not to by the Castro regime...

Yoani was named by Time Magazine of one of the top 100 most influential people in the world in 2008, even though she has never left Cuba and her voice is only heard (read) through her blog... Very inspirational...

Yoani Sánchez - The 2008 TIME 100 - TIME

[barbaro]

Here's an update. She's prevented from leaving her own country.

And this:

Blogger says Cuban agents beat her

November 7, 2009 -- Updated 1514 GMT (2314 HKT)


Havana resident Yoani Sanchez's blog, "Generation Y," draws about 1 million hits a month.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Government agents tried to get her into car, Yoani Sanchez says
• "Generation Y" blogger known for posts critical of life in Cuba
• She'd been warned her blog goes too far, nonprofit group says
• Time magazine names Sanchez among world's most influential people

Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- A Cuban woman known for writing critical blogs about life in the communist nation said she was briefly detained by government agents Friday in the capital.


Yoani Sanchez said agents pulled her hair and beat her when she refused to get into their car, according to Roots of Hope, a nonprofit that works with Cuban youth. She said she was on her way to an anti-violence march when she was detained.


Sanchez gained international attention for her blog "Generation Y," which gets about 1 million hits a month.
Read Yoani Sanchez's blog
Before agents released Sanchez, they warned her that her writings had gone too far, the nonprofit said. Freedom of speech is limited in the island nation, where media are controlled by the government.


There was no immediate comment from the Cuban government on Sanchez's claims, which CNN could not independently verify.


Earlier this year, the blogger was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. The government barred her from traveling to New York in October to receive a journalism award.

Link & Entire: Blogger says Cuban agents beat her - CNN.com