« November 2007 | Main | February 2008 »
December 28, 2007
Generación Y
"The exercise of truth, and the exercise of liberty is something that marks you for all of your life."
The WSJ this past weekend had a truly inspiring front-page article profiling Yoani Sánchez, a 32 year old blogger from Cuba (click here for her website). It's well worth the read. Below is a video summary of the article as well as a few quotes:
From the article:
On a recent morning, Yoani Sánchez took a deep breath and gathered her nerve for an undercover mission: posting an Internet chronicle about life in Fidel Castro's Cuba.
To get around Cuba's restrictions on Web access, the waif-like 32-year-old posed as a tourist to slip into an Internet cafe in one of the city's luxury hotels, which normally bar Cubans. Dressed in gray surf shorts, T-shirt and lime-green espadrilles, she strode toward a guard at the hotel's threshold and flashed a wide smile. The guard, a towering man with a shaved head, stepped aside.
"I think I'm able to do this because I look so harmless," says Ms. Sánchez, who says she is sometimes mistaken for a teenager. Once inside the cafe, she attached a flash memory drive to the hotel computer and, in quick, intense movements, uploaded her material. Time matters: The $3 she paid for a half-hour is nearly a week's wage for many Cubans....
...The problem is, saying what you think in Cuba can be dangerous. In 2002, Cuba imprisoned dozens of journalists who declared themselves dissidents and published criticisms of the regime -- many are still there. Most Cubans are so afraid of being labeled a critic that they are reluctant to utter the words "Fidel Castro" in public. Instead, they silently pantomime stroking a beard when referring to their leader...
...A recurring feature is her 12-year-old son's school. Recently, he participated in a military shooting exercise there. Her son enjoyed playing soldier, but she was outraged. In another entry, she described how parents congregate at the schoolyard at lunchtime to secretly pass food to their children who don't get enough to eat. She described her sadness at seeing children whose parents who don't turn up and will go hungry.
An Oct. 22 entry talked about how her son's teacher told the class that one student had been secretly designated an informer -- charged with keeping a list of good and bad kids that the teacher could use to mete out punishment.
"So young, and these children experience the paralysis generated by the feeling of being watched," she wrote. "I look around me and confirm that the successive irrigations of paranoia have worked. Our fears are populated by CIA agents and members of the secret police."
...In addition to publishing her blog, she talks freely about taboo subjects. She tells neighbors that she doesn't vote, a shocking admission in Cuba. She isn't a member of any of Cuba's quasi-compulsory political organizations.
"There are many ways to pretend in Cuba: you can say things that you don't believe, or you can stay quiet about the things you don't like," she says. "I have the tranquility of being able to look at my son and he knows that I don't fake it."
Still, there is no guarantee that Ms. Sánchez's activities won't land her in legal trouble. Even if jailed, Ms. Sánchez says she would find ways to publish her blog. "You have to believe that you are free and try to act like it," she says. "Little by little, acting as though you are free can be contagious."
Posted by Peter Mork at 9:28 AM | Comments | TrackBack
December 2, 2007
An Incredible Victory
This just came across the wire:
21:37 PST Venezuelan Voters Reject Chavez's Constitutional Reform
By Raul Gallegos and Darcy CroweOf DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
CARACAS (Dow Jones)--Venezuelans voted to reject President Hugo Chavez's constitutional reform proposal by a slim margin Sunday, marking the first electoral defeat in the president's nine years in office.
Venezuelans who opposed Chavez's reform, which he had said was a cornerstone for his plans to guide the Andean country towards socialism, managed to block the measure by a narrow margin.
The National Electoral Council president, Tibisay Lucena, said in televised remarks that although the total vote tally was not finished "the trend was irreversible."
President Hugo Chavez accepted defeat in televised remarks shortly after the electoral authority announced the results.
The 69 articles included in the reform were divided in two blocs that Venezuelans voted on. In the first bloc, which encompassed the majority of the proposed economic reforms, opponents of changing the country's charter won with 50.7% of the vote, while supporters only obtained 49.29%.
In the second bloc, which granted the executive branch the power to suspend basic legal rights under a state of emergency among other changes, opponents to the reform won with 51.01% of the vote, while supporters obtained 48.94%.
Reforms would have let Chavez run for office indefinitely, control foreign reserves, censor the media in times he deemed were an emergency, appoint cronies over locally elected officials, and the list goes on.
I'm still in shock both Chavez and the CNE have admitted defeat. What a victory for liberty in Venezuela.
More on Chavez here, here, and here.
Update: Well, I guess this should have been expected. More headlines:
Venezuela's President Says Reform Plan Defeated `For Now'
Venezuela's Chavez: Opposition Groups Still A Minority
Venezuela's Chavez: Country Still Building `Socialism'
.
Venezuela's Chavez: Constitutional Proposal `Still Alive'