Cuban Bloggers Widen the Crack

The Socialist Republic of Cuba never did exactly become a Soviet satellite, but a disturbing (perhaps insignificant to some) report Friday indicates that after over 50 years now it is still not the Castro Paradise of Uncle Joe's dreams.

Writes Janine Mendes-Franco about el acontecimiento (the incident) on Global Voices:

"Perhaps it was only a matter of time, but Yoaní Sánchez, Cuba's most famous blogger, who has received countless international awards for her activism, was detained briefly and beaten by Cuban authorities on November 6, along with fellow bloggers, Claudia Cadelo (a Global Voices contributor) and Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo. The three were on their way to an anti-violence march in the Cuban capital, Havana."

Here:

Yoani Sánchez herself shares this (now translated) account from her own blog:

Near 23rd Street, just at the Avenida de los Presidentes roundabout, we saw a black car, made in China, pull up with three heavily built strangers. “Yoani, get in the car,” one told me while grabbing me forcefully by the wrist. The other two surrounded Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and a friend who was accompanying us to the march against violence. The ironies of life, it was an evening filled with punches, shouts and obscenities on what should have passed as a day of peace and harmony. The same “aggressors” called for a patrol car which took my other two companions, Orlando and I were condemned to the car with yellow plates, the terrifying world of lawlessness and the impunity of Armageddon.


I refused to get into the bright Geely-made car and we demanded they show us identification or a warrant to take us. Of course they didn’t show us any papers to prove the legitimacy of our arrest. The curious crowded around and I shouted, “Help, these men want to kidnap us,” but they stopped those who wanted to intervene with a shout that revealed the whole ideological background of the operation, “Don’t mess with it, these are counterrevolutionaries.” In the face of our verbal resistance they made a phone call and said to someone who must have been the boss, “What do we do? They don’t want to get in the car.”

After enduring and somehow surviving the horrific ordeal Ms. Sánchez concludes:

"I managed to see, however, the degree of fright of our assailants, the fear of the new, of what they cannot destroy because they don’t understand, the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered."

Party Over?

Notes The Miami Herald in its own Friday edition, quoting another blog Penultimos Días:

"These are new people, with stunning ingenuity," [ ] add[ing] that the organizers had carried out a prior event in the Dimitrov Park that included "group fraternizing exercises . . . and group theater."
The march, which [ ] drew some 200 participants, was the second demonstration in Havana in the past three weeks to bring together young Cubans generally critical of the island's communist system.
On Oct. 20, a dozen Cuban bloggers and more than 100 Internet sites around the world joined in a "virtual protest," using Tweets, text messages and blog posts to send out messages like "Freedom" and demanding the release of all political prisoners.

 Could something this seemingly small be the final spur toward freedom and something truly better for the people of Cuba?