Generation Y on 4/9/12 by Yoani Sanchez - Mike Nova's starred items
via Generation Y on 4/9/12 by Yoani Sanchez
A child of five starts going to school, but a blog of the same age has already been made bolder. I make an effort today and try to remember the woman I was quiet and fearful before April 9, 2007 that created Generation Y. However, I can not. I lose her face, I diluted among all the beautiful moments I have experienced and hard after posting my first text on the web. You can not imagine without this diary and personal accident. I have the impression that always, in one way or another, I wrote a blog. When the indoctrination and points reached intolerable injustice, my infant head glossed reality-apart-in a way that could never say out loud. The teenager became evasive when I was also doing the same thing narrándose his daily life, trying to explain it and trying to escape.
The truth is that this morning when I left home to put my virtual page on the Internet, nobody could imagine how I transformed with this action. Now, whenever I am overcome the apprehension that the Cuban political police is "infallible" exorcise that thought by saying that "did not know, that day could not even guess that would create this site." What happened next is already very well known: readers arrived, took over this space as a citizen in a public square apertrecha, knocked on my door many others who wanted help to create their own spaces of opinion appeared the first attacks and surveys also emerged. On the way I lost that mother of 32 years who spoke only of "complicated issues" in a whisper, I lost the compulsive thirties hardly knew discuss or hear. This blog has been like to experience in time and space of a single life, an infinity of parallel existences.
I could never walk again in the street incognito. That gift of invisibility have boasted to be ruined, including the embrace of those who recognize me and the watchful eyes of those who watch me. I paid an enormous personal and social cost for these little vignettes of reality and yet would take my flash, I would go back to the hotel lobby where he plunged into the great world wide web my inaugural post .
via Generation Y on 4/5/12 by Yoani Sanchez
Cuban children chant "We are pioneers of communism, we shall be like Che" to start the school year today - REUTERS / Desmond Boylan. (Image and caption for the image taken from http://www.noticias24.com)
Last week I found on the street to an Italian friend who lives in Cuba for nearly a decade. It occurred to me to ask for her children, two teenagers who were born in Milan but now grow in Havana. "Here I have them in the French school" confirmed to me smiling. At first I did not understand why he had chosen that teaching French, but he said it. "What do you want, you send them to public school? With how bad the education is here. " Inquiring, I learned that they share classroom with children of diplomats, foreign correspondents and figures of our culture who are married to an immigrant. For a fee of 5220 CUC (5800 USD) per year, each shoot of Milan is well served plump and educated.
The first impression of that meeting was that my friend was exaggerating, but immediately went through my own experience as a mother of a school. I visualized the amount of floor blankets, bags of detergent and broomsticks, we have donated over the years-to make the hallways and bathrooms of the school were at least presentable. The list was also the lock to the door of the classroom on several occasions repusimos fan and bought among all parents as the sweltering heat prevented the children stay on track. And do not forget the countless times in our house were printed examinations at school because there was no paper, no ink, no printer to work. The midday meal give away so many teachers, for food in the dining room was simply unpresentable. I recalled the cards, tubes of glue, tempera and colored paper that also deliver to the mural after it would place an image of Fidel Castro smiling and gracious.
However, I decided not to stay only in the high material cost of these school years and continued connecting memories. Recapitulated on those times when calls were implemented tele-classes that they covered more than 60% of teaching hours through a television. The great teachers who decided to go home to paint nails, sell coffee or relocated in the tourism sector because the mixture of high responsibility and low wages were unbearable. And I had a minute for the few teachers in primary and secondary nevertheless remained in their posts. I listed one by one all the atrocities so many adolescents such emerging teachers (teachers should be called instant): since the Cuban flag has a star with five points by the number of Interior Ministry agents who are imprisoned in U.S. jails until New Zealand is located in the Caribbean Sea. Also reconstructed the afternoon when a teacher announced in front of our son very near there took place an act of repudiation against "dangerous counter-revolutionaries" and little Matt swallowed hard, knowing that his mother and father were among the victims of that harassment. Paraded before my eyes the many occasions when an assistant clothing and navel outside or a teacher with gold tooth and an eagle on the sweater criticized the long hair of the students and not let them in school.
There was no lack, in my recollection of that evening cathartic, slogans repeated ad nauseum, the endless morning routine, the personality cult of men who appear in history books as saviors and books of science and scientists. All that made me, at the end of my reflection, understand why my Italian friend prefers the "French schoolhouse" of Havana. But I also knew that their children will grow up with a very different idea of what education in this island will believe that the bright and well qualified premises where each subject received, lunch balanced, caring teacher and school quality materials are characteristics inherent in our educational system. Not rule out that someday return to Europe, to participate in a street protest to public education looks like ours, so that their children enjoy what they "knew" in Cuba.
via Generation Y on 4/3/12 by Yoani Sanchez
Image taken from www.skyscrapercity.com
After the storm may come too the storm, hurricane, tornado. A few days ago, we believed that the punishment would concentrate between Monday and Wednesday of last week, would last only as long as Benedict XVI was on Cuban soil. Those intense days we live with prayers and cries, with seats filled and crowded dungeons. Mobile phones, instead of giving us communication boxes became silent, useless equipment. Only when the plane took off from the Pope, began the releases and reconnected some of the phones that had been "no service". It seemed that for Saturday or Sunday the fatigue of the repressive forces would give us a break.
However, all known authoritarian father after the son chooses penance total submission or greater disobedience. In some parts of Eastern Cuba there have been street protests against the arrest of activists and has triggered the ensuing wave of police warning. Yesterday, a group of officers and members of the State Security raided the home of Jose Daniel Ferrer opponent and took him, his wife and colleagues. Also charged with destabilizing seemed as object: books, newspapers, pictures, computers. None of the witnesses recalled having shown a search warrant or seizure, much less a document with the reasons for arrest.
When the rice in the knees, whipping in the back and the running in the dark and do not work, despotic patriarch knows to tighten the grip. Confident that increasing severity of corrective make the unhappy offspring to reason, but really gets his rebellion grows. Even those who never have dared to oppose the government, feel that these penances, increasingly frequent, they generate sympathy for the attacked and not the aggressor. Witnessing the crackdown and accelerates the process of complicity between citizens against totalitarianism. Each blow can give one another pretending to wake the sleeping peacefully beside her. Together they have the opportunity to find the window to escape from confinement or, instead, take the time to bring Dad home.
via Generation Y by Titicaca on 4/2/12
Guanajay has a central park that looks like a larger town and a gazebo with the majesty of an entire capital. Right there for 28 days was Jeovany Jimenez on hunger strike demanding their right to return to practice as a physician. He had been disabled by the profession since 2006 when he protested a miserable wage increase to public health personnel. He complained of the few 48 Cuban pesos (2 USD), together-with great fanfare, the salary of surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and other professionals. Along with the administrative action that was applied was also separated the Communist Party which was active. In late 2010 and in the absence of institutional responses to their complaints, opened the blog Citizen Zero on the platform Cuban Voices .
After submitting to the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) a score of letters during these past five years, Dr. Jiménez outlawed resorted to a desperate strategy to stop eating until he rehabilitated in place. Amid the sadness of his friends and the curiosity of passers-by Guanajay Park, began to lose pounds and hopes. Since 5 March refused to eat and sighted only two options: he had to abandon the strike without achieving their claims or ending in a coffin. The most amazing of the scenarios was that the doctor will claim legally because of the stubbornness of the institutions at the time to rectify an injustice. Yet the miracle happened.
On Sunday, two officials took him to Jeovany MINSAP Jimenez resolution 185 which allows return to work in their profession. Even he will refund the amount left to pay salary in the six years of unemployment. To achieve this "happy ending" Dr. Jimenez was his tenacity as a main weapon, the evidence that many of his acquaintances and cataloged almost like an obsession. This protest was not political bias but labor had the wonderful Internet tool to give visibility and microphones of journalists, radio stations and foreign broadcasters shed light on administrative punishment so disproportionate. But the final touch gave his own body. That body that the care was sworn in others and that put at risk in itself for them to return the right to heal. A doctor who has struggled so by returning to the doctor, the stethoscope on the chest, pure white robe tight and letter of the recipes, you deserve more, you deserve a gold diploma.
via Generation Y by Yoani Sanchez on 3/25/12
Image taken from www.elheraldo.hn/
In that January 1998, at the end of the Mass of John Paul II at the Plaza of the Revolution, a fresh wind swept the vast esplanade. My son was sitting on the shoulders of his father and the breeze swirled the hair. Pope's homily was over, but still picked up the microphone and spent several Latin words to that naughty streak we all ruffled. " Spiritus et vult Spirat ubi vult Cubam "he said. We came home a while later, squeezed between thousands of people dressed in white and yellow. Since then, I have the feeling that the wind has not stopped beating on us, that this burst has come to tour the island, shaking all our lives.
Benedict still has not come to Cuba and now part of this whirlwind we are stirring. Among Catholics perceived joy at the papal visit and hopes that this will help to expand the role of the Church in our society. For those who had to keep hidden for decades crucifixes for fear of radical atheism, it is a relief to the gradual elimination of religious intolerance. Already achieved by the television broadcast Masses official processions are allowed in the streets carrying the image of the Virgin of Charity, it seems sufficient to many gains. However, every minute achieved by the church hierarchy in the mass media and every word exchanged at the negotiating table with the government, has also matched its share of loss and defeat. Because, make no mistake, hiding in the catacombs is more consistent with the speech of Christ to the convenient proximity to the throne.
Less than 24 hours before the Pope comes to Cuba, and the script of your stay with us is written and not by the Vatican delegation. The government has undertaken raulista "ideological cleansing" to prevent activists, dissidents, dissidents, independent journalists, bloggers and other malcontents alternative to reach the places where His Holiness will speak. Threats do not leave home, operating disproportionate arrests, phones cut off, people deported from the East of the country to prevent him being in the Antonio Maceo Square on Monday. A roundup of intransigence that remembers those times and scapulars torn cassocks children spit on by fans of a revolution that was declared materialist dialectics. It is true that no longer pursue the rosaries, but they continue to harass the views. Now, take a picture with the Sacred Heart of Jesus does not cost you the job to anyone, but believe that a free Cuba may be made to suffer the stigma and the ordeal. We can pray out loud, but criticizing the government is still sin, blasphemy.
In the hands and voice of Benedict XVI is now the choice of whether to stop hijacking the visit for the intentions of a party that continues to have a doctrine of Marxism Leninism. In their eyes is the ability to realize that among the faithful gathered in the squares missing many Cuban herd sheep have been prevented from reaching the vicinity of his staff. In your ears is the decision to listen to other voices beyond the official or strictly pastoral. With that ancient wisdom which the Church recalls to each obstacle, the Pope should know that this visit is decided part on the presence and influence of the Catholic faith in the national future. In his hands, his voice in his ears, is then confirm that you understand how momentous the moment.
It may happen that a playful wind beyond control, make fun of the political police and break out into the crowd. A breeze gagged free in a country that leads to the very eardrums papal these vibrations, those phrases that we can only whisper softly.
via Generation Y by Yoani Sanchez on 3/19/12
Breaks down the stairs of a building on the corner where he declared the socialist character of the revolution. A desperate group of thirteen people occupied the Church of Charity in downtown Havana and are taken by force during the morning. The TV shows a report on the bridges vandalized by people who removed to build houses. The archdiocese issued a notice in the newspaper of the Communist Party, in a tone that emulates the official editorials. The pope continues to appear sporadically in the stands of farmers markets and price increases illegal networks. A hip-hop musician was arrested for protesting against the treatment given school her son and takes a photo of Camilo Cienfuegos school entry. The Cardinal makes a speech in prime time programming on the same date 55 years before a young man came to force in a radio station.
Hugo Chavez in Cuba goes on postoperative shrouded in secrecy and rumors of a return to the Special Period. Book is presented Castro with Latin American intellectuals, spending thousands of copies in their paper for the annual production of an entire editorial. A doctor declares hunger strike to that restore their right to cure patients. The "cyber" paroxysms incredible reach and drive social networks just as a weapon to fight or defeat an enemy. A man with a mobile phone shooting a fire and then the police will confiscate the device for showing "the ugly side of things." In the midst of the battle against secrecy information, a journalist who rails against buying massive amounts of cookies and pastries for resale. Winter says goodbye to Havana without leaving us just take our coats. It was announced that a crocodile illegally exported back to our Island from Italy in the same party where the Pope will travel.
And I wonder: Do all these signs, these events are signs of the end or beginning? Are we getting all crazy or is it only now that we've reached the sanity?
Mike Nova's starred items
