Yoani Sánchez: A woman in search of a cause

“Sometimes the questions are complicated because the answers are simple.” - Dr. Seuss / Art: Varela

Today Rebelión published the first of a two part interview Salim Lamrani did with Pentagon babe Yoani Sánchez. English translation here.

Salim says that an unnamed “western diplomat” who’d read some of the “relatively critical” articles he’d written about Yoani passed them along to her, and as a result she asked to meet with him to clear up a few things.  They met in the middle of the afternoon at the bar in the Plaza Hotel in Havana.  He describes her as affable, serene, never flustered, and with her experience dealing with Western media, “relatively practiced in the art of communication.”

The rest of the interview is a tour de force of incoherence and ignorance.  But José Varela has already been busy with the machete, over at varela blog, and there’s no-one better.

The Complicated Chica - español

José Varela

Translation: Machetera

Yoani Sánchez has been interviewed by a French journalist (complete Spanish text here) and has told him that she has photos of the blows she received in the street, but she doesn’t want to reveal them because she’s going to present them in court.  This detail is significant because one’s credibility in court is not dependent on possibly self-inflicted or fabricated proof, but rather, proof collected in situ.  It’s dependent on witnesses, experts, medical reports or a confession from the aggressor (or aggressors).  If what she’s seeking is to denounce a violation (as seemingly suggested at first in the interview) the opportunity was lost by not publishing the photos on her blog or giving them to her great ally, the international press.  But if she’s looking to punish her aggressors (which is what she said later), she’s not going about it the correct way.

Silvio Rodríguez on the U.S. led blockade, Cuban dissidents, music and the media

Silvio Rodríguez: “They’re the same shameless ones who’ve blockaded us for fifty years…” - español

By Karina Micheletto

Página 12, Argentina

Translation: Machetera

Silvio Rodríguez is in a not particularly comfortable position: while he carries a symbolic weight, and his name alone recalls an era and particular kind of song – made possible by that very era – the passage of time has presented the challenge of perfecting himself as a troubadour.  The way he has surmounted such a daunting challenge can be heard in Segunda cita [Second Date], the album he recently completed.  The album contains beautiful, powerful songs that are musically enriched by the acoustics of the jazz trio that Rodríguez chose as his accompaniment on this occasion.  “We can’t be eternal prisoners of our past, because we have more tomorrows than yesterdays awaiting us,” says Rodríguez

Ernesto Hernández Busto, Peter Ackerman and James Glassman in the same room? Call the firemen!

Hat tip to Eva Golinger…sometimes the news just doesn’t get any better than this.  It seems that Machetera’s secret admirer, Ernesto Hernández Busto, is hitting the talking heads circuit now for who else but his other American idol, George W. Bush.

W, whose latest vanity project is something called the George W. Bush Institute (whatever happened to the good old days of disgraced presidents quietly slithering off to San Clemente?) has hired James Glassman to run the shop and put on silly dog and pony shows like the one EHB will be joining on April 19 in Dallas.  The “Conference on Cyber-Dissidents,” co-sponsored by NED beneficiary Freedom House will also feature Al Giordano’s new best friend Peter Ackerman, and a raft of other guests linked to U.S. intelligence.

Raúl Castro’s address to Cuba’s Young Communist League

I’ve always loved the stories about the Cuban mambises, who, outgunned and outnumbered by their nineteenth century Spanish oppressors, resorted to a clever kind of weaponless warfare; that of wearing their enemy down by giving them false directions when lost, or harassing them during the night so they could not rest.  While the Obamas and Estefans share Bloody Marys with the terrorist faithful on April 15th in Miami Beach, they might spare a thought for the historic futility of their efforts.  Cuba’s youth will always outlast them.

“Young Cuban revolutionaries understand perfectly well that to preserve the Revolution and socialism, and to continue being dignified and free, they have many more years of struggle and sacrifices ahead of them…Cuba does not fear lies nor does it kneel to pressure, conditions or impositions, from whichever direction. It defends itself with the truth, which always, sooner rather than later, ends up being known.”

Cuban President Raúl Castro’s keynote address to the Young Communist League, Havana, April 4, 2010 - español

Edited by Machetera

Compañeras, compañeros, delegates and guests,

It has been a good Congress, which actually began last October with the open meetings attended by hundreds of thousands of young people and continued with the evaluation meetings conducted by organizations from the rank and file as well as the municipal and provincial committees where the agreements were shaped that would be adopted in these final sessions.

If there is one thing we’ve had plenty of during the little over five years that have passed since Fidel made the closing speech at the Eighth Young Communist League (YCL) Congress, on December 5, 2004, it’s been work and challenges.

This Congress has been held in the midst of one of the most vicious and concerted media campaigns launched against the Cuban Revolution in its fifty years of existence, an issue to which I will necessarily refer later on.

Washington’s Cuban cannery

“…a genuine national political movement cannot be manufactured in the capital of the enemy.  Parties and movements are not exportable commodities, because a political party cannot be bought and sold as though it were a can of spam… That this kind of foreign production might have any kind of legitimacy in Cuba is a myth that is only believed by those who do not know Cuba and do not live there.”

The War Against Cuba: New Budgets, Same Premise - español

José Pertierra

Translation: Machetera

Presidents in Washington come and go, but the end goal of U.S. foreign policy remains the same: derail the governments who dare to defend their national sovereignty and destroy any revolution that ventures toward a different world than that which is programmed for them.  The weapons that the United States has used in its offensive against Cuba have evolved over the last fifty years, but the war remains the same.

Cubanologists in Washington and Miami want to build a supposed socio-political movement in Cuba as a tool of subversion.  But a genuine national political movement cannot be manufactured in the capital of the enemy. Parties and movements are not exportable commodities, because a political party cannot be bought and sold as though it were a can of spam.

Frei Betto explains Yoani Sánchez’s life of luxury

La Jiribilla interviews Frei Betto - español

Translation: Machetera

Once again, Cuba is in the news.  But the majority of the reports reflect a false reality, produced by the huge multinational media conglomerates to follow the media campaign of the moment.  “The problem is simply that we live in a world that is considered to be democratic, where it is said that everyone has the right to freedom of expression,” explained the Brazilian theologian Frei Betto in an interview  with La Jiribilla. “It just so happens that very few people have access to the means of expression; therefore, the version of events that is presented by those who have hegemonic control of the major media, such as with the Zapata Tamayo story, is always on the side of imperialistic interests and those of the United States; these lies and a strong ideological offensive are meant to discredit the Cuban Revolution and destabilize the country.

The author of Fidel & Religion is currently in Cuba to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of this seminal text and says that “Nothing’s going to happen because fortunately there are plenty of people who do not have the means to express themselves but who show, as I do, their support for the Revolution and, above all, denounce the fact that behind every campaign there’s a permanent plan to destabilize the Revolution, as though this were a country that does not allow its people freedom of expression.  What it does not permit, just as no country permits, least of all the United States, is conspiracy to destabilize the government, and in Cuba’s case, the Revolution.”

“Now you have a woman here who spends every day disparaging Cuba through her blog,” Betto pointed out.  “This is the only country in the world in which a person can enjoy the luxury of not working, of spending the entire day blogging, and nothing happens to her.  Nothing happens, not in the sense that she doesn’t go to prison, but in the sense that if someone in Brazil were to not work and spend the entire day at their computer, they’d go hungry, they’d end up in the street, they couldn’t support themselves, and if they were to fall ill they’d be totally lost because they’re not going to have the money to get medical attention, while in this country, this woman has that luxury.  She is proof positive that there is freedom of expression in Cuba.  What there is not, just as there is not in any country that I am aware of, is freedom to conspire.”

In Betto’s judgment, “the Internet is important because by virtue of its speed and proximity, huge amounts of information and barriers are liquidated, and this is essential to allowing more reflection over the events taking place in the world.  Unfortunately the capitalist system and those who have ideological hegemony dominate the Internet, and therefore when there is something favorable to Cuba or when there is a demonstration of solidarity with Cuba, it comes out way down in thirtieth place on the search engine, but if there’s something negative about Cuba, it comes out on top.”

“We have exceptionally worrisome situations in Latin America,” said Betto, who won the 2009 ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the  People of our Americas) Literature Prize.  One is “the blockade against Cuba, the criminal, imperial manner in which the United States relates to Cuba through the blockade and its base at Guantánamo.  These are factors that demand plenty of attention, and plenty of resistance by Latin American and Caribbean countries.”

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the author and translator are cited.