The journey ofYoani SanchezOutside of Cuba, it has created great expectation. This Havana-based journalist is one of the most famous bloggers in Spanish by Generación Y. She has visited Burgos to talk about social networks and freedom in iRedes, theIII Ibero-American Congress of Social Networksand collect the Award iRedes Individual Category 2011 that I cannot collect at the time.
Very Interesting: I had not left Cuba for ten years. How are you living this trip, what is surprising you?
Yoani Sánchez: First of all, this has been a journey through time. The integration of people with new technologies, how they connect with their mobiles, how they interact not only through the senses, but through those gadgets on the screen and keyboard … That already impressed me a lot.
And then that feeling of waiting for someone to come and disown you. In Cuba there is always something forbidden. Don’t do this, don’t take photos, you can’t walk around here …… And it’s not just the policeman, or the custodian: your own family tells you to protect you. And here I feel that people speak very openly about any topic.
And of course, the lost flavors, rediscovered, what I had never eaten, the smells, the sensations, the hugs … Because there are people I have met in the virtual world, like José Luis Orihuela, with whom I have had a relationship of friendship and collaboration for years, which has taught me many things about technology, and now to see him in the flesh … That is very impressive.
Very Interesting: How is the use of social networks made by people in Cuba different from what we do in Europe?
Yoani Sánchez: In Cuba access to the Internet is very limited. Although the Government says that there is more than 20% of the population connected to the Internet, it is a very inflated figure: there are also the people who use only email or an intranet. The reality is that we are below 3% connectivity, which is very little. The relationship with social networks in many cases is sporadic, in others none, in others very accidental.
Among young people, for example, there is now a great taste for Facebook. Of course, when they can enter somewhere in that social network. But Twitter plays a great role, because it has the advantage that even without the Internet, through text messages, you can take Twitter with you. Despite the fact that we are a small community of tweeters, I think the impact is great because sometimes even if the government wants to deny a story, the action of people on Twitter makes it unfeasible.
Very Interesting: How many people can be connected to Twitter in Cuba?
Yoani Sánchez: Not connected, because they can broadcast but they can’t read, they don’t know about trending topics… but they can broadcast. We are a small community of 120 tweeters. It seems small but I can assure you that for the Cuba of 10 years ago that immediacy of writing a 140-character message on your mobile, clicking and going out into the world is already an unprecedented informative fact.
Very Interesting: Can social networks contribute to political changes in Cuba, as happened in the Arab Spring?
Yoani Sánchez: Yes, but not to such an extent. In Cuba we are in a very embryonic stage of the development of social networks. In countries like Egypt, Tunisia or Libya itself, people had a much higher level of contact with technology. Through the Blackberry or social networks such as Facebook, protests could be called. In Cuba at the moment that would not be possible because out of 11 million citizens only 1.8 have a mobile phone, and most use it in a very utilitarian way, the costs are high … But without a doubt it will have an impact, it will catalyze some processes democratizers.
Very Interesting: The role she has played is well known internationally and yet she is less known in her own country.
Yoani Sánchez: My goal when I started writing my blog was not to become famous. Fame is a side effect of my work. But about that I will tell you that something very interesting has happened, that certain things are made known outside and enter the island again. Suddenly the tweet reaches the phone of an exile and that person forwards it to Cuba. Or he calls his relative on the island and tells him “Hey, I read on Yoani’s account that…” It is a somewhat bumpy system, but it is working.
Very Interesting: How does the Internet help to circumvent censorship in Cuba?
Yoani Sánchez: There are many mechanisms. We Cubans have the facility to access everything that is prohibited. If you look at it, legally in Cuba children over seven years of age could not drink milk, but that does not mean that they do not drink it. In addition to the rationed quotas, mothers, concerned that our children grow up with sufficient calcium intake, immerse ourselves in the clandestine market to look for that milk. We do the same with beef, with clothes … And with information. There is a lot of information that comes indirectly and there are people who have never connected to the Internet and are still reading news from web pages.
To publish we organize with a little ingenuity. For example, I use the WordPress platform. I write at home, they are not informative texts, they are texts that work more on the chronicle, the day to day … so they do not get old quickly. I write three or four, I connect in a hotel and running like crazy I try to leave the texts programmed. So that the blog is alive even though I am not on the web. And like that trick, sometimes by emailing the text to a friend for him to publish… that’s how my blog, “Generation Y”, stays alive. And so do many of the bloggers of the Cuban Voices portal.
Very Interesting: There are those who think that the regime has “sold” your departure from the island as a demonstration that its emigration policy works, in the sense that if Yoani has been able to leave Cuba, anyone can leave. Do you feel used?
Yoani Sánchez: No, I don’t feel used because one thing is what the Cuban government believes is going to be the result of immigration reform and another is what is going to happen. Life has taught me that in Cuba we work with very twentieth-century tools while the world moves at a different pace. I am thinking, for example, of Brazil, where the Cuban embassy was behind some acts of repudiation. The end result was enormous solidarity throughout the visit and an additional 35,000 followers on Twitter. In other words, the Cuban government believes that it can calculate the result of certain actions, but it no longer knows why it does not use modern methods. So if they let me out to give that impression they have to know that I will continue to give my opinion, and the political cost of certain actions will be high.
Very Interesting: How is the news of the death of Hugo Chávez being lived in Cuba?
Yoani Sánchez: Cubans are divided between two sensations: on the one hand, people know of the importance of Venezuela as a support for the family economy, and they support the regime as well. And many people associate the death of Hugo Chávez with shortages, lack of resources, a new special period … That worries many people.
But when the Cuban government comes face to face with the fact that it now has to survive on its own, perhaps it will open up politically, make it more flexible, allow more licenses on its own … This may be a variable that catalyzes change. That is the dilemma right now.
What I think is that a system made in the image and likeness of a person does not survive the death of that man. It may take a little longer, but it can’t survive without the person who created it.
Very Interesting: Do you feel safe there and here?
Yoani Sánchez: When you live in a totalitarianism that can destroy you at any time and in all possible ways, I think the best thing is not to let yourself be paralyzed by that. It is clear that there is a constant in the life of any activist and anyone, and also it does not have to be you directly, they can harm your loved ones. But that shouldn’t stop you from getting up every morning and doing what you do. When I came here I told my family: I am leaving in peace. I want to be here for many years but if it ends tomorrow, I have done what I wanted, and I am at peace.
