Yoani Speaks: Blogger Talks About Being Beaten Up By Cuban Authorities

Will this attack change the way in which you write your blog, or the way Cuban bloggers are organized?

I don’t think this will affect the topics I write about, because my style is to write about daily stories, things that happen to me. This is a personal blog. And that will not change. I’m not going to turn my blog into a political document. I will continue to write chronicles of reality.

But to have been a victim of a violence will give me a bigger responsibility to shed some light on people who are suffering similar situations and may not have the possibility of empowering their voices, or using the wonderful loudspeaker the Internet is.

Are you afraid?

I’ve felt fear since I started writing my blog, but there are very different ways of reacting to fear. In my case, ever since I was a child, I would run towards its source. And that is what I’ve done with my blog: I run towards the place where fear is born.

What injuries did you suffer from the attack?

On Saturday, after suffering severe pain, I went to the polyclinic. I have a strong pain in the lumbar zone. There is no visible injury, but the forcing of my head into the car, together with all the pushing, the shaking and the punches, caused an injury to my lower back. So now I am receiving treatment for the inflammation and the pain. But I hope this nothing to be worried about, something that my age and the health I’ve always had will heal quickly.

“To have been a victim of a violence will give me a bigger responsibility to shed some light on people who are suffering similar situations and may not have the possibility of empowering their voices, or using the wonderful loudspeaker the Internet is.”

Did you receive medical attention from the Cuban health system? Isn’t that a bitter irony?

I used the Cuban health system because I consider myself fully entitled to do so for living in this country. I don’t want to pay with my freedoms for the chance of being treated at a hospital. The free medical care and free education Cubans receive doesn’t have the go through the ideological filter—doesn’t need to be used as a justification for silence.

I dream of a Cuba where people can complain, where they can point out the failures of government and the system — the health and education systems, both suffering of severe problems — without being told by someone to “shut up because they are free.” That’s not true. We pay for the hospitals. We pay for these hospitals with our taxes, with the wages we are not paid in full, with the very high prices on the stores. More than anything, however, we pay for them with freedom, which is the most expensive currency, and the hardest to pay things with.

IN YOANI’S OWN WORDS:
A gangland style kidnapping [Generation Y]
Blame The Victim [Generation Y]

RELATED:
Cuban Blogger Claims She Was Beaten By Government Agents [Mediaite]
Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez detained, beaten on way to march [Miami Herald]

Here is a video taken at the march for non-violence that Sánchez was headed to when she says she was abducted:

José Simián is a producer at NY1 Noticias, where he hosts a literature and music interview segment. His writing has appeared in NY Daily News, Huffington Post, Sports Illustrated Latino and Billboard en Español. He writes the “Meet The Prensa” column for Mediaite.

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