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Guinea: History repeating?

Elia Varela Serra · 23:55 · Sub-Saharan Africa

lingua → fr · zhs · zht

A week after the passing of President Lansana Conté and the military coup led by Captain Moussa Camara that followed, Guinea's military rulers have named a banker named Kabine Komara as their prime minister. According to observers, the situation remains calm after the coup and Guineans in general appear to be hopeful of their new leader. However, for many bloggers, the recent developments have a clear déjà vu quality.

Zot in Guinea, a Peace Corps volunteer, wrote about the feeling of optimism towards the new leader:

Guineans are generally pretty happy with the whole thing. The new president isn’t from any of the three major ethnic groups, which has eased ethnic tensions, and, perhaps most importantly for the general public, the power has been much more consistent since he took over. Most Guineans want change, and figure any kind of change is good.

And there is reason to hope that there will be good change.

For Seckasysteme [Fr], the reaction of the Guinean people to the coup is due to amnesia:

Pris comme dans une amnésie collective, le peuple Guinéen si longtemps opprimé pleure Lansana Konté et fait acte d'allégeance au chef de la Junte militaire autopropulsé Président de la république de Guinée.

[…] C'est à croire que le peuple Guinéen est fataliste et qu'il s'accommode très bien de son asservissement et de la misère dans laquelle l'a si longtemps maintenu ses chefs d'état successifs.

Taken by a sort of collective amnesia, the Guinean people that has been oppressed for so long is now crying for Lansana Konté and is pledging allegiance to the chief of a military junta self-proclaimed as a President of the Republic of Guinea.

[…] It's as if the Guinean people was fatalistic and accomodating very well to its own enslavement and misery, in which it has been kept for so long by successive heads of state.

Widely condemned by the international community as unconstitutional, Guinea’s military junta is promising democratic elections at the end of 2010, which seems too far away for most commentators. But Zot in Guinea argues that it's not realistic to expect elections too soon:

… you cannot possibly know how impossible fair elections would be in a country like Guinea. There is no registration of voters to speak of. There is no identification system. If they set up polls, nothing would prevent the wealthier candidate from paying people to vote repeatedly. The infrastructure to handle and election is just nonexistent in this country. And it can take a long time to put together. […] I’m not saying I think the coup is necessarily a good thing, especially since I don’t know much about the president himself, and it is impossible to know whether the military will actually organize elections. But Guinea has been spiralling downward for some time under not just bad leadership, but a lack of leadership, and hopefully things will be different now.

Naija Pikin, a blogger from Nigeria, is sceptical about the democratic prospects offered by the new military junta:

Lets not be deceived. Guineans are happy with the junta because they were frustrated with Lansana Conte's government which for 24 years suffocated them down with poverty and oppression. They yearned for fresh air. In stepped Camara. Lansana came into power in 1984 via a military coup.

Camara is only threading a farmiliar path. Seize power, the whole world will condemn you. You promise to conduct elections in the soonest possible time. The world relaxes its pressure. Two years time you conduct a ‘democratic' election with you as the main or only candidate. You win a landslide.We know this song too well.

For Edward B. Rackley, an American scholar blogging about African affairs at Accross the divide, the coup in Guinea follows a familiar pattern:

With last week's passing of Guinea's senile dictator, Lansana Conté, and the military coup that followed, the country is marking no deviation from a well-rehearsed choreography, enacted repeatedly since independence from the French in 1958. The dance moves are economical, simple for new generations of political elites to learn.

A leader emerges, accedes power bolstered by populist rhetoric, buys off the military, installs single-party rule. Cronyism flourishes, rule of law evaporates, the military shores up the trappings of statehood. Decades pass; the population languishes. Leader then dies, military resumes control until a new leader-puppet is found. For nine million Guineans, the spectacle and squalor continue.

For Seckasysteme [Fr], once again history is repeating:

C'est à croire que l'histoire se répète pour le pauvre peuple Guinéen.

Des siècles d'esclavage et de colonisation, 27 longues années de Touréisme et 24 autres longues années de Kontéisme semblent ne pas suffire pour sortir le peuple Guinéen de l'obscurantisme, de la misère et de l'asservissement, pour le faire entrer dans la démocratie et la modernité.

Vraiment dommage que le débile Général n'ait pas emporté avec lui, sa dictature.

It's as if history was repeating for the poor Guinean people.

Centuries of slavery and colonisation, 27 long years of Touré and 24 long years of Conté don't seem to be enough to take Guinean people out of obscurantism, out of misery and enslavement, and to make it enter democracy and modernity.

It's really a shame that the General didn't take the dictatorship with him.

Africa News reports about the African Union's response:

The African Union (AU) has condemned the return of coups d’état to the continent, describing the phenomenon as “a very serious setback in the ongoing democratization process in Africa.

Abantu is a blogger that, like the AU, condemns the coup:

What is really wrong with us Africans? Cant we ever learn from past mistakes and take it upon ourselves to walk the democratic path on our own, or we are so used do disorder and dysfunction as the order of the day, the coups don't mean anything to us?

[…] The world should condemn this act by the Guinean military in the strongest terms possible and ensure that that bauxite producing state should return to a civilian democratic process because the military has no basis of interfering the management of political state affairs.

Neba Fuh of Voice of the Oppressed, a blogger from Cameroon, recently wrote about Guinea in a post titled “Military Coups In African Dictatorships: Liberation or Retrogression?“:

A country blessed with natural resources and its people caged by a dictator for over 24 years. Drowning in poverty for decades, the people are now holding tight to a 'snake' hoping that it can take them afloat.- A junior officer of the Military just seized power there after the death of the country's long time dictator- a move apparently welcomed by the populace.

Cameroun, Gabon, Congo, Egypt, Libya and many other African countries will one day have their ‘liberators'. They may come from barracks, who knows???

It will be called a ‘coup'; but the question all of us should ponder on is: In a country where all democratic methods to change a seasoned dictator have been barred or made impossible, is a military coup an act of patriotism or subversion?

For Sofa Jawaro of The sword of truth, a blogger from Gambia, it is important to give credit to the military junta for the sake of stability in a very volatile region:

…taking into consideration the timing of the coup, Conteh’s 24 year autocratic misrule, and endorsements by both a prominent regional player, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and constituents across the Guinean political landscape, it is imperative to give the situation the benefit of the doubt. That may be possible only by supporting the young military leaders to ensure that Guinea do away with its authoritarian past by reforming the fabrics of Guinean communities.

In a region that is already ravaged by bloody civil wars in Liberia, Sierra-Leone, Ivory Coast, low level insurgencies in the southern Senegalese region of Cassamance and northern Mali, isolating the military junta and suspension of aid could have an adverse impact on the sub-region. Guinea continues to be home to thousands of refugees from neighboring Liberia, Sierra-Leone, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau

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Lusosphere: Reform in Portuguese Language Not Welcomed

Paula Góes · 22:47 · Sub-Saharan Africa , Americas

lingua → fr · es · zhs · zht

Described by Brazilian poet Olavo Bilac as “the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful”, the Portuguese language is about to change. As of 1st January 2009, the reform of its spelling begins to be implemented in Brazil over a four year adaptation period until the new rules are completely enforced. The same rules will eventually be implemented in Portugal, where the changes will be phased during the next six years, and also in the other 6 countries where Portuguese is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe.

The latest Portuguese orthographic agreement was signed in 1990 by seven out of eight Portuguese speaking countries. It intends to unify the two current orthographic standards and was meant to go into effect after all signatory countries had ratified it. However, by the end of the decade only Brazil, Cape Verde, and Portugal had done so, although in Portugal the change was passed into law only in May 2008. Brazil, which has nearly 80% of the Portuguese speakers in the world, is the first to implement it.

The spelling changes will affect about 1.6% of the words in the European norm (also adopted in Africa) and 0.5% in the Brazilian spelling. Across the Lusophone world, many linguists, philologists, politicians, journalists, writers, translators – and of course bloggers – do not quite understand the need for, or agree with, the international treaty meant to improve the language's international status through a single official orthography. The debate is a heated one, but most bloggers seem to be on the same side.

“A sign in both Chinese and Portuguese in Macau, China. Actually, “主教座堂辦公室” (in Chinese) or “Cartório Da Sé” (in Portuguese) means “The Office of the Cathedral.” By Wikimedia.

Starting with Portugal two petitions (1 and 2) collecting thousands of signatures calling for the suspension of the implementation are being evaluated by the National Assembly. There, the reform is perceived as a “abraziliament” of the language with no real advantage for the other countries. It is also claimed that the new spelling rules disagree with the way the Portuguese people pronounce words. A Portuguese citizen who has grown up in Macau, Ricardo José [pt] has taken an extreme decision:

Um país não é um hino ou um desenho numa bandeira. Um país é a sua língua e é a sua cultura.

E se um conjunto de políticos se arroga o direito de interferir na língua que é minha, contra aquilo que caracteriza a cultura dos cidadãos dum país, servindo interesses que não os dos portugueses, então repudio-os, porque já não são mais políticos de Portugal.

A partir de hoje e para sempre, se este acordo não tiver retrocesso, o meu voto será sempre público e será sempre o mesmo: votarei em branco.

A country is not an anthem or a flag design. A country is its language and culture. And if a group of politicians claims the right to interfere in a language that is mine, against what characterizes the culture of the citizens of a country, serving the interests of other [people] than the Portuguese, then I reject them, because they are no longer politicians of Portugal. From now on, if this agreement has no retreat, my vote will always be public and will always be the same: I'll cast a blank vote.

In fact, for what has become known as Brazilian Portuguese, changes will be kept to a minimum, and some bloggers have adopted them already [pt]. However, the majority of people are not happy with the reform either. A doctor of the Portuguese language, Marcelo Leite [pt], for one, seems to agree with the views of the blogger above, adding that the reform was an agreement which has much more to do with political and economic interests than language issues.

Na verdade, fizemos a comunidade lusófona engolir a maioria das regras para se unificar em nome de uma unidade lingüística que, assim como o Godot, de Becket, fica sob uma árvore esperando. Podemos até escrever do mesmo jeito, mas o que nos faz tão distantes, tão distintos não está na grafia das palavras, mas em uma herança cultural que, fora a língua, nos separa por mais de um oceano. E acho que essa diferença é que é o legal da coisa.

In fact, we have made the lusophone community swallow most of the rules to unite in the name of a linguistic unity that, like Becket's Godot, have been waiting under a tree. We can write in the same way, but what makes us so far apart, so different, is not so much in the spelling of words, but in a cultural heritage that, language apart, separates us far more than an ocean. And I think that this difference is the cool thing.

Eugênio Costa Almeida [pt], from Angola, agrees with the Brazilian blogger that a game of power is at play and wonders how this reform can be implemented in language prolific Africa:

Como será que a CPLP vai descalçar esta bota, bem apertada, quando há países que ainda nem ratificaram a nova ortografia, como Angola e Moçambique, sendo que o primeiro, ao contrário de Moçambique e Guiné-Bissau, já tem quase mais falantes em português que nas próprias línguas nacionais.

How will the CPLP [Community of Portuguese Language Countries] take off these very tight boots, when there are countries that have not yet ratified the new spelling, such as Angola and Mozambique, considering that the first, unlike Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, has almost more Portuguese speakers than of their national languages.

Talking about Mozambique, Nyikiwa [pt] thought that the country should stop models that much of the time are not in line with their reality:

A questão do acordo ortográfico, quanto a mim mostra claramente que a população não é consultada, nem ouvida. A população apenas serve para votar. Na verdade quem ratifica os documentos quer a nível nacional, quer a nível internacional são os dirigentes, que ignoram o facto de haver diversas culturas e diversos comportamentos no seio de um povo que aparentemente é homogéneo, quiça entre povos de diferentes culturas e comportamentos? Julgo que está na hora de antes de se avançar para esse tipo de acordos, se ausculte o povo e se faça ouvir suas ideias.

The spelling reform issue, I think, clearly shows that the population is neither consulted nor heard. The population is only good to vote. In fact, those who ratify documents, either at national level or international level, are leaders who ignore the fact that there are different cultures and different attitudes within a nation that is seemingly homogeneous, what about between peoples of different cultures and behaviors? I think it is time for, before moving on to such agreements, the people to be heard and that their ideas are voiced.

“– Here's to the spelling reform!
– Poor thing, he is dyslexic and is ever so happy with the multiple spelling words. He says that he will never make a mistake again.” A cartoon against the agreement by Foram-se os Anéis.

Virgílio Brandão [pt], from Cape Verde, is not too happy either - the blogger also says that apart from Portugal and Brazil, the other Portuguese speaking countries had no say in the process - as if “these other speakers did not exist”:

Não existem senhores nem donos da língua; nem é preciso, em boa verdade, um acordo ortográfico como o que se tenta impor às comunidades falantes do português. Até porque, até me demonstrarem o contrário, a diversidade é um bem estimável.

É por essa razão – para não estarmos presos a um desejado e sub-reptício império da língua – que a língua cabo-verdiana deve ser implementada como língua de trabalho ao nível internacional. Se somos independentes, que o sejamos em tudo, caramba! Quem não tem coragem de fazer o que é preciso, que dê lugar a quem tenha. É, para os cabo-verdianos, uma questão bem mais importante do que aparentemente possa parecer.

There aren't misters or masters of the language; nor is it needed, truth be told, a spelling agreement like the one trying to be imposed on Portuguese speaking communities. Because, until I am shown the contrary, the diversity is highly desirable. It is for that reason - for us not to be tied to a desired and surreptitious empire of the language - that the Cape Verdean language should be implemented as the working language at international level. If we are independent, we should be so in everything, dammit! He who does not have the courage to do what is needed, should give way to those who have it. It is, for the Cape Verdean people, an issue far more important than it may seem.

Portuguese is a Romance language originating in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. During the Portuguese colonial empire, the language spanned around the world: from Brazil to Goa to Macau, in China, where it still is one of the official languages. Nowadays, Portuguese ranks 6th in a list of languages according to number of native speakers, which makes it one of the world's major languages, with an estimated 240 million speakers in virtually every continent. It is spoken by about 187 million people in South America, 17 million in Africa, 12 million in Europe, 2 million in North America, and 0.61 million in Asia.

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Palestine: West Bank protests hindered by factional tension

Ayesha Saldanha · 20:31 · Middle East & North Africa

lingua → fr

While the eyes of the world are on Gaza, what's going on in the West Bank? Bloggers report that there is enormous anger at the assault on Gaza, yet ongoing tension between political factions in some areas means that protesting publicly has not been easy.

Samuel Nichols, who blogs at SammerTime, is a American member of the Christian Peacemaker Team working in a village in the southern West Bank:

As you can probably imagine, the sentiment among Palestinians in the last days, is very emotional. People are in mourning, people are angry, people want to respond. … As I came into Hebron yesterday, many youth were throwing rocks, chanting, and burning tires in response to the massacres. Roads were blocked with stones and tire fires raged and youth paraded with Palestinian flags. The Israeli military was responding with live ammo, concussion grenades, and teargas. As I came into the Old City of Hebron, a kind gentlemen showed me an alleyway towards my house, which would avoid all the teargas. … Leaving Hebron today, the scene was very similar. One youth grabbed my arm and pulled me into an alleyway. Just as we rounded the corner, a sound grenade went out, scaring the hell out of me. I thanked him for this gesture, and he proceeded to ask where I was from, I said, “Ameerka.” Instantly I could tell that this wasn't a popular answer at the present moment. He asked me if I had said seen the pictures of babies killed in Gaza. He said that America is responsible for those dead babies. He told me that America needs to be destroyed. He demanded to know if his statements were true or false. “Haada mazbuut,” this is true, I said. He told all his friends around him that I was “Amreeki,” which garnered many grunts of disapproval. Another sound grenade went off nearby and I figured it was my time to leave.

[…]

As I boarded the bus to Bethlehem, where I change buses to go to Jerusalem, I got into another conversation with 3 men. One man on the bus looked remarkably like Yasser Arafat, and other men in the bus were giving this man a hard time and trying to get him to do an impersonation. … They then asked me where I was from. When I said America, they again asked about Gaza, if I had seen the pictures and the videos. They then asked what I was doing here. In my limited Arabic, I explained that I work near Yatta, in a village called Tuwani. I struggled to find the words to describe the work…”I live with Palestinians who have many problems with Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers. The foreigners with me, we have video cameras, and we try to help, and try to tell our country about what's happening.” … Then the ‘Yasser Arafat look-alike' reached across the aisle to shake my hand. “You are welcome here in Palestine,” he said to me, in the first English spoken in the conversation. The other men shook my hand and asked what my name was and where I was going. After I told them my travel plans, they insisted I come with them in their friend's car and they would drop me off in Jerusalem to catch the bus. Upon entering the car, the driver offered me food and tea, and told me I was welcome here.

Marcy Newman, an American activist and academic working in Nablus, who blogs at Body on the Line, describes the feeling in the city:

the mood in nablus is not good. …. a common refrain i heard among my students yesterday was that “palestinian blood is cheap.” there is a feeling that they are all alone. yesterday i posted an important video of sheren tadros reporting on al jazeera highlighting the fact that there is nowhere for palestinians in gaza to run to. but here, too, people feel that there is no one to go to for help. that their calls for ending this bloodbath fall on deaf ears. […] people in nablus are afraid to speak out, too, as there are a number of palestinians who have spoken out publicly in mosques and other public spaces and as a result the palestinian authority has put them in prison. enemies are every where. from within and from outside. one of the student activists at my university was chatting with me last night. she wants to erect a tent in downtown nablus in martyr’s square to have a public memorial for the martyrs of gaza; hamas and fatah leaders in the city couldn’t agree. so no tent. more silence. the same is true in nasra [Nazareth, in Israel] where palestinians were attacked by israeli terrorists for protesting the brutality in gaza.

Nevertheless a demonstration did take place:

you’ve got to hand it to the women. when the shit hits the fan they are always the ones to react. the strong ones. in the midst of a political situation where palestinians are afraid to speak out against the israeli terrorist war against gaza, the women’s union got fed up today and organized and impromptu protest at martyr’s square in downtown nablus. it was a brief demonstration, partially due to the rain i suspect, but important nevertheless. after the first fifteen minutes or so men joined as well. the chants were all about unity: one nation. no division. the chants criticized hamas and fatah alike.

Then a second one:

i went downtown again at 5pm for the second protest for gaza today. this one was a candlelight vigil. i got their early because of what happened to the first protest i went to. none of my friends were there yet. i saw a lot of yellow [Fatah] flags when i arrived, but they were flags for palestinian political prisoners so i did not think anything of it. while i was waiting for my friends to arrive two students from an najah [university] came up to me and while we were talking little by little i started to realize this was not at all a candlelight vigil for gaza in spite of all the people there in kuffiyas looking like they were gathered for a vigil or demonstration. all of a sudden really large speakers began blasting fatah songs and shortly thereafter a huge parade began to march down the street full of children on drums. every one of them waved enormous fatah flags. … i was not in the mood to watch fatah celebrate its 44th anniversary, which to me seemed like dancing on the graves of people in gaza. incidentally, i head heard that celebrations for fatah’s anniversary were ordered to be canceled today because of what is happening in gaza; apparently nabulsis [people from Nablus] didn’t get that memo.

Ned is in Ramallah, and blogs at Oranges and Olives:

Yes, no one can say that Hamas are angels. They are not. But doesn’t it sound absurd that while F-16s and Apaches are bombing Gaza and while tanks are taking position around the strip, the calls are coming out to Hamas to stop the violence? But surrealism, as stark contrast between elements, can only be strengthened by a third element in our case. What adds to this surrealism for me is not to be found in the world reaction, not the Arab reaction, but the reaction of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. A small march goes out in Central Ramallah, and it appeared to be infested with agents of the Intelligence apparatus. It was disgusting to see that Hamas supporters were being arrested in the heart of Ramallah, by Palestinians. What added to the sadness is the sight of a line of riot police that blocked the road to the Muqata’a (the presidential compound). If we are to treat a peaceful demonstration in such a manner that calls for the use of riot police then what should we expect from others? […] Everyone is wrong, no one is doing the right thing, but things have entered into a spiral of wrongs and blames that it is now impossible to say that one thing can stop everything. This is why my thought goes back to the root of the problem, at least its root on our side of the game. The bottom line of my analysis is that we do not have sincere leaders. No one is genuinely interested in the best interest of the Palestinian people, not even the Palestinian leaders themselves. On the one hand, the PA cannot be expected to come out strongly against military action that can potential restore power in the strip to them. Nor are the Hamas leaders expected to leave their throne after the finally got there. Nor are we, as a people, intelligent enough to stand up against this catastrophic leadership and create a new one that represent us. It looks so gloomy.

Elena is an Italian working in Ramallah who blogs at Fazzo Io!, and she has posted a poem written by her friend Raya:

Last night I had my last drop of coffee
My last dream, my last piece of bread
Tomorrow morning I will witness my last dawn
Listen to my daughter's last heart beat
Say I love you for the first, the very last time
[…]
Few minutes ago I was invisible no one knew about me
No one heard my screams, felt my fears
No one held my freezing shaking small hand
No one told me it will be ok
Soon it will be ok
No one saw me, no one felt me
I was invisible, no one knew about me!
Few minutes later I'm on TV
Everyone talks about me
Even the CNN mentioned me!!
[…]
Yesterday I died!
As an old man buried in his tomb,
As fetus dead in her mother's womb
Yesterday I died 360 times!

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Cuba: Bloggers Gather In Spite of the Challenges

Claudia Cadelo · 00:50, January 1st, 2009 · Americas

lingua → fr · es · it

In Cuba, connection to the internet is difficult and limited. In the civil population, only the foreign permanent residents in Cuba, journalists working for the official media, and high-ranking officials of public-private mixed companies have the right to have their own account: everyone passes through a filter prior to a review of “political conduct,” for those members of the Communist party or demonstrating through the use of the internet their ideological unconditionality.

Accounts also exist in institutional and labor centers, and they can have access to the Internet, but it is limited and all of the information utilized by the users is duly verified by a server. In these accounts, sites such as Gmail and Yahoo are blocked. Doctors, artists, university students among others have access to the Intranet through their institutions, an internal Cuban network, and access to email with the domain .cu, and some have access to international recipients. These people can access their email from home or from work, depending on the position that they hold, and some are able to access the Internet through a proxy.

In hotels, one can access the Internet through public locations, where connection time costs between 5 and 8 CUC per hour, equivalent to 120 or 200 Cuban pesos, which is half of an average salary per month.

Under these conditions, bloggers in Cuba have special characteristics:

-They blog from blocked sites, such as the case of the bloggers of Desde Cuba [es], who can only see their own blogs through a proxy and they cannot administer their sites from Cuba, and their friends abroad are in charge of posting, making links and everything related to the administration of their blog.

-They blog from the Wordpress or Blogger platforms, as in my case: generally, those who blog also do not have access either legal or illegal, but when it comes to it (a friend allows us to their house, a public space) we can administer the blog. What happens is that we do not have online time to administer, the connection is very slow, the time on the account is not enough or the access is sporadic. We also need someone abroad, that via email we can send the post, photos, links or anything else that we want to publish.

There are bloggers that do not have computers, and they work from a friend's house. There are bloggers that have completely anonymous blogs and post through other bloggers in the country, who are sent posts by mail. Generally, we cannot read the comments, and in my case I have friends that bring me the blogs in other formats (flash memory, CDs) along with the comments, so I see my blog more or less 24 hours after each post, sometimes more.

In summary, we cannot participate in the comments, we cannot post every day, and frequently, we cannot administer our own blogs. In spite of these difficulties, the alternative Cuban blogosphere is growing: more and more there are blogs without pseudonyms, or with pseudonyms, but we all know who the blogger is, such as Pia Mc Habana [es], written by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo; and others that have made the jump from anonymous to open, such as Sin Evasión [es], the blog of Miriam Celaya.

For all of these reasons, Yoani Sánchez of Generación Y [es] decided to begin blogger meetings. Unfortunately, the first meeting in Pinar del Río could not take place because the police summoned us to warn us of the consequences. Reinaldo Escobar of Desde Aquí [es], Sanchez' husband follows up with some questions about the meeting with the police, who said that the bloggers were “disqualified for any dialogue with the Cuban authorities.”

Since we are not interested in being jailed, but rather to keep posting, we changed the concept of “meeting” to “traveling gathering.” And as Miriam Celaya of Sin Evasión [es] explains about the get-together that will alternate locations:

Porque de eso se trata: de un itinerario que nos comunique y nos una, de una vía permanente de intercambio de experiencias, de defender un fragmento del ciberespacio que nos pertenece a todos por derecho propio y que la voracidad e impotencia de las autoridades pretende disputarnos, tal como se demostró en la prohibición expresa a reunirnos en Pinar del Río, donde se celebraría la inauguración de este encuentro. Si alguien pensó que con semejante gorilada iban a impedir nuestro encuentro, ya debe haberse convencido de lo contrario.

That is what it is all about: a gathering where we can communicate with one another and something that unites us, a permanent path of an exchange of experiences, where we defend a piece of cyberspace that rightfully belongs to all of us. The voracity and powerlessness of the authorities who try to contest us, as demonstrated when they prohibited us from gathering at Pinar del Río, which is where the gathering would take place. If someone thought that with such savageness that they would stop our gathering, they should have thought otherwise.

Photo by Claudia Cadelo

So far, the topics most discussed have been, naturally, the difficulty to post, access to technology, and blogger ethics. The most important aspect of these gatherings is the possibility of mutually helping one another, sharing information, getting to know one another, and learning from the diverse experiences that we have had trying to maintain our own blogs. In addition, a Cuban blogging contest was launched called “Una Isla Virtual” (A Virtual Island), as Yoani Sánchez explains about the meeting [es]:

Once participantes, entre ellos siete autores de bitácoras, nos reunimos en lo que –lúdicamente– llamamos un “café blogger”. Comenzamos con el texto de Andrew Sullivan ¿Por qué bloggeo? y las preguntas superaron a las certidumbres obtenidas de nuestra breve experiencia en Internet.

Discutimos la convocatoria al concurso Una Isla virtual, cuyo premio gordo será la laptop que me gané en el certamen Bitacoras.com. Alguien sugirió la idea de invitar a todos los bloggers del mundo que quieran darse un saltico por el encuentro semanal que iremos realizando a lo largo de un año. A ellos les recomendamos también colaborar con manuales, libros y programas para este intercambio de conocimiento.

Eleven participants, including 7 authors of blogs, gathered at what we - brightly - are calling a “blogger coffee.” We started with the text by Andrew Sullivan, “Why Do I Blog?” and the questions surpassed the doubts collected over the course of our brief experience on the Internet.

We discussed the convocation for the contest A Virtual Island, whose grand prize will the laptop that I won at the Bitacoras.com competition. Someone suggested the idea to invite all the global bloggers that would like to visit our weekly gathering that will take place over the next year. We also recommended that they contribute with manuals, books and programs for this exchange of knowledge.

This is a list of the blogs and participant sites of the last gathering, as well as some of the resources collected and presentations [es] by some of the attendees:

- Generación Y [es]
- Desde Aquí [es]
- Habanemia [es]
- Sin Evasión [es]
- Pia mc habana [es]
- La Colmena [es]
- El Blog de Dimas [es]
- Octavocerco [es]
- Convivencia [es]
- Retazos [es]