Global Voices » Claudia Cadelo

Cuba: Interview with Blogger Lizabal Mónica

Claudia Cadelo — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:41:55 +0000

In 2007, Cuban writer Lizabel Mónica started blogging about the Book Fair about recent works that she felt were important to showcase. Even though her concept of blogging was still closely tied with the concept of the print, she admits that her first few posts were too long and full of news. However, since then she has become quite comfortable with the use of blogs as a tool of communication and she currently publishes on three different blogs. Most of these blogs are closely associated with Cuban art, literature and culture. She summarizes her outlook on blogs in this manner, “Blogs are related with my way of looking at art, literature, but above all and this is the best part of the blogging phenomenon: confuse the life that we recount, with the life that we live in reality.”

Photo of Lizabel Mónica and used with permission.

Her first blog palaDeOinDeleite [es] is also her personal blog and focused on Cuban art, literature, politics, and society. It has evolved into a place to showcase other cultural projects on the island. A second blog is called Cuba Fake News [es]. This site, as the name states, provides bilingual “fake news” about Cuba and receives contributions from a variety of authors.

Mónica's third blog is Project Deliz [es], which provides information about the cultural project, which aims to “build bridges between literature and national and international art, as well as to explore the relationship between art and life.” On the blog, one can also download a copy of the multi-media magazine.

The following is an excerpt of an interview conducted with Mónica about her projects and her participation in the Cuban blogosphere:

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Claudia Cadelo: Tell me a little about the Project Desliz

Lizbal Mónica: It is an open project. Everyone who wants to participate can form a part of the project participating as much as they want. Desliz is an inclusive project, which uses the dynamism of social networking, and our page continues to add and subtract participants. Desliz is not a ghetto, but rather a reason, so that everyone who joins this purpose and participates in the activities is a part of the project. What is its purpose? To build bridges: spread the national culture and promote dialogue between Cuban writers and artists who live on the island and those who have emigrated; bring artists that we know to the national scene; promote cultural dialogue on a national level; explore the concepts of each genre or area, and the concepts of art and literature in general. Those are some of our goals. Another, more obvious: to make culture, which is archaic, more dynamic and which often does not know its own potential.

CC: Your blogs and your digital magazine Desliz are a possibility for artists and writers to access the virtual world in Cuba. Could you talk a little about your goals of using technology for artistic promotion?

LM: Writers, artists and professionals in general should have access to the Internet, but it is more important that everyone who wants access receives it, regardless of their job or position, and even if they work or don't work for society. The opinion and participation of all is important and that is what it is all about. What happens in Cuba is a superiority prejudice of Saint-Simonianism.

Project Desliz provides a specific function with the artists, but our interest is to carry out, in the near future, something similar with the common citizen. There are two prejudices in Cuba regarding the participation or presence of an individual or group on the Internet: they are either artists or independent journalists - that they start a blog to make criticism to society and/or to the government. In this manner, the vicious circles of an authoritarian government continues to turn. One of things we understand is that our country needs that the individual take the reigns of his or her own life, not under an ideology or respectable labor, but simply in the name of one's own interests, whatever they may be. Cuba lacks a civil society, and this is one of the best ways to help create one.

CC: You are starting a project to support artists so that they can create blogs and have an online presence. How is it going?

LM: Now I am working on some artistic projects and with artists who want to have an independent presence online. They also bring a lot of good ideas with them. Due to the fact that the Internet is prohibited except for some State workers, it is very expensive - the price of an “underground” account is the same as housing rent -, and the work becomes much slower than what is would be without these other conditions. Many of these artists do not have Internet, and some do not even have their own email accounts, for that reason we use our own account, limited by hours per month - using the excess hours is too expensive and we cannot afford it - for the creation of these blogs, once they are created, we help them maintain them. None of these blogs are online yet, but we just started, and soon you will be able to see the results.

CC: Do you have faith in the Cuban blogosphere? How do you feel a part of it?

I have faith in how we can develop through it. I hope that it continues to diversify, even though the voices go out of tune. There are different views, and listen to how we differ from one another, which is something that my blog Desliz tries to do. I am pleased with the start of citizen activism that can count on key characteristics like inclusion, which is by (predetermined) default with the language and the logic of the Internet, and the start of a constant change to the structures or better yet, the absence of defined structures. I count on it.

Cuba: Blogger Yoani Sánchez Introduces Voces Cubanas

Claudia Cadelo — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:59:18 +0000

As a philologist and a blogger since 2007, Yoani Sánchez has been a big part of the phenomenon, which has been described by some as “blogostróika” in Cuba. Her blog Generación Y [es] is currently hosted on the portal Desde Cuba [es], which happens to be blocked within the country since the last week of March 2008. However, it is still available by anonymous proxy. Together with Reinaldo Escobar, she has helped organize the “itinerant blogger gatherings [es]” held during the past two months and is also on the jury for the blogging contest “A Virtual Island.”

Photo by Claudio Fuentes Madan and used with permission

She has been awarded with the Ortega and Gasset prize for journalism, the Bitácoras 2008 prize, and the BOBs organized by Deutsche Welle. On January 28, the new Voces Cubanas [es] (Cuban Voices) project was launched, which aims to gather citizen bloggers from across the island. To date, there are 8 active blogs and 15 in development.

Claudia Cadelo: What are the goals of the new portal Voces Cubanas and how does it differ from Desde Cuba?

Yoani Sánchez: Voces Cubanas is a blogging platform and differs from Desde Cuba [es], which also contains a virtual magazine and other universal spaces. It is a website where all those who want to express ideas, put their projects online, can do so. It is born and inspired by the experience that we gained through the administration of other sites, but there is not an editorial policy that guides it, rather each blogger is his or her own director, editor and even censor.

CC: What does one need to do to have a blog in Voces Cubanas?

YS: The fundamental requirement for the new blogging platform is to live in and write from Cuba. Those who want a space at Voces Cubanas only needs to let us know in person or through an email to bloggers@vocescubanas.com. We'll help them with a proposal for a design and we'll teach them ways to administer their own blog themselves. We accept any type of subject matter, only when it does not incite violence, pornography, racist or discriminatory propaganda.

CC: What are the blog that are hosted on the site so far, could you make a brief introduction to each one?

YS: By the end of February we have had 7 blogs, and little by little we will have another 3. The greatest difficulty to have these blogs ready is internet access. Since we cannot have internet connection at home, we are forced to use public sites, usually hotels or others sites that are very expensive to use. Nevertheless, we have been building Voces Cubanas without trying to do it all at once, despite the limitations and obstacles that Cubans face when trying to develop projects in the virtual world.

To date, there are the blogs Reportes de Viaje [es] (Travel Reports) written by Henry Constantin from the province of Camagüey, Veritas [es] written by Eugenio Leal is dedicated to opinion surveys, my blog Generación Y has a mirror on the domain Desde Cuba, the independent journalist Iván García has a blog called Desde La Habana [es] (From Havana), and we are working with the blogs Octavo Cerco [es] by Claudia Cadelo, Habanemia [es] by Lía Villares and Lunes de Post Revolución [es] by Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo.

CC: What is the concept of blogostróika? Do you feel that blogs can contribute towards the expansion of freedoms for the Cuban people?

YS: The idea of calling this new phenomenon with the label of blogostróika came from Cuban writing their blogs from exile. They called this new wave of personal and collective sites with Cuban themes that have appeared in the past five years. The use of this term is a clear allusion to the process that came about when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, especially during the information transparency process called glasnost. Even though the term sounds nice, I have to make a small comment that perestroika was pushed from a position of power, while the alternative Cuban blogosphere did not ask permission from anyone to exist.

CC: Talk to me about how your experiences with all of the international recognition that you have received and talk about the different stages of your life, before you were a blogger, as a blogger and as a blogger that traveled distances to teach people how to open a blog. What can you say? Have you changed? Have you discovered something about yourself?

YS: My life has changed in many aspects, while others remain the same. Ever since the foreign press discovered my blog, I have received many interview requests, offers for collaboration, and messages of encouragement. I was a person profoundly shy and I had to evolve and adapt when people on the street recognized me and even asked for my autograph. I have also learned to live with the unjust judgements against me, the acts of defamation, the lies to make me out to be an employee of the CIA. My family has seen my free time decrease, but they have given me all of the support to free from daily chores.

What I have learned the most during these two years of blogging is the what an ordinary citizen can achieve, of the immense power that is hidden within each individual.

CC: What do you hope for the future of the Cuban blogosphere?

YS: I hope that it becomes more numerous and more pluralistic. I have the feeling that the Cuban blogosphere will play an important role in the democratization of Cuba and in the field of public opinion. That it will be healthy for a long time because there is a lot to tell and many ways of doing so, and I don't see that it is time to run out.

Translated by Eduardo Ávila

Cuba: Interview with Blogger Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Claudia Cadelo — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:53:14 +0000

Editor's Note: This is an abridged version of the interview of Pardo Lazo. For the complete text, please visit Claudia's blog Octavo Cerco [es].

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo has been blogging since 2008. He was born in Havana, Cuba on December 10, 1971. With a degree in biochemistry obtained in 1994 from the Department of Biology from the City of Havana, he left the sciences for literature. In this field, he received many prizes from official publications such as the Short Story Prize from the magazines La Gaceta 2005 and Cauce 2007 and many other awards. His unofficial publications can be seen as the editor of the e-zine the Revolution Evening Post.

Now he has been publishing in many blogs and digital magazines such as Revistas Cacharro(s) [es], 33 y 1/3 [es], Desliz [es], and The Revolution Evening Post [es], Fogonero Emergente [es], Penúltimos Días [es], Pia McHabana [es] , and Lunes de Post-Revolución [es].

Boring Home book cover

Recently, Pardo Lazo published his book called Boring Home, which was not published by Letras Cubanas. Instead the book was presented at a event on the outskirts of the International Book Fair in Havana. During the week before the presentation, which was organized by blogger Yoani Sánchez of Generación Y [es]. the author had been targeted by a police operation, and by personal threats by email and telephone. Despite that, the book presentation of Boring Home was well-received with the participation of many writers, photographers and bloggers from around the country. The book can be downloaded here (.pdf format) in its entirety.

Claudia Cadelo: When did you start with your blogs Pia McHabana and Lunes de Post-Revolución?

Orlando Luis Pardo: Pia McHabana (whoever it is) started to blog in August of 2008 after a time lost in the internet (I think it has been lost again). In October 2008 I started to write more regularly on my blog Lunes de Post-Revolución, where I publish, more than posts, all of the weekly columns: essays, opinions, delusions, interviews, features, vile ironies, reports, dreams. This blog is my best effort as an author. I would like to see them published on paper some day, but I suspect that it would be a intolerable book.

CC: Was it through the use of blogs that you started to become part of the blogosphere or did you work on another digital space?

OP: Previously I had sporadically appeared on other websites, such as official magazines like Made in Cuba, Esquife, Alma Mater, El Caimán Barbudo and La Jiribilla. Of course, I also became involved in alternative editorial projects like the indpendent magazines Cacharro(s), 33 y 1/3, the projece Desliz, and my own irregular e-zine called The Revolution Evening Post (which I produced together with Cuban writers Jorge Enrique Lage and Ahmel Echevarría Peré). In the blogs Fogonero emergente y Penúltimos Días, among others, one can read a large part of my work as a blogger columnist. There, little by little I started to draw in readers and other friends.

CC: Talk to me about the story behind the book “Boring Home.”

OP: Boring Home is a book using a play on words, where the stories mean less than the discourse. There are extensive stories and others of only one page, but all of them emerge with that pleasure of savoring the words: alliteration before the literary. The characters of my book are lazy and are obsessed with the act of narrating posthumously: how to compile prime material of fiction, how to be an accomplice by provoking friction.

Pardo had been receiving anonymous phone calls after the digital convocation for the book Boring Home, which has been rejected by the state publisher Letras Cubanas, even though it had been approved for publication months before. He said that he had heard rumors that high ranking officials had read the book and some of his blog columns. He adds that he did not respond to any personal attack because then he could be labeled as a “dissident, mercenary, counter-revolutionary, agent, etc.” The prohibition of the book was never made official, according to Pardo and he indicates that it has partly to do with his work as a blogger in order to make an example of him.

CC: You also participate in the blogger gatherings organized by Sánchez, you have many blogs and are a part of Voces Cubanas. How do you feel with the presence of the small blogger community who supported you during these difficult days?

OP: Solidarity. Even without needing to know the entire gravity of the situation, they showed solidarity, civil sympathy, and even a good sense of humor. I thank all of them, especially Yoani Sánchez for accepting the challenge of presenting my book, knowing that no other Cuban writer would be willing to do so. And to you, Claudia, for opening up a window to be able to breath despite such foul air, and for this interview. The bad readers say that they manipulated me to make a big show (even in the phone threats they told me), but to sow this type of carrion is among us the oldest trade in the world. Also, many nice readers and Cuban bloggers attended the book presentation around La Cabaña: we didn't even invade the space around their walls, it was enough to leave a symbolic graffiti next to the drawbridge of the Kafkabaña Castle.

Cuba: Interview with Blogger Reinaldo Escobar

Claudia Cadelo — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:12:32 +0000

Cuban blogger Reinaldo Escobar was born in 1947 in Camagüey, and graduated with a degree in journalism from Havana University in 1971. He is one of the few bloggers that has worked professionally as a journalist: first in the magazine “Cuba” up until 1987. Here during this work, he was able to travel and visit practically all of the Cuban municipalities where he wrote about many different topics. He later joined the staff of the newspaper “Juventud Rebelde,” (Rebel Youth) where he was later expelled in December of 1988 for what he calls writing with “youthful rebellion.”

Photo by Cuban photographer Claudio Fuentes and used with permission

Now he is an independent journalist and celebrates his firing from the newspaper, together with his wife, Yoani Sánchez of Generación Y [es], whom he met in 1993. From here in 2004, he became editor of the magazine “Consenso” which eventually became the portal Desde Cuba [es], which is is also where his blog Desde Aquí [es] is hosted.

He is also very active in the Cuban blogosphere and will be on the jury for the blogging contest called “A Virtual Island [es],” gives presentations during the blogger gatherings, and is part of the team that is preparing to launch the project “Cuban Voices [es],” where to date, 8 bloggers will have their blogs hosted and which will be inaugurated soon. For Escobar, blogging allows him to write about those topics that come to mind, but where he cannot find a space in official Cuban media. Here is a short interview about his interest with blogging.

Claudia Cadelo: How did you start with blogging?

Reinaldo Escobar: In 1994, I touched a computer for the first time, so I arrived late to using technology. Thanks to Yoani Sánchez, author of the blog Generación Y [es], my partner for the past 15 years, she introduced me to this new form of expressing ideas called a blog. She taught me and motivated me, and she still pushes me when I don't write in my blog for more than one week.

CC: What do you see is the value in blogs?

RE: I think one finds an elevated level of freedoms in blogs, and people can aspire to it when they wants to express themselves. Whether or not it is journalism, will be a discussion for the future. It is like the debate whether or not acupuncture is medicine, whether or not chess is a sport, or whether or not yoga is a religion. These phenomena emerge and acquire their own identity, independent of definitions and labels given to them.

CC: What are your thoughts on a blogosphere that is often polarized?

RE: Now, I have chosen moderation, which is not synonymous with cowardice or conservatism. Sometimes, I write incendiary words and I have the urge to insult and discredit, especially with those who insult and discredit others as if it were their job, most of them are opportunist and.. . (see, it does not take much to fall into temptation), but I contain myself. Even though I prefer not to belong to any political organization, I believe that I have a commitment, a citizen's obligation to my country and its future. I enjoy the characteristic (for some it is a defect, and for others a virtue) of not remaining quiet when I sense that it is necessary to say something. I am that person that tells the passerby that their shoe is untied, that signals a driver when he or she drives with their lights on during daytime. Whey should I remain silent when I have the feeling that my children's future is in danger? I don't feel like a hero or anything else. I chose the risks of responsibility, before brave imprudence or indifferent comfort.

Cuba: Interview with Blogger Miriam Celaya

Claudia Cadelo — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:22:46 +0000

Miriam Celaya is a Cuban blogger, whose blog Sin Evasión [es] is celebrating its one year anniversary. With an art history degree, she worked nearly two decades at the Department of Archaeology at the Science Academies. In addition, she has been a literature and spanish languages professor, where during this time, she became familiar with the use of computers. However, the institute did not have an internet connection. It wasn't until her time working with the digital magazines “Consenso” and “Con Todos” did she learn about the use of the online medium. Soon with the help of other Cuban bloggers, namely Yoani Sánchez of Generación Y [es], she started her own blog under a pseudonym “Eva”. However, that soon changed when she decided to use her own name to publish her blog. Here is an interview with Celaya about her start in the world of blogs, why she chose to leave her pseudonym behind, and her participation in the blogger gatherings.

Claudia Cadelo: How would you define the type of relationships that you have with your blog?

Miriam Celaya: I don't define it. I don't like to categorize things that are dear to me. I prefer to say that my blog is the space where my character and my habitual tendency to provide opinions can be combined with the possibility of freely expressing myself beyond the limited boundaries of interpersonal relationships, within the reality of this country. My blog has allowed me to start relationships with many people, the majority Cubans like me, but also of other nationalities, all of which are very close to me and very needed. It has allowed me to practice tolerance, a skill that - I admit- was very hard for me years ago and something which I had been working on. I also got to know myself better. It was like a second birth for me, and I only hope that the blog will allow to grow as a human being.

CC: You started your blog with a pseudonym, but later you stopped using it. Could you talk about the reasons why you started to blog anonymously?

MC: Some people thought that I hid my identity out of fear of repression. That is not true. In reality, paradoxically, here it is more dangerous to remain “anonymous” by trying to hide. In this semi-clandestine state, one is more prone to blackmail. I was aware that the police knew my real face and could guess that I was scared… My identity was evident: in the magazine Con Todos (and before with Consenso) I published indistinguishably as Miriam Celaya, as T. Avellaneda, as Lucía Morera and as Eva González, and the four had the same writing style. However, I had my own personal reasons to use the mask of Eva, which is the pseudonym that I always preferred: my father, who died in October 2007, was fearful for me because he suspected that I was involved in “something dangerous” and that I also was fearful of possible retaliation against members of my family. In any case, no one can take Eva away from me.

CC: What were the events that led to you showing yourself with your real name? When was it?

MC: As I mentioned, the death of my father and the end of the, let's say, “grace period” that I gave to others, who are very important to me and that always gave some resistance to my intentions to show my face. It is always difficult to convince others about your reasons, especially if those “others” love you and worry about you. I think it was a time of maturity with the circumstances, I publicly discovered myself at the right moment. That was in the summer of 2008, when I was already blogging six months incognito.

CC: Now that you have experienced blogging both anonymously and under your real name, could you tell me about the positive and negative aspects of each and what differences have noticed between the two? Do you feel like you made the right decision?

MC: I feel and know that I made the right decision. I don't have a doubt, especially because it was a completely personal choice and one is responsible for one's own actions, right? I assume all of the consequences for what I write and for the way that I write. The negative aspect of posting anonymously is that it takes away credibility in the eyes of the readers. They understand your reasons and even justify them, but some could wonder that in the distance, whether one is exaggerating the truth hidden behid the pseudonym, avoiding that the opinions and the events can be authentic or verifiable. I truly felt happy with the reaction of the readers upon learning my identity, they encouraged me a lot, connections were made with them, and I gained confidence in myself. However, I don't regret having used my pseudonym during that time: Eva González is a real part of me, even though it was not the name given to me when I was born, October 9, 1959. In an anthropological perspective, Eva was (is) something like a rite of passage.

CC: You are participating in the blogger gatherings, which is how we met. Could you tell us how you feel being a part of that group and in general about your thoughts regarding this phenomenon?

MC: I think it is an extraordinary event, even though of its modest proportions and because of all the difficulties for the blogosphere from Cuba. The gatherings have allowed us to grow closer together and unite the will for the search of independent, civic spaces for dialogue. Up until now, we had been unconnected. The blogosphere also allows us to be something that had been banned: to be citizens, and our gatherings become the forum where people from different backgrounds, ages, experiences, and lines of thinking, can come together, and we profess respect for one another and we encourage this strong feeling, which is inner freedom, and is something that they can't take away. Without a doubt, I am a part of “this”.

CC: Everyone that is part of a journalistic and creative activity like yours, who leaves behind anonymity and publishes their opinions publicly, must have personal and social goals. What are they? Which goals have you accomplished and which ones are close to be accomplished?

MC: I wouldn't say that I am a journalist, even thought I do express my opinions publicly. My personal goals are to contribute any way that I can to the encouragement of dialogue, to search for pluralistic and common spaces, and to push for a different Cuba with which we all dream and need. I don't accept the opinion of some readers who thank me for what I do “for Cuba”: in reality, I only follow my personal convictions and I don't take on the role of Messiah or Joan of Arc. I am not a leader, nor do I follow leaders. Through the blog, I tried to connect myself with many interesting and capable people, people like you and me, who are around, on the streets, who surround you and who you didn't even know existed, and who have the same wishes as you.

Cuba: Bloggers Gather In Spite of the Challenges

Claudia Cadelo — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:50:09 +0000

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]