Se veía venir...

I’ve said it before; about Yoani’s blog, awards and the whole international recognition. The regimen has been dutifully cooking out a way to shut her down.

Ellos no se van a quedar da’os, you know, me extraña que siendo arañas se caigan de la pared.

Earlier this week, when I read the posts about the move against Yoani, I saw that my fears became a fact.

It’s also worrisome to see how they are trying to implicate Carlos Alberto Montaner in their fabrications –one more time.

And all this after the whole theater in La Mesa Retonta about the Cuban dissidents receiving aid from the US. What a “coincidence”!

That left me wondering why Montaner has become that annoying piedrecita en el zapato for castro’s inc and how, with the power of la palabra y la pluma, an individual can sometimes move the mountains. I felt very please this morning when I read his response to (b) arredo’s rant.

I owe many things to J-School at FIU and the Miami Book Fair. One of them is having had the possibility to personally meet Montaner and having interviewed him for one of my classes’ projects.

For a simple Cubanita recently arrived from Cuba and completely clueless about “the other side of the story”, that encounter meant a lot.

Right there I got tips for this journalistic profession that I dearly hold and follow every single day, even when I am not working as reporter anymore.

I got to hear for the first time in my life about the other side of free trade, globalization, the dangers in excessive government power and the path that the richest countries in the world have always followed. (It was during the ALCA conference in Miami, a few years ago).

I hooked up with his books, discovered Mario Vargas Llosa (a forbidden name I never heard in Cuba) and have followed his writing as inspiration for my own.

Saved the most important lesson wrapped in a single phrase that I have shared with my students in countless opportunities: “Los periodistas somos reformadores sociales de baja intensidad”.

Got interested in a member of my family that had some role in Cuba’s history, although I’m still not sure how good or bad was. (I guess we still have that conversation pending, but, who's gonna remember another J-student from el bulto anyway?).

Along with MDH, I basically discovered what freedom of speech is listening to him and others, at the evening debates in MDCC, during the book fair.

I was left with the feeling that, when talking about Cuba’s freedom, we really meant business. And we were also in the same line, waiting for “la cáscara de una nuez”.