Category Archives: Eliecer Avila

Universal / Yoani Sanchez

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sif2013Someone sitting at the table behind spoke in French, while in chairs at the side two Brazilians exchanged ideas. Two steps further on some activists from Belarus were talking with some Spaniards who had also come to the Stockholm Internet Forum. An event that began on May 21 in the Swedish capital bringing together people interested in digital tools, social networks and cyberspace. A real Tower of Babel where we communicate in the lengua franca of technology. The global and virtual village is now contained in an old factory on the edge of the sea. And in the midst of this back and forth of analysis and anecdotes, are six Cubans, also willing to contribute their labor as cyber activists.

This is without a doubt the most enjoyable stage of my long journey and not because other places haven’t been filled with beautiful impressions and lots of hugs, but because here I have met up with several colleagues from the Island. Some of the people who, in our country have grabbed hold of new technologies to narrate and to try to change our reality, today are gathered here. The young attorney Laritza Diversent, the director of Estado de SATS, Antonio Rodiles, the keen blogger Miriam Celaya, the information engineer Eliecer Avila, and joining us for one day as well, the independent reporter Roberto Guerra. Here in Stockholm it has felt rather like Cuba, though certainly not because of the weather.

The Internet Forum has allowed us to feel like citizens of the world, to share experiences with those who live in different situations but, in essence, surprisingly similar ones. It’s enough to chat with another attendee for a little while, or to listen to a talk, to realize that in every word spoken here is the eternal human quest for knowledge, information… freedom. Expressed on this occasion through circuits, screens and kilobytes. This meeting has left us with the sensation that we are universal and that technologies have made us into people capable of transcending our geography and our time.

like_webb23 May 2013


Operation Truth – Video / Eliecer Avila and Yoani Sanchez

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Operation Truth Video & Transcript

Site manager: We decided not to subtitle the video itself, given its length and poor sound quality, so a transcript is provided below and can be downloaded here.  The video of Eliecer’s encounter with Ricardo Alarcon is available subtitled in English here.

Yoani Sánchez: It’s a pleasure to be with you and share an interview with Eliécer Ávila. Eliécer is an Information Scientist, but in recent years has been best known for his political and social action in Cuba. He is also the producer of the alternative television program “One More Cuban” and in the year 2008, for those who remember it, in the Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas (UCI) (Information Sciences University).  Eliécer had a question and answer session with Ricardo Alarcón, President of the National Assembly.

(Excerpt of video between Eliecer and Ricardo Alarcon)

Eliécer Ávila: OK, let me introduce myself, I am Eliécer Ávila, Faculty No. 2, leader of the “Technological and Political Surveillance” Project, which is one of the specialties of Operation Truth). What we are looking at here is the constant monitoring of the internet and our mission of reporting and fighting in this area.

Yoani Sánchez: What is and what has been Operation Truth?

Eliécer Ávila: Operation Truth is a project that stems from an “activity” of the UJC (Young Communist League). An “activity” (for non-Cubans here) is a meeting of the key militants and UJC teams of all the UCI brigades, which they hold periodically, about once or twice a year as I recall, in the Palace of Conventions.

The Minister of Culture, Abel Prieto, was invited to one of these activities and, among other things, he explained that currently they were pursuing another campaign of defamation and that kind of thing, and then a student … (after the announcement Prieto played the university card, to use the students to express the Revolution’s opinion on the theme they were discussing. … a student proposed creating a project organized in the UCI,  which was the university most technically able to do it, to send out to the world the truth about Cuba, the truth put forward by the government about Cuba. Also the context of the Five Heroes. The second important objective of the Operation Truth Project was to tell the world about the Cuban vision regarding the Five Heroes.

Roughly in what year was the Operation Truth started?

I think it was 2007-2008

It was exactly in that period, in early 2008, if I’m not mistaken, when the conversation occurred between Ricardo Alarcón and a group of students of the UCI, and you in particular, pretty much in the same time period.

I think the Project had been going some months because it was then fairly well developed and they had gained a lot of experience. There was already a signed document of the Project at that time. It had been in operation for some time. Continue reading →


Contrasts / Ernesto Hernandez Busto

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El cocinero, a private restaurant in Havana

El cocinero, a private restaurant in Havana

There are contrasts that make one think. While Eliecer Avila convokes an opposition movement “We are more,” from the island Wendy Guerra offers us this culinary chronicle about the restaurant “El cocinero” – The Cook. The story begins like this: “A few months ago Camila and Rafa, two young people, with the help of their parents and friends, rented a symbolic space in the Havana neighborhood of El Vedado, a former cooking oil factory”… As Yoani Sanchez does not appear here as part of the action, it doesn’t occur to anyone to ask where the money came from. But it would be a good question: Camila is the daughter of the painter Nelson Dominguez and of a professional urologist who for some time hasn’t practiced her profession. The place Wendy refers to, of course, is not just any house rented for a private restaurant, but in any event, viva capitalism and may good restaurants in Havana flourish… My point: it’s impossible not to see a certain disconnect between the discourse of the dissidents and this other reality of an elite with money and new businesses that thrive, little by little, on the island.


Eliecer Avila introducing a new opposition movement: “Somos más” in a video from Poland

By Ernesto Hernandez Busto

From PenultimosDias.com

28 March 2013


To Root Out the Remnants / Miriam Celaya

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Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Yoani Sanchez, MJ Porter in New York City. Photo from Penultimos Dias

Many of my dear readers have written asking for a comment on the long tour of Yoani Sánchez through several countries, and the travel abroad of other figures of internal dissent such as Eliecer Avila, Rosa María Payá, Berta Soler and Orlando Luis Pardo, just to mention some of the best known, and the significance this could have for the opposition on the Island

The topic requires, perhaps, a long essay, but it’s enough to follow the statements of the dissidents mentioned as published in various media, the packed agenda Yoani is covering on her journey, and the links that have been strengthened between Cubans critical of the Castro government on all shores, to understand that there is a before and after with regards to these journeys. The issues raised by all of them range across all the problems of Cuban society today and the crisis of the Castro model.

Rosa María Payá (Another promising young person of the Cuban opposition)

Most significant in this case could be the variety of opinions expressed by them and the fact that, despite differences of nuance, there is a consensus on the need for democratic changes in Cuba and that these must be achieved through peaceful and concerted means. I dare to suggest that, save for some specific remnants of some opponents who feel disenfranchised or who refuse to make way for new ideas and figures which have emerged in the political spectrum of resistance, there are many more who identify with and feel represented in the statements of all these young Cubans who are traveling the world.

Just recently I received a bitter critique from a longstanding opponent who felt diminished in importance because I didn’t mention her in an interview I did with my colleague Pablo Pascuel Mendez which was published in Cubanet in January. She did not understand that the questions put to me by the journalist had nothing to do with her activity, much less did my answers encompass disrespect for any of my fellow travelers from before or now.

The are no pedigrees nor privileges in the Cuban opposition, only fighters for democracy; it doesn’t matter who came before or after, we all matter. At least as I understand it. For that reason I have no problem promoting debates, which I consider essential, because a lack of transparency is nothing more than repeating the patterns of the government we condemn.

I think, in the end, that the words of our compatriots abroad will not only strengthen us by offering a more dignified and truthful picture of what the Cuban opposition is in the light of these times, but will also serve to further understanding and support for us within Cuba, which perhaps would be one of their most important contributions. Yoani, Rosa María, Eliecer and Orlando Luis are offering a magnificent example of the true variety of citizen awareness on the Island. Rooting out the remnants among ourselves would be a chance to feel that in them, somehow, we are all represented.

18 March 2013


“The Internet Has its own Soul.” Eliecer Avila in a revealing interview / Miriam Celaya

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Picture taken from the website Cabaiguán

The title of this post is a phrase by Eliecer Ávila, who, while still a student at the University of Computer Sciences (UCI) in 2008, ridiculed the President of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcón, perhaps unintentionally. On that occasion, the young man unambiguously publicly questioned the emigration policy imposed on Cubans by their government.

The short video circulated in Cuba back then from one computer to another at the speed of gunpowder, marking the initiation of someone who was not aware he had crossed a forbidden line: just by posing the question to a senior official Eliecer had become a dissident.

A very short time after that the young man, who had already graduated as a computer engineer, got in touch with the independent blogosphere and with other civil society groups and created his own space for debate. Since then, he has been active in the field of civic and political public opinion in defense of democratic opportunities for all Cubans. Without a doubt, Eliecer has all the qualities of a born leader. Continue reading →