Jumping the Barriers / Yoani Sánchez

La ciber policia en Cuba from Coral Negro on Vimeo.

Are you one of those who fabricates the lies? Or one of those who believes them? I would like to ask this question of the speaker who deploys a complicated conspiracy theory in this video. If it’s someone who is just sending a message, then the answer is simple: the falsehood is concocted higher up and he is just the messenger. But I fear that part of what he is expounding in front of those grim soldiers — with a constellation of stars on their uniforms — is his own production, cooked up by himself. His lengthy presentation, punctuated with words such as “enemy,” “operative,” and “the evils,” shows me what can happen when one talks about the most modern of technologies using old-fashioned language. He doesn’t seem to understand the affinities and ties that link sites like Facebook and Twitter, but applies a prism of his own making to them, rather than recognize that individuals make their own decisions to join them and — horrors! — jump the ideological barriers. Although he might be a brilliant computer scientist, this young man failed social sciences.

On this fictitious base they design strategies that will barely hurt the Cuban blogosphere. Meanwhile, believing that the impulse does not come from us, but from others who manage us like puppets, they will develop tactics that will make a lot of noise but generate few results. To recognize that the New Man — their New Man — is tired of being a soldier, repeating slogans, applauding at political rallies, and now wants to have his own space for expression, would be like confessing that they have failed. All the walls and boundaries they impose on us in the physical Cuba, we have jumped over into that infinite space that so robs them of their sleep. If they can no longer control us, let them at least console themselves by dismissing us.

*Thanks to the commentator in my blog who sent me the link to this video, the distribution of which is proof positive that our government has lost the monopoly on information, including its classified materials. Viva Cubaleaks!

Translator’s note: Given the length of this video I don’t think we will be able to prepare a translation. The gist of it is a detailed explanation of how Yoani and other dissident bloggers are classified by the government as counterrevolutionary enemies controlled from the U.S. and Spain. There is a proud enumeration of the “Revolutionary” blogs and the accuracy of their attacks on Yoani et al. The principle criticism aimed at the alternative bloggers is that they are trying to break the “ideological barriers” (put in place by the Castro regime). The term “human rights” is repeated as if it is an obscenity. At one point the slide on the screen shows us Fidel’s “blog” and how many “hits” he has (more than half a million!).
4 February: Following are links to some additional summaries of what is said in the video. The Diario de Cuba article is in Spanish, but readers can translate it using Google Translator.
El Yuma
The Cuban Triangle
Diario de Cuba
Miami Herald

3 February 2011