Regina Coyula, 12 March 2016 — In a decision that takes one’s breath away, even among commentators who defend official orthodoxy, the author of the blog El Colimador (The Crosshairs) has decided to stop publishing.
He had been “notified by the monitoring team for the Reflejos platform, due to the publications of comments approved by him that violate the conditions of use established by this platform.”
Accustomed to my WordPress blog, a .com platform, it was striking to me that in the Terms of Use of reflejos.cu moderation (I would say censorship) of comments is included (which are not part of the posts) under ideological considerations; while in WordPress the terms regarding comments are established by the author and WordPress limits itself to offering the tool to perform this function.
It turns out that in the conglomerate of blogs about sports, spirit, food, unfailingly full of applause, respectfully forgettable like almost everything on the platform, El Colimador stood out for being interesting and intense. It unapologetically defended what we know as the Cuban Revolution and its administration always managed a balance that fostered a respectful debate.
Who was the “regulator” (the author exonerates the technical team) who expressed the narrow viewpoint of a sector with power that appears not to live in the 21st Century but rather in the 19th.
Those with a better memory will remember the incomprehension with which La Polemica Digital and La Joven Cuba were dealt with, blogs that won their space and their readers not with obsequiousness but quite the opposite.
It would be lamentable if the enemies of El Colimador take advantage of my complaint to justify their censorship of the blog. These people can’t understand that I want a country where the Ruslans and the Reginas can express themselves without fighting under a nick and a false IP and accusing them of receiving “goodies” from the Cuban government or dollars from the American government.
