14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 26 April 2022 — The “restless boys” of the Cuban political police no longer know what to ‘invent’ to boycott our journalistic work. Today it occurred to them (they have also done it before) to circulate my husband’s and my mobile phone numbers on several digital classified sites along with a false advertisement for the sale of dollars, euros and other currencies.
The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since and every call that comes in, of course, cuts off my internet connection and interrupts my editorial work, even the interviews and testimonies that I’m compiling for my series #MadresDel11J [Mothers of 11 July] are cut off with the desperate ringing of those who are looking for any cent of foreign currency to be able to escape from this #IslaEnFuga [Island in Flight].
If the agents of the State Security believe that with these coarse missteps the press is muzzled… they don’t know anything. This is almost “child’s play” compared to what we have had to experience in almost two decades of journalistic work. I am sorry, yes, for all those who dial the eight digits of my mobile in the hope of getting hold of those bills that are used to buy in the infamous stores in MLC (freely convertible currency) or to pay for a ticket to any point of world geography.
I feel very sorry for them, but no. This phone is not from an informal exchange but from a newsroom. Here we do not work with cash but with stories, news and daily dramas. Here the value is not reduced to a piece of paper but to the capacity that we have as a team to recount the deep Cuba.
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