Who's Afraid of Yoani Sánchez?

Coco Fusco
Co-organizer, The Revolution Recodified: Digital Culture and the Public
Sphere in Cuba

Who's Afraid of Yoani Sánchez
Posted: 03/27/2013 2:12 pm

Yoani Sánchez's historic visit to New York last week thrust political
debates about Cuba into the public arena, exposing their invariably
polemical character. During the famed Cuban blogger's visits to
university campuses, the only venues that offered public access to
Sánchez, she encountered fans who read her blog Generation Y, Cuban
exiles who admire her temerity, and a small but ardent band of
protestors. As one of the organizers of the conference featuring Sánchez
at The New School and New York University, the institutions that
sponsored her visit to New York, I was privy to the challenges involved
in bringing her to the U.S. as well as those of managing a volatile
crowd. Although the disruptive tactics used by the protestors suggested
that they were intent on shutting public debate down rather than
engaging with Sánchez, I'd like to take a moment to consider the content
of their statements, as well as their form of address.

As a moderator, I reviewed all the questions from the audience. Those
coming from Sánchez's detractors were fairly consistent in content and
limited in scope. Her critics asked about money they assumed she
receives from the U.S. State Department; they doubted the political
effectiveness of blogging; and they demanded to know why Sanchez's
writings did not highlight positive aspects of the Cuban Revolution.
They also drew attention to the unjust treatment of immigrant workers in
the U.S., as if to suggest either that Sanchez's calls for
democratization in Cuba were tantamount to an embrace of all American
policies and practices, or that political change in Cuba would
necessarily result in neoliberal style labor exploitation. Although
Sanchez was invited to speak about digital cultures emerging in Cuba,
the protestors sought repeatedly to sidetrack the discussion by
exhorting Sánchez to defend the Revolution and by trying to impugn her
credibility.

Sánchez described these protests in Cuban terms as "actos de repudio" --
the collective acts of public excoriation aimed at dissidents that are
orchestrated by the Cuban government. To her credit, she also responded
calmly to many of her opponents' questions, explaining that she
recognizes the limits as well as the benefits of the internet-based
movement that she leads; that she visits the U.S. Interests Section to
obtain visas just as Cuban officials seeking to travel do; that the
translations of her writings into multiple languages are produced by
volunteers; that she makes a living from her publications and does not
receive funding from the U.S. government; and that she understands her
role as an independent journalist to be that of a critical conscience,
rather than a promoter of official Cuban policy. Even though the
conference organizers explained that Sánchez's trip to New York was paid
for by The New School and NYU, and even though her English translator MJ
Porter detailed how the international team of translators had been
formed, the protestors continued to accuse her of being a mercenary
financed by the CIA, as if repeating unsubstantiated accusations would
somehow make them true.

While it is not possible to prove that Sánchez's protestors in New York
took orders from Havana, it does appear that they do not perceive the
contradiction involved in exercising their right to express alternative
views in order to discredit Sánchez's attempts to do the same in her own
country. The protestors' raucous behavior was somewhat comic, but sadly,
their questions bespeak commonly held assumptions among American
progressives about Cuba, Cuban dissidents and Cuban exiles. All too
often, progressive Americans maintain their unflinching support of Cuba
as an expression of their critical views of U.S. policy, not because of
their understanding of Cuban society. Rather than renouncing their
political ideals, they seek to silence the messengers who deliver a very
different picture of life in Cuba as it is lived, not prescribed by a
political apparatus. Unfortunately, the Cuban government makes matters
worse through its hegemonic control over academic organizations that
support Cuban studies abroad, and by instilling fear in Cuban studies
scholars outside Cuba that public criticism of the Revolution will
result in their being denied entry to the island. Recent posts from Cuba
on government-sponsored blogs raised the issue of whether the presence
of Sanchez and fellow blogger Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo on American
campuses might have an adverse effect on academic exchange projects
between Cuban and U.S. institutions; the very act of releasing such
questions can have a chilling effect on public debate about Cuba beyond
its borders.

Ardent Cuba-supporters' tirades against Cubans who publicly expresses
criticism of the Cuban Revolution not only mirror the repressive tactics
the Cuban government uses to discredit its internal opposition, but also
deny Cubans agency as thinking subjects. As Sanchez herself put it, how
could it be possible for Cuba to be the only country in the world with a
citizenry that agrees with everything that its government does? Might it
not be reasonable for Cuban exiles, who send billions of dollars to
their island relatives and who function as de facto wholesale suppliers
for Cuban small businesses, to have their views be treated with respect
too? Don't Americans deserve access to the diversity of views that exist
among Cubans inside and outside Cuba? As a Cuban-American who has
conducted research on Cuban culture for three decades, I have had to
contend with intimidation from extreme right Cuban exiles, pro-Cuba
leftists in the U.S. and Cuban state security because I refuse to stay
inside the ideological sandbox created by the Cold War. I find it quite
heartening now to witness how Cubans from across the political spectrum
are beginning to open themselves to peaceful dialogue with each other
thanks largely to the work of writers such as Yoani Sánchez who are
creating virtual forums for a plurality of views about Cuba to be shared
with the world.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coco-fusco/whos-afraid-of-yoani-sanc_b_2950637.html?utm_hp_ref=cuba