My Book is Banned In Cuba, But My Words Fly Freely on the Web

My Book is Banned In Cuba, But My Words Fly Freely on the Web

Just yesterday, on the eve of the presentation in Chile of a compilation
of my blog posts under the title Cuba Libre, I received a report from
the Customs Department of the Republic. It confirmed the confiscation of
ten copies of my book sent via DHL. In the rancid and brief words of the
bureaucracy, it explained:

Physical inspection of the package found documents whose content
goes against the general interests of the nation, and for this reason
they have been seized consistent with the established legislation.

I try to recreate the scene of "the specialists" clarifying if they
would or would not permit the book to cross the borders of this Island
and come into my hands. Would they look in its pages for some obscene
images that could offend morality? Certainly they didn't find any among
the photos of inflammatory billboards with political slogans, the
dilapidated bowels of an abandoned car and the Cuban flags on display in
a market that does not accept national currency. The latter may seem
obscene but it's not my fault.

Would those who groped the phrases of Cuba Libre be zealous doctors of
grammar, looking for an error, perhaps, or misuse of a verb tense? Were
they military analysts, searching between the paragraphs of my
chronicles for hidden codes, revelations about the economy, or secret
State Security documents? They found none of that, not even the recipe
for how to make guarapo, the nearly extinct national drink made by
crushing sugar cane.

I make do with fantasizing that those who prevented the Spanish version
of my posts reaching hundreds of friends, among whom they would have
circulated, were some soldiers with more discipline than literacy. They
were probably already warned by the listeners who constantly monitor my
telephone; they might even have been warned not to read the contents. If
three years of publishing in cyberspace would serve to bring my voice
only to these grim censors, I would have sufficient reason to be
satisfied. Something of me would remain inside them, just as their
repressive presence has marked my chronicles, my book has pushed them to
leap toward freedom.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/my-book-is-banned-in-cuba_b_531226.html