Disruption of Yoani speech in New York carries echoes of Cuba

Posted on Tuesday, 03.19.13

Fabiola Santiago: Disruption of Yoani speech in New York carries echoes
of Cuba
By Fabiola Santiago
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com

NEW YORK -- What do you know?

I came to the hip "capital of the world" to attend an unprecedented
conference on digital media in Cuba — and ended up witnessing an
American-style version of what on the island is widely known as " un
acto de repudio."

Literally, the phrase means an act of repudiation, but in any language
it's a calculated, verbally violent attack that escalates and turns
uglier and uglier with by the moment. It's the favored weapon of the
desperately intolerant to quash a point of view that runs contrary to
their deeply held beliefs.

Note this important difference: The point of an " acto de repudio" is
not to express an opposing viewpoint — a value held dearly in our
democracy — but to disrupt an event and/or discredit an individual.

And that's exactly what a group of pro-Cuban-government Americans sought
to do Saturday in this cultural hub where one expects intelligent
conversation — disrupt the packed conference The Revolution Recodified:
Digital Culture and the Public Sphere in Cuba, at The New School's
Tishman Auditorium, and discredit one of its panelists, the celebrated
Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez.

In the United States for the first time, Sánchez, 37, was the last
speaker of the last panel of the day, Cuba in a Global Context: Social
Media and Political Change, which included U.S. experts on social
network analysis who have done fieldwork in Russia and the Middle East.

While the panelists made insightful presentations about how global
networks are expanding and fomenting social change, organizers gave
members of the audience note cards to write down questions for the
panelists. It was an effort to speed up time-consuming translations and
people walking up to microphones.

After the questions were collected, conference coordinator Coco Fusco, a
Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist and associate professor at The
New School, read them to the panelists.

Most turned out to be for Sánchez — and quickly, a pattern of antagonism
against her emerged:

How much money is the State Department paying you?

Could Sánchez name five human rights violations in Cuba, since the
previous day she had said there were many but hadn't named one?

Has she ever attempted a civil dialogue with people who support the
government?

Sánchez took the questions as an opportunity to present the kind of view
of the real Cuba that quickly shatters utopian myths.

Her answers were slam dunks against the regime — and most of the
audience applauded her.

The fact that she and the U.S. government coincide on wanting to see
democratic change in Cuba, Sánchez said, doesn't make her "a slave" to
U.S. interests, and by the way, when did you ever hear of a person in
Cuba who wanted freedom and wasn't called a CIA agent?

"The rhetorical game," Sánchez called the practice.

She listed a myriad human rights violations recognized by the Geneva
Convention — lack of freedom of speech and assembly, of movement
throughout the island, etc., but the last violation she named was a
zinger: Lack of access to the Internet.

"That, to me, is also a human right," she said.

But it was her answer to the question about who she had engaged in
dialogue that brought out the rage in her detractors.

Every attempt to debate issues has ended in pro-government people
hurling insults, or hasn't materialized because the other side hasn't
come to the table, Sánchez said.

She gave as an example her attempt to engage Raúl Castro's daughter,
Mariela, who was abroad promoting her work on gay issues at the National
Center for Sex Education, with the question: "Now that Cubans are free
to come out of the sexual closet, when will they be able to come out of
the political closet?"

To which Mariela Castro answered that what Sánchez needed was sexual
therapy, and that she could get it at CENESEX.

"That's a lie!" a woman in the audience shouted and was immediately
joined by others who echoed her from different corners of the auditorium.

One after the other, the pro-Castro members of the audience began
shouting tired lines used by the Cuban government and unfurling
anti-Sánchez banners smuggled into the auditorium with their personal
belongings.

They also threw dollar bills printed with Sánchez's face into the air
and along the aisles

Sánchez supporters grabbed two of the banners away from the protesters
and ripped them up.

"Yoani! Yoani!" her supporters began to chant.

It's amazing the kind of misery a heavy dose of hard truth — the kind
that shatters the myths of ideologues — is capable of unleashing.

For those of us who were sitting in the middle of this circus as the
tensions escalated, it was scary. There were no metal detectors during
this part of the three-day conference and few security officers, so
there was no way of knowing if anyone was armed and how far things would go.

Take note, Miami.

The world will soon cast its eyes upon the exile capital to see what
kind of reception Sánchez receives. If New York was a dress rehearsal,
the provocateurs have already been lined up for a big show.

But I hope we can do better than this and let Sánchez speak her truth,
whatever that may be, in peace and freedom.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/19/v-fullstory/3295249/fabiola-santiago-disruption-of.html