Useless? Without Virtue

Useless? Without Virtue? / Luis Felipe Rojas
Posted on September 3, 2013

An event has shaken the forums on Cuba and Cubans lately. The trips
abroad of some Cuban opponents of the regime has focused attention on
the tendency of we Cubans to be who we are: passionate, extremists,
relaxed, dazzling, contemptuous, in short, human. But there are three
women in particular I want to talk about: Yoani Sánchez, Berta Soler,
and Rosa María Payá. Each one stretched the cord until it broke, from
one side and the other, of Tyrians and Trojans.

In order of appearance, the linguistic slip and use (perhaps incorrect)
of irony in a battlefield (the media) where gaps of misunderstanding are
not allowed, unless for the use of their own machinations, painted with
the first scandal the multi-award winning girl from Factor Street. All
the posts she wrote over five years, taken together, didn't generate the
flood of comments as great as her 15 seconds of "fame," and that's bad…
but it's good. If anyone really doubted that Yoani could grab the
attention of the world, they were as wrong as she was.The verbal
stumbling had the same company of cheers and repudiation. We all learned
the lesson, she not to again trade her communication tools, we to
demonstrate once again our propensity for intolerance, and Europe and
Washington to serve as a clear path to show themselves exquisite hosts.

For her part, Rosa María Payá is in, probably, the most delicate moment
in her political career, Cuba doesn't know it. Even the Human Rights
activists don't know, the Independent Civil Society (not forgetting that
the opposition is not exclusively in Havana… far from it) and the
contacts with the movement she hurriedly inherited (the Christian
Liberation Movement) have not taken a couple of trips from the capital
of the country. But the strength with which she has led the fight to
denounce the death of her father, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and the
activist Harold Cepero Escalante, had demonstrated the fiber she is made
of, seasoned with three ingredients very dangerous for her adversaries:
clarity of thought, ease of communication, and a clinging to the truth
that could put the Castro regime in a position as delicate as that it
faced three years ago with the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

Berta Soler Fernandez brings the experience of a decade plotting
strategic actions, reckless and brave against a repressive machine that
went down in the annals of the twentieth century and has taken the lead
in the twenty-first. Seconding the peerless Laura Pollán was a difficult
test, but she took it on with ease in ten years of the struggle with the
Ladies in White. Steering the mythical and effective female group,
working as a team and gaining their blind trust was the final exam,
conquered cum laudem. Berta Soler has deployed her agenda on the old
continent as one who knows every word, every phrase the political
prisoners whispered in her ear, the spirit of Pollán and the Ladies in
White who continued protesting in Havana as long as she represents them.
Soler has flatly denied having political ambitions, she has focused on
Human Rights and with simplicity and bravery continues to support her
ideals.

Three voices, three women called to tell the story and they are
narrating it in a tone of voice that anyone of us would wish.

22 March 2013

Source: "Useless? Without Virtue? / Luis Felipe Rojas | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/useless-without-virtue-luis-felipe-rojas/