Yoani Sánchez, the dissident Cuban blogger Contrarian featured last month, reports that she and three associates were briefly detained and roughed up by Cuban security agents while en route to an anti-violence demonstration Friday. In the face of Cuba's police state, Sánchez's behaviour is what you might call ballsy. I just managed to grab, through his trousers, one’s testicles, in an act of desperation. I dug my nails in, thinking he was going to crush my chest until the last breath. “Kill me now,” I screamed, with the last inhalation I had left in me, and the one in front warned...

08 November, 2009

A few months ago, a friend and I spent a week in Cuba—not the usual Canadian stay in a beachside resort, but a week spent tramping the streets of Havana seeking out baseball games, opera, and the wonderful music that is the island nation's rightful trademark. We enjoyed the music and the weather, but the overwhelming impression was depressing: grinding poverty, decayed buildings, and the leaden air of a police state. Last week, Yoani Sánchez, a 34-year-old Cuban writer, editor, and linguistics scholar, won the Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot Prize for journalism that advances inter-American understanding. Cuban authorities...

18 October, 2009