Victim no, responsible

BY Yoani Sanchez

I could spend the day scared, hiding from the men stationed below. I might fill pages with the personal cost this blog has brought me and with the testimonies of those who have been “warned” that I am a dangerous person. It would be enough for me to decide that every one of my articles would be a long complaint or the accusing finger of one who always looks outside to find fault. But it happens that I don’t feel myself a victim, but responsible.

I am conscious that I have been silent, that I have allowed a few to govern my island as if they were running a hacienda. I pretended, and accepted that others will make the decisions that touch us all, while I shielded myself behind the fact of being too young, too fragile. I am responsible for having donned my mask, for having used my son and my family as a reason not to dare. I applauded—like almost everyone—and left my country when I was fed up, telling myself that it was much easier to forget than to try to change something. I am also burdened with the debt of having let myself carry—sometimes—the rancor and suspicion with which they marked my life. I tolerated their inoculating me with paranoia and, in my teens, a raft in the middle of the sea was a frequently nurtured desire.

However, as I do not feel myself a victim, I raise my skirt a little and show my legs to the two men who follow me everywhere. There is nothing more paralyzing than a woman’s calf flashing in the sun in the middle of the street. Nor am I wooden like a martyr, I try not to forget to smile, because giggles are hard stones in the teeth of the authoritarian. So I continue my life, without letting them turn me into a whiner, with only one regret. Ultimately, everything that I live today has also been the product of my silence, the direct fruit of my former passivity.

This was originally written and published in Spanish by Yoani Sanchez and translated and posted in her English version blog. Since the castro regime continues to curtail her internet access and continues to block access to her blog and other internet sites in and out of Cuba, we are posting Yoani's work in its entirety in solidarity and to help promote and distribute same.

Posted by Val Prieto at January 26, 2009 08:21 AM

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Posted by: Ziva Sahl at January 26, 2009 08:48 AM