The Nigh Seen Creeder

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured a fascinating piece about a young blogger, Yoani Sánchez, who's tempting fate by daring to tell the world what life is like inside Communist Cuba (visit her blog here).

Ms. Sánchez's blog should be required reading for those liberals who've managed to convince themselves that Cuba is a paradise in which all citizens are well-fed, well-educated, and, well, kept well by Cuba's amazing system of free health care.

Here're some highlights from the WSJ article:

"Ms. Sánchez has done this cloak-and-dagger routine since April, publishing essays that capture the privation, irony and even humor of Cuba's tropical Communism -- 'Stalinism with conga drums,' as she and her husband jokingly call it. From writing about the book fair that blacklisted her favorite authors to the schoolyard where parents smuggle food to their hungry children, Ms. Sánchez paints an unflinching, and deeply personal, portrait of the Cuban experience. ...

"The problem is, saying what you think in Cuba can be dangerous. In 2002, Cuba imprisoned dozens of journalists who declared themselves dissidents and published criticisms of the regime -- many are still there. Most Cubans are so afraid of being labeled a critic that they are reluctant to utter the words 'Fidel Castro' in public. Instead, they silently pantomime stroking a beard when referring to their leader. ...

"The blog reads like her interior monologue as she goes through her routine in Havana: Collecting the daily ration of bread (one bun per person per day), taking her son to school, and running errands -- often trekking on foot to avoid riding the "camel," a bus pulled by a soot-belching tractor-trailer cab. ...

"A recurring feature is her 12-year-old son's school. Recently, he participated in a military shooting exercise there. Her son enjoyed playing soldier, but she was outraged. In another entry, she described how parents congregate at the schoolyard at lunchtime to secretly pass food to their children who don't get enough to eat. She described her sadness at seeing children whose parents who don't turn up and will go hungry. ...

"Writing her blog is one way to shed her 'internal policeman,' Ms. Sánchez says. 'I am trying to push the limits, to find the line where the internal limits end and the real limits begin.' She thinks more Cubans are pushing nowadays too. Lately, in bread lines and other informal gatherings, she's witnessed Cubans publicly complaining about things like corruption, low wages, or the decaying health system." [Emphasis mine]