HAVANA, (Reuters) – Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez says the island is headed for “inevitable” change since former leader Fidel Castro retired, and Cubans have become more outspoken than ever in their criticism of the government.
“Change is coming, it’s as inevitable as rain in the summer and cold in the winter,” Sanchez told Reuters in an interview.
She said President Raul Castro, who took over from his ailing elder brother last year, lacks Fidel’s persuasive charisma and faces a big leadership test as the global economic squeeze piled fresh daily hardships on Cubans.
Sanchez, whose “Generacion Y” blog is critical of Cuba’s one-party communist government and is widely read abroad, has won international acclaim. She was selected by Time Magazine as one of the world’s most influential people in 2008.
But her Cuban readership is limited because Internet access is closely monitored and restricted on the island. Cuban authorities, who often condemn internal critics as U.S.-backed traitors, have accused her of being a “professional dissident” at the service of “anti-Cuban propagandistic machinery.”
In the year of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, expectations for change have grown in the Caribbean nation following Fidel Castro’s formal handover of power to his brother Raul.
U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged “a new beginning” with Cuba and eased certain restrictions under a 47-year-old trade embargo imposed by President John F. Kennedy as Fidel Castro moved toward a Cold War alliance with the Soviet Union.
But Obama has made clear he will keep the embargo in place to press Havana to allow more political freedom, and Cuba’s leadership has ruled out any “concessions”.
In her blogger vignettes about daily life in Cuba, the 33-year-old Sanchez has written humorously about hardships faced by Cubans — like shortages of lemons, and the need to climb 14 stories to her apartment because the building’s Soviet-era elevators are in a constant state of disrepair.
In an interview late last week, she spoke about the dire state of Cuba’s economy, and said people’s willingness to accept more sacrifices on behalf of what she calls a “dying” regime was under question as perhaps never before.
