Yoani is denounced by her Italian translator

Yoani Sánchez’s Italian-language translator for the past six years, Gordiano Lupi, on Friday (May 9) published an article blasting the Cuban blogger for being arrogant, mercenary, and greedy. Its title: “Yoani Sánchez: Her new journal is my freedom.”

Lupi, 54, is a respected translator, having translated into Italian works by José MartÌ, Heberto Padilla, Virgilio Piñera, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Alejandro Torreguitart Ruiz, and many others.

The article, which appeared in the independent website Il Gazetin, is so revealing — coming from a man who knew Sánchez for a long time — that Progreso Weekly has translated it from the Italian and is publishing it here. Our translator’s clarifications appear [in brackets.]

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Yoani Sánchez has terminated her contract with [the Italian daily] La Stampa and has made me a free man who, until yesterday, could not say what I thought, in view of the fact that I translated her. Now that I no longer have any connection [with her] and that the interests of the world’s richest and most rewarded blogger are in the hands of her agent, Erica Berla, I can remove the pebbles from my shoes. They were hurting me.

I made the mistake of believing in Yoani Sánchez’s cause, believing it to be a David-against-Goliath struggle, a struggle that came from the grassroots to strike at the power, an idealistic struggle for the freedom of Cuba. I realized — through bitter disappointments — that Yoani’s opposition was a dead letter, not to say [an opposition] of convenience, as if to make the world believe that in Cuba there is freedom of speech.

I began to wonder if Yoani was not so much an agent of the C.I.A. — as her detractors say — as [an agent] of the Castro family, paid to blow smoke in people’s eyes.

But even if none of this were true, it would be enough for me to realize that I was dealing with a person whose foremost interests are not at all idealistic. A blogger who leads a tranquil life, who nobody in Cuba knows and nobody harasses, who is not threatened, imprisoned or silenced, who has no problem entering or leaving her homeland.

Because of her pretty face, I was the target of insults and threats from Italian supporters of Castro and communists for taking part in a nonexistent struggle, a dream of freedom hoped for by many, but certainly not by her, who thought only about the money that came from awards and contracts.

At this point, I do not know if Yoani Sánchez is an agent of the C.I.A. or the Cuban Revolution. I do not know, and do not care to know. I only know that she is not the person I thought she was. That’s enough for me.

One episode, above all, should have opened my eyes to reality. Over a year ago, I sent my mother-in-law to Yoani’s house to ask for some clarifications about [Yoani’s] trip to Italy. Well, they made her wait on the staircase. They didn’t even invite her into the entrance hallway. Very strange behavior for a Cuban of the people.

I should have believed my mother-in-law when she told me, “Those people are not fighting for the freedom of Cuba. They’re only interested in filling their pockets.” I didn’t believe her, and I was wrong.

I believed in an ideal fight that didn’t exist. In reality, Yoani Sánchez’s intention has always been to become rich and famous. Now she has achieved that. Now that she has distanced herself from me, I have lost the right to re-enter Cuba, while the princess-blogger buzzes like a blowfly between Havana and Miami. The word “butterfly” does not describe her. “Blowfly” is a more fitting term.

Now Yoani S·nchez will open a “farlocco” [phony] newspaper, as we call them here in Italy. Somebody else can translate it from Cuban, I cannot. A phony newspaper like [publisher Walter] Lavitola’s “Avanti,” with all due respect to Lavitola. She and her little friends will start a daily that nobody in Cuba will read, because it will be available only online.

But what does Yoani care? To her, it’s enough that someone finances it, that it is read in Miami and Spain, that the Cuban community continues to be deceived by a nonexistent paladin.

So far, we’ve traveled together, dear Yoani. Now we stop. I continue my journey alone, far from your ambitions. It still involves Cuba, true, which is part of my life, although many Cubans have disappointed me.

I shall try not to think about it, out of respect for my wife, who is a Cuban of the people and has nothing to do with your bourgeois arrogance. And then, as Fidel Castro said, history will decide. Let’s see who it will absolve.