Translator: Yoani ‘believes only in the Money God’

On Thursday (May 8), Yoani Sánchez’s Italian translator, Gordiano Lupi, wrote a brief article about the Cuban blogger in the website TellusFolio. Headlined “About My Fate and My Disenchantment Over Yoani Sánchez,” it preceded a longer article, written the following day, that can be found elsewhere in this issue of Progreso Weekly. In this translation by Progreso Weekly, our translator’s clarifications appear [in brackets].

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My fate is to be attacked, no matter what I say. I don’t say anything more than what I think. Always.

I don’t say that Yoani is paid by the C.I.A. I say that, since time immemorial — everybody knows this — the United States of America has kept a fund to bankroll democracy in the countries that, according to [the U.S.], don’t have it.

This is a basic flaw that prevents us from distinguishing the true dissidence from the self-interested dissidence. Today, judging from many of my life experiences, I no longer believe in the dissidence that Yoani leads.

Dumbfounded? I am. I devoted SIX years of my life to this woman. That’s not all. Me and my wife can no longer travel to Cuba for having believed in her. And she, in turn, goes in and out of Cuba, shuttles between Miami and Spain, and has an agent in Italy who evaluates whatever is (economically) convenient for her to do.

Now, I believe in an idea, not in money. As for her, she believes only in the Money God. For this reason, I am disassociating myself totally from Yoani Sánchez. Forever. And I’m sending to the pulper every book I’ve written about her. I was a fool.

By this I do not mean that I’m a Castro sympathizer and that I approve of [the newspaper] Granma and Raúl Castro’s statements. Not at all. I remain a critic. But mine is a constructive criticism, [the criticism] of Gordiano Lupi, not of a member of the most vulgar right, speaking from Miami.

My criticism of the Cuban system remains what it always was, but not by the side of someone who thinks that the only value in life is a bank account!

[Progreso Translator’s Note: Lupi translated into Italian Sánchez’s “Cuba Libre” and “Waiting for Spring.” Also, all her blog entries since 2009. He wrote “To Know Yoani Sánchez” and several articles about her.]