Cyber game
By Varela
As I see it, when on Nov. 12 the presidential team (Obama was in China) agreed to answer the questions posed by Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, it did two things. First, it paid back Fidel for his earlier prediction that Barack would not be reelected in 2012 but be succeeded by a Republican in the style of Nixon or Cheney. And second, it bet on the Internet as a way to deal with Cuban issues – but not with the people and for the people, because Yoani does not represent the people. She is a product for foreign consumption.
The Obama team is in the cyber generation. It was not by chance that the kilobyte was one of its big guns in the previous elections. One of its campaign commercials mocked McCain because he didn’t know how to send an e-mail.
Marta Beatriz Roque, one of the professional dissidents in Havana, writes no blog. On top of that, she got sick and almost died, although she was resuscitated on the third day by the Cuban press in Miami. She is not attractive.
In contrast, the cyber-novela of the Generation Y blog is shown in episodes, where Yoani – like a digital Joan of Arc – delivers speeches in immigration offices (soundtracks behind frozen images), wears wigs to infiltrate conferences about the Internet, receives virtual beatings (that leave no marks), poses for pictures leaning on crutches without furnishing medical diagnosis or a report from any hospital, and recovers in one week to burden the White House with questions.
The historic oppositionists on the island have become obsolete because they’re old and give interviews while curled up on a sofa, while the rockers-become-argumentative-bloggers raise a ruckus in the center of town and upload video to YouTube – faked or not, what’s the difference, it’s virtual reality – something that sells well in the worldwide web.
Because exile no longer exists, it’s economic immigration, pure and simple. The precarious and entrenched ultraright supports Yoani with awards and fund-raising dinners in a honeymoon that will eventually dissolve like a sand castle under the high tide of anti-Castro poker.
But here’s what significant. By paying attention to this blogger created and propped up from abroad, the Obama team is creating a bilateral question: Will any Cuban doing pirouettes in cyberspace attract the attention of the world’s most important leader? It’s something that sounds a bit puerile and tends to ridicule the image of the American president.
Jose Varela, born in Cuba in 1955, editorial caricaturist in Miami for 15 years for Exito Magazine (1991-1997) and El Nuevo Herald (1993-2006). He is a publicist and TV writer. He is now a regular contributor to Progreso Weekly.
