Yoani Sanchez, Cuba's Most Famous Dissident, Given Cool Welcome in Mexico Carlos Puig - The New York Times
go to original March 15, 2013

Demonstrators protest in front of the hotel President, during the annual meeting of the Inter American Press Association. They demanded she leave the country and sang in favor of Fidel Castro and Cuba, Hugo Chávez and Venezuela. (CINEMANIA2012)

MEXICO CITY — In a country with barely any Internet access, the activist Yoani Sánchez has managed, with a blog and a Twitter account as her only tools, to tell the outside world about repression in Cuba. This has brought her a couple of arrests and a dozen international awards, including a special mention from the Maria Moors Cabot Prize committee and the Ortega y Gasset prize for online journalism.

But in Mexico, Cuba’s most famous dissident was given a decidedly cool welcome.

A couple of weeks ago, Sánchez finally got an exit visa to leave Cuba and started a three-month tour that will take her across Latin America, the United States and Europe. Her first stop in Mexico was in Puebla, two hours from Mexico City, at the annual meeting of the Inter American Press Association. When some of her Mexican friends asked politicians and nongovernmental organizations to host an event in her honor, they found no takers. At the conference itself she was harassed and insulted. Organizations no one had ever heard of published manifestos in local newspapers repudiating her visit.

Earlier this week, Senator Roberto Gil Zuarth invited Sánchez to the Senate in Mexico City to give a lecture on freedom of expression and social media. When, well past the announced starting time, Gil finally opened the talk, the room had filled up with journalists and civilians but only four of the 20 front-row seats reserved for senators were occupied.

Read the whole story at The New York Times

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