Around the World in 80 Days for Cuba’s Most Famous Dissident Blogger

WASHINGTON â€" Yoani Sanchez, Cuba’s most famous dissident blogger, arrived in Brazil looking like a sixties hippie, her hair falling below her waist, her dark ankle-length skirt floating under a summery flower-child top. It was the first stop on Ms. Sanchez’s 80-day tour of South America, Europe and the United States.

For the past few years, she’s been a darling of both liberals and conservatives outside Cuba, a 37-year-old phenomenon, a fierce anti-Castro leader, a whip-smart intellectual and canny self-promoter. Her much awaited tour, her first trip outside Cuba in five years, comes with some of the fanfare reserved for major world figures.

I write the Cuban revolution’s double-edged legacy when it comes to women’s rights in my latest Female Factor column.

Ms. Sanchez, named by Time magazine one ofthe world’s 100 most influential people in 2008 and a recipient of Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot prize in 2009, is quite possibly the most famous living Cuban not named Castro.

The creator and instigator of the Generation Y blog - named after her first initial or after the Russian-influenced generation whose names start with a Y - Ms. Sanchez made a splashy landing in Brazil to the chants of fans and the shouts of opponents. Placards and banners accused her of complicity with the United States and betrayal of her country. Later, in Salvador, her second destination in Brazil, she had to evade demonstrators, but she seemed to enjoy the attention.

“At the arrival many friends were welcoming me and other people yelling insults. I wish it would be the same in Cuba. Long live freedom!” she exclaimed on Twitter.

Her elation needs little explanation. She has spent years risking her freedom at home while giving the wo! rld descriptions of the reality of daily life under the Castro regime. She has defied the authorities by sneaking her Generation Y blog out of Havana via stealth visits to Internet-equipped hotels where she manages to email her blogs to friends outside the country who then post them online. (The blog is said to be available in 17 languages.)

Now free, at least while she’s abroad â€" and perhaps protected by her own fame â€" after defying authorities and facing arrest, beatings and kidnapping in Cuba, she’s letting it all out with a vengeance.

Speaking about the protests against her in Brazil, she wrote: “I have experienced several acts of repudiation up close, whether as victim, observer, or journalist, never â€" I should clarify â€" as a victimizer. But last night was unprecedented for me. The picketing of the extremists…was something more than the sum of unconditional supporters of the Cuban government…They shouted, interrupted, and at one point became violent, and occasionally launced a chorus of slogans that even in Cuba are no longer said.”

She went on, singing a hymn to herself, saying, “Their necks swelled, I cracked a smile. They attacked me personally; I brought the discussion back to Cuba which will always be more important than this humble servant. They wanted to lynch me; I talked. They were responding to orders; I am a free soul.”

Within 24 hours of President Raul Castro’s announcement on February 24 that he would step down after his term ends in 2018 â€" and his subsequent designation of Miguel Diaz-Canel as first vice president and most likely successor â€" Ms. Sanchez was tearing up any illusions anyone could have about any loosening of the reins in Cuba.

“Diaz-Canel possesses characteristics that undoubtedl! y influen! ced his appointment,” she wrote in her blog for Huffington Post. “A man who shines very little, from whom we cannot recall a single phrase of his monotonous speeches, someone who projects absolute fidelity, a good physical presence and a dose of youth (52), so needed by Raul Castro to show that his government is generationally renewing itself.” She cautioned that, given the fate of previous aspirants to the Castro seat, Mr. Diaz-Canel “awaits an uncertain journey fraught with booby-traps.”

The journey Ms. Sanchez is on has its own perils. How free is she What will happen when she returns to Cuba Will she return It’s easy to see a scenario in which she settles in a European country, or even in the United States, living in freedom and surrounded by honors, comforts and money from speaking tours, blogs and books, and her family would probably be allowed to join her.

She married at age 18, n 1993, and had a son two years later. In 2002, she left Cuba and emigrated to Switzerland alone, but was later joined by her husband, Ricardo Escobar, and their son. They returned to the island in 2004, citing “family reasons.”

She could pull up stakes again. But now it’s different. Living as an exile, even a famous exile, she could lose the edge that sets her work apart. The mystery, what remains after so much publicity, would fade fast, and she would lose the aura of a prophet speaking truth in her own land.