Cuba’s citizens enjoy a 99 per cent literacy rate and what the WWF believes is ‘the perfect model of sustainable development’.

In other words, Cuba scores high on critical factors that measure wealth of a nation — so what’s blogger Yoani Sánchez on about? Why has one of the world’s most oldest and secretive regimes branded her a ‘cyber terrorist’? Yoani Sánchez’s blog, Generation Y, is the result of, let’s say, Cuba’s other, more, notorious, numbers. Less than 10 per cent of Cubans use mobile phones and despite a population of millions, the country’s internet use is less than that of Haiti. Hundreds have just died trying to flee the country and like WWF, another group, called the United Nations, believe some have simply disappeared.
That makes Yoani Sánchez’s ‘blind blog’ one of the few voices coming out from Cuba. Sanchez’s journey started when she found a way to beat Cuba’s Web censor. She would text updates to friends around the world and they, in turn, would update her blog. There’s nothing Castro’s back-end team could do.
She now has over 14 million hits a month and over 200,000 followers on Twitter. In 2010, Foreign Policy magazine listed her as one of the world’s top 100 ‘thinkers’ — from a country where, according to FT, a single tweet can cost up to $1 — price of an entire t-shirt.
Faced with these odds, Sanchez continues to attract the ire of the Cuban government, proving to the world outside just how powerful revolution is when it finds a laptop.
Have a good day, Cuba.