Crumbling buildings and Yoani Sanchez

The photo below shows a stereotypical Havana mansion house, bearing the scars of seasalt decay and several years of neglect.  Architectural decline is a major problem in Cuba, as Yoani Sanchez, Cuban dissident blogger, recently wrote about on her Generacion Y blog.

Yoani herself is also well worth a mention: widely acclaimed and admired, Yoani is a Havana-based writer famed for her outspoken online critiques of Raul Castro's socialist regime - one that doesn't tolerate dissent or allow freedom of speech.  Yoani draws on the help of international supporters to publish her thoughts online.  One of her resourceful workaround solutions involves sending copy for blog posts via text from a mobile phone with an internationally registered SIM card (thus staying off the Cuban authorities' radar) to supporters outside of Cuba, who then publish them on her blog from overseas.  Another is to pose as a German tourist to access internet terminals inside upmarket hotels.

Despite winning several awards for her writing internationally, Yoani hasn't been allowed to leave Cuba since 2004 to collect any of them - as explained in a recent article in the Guardian.

This eloquent interview with Yoani for the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2010 is well worth a watch too.