CUBA:Kilobytes of Discord

MAR | 10

S A M P S O N I A WAYSÁNCHEZ | CADELO | PARDO | WILEY | CASTELLANOS MOYA

In Cuba, blogger Yoani Sánchez’s protests result in a new kind

of revolutionBy Silvia Duarte

Translated by Alicia Sewald

Kilobytes of Discord

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Yoani Sánchez is known for her blog Generación Y(Generation Y), which documents the experiences and frustra-tions of Cuba’s younger generation. Her blog brought her inter-national attention and prestigious awards—as well as backlashfrom the Cuban government. On her blog, she denounces thegovernment’s actions, including surveillance, threats, and evenan alleged kidnapping. In 2009, she requested interviews fromthe two people who have the most influence on Cuba’s future.Her interview with President Barack Obama appeared inNovember, 2009. Raúl Castro declined to answer her questions.

Yoani Sánchez’s story could begin with her first post on April 9, 2007 abouthow the baseball playoffs serve to distract the population from politicalprotest—the post that began her notorious fight for democracy. Or it couldbegin with her interview with the head of the most powerful country in theworld. Instead, it starts with a kidnapping. On November 6, 2009, Sánchez was walking down Los Presidentes Avenue to

cover a civil protest against violence along with two other bloggers: Claudia Cadeloand Orlando Luis Pardo. Pardo’s girlfriend was along as well. Cadelo later postedon her blog that they felt nervous but knew they “wouldn’t be alone.”Pardo tried to ease the tension by joking about a man masturbating on

Zapata Street in front of a group of people waiting for a bus. Sánchez joinedin laughter with the others.

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Photo (above): Grafitisvirtuales

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They were all laughing when an elegant Geely (a Chinese-made car),pulled over and parked. Three men stepped out. The bloggers immediatelyknew what was going to happen next. “Looks like we are going to travel with comfort,” Sánchez said sarcastically.As if he had heard her, one of the men walked directly towards her. When

Pardo pointed his cell phone at him, another man yelled, “Don’t you film us!” Cadelo managed to fire off an S.O.S via Twitter from her phone before two

policemen who had arrived at the scene forced her in their car along withPardo’s girlfriend. They were freed a couple of blocks away.Meanwhile, the man grabbed Sánchez’s wrist, ordering her into the car. “Show me your identification,” she demanded. “Where is the warrant?”“I told you to get in the car, damn it,” he shouted. Terrified, Sánchez screamed that a kidnapping was in progress. Dozens of

people on the street heard her, yet no one intervened, despite the fact that theman taking her was not in uniform.The other man cautioned the crowd not to get involved, adding that the

bloggers were “counter-revolutionaries.” As Sánchez refused to get in the car, the man talked to his boss on the

phone, asking what to do now that the bloggers are resisting. The answer from the man on the phone was clear when Sánchez’s captor

hit her, then jerked her up, raising her skirt. He tried to force her into the car,grabbing at whatever he could hold on to, even her bare legs.Sánchez continued to scream. She held on to the car door handle while the

man smacked her knuckles. Then she did the only thing she could think of:She stole a paper from the man’s pants pocket and put it in her mouth.Somehow they managed to force her into the car. Pardo was already inside,

immobilized with his head on the floor of the vehicle. The Geely started moving. Sánchez clenched her mouth closed as one of the three men pressed his

knee to her chest. From the front passenger’s seat, he kept beating her so shewould let go of the paper. The only consolation were the choked half-wordsof Pardo in the back seat telling her he was still alive.“This is the end for you, Yoani. This is the end of your clown tricks,” said

the man holding Pardo down.With all of her 103 pounds in pain, her face red, and her legs up in the air,

Sánchez raised her arm and grabbed the man’s testicles. As she tightened hergrip, the man pressed harder at her chest. She thought he was going to chokeher to death.

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“Kill me already,” she gasped.“Let her breathe,” said another of her captors.Twenty minutes later, the car stopped and the man in the back seat pushed

them both out like they were two bags of garbage.“What happened to you?” asked a woman on the street when she saw the

two trembling figures.“A kidnapping,” Sánchez said.Sánchez hugged Pardo and cried, thinking of her adolescent son, Teo. She

later posted, “How am I going to look at him in the eye and tell him that hismother was publicly kidnapped just because she has a blog and writes heropinion in kilobytes?” Even though Sánchez, Pardo, and Cadelo blame Raúl Castro’s government

for what happened to them, they have no way to prove it. The doctors at thepublic clinic who examined Sánchez after the attack reported that there wereno signs of bruises and witnesses refused to corroborate any of the complaintsfiled. The Cuban press accused the three of “self-kidnapping.” The govern-ment wouldn’t answer calls or e-mails from the international press. All of thedetails of the alleged kidnapping that appear in this article were taken fromthe blogs of Sánchez, Pardo, and Cadelo. Nevertheless, Human Rights Watch confirms the deteriorated state of human

rights on the island, where the government consistently makes arbitrary arrests,rigs judiciary proceedings, and allows prisoners to languish in prison on chargesof “dangerousness.” Sánchez wrote on her blog that her attack was the result of“the mad anger of one who knows that his days are numbered.”

From the blog to the worldSánchez, 34, is a leader of Cuba’s new cyber-movement. She describes herselfas being part of a generation that is marked by illegal emigration and frustra-tion. Her blog’s name comes from the fact that her generation is also markedby a popularity of names starting with the letter Y, just like hers. She is mar-ried to Reynaldo Escobar, a writer who resigned from government journalismin the 1980s. When she returned to Havana from Switzerland after studyinglinguistics and literature to care for her ill parents, she saw the need for alter-native sources of journalism and started to blog. For a government accustomed to the nation’s press being their mouthpiece,

this blog is a contradiction, a slap in the face. So much so that it is prohibitedin Cuba. If you want to read the blog on the island, you have to do so in clan-destine and expensive ways.

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In another time, the government could have solved this problem easily:with no readers there is no dissemination and without dissemination, the“counter-revolutionary” message is worthless. But censorship does not workas well when it comes to the Internet. Just a little push and information goesaround the world. And this is exactly what happened with Generación Y, pub-lished for the first time in 2007. Sánchez’s friends around the world linked toher blog from their own websites. Some international newspapers linked toher blog as well and thousands of people saw Cuba in a new light.In 2008, the blog won the Ortega y Gasset, an award given by the Spanish

newspaper El País. Raúl Castro’s government did not acknowledge the impor-tance of this award and the office of Migration denied Sánchez permission totravel to the ceremony. In October of 2009, when she was awarded theColumbia University’s Maria Moore Cabot Prize, the Cuban government againdenied her exit permit and she was unable to attend the ceremony.In 2008, Time magazine classified Sánchez as one of the 100 most influen-

tial people on the planet, and added her to their best 25 blogs of 2009. Shewon the highest award for a Weblog on Best of Blogs (BOBs), sponsored byDeutsche Welle International. Foreign Policy magazine selected her as one ofthe 10 most influential intellectuals of the Spanish-speaking world for 2009.Contra-Castro discourse has traditionally been dense, long, and abstract.

Generación Y, on the other hand, deals with the daily realities of living Cubaand emphasizes personal experience. Sánchez doesn’t like being branded a“Cyber-dissident” and insists that she doesn’t have a political affiliation.Sánchez’s sees her blog as a reflection of the everyday life of Cuban people,lived against a backdrop of a brutal, intolerant, and repressive regime. But,despite Sánchez’s emphasis on daily life, her blog and others like it are a keypart of social protest. In February 2009, Sánchez and other bloggers madesuch a racket about the incarceration of rock singer Gorki Luis Aguila, knownfor his lyrics of protest, that he was released.

A new revolutionIn her interview with the President Obama, she discussed the limitations onInternet access in Cuba and asked him if the American government would bewilling to do anything about it. In addition, Obama assured her that the U.S.government has no intention of military action against Cuba, contradictingthe Cuban government campaign of distrust against “The Empire.”

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Sánchez and her husband believe that the only way to change the Cubangovernment is through citizen activism. They refuse to let up on their efforts,even in the presence of what they call political persecution. According to the blogs of her friends, Sánchez later recognized one of her

captors in a photograph. Although the details remain unclear, they claimEscobar challenged him to a verbal duel at the street corner where the kid-napping occurred, but the government planned some kind of festival for thesame place and time. When they arrived, they encountered a crowd marchingand chanting “This is Fidel’s street.” The crowd then assaulted Escobar.Police arrested some of the people taping the incident and confiscated theircameras. “This was the response to a request for dialogue: Physical violence,screaming, and hate rallies,” declared Sánchez. Critics claim Sánchez is an invention of Grupo Prisa, owners of the news-

paper El País or that she is financed by Cuban dissidents and politicians inWashington, D.C. Some even accuse her of being an agent of Raúl Castro. Shelaughs at this.Nonetheless, the fact that Sánchez cannot see her own blog, making her a

“blind blogger,” is no laughing matter to her. Posting her commentaries is anordeal. She must send them to friends and collaborators abroad so they canpost them through a German portal called Desde Cuba (From Cuba), whereher blog can be found along with six others. She has been denied exit from the country, accused of being a traitor, and put

under surveillance. However, she remains determined to make the blog worldbigger. She travels around the country conducting workshops on blogging andhas created an online platform called Voces Cubanas (Cuban Voices) that helpsCubans start their own blogs. The site hosts some 25 blogs currently. In the meantime, Generación Y continues to grow. It has been translated

into 16 languages by a team of volunteer translators and in September 2009, itreceived 14 million hits. International criticism of the Cuban government con-tinues to grow as well, not only because of Sánchez. During the last two weeksof November 2009, press around the world published the Human RightsWatch report and ran stories on the lack of basic staples for everyday livingand the population’s collective discontent. A day after President Obama’sinterview appeared on Sánchez’s blog, the Cuban president ordered threedays of intense military exercises to guard against U.S. invasion.

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Something is happening on the island. Sánchez’s blog is like a tectonicfault rupturing under the establishment. Maybe Sánchez is not to far from thetruth when she says that the days of the Cuban government “are numbered.”Maybe then, or even sooner, she will be able to respond to calls fromSampsonia Way. (Most of this article was gleaned from her and her col-logues’ blogs.) Among other things, she could tell us about what her son Teothinks about her fight, how she finances her blog—and what was written onthe paper that she took from her kidnapper and put in her mouth.

LEA ESTE ARTÍCULO EN ESPAÑOL. (LINK TO SPANISH VERSION)

Something is happening on the island. Sánchez’sblog is like a tectonic fault rupturing under the

establishment. Maybe Sánchez is not to far from the truth when she says that the days of the Cuban government “are numbered.”

CUBAN BLOGGERS

Blogging Under Fear—The Risks of Virtual ProtestsBy Silvia Duarte, Translated by Alicia Sewald

YOANI SÁNCHEZ

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Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo

Like those who have placed their hopes for a democratic futurein boats, Cuban bloggers place their hope in missives sent intocyberspace not knowing if they will reach their intended target. In this country of 11.5 million, the independent blogosphere

remains very small because of obstacles to Internet access andfear of repression and reprisal. According to a recent report ofthe Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) there are300 blogs on Cuba; 200 of which are operated by journalists whowork for the government; of the remaining 100, only 25 are jour-nalistic in nature and are regularly updated. Acquiring a computer in Cuba is not an easy task. People who

own computers can be divided into three groups: those whowork for the government; those who manage to buy them in gov-ernment stores at prices far out of reach for most Cubans; andthose who obtain them illegally. The final group uses their com-puters in hiding and in fear that the police will search theirhomes and confiscate their machines. However obtaining a computer outfitted for Internet access

doesn’t guarantee you can surf the web. On paper, the govern-ment approved a law allowing free use of the Internet, but inpractice, bloggers claim, getting on-line is expensive and nearimpossible. In an email interview, blogger Orlando Luis Pardowrote that access to the Internet is the privilege of those whohave Peso Convertibles, money created exclusively for tourists.One hour on the Internet in a hotel or cybercafé costs the equiv-alent of one-week’s salary. VIEW PARDO’S BLOG HERE.

According to the CPJ report, Cubans need a password issuedby the government Internet provider to have private access tothe web. Like many things in Cuba, you can find these passwordson the black market, but their cost is equal to two week’s salary.

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YOANI SÁNCHEZ Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo

If everything is so expensive, how the bloggers afford their endeavors?Most of them don’t have unlimited access, so they read their posting over thephone to friends overseas who post on their behalf. Others are less candidabout their methods because they finance their blogs by working illegally astourist guides or Spanish teachers, among other things. Pardo explains that even though there are Internet connections in hotels or

government offices, they are very slow and the public computers are not trust-worthy. “The government steals your passwords and can monitor all your e-mail,” he said. He added that downloading large documents is almost impossi-ble and seeing a video or listening to audio on-line is like glimpsing utopia.

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The government claims that 12.5 percent of the population has access tothe Internet, but bloggers assert the number is inflated because it is includesgovernment administrative networks. Raúl Castro blames Cuba’s limited Internet access on restrictions estab-

lished by the United States. However in his interview with the blogger YoaniSánchez, President Obama said: “We have opened telecommunications inorder for the people of Cuba to expand their view of the world around them.”He added that this work is still in process and requires the Cuban governmentto seriously commit to moving toward democracy and proving their respectof human rights.

CLAUDIA CADELO (left)ORLANDO LUIS PARDO (right)

Photos: Orlando Luis Pardo

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Battle against the international blockMost of the independent bloggers identified by the CPJ are in their 20s and30s. They are journalists, students, professors, lawyers, artists, photographers,or musicians. Their blogs are dedicated to the critical examination of every-day issues concerning Cuban life: lack of food, healthcare, education, hous-ing, and Internet access.In his interview with Sánchez, President Obama praised the courage of the

Cuban bloggers. He acknowledged the restrictions on Internet use in Cubaand the fact that bloggers work under the fear of reprisals. Though the Cubangovernment’s limits on the Internet are not as severe as they are in China,they are nonetheless quite repressive. Reprisals to bloggers range from verbalthreats to beatings and imprisonment.“This is like hell,” said Pardo, “but the blogger’s spirit overcomes all difficul-

ties with enthusiasm, as long as they can make their blogs visible each and everyday.” These authors do everything they can to disseminate their texts. Theyallow websites around the world to publish their comments, send e-mail chainmessages, and exchange information through Bluetooth, a wireless protocol thatconnects devices such as mobile phones, laptops, and digital cameras.The blogger’s spirit that Pardo talks about is evident in “virtual protests”

when the bloggers all together criticize a specific government action or raiseawareness about a particular issue. Yet Pardo recognizes that their efforts can-not go far if the people who speak up remain so few in number. What’s mostimportant, he said, is that the number of blogs increases. In order to encour-age blogging, Sánchez created the Cuban Bloggers Academy and launched acontest in 2009 called Una Isla Virtual (One Virtual Island) to motivate peo-ple to continue to develop their websites, as well as start new ones. A juryawards prizes in a variety of categories and readers can also vote for theirfavorite blog via online ballots. Claudia Cadelo’s Octavo Cerco (Eighth Circle) was chosen out of 187

nominations for the Best Blog prize. Cadelo wrote on her website that thestory of her winning is one she will tell her grandchildren in a distantfuture. And in that story, she will also tell how she helped her friend PabloPacheco, a journalist who was sentenced 20 years in prison in 2003.

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Pacheco calls Cadelo from prison and reads her his commentaries to betranscribed and posted on a blog called Tras las Rejas (Behind Bars). In pro-viding technical assistance and acting in extreme solidarity, others bloggersoften cooperate to make their blogosphere bigger. HEAR PACHECO SPEAK-ING FROM PRISON. In the context of Cuban journalism, these blogs are innovative in many

ways: They allow for immediate news to be disseminated to the rest of theworld, provide space for diverse ideologies and opinions, and are an alterna-tive to the official government press. Above all they are an attempt to opendemocratic avenues. All of this has generated a new sense of yo (I) in a coun-try were the discourse always has been marked by the use of the pluralnosotros (we). The bloggers speak in the first person and purposefully exclude“we comrades,” a phrase which has been a pillar of the Castro regime, saidErnesto Hernández Busto, editor of the blog Penúltimos Días (Second to LastDays) in a phone interview from his home in Spain.

Alternative editorialsIn making space for this individualism—in political viewpoints, for personalcatharsis, or as an artistic outlet—the world of blogging has come a long way.Pardo recently used his blog to circumvent censorship and publish his liter-ary work. He is the author of four books that have been published in Cuba.His work was never banned until 2008, when his novel Boring Home wasdenied print by Letras Cubanas Publishing House. “It was not because of thecontent of the book, but because the comments I have written on my blog,”clarified the author. He decided to publish Boring Home in his blog inFebruary 2009. DESCARGUE BORING HOME EN ESPAÑOL. (DOWNLOAD SPANISH

VERSION)

Pardo and his friends were also blocked from participating in the govern-ment-sponsored Cuban International Book Fair. He said, “I encountered theconstant opinions of the whole Cuban literary field, although nobody daredto write their opinions anywhere. Bloggers were waiting anxiously to seewhat was to come after a book was published outside of the CubanInternational Book Fair. I dealt with phone and e-mail threats and constantattack from certain Cuban journalists.” When Pardo and his friends gatheredoutside of the Book Fair, they “were surrounded by men with walkie-talkiesand ‘civilian’ experts in martial arts ready for action at any given moment. It

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was like a show. I also got thousands of complaints and a few good criticismsfrom some renowned literary critics.”Pardo’s pioneering actions are proof that, thanks to the Internet and the

blogs, authors are no longer tied to the approval of their texts by theCommittee of Reading or to the budgetary limitations of a publishing insti-tution provided they can access the web. “I believe,” Pardo said, “that sooncensorship will be an obscene and vintage concept of 20th-century Cuba,not one for the 21st century. As authors, we have the ethical responsibilityto be the protagonists of this process.”That process is far from over. In 2003 several writers including Pacheco,

tried to challenge the government in ways similar to what the bloggers aredoing today. They sent their articles to overseas blogs by phone or fax. Inwhat is now known as the Black Spring, 75 of these journalists were impris-oned, 20 still remain behind bars. Orlando finds many differences betweenthe two movements, however it remains to be seen if another such crack-down will occur or if the bloggers really do have the power to challengegovernment censorship.

LEA ESTE ARTÍCULO EN ESPAÑOL. (LINK TO SPANISH VERSION)

“I believe that soon censorship will be anobscene and vintage concept of 20th-centuryCuba, not one for the21st century. As authors,we have the ethicalresponsibility to be theprotagonists of thisprocess.” ORLANDO LUIS PARDO

DISARMINGTHE EXOTIC

Richard Wiley makes a home for exiled writers in Las Vegas

By Desiree Cooper

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hen Richard Wiley was in his 20s, he left his home in Tacoma,Washington to join the Peace Corps. “I didn’t want to get drafted to serve inVietnam,” said Wiley. “When the Peace Corps asked me whether I wanted togo to Korea, Samoa, or Chile, I told them, ‘Whichever one starts first.’”Wiley’s experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea transformed his

understanding of the “otherness” of Asian culture and inspired him to writebooks that would challenge his readers to take on the perspectives of peoplewho—at first glance—seem completely foreign. He’s the author of six books—his first novel Soldiers in Hiding received a Pen/Faulkner Award in 1987.“My job as a writer is to disarm the exotic,” said Wiley, whose novels are

rarely set in the United States. “Cultures are only exotic from the outsidelooking in. I try to get readers to see them from the inside.”He not only forges cultural understanding in his art, but also with his life’s

work. A professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), he helpedestablish the first American City of Asylum for exiled writers in 2001. TheUNLV program hosts writers for up to two years while providing a $40,000yearly stipend, housing, and health insurance. This enables the writers to cre-ate free from political repression. Following the residency, the program willalso help the writers secure an academic appointment at a leading college oruniversity. Writers from Sierra Leon, Iran, China, and other countries haveparticipated in the program. “No one is ever obligated to read a book,” said Wiley. “But they are obli-

gated to let other people write them.”

Home is another countryBy his own description, Wiley was a “dunderhead” when he arrived in Koreaas a Peace Corps volunteer in 1967. “I was 21 or 22, just out of the Universityof Puget Sound,” he said. “It was then that I discovered something obvious:Language dictates reality.”He was amazed at what a different person he became as he was immersed

in Korean culture. “What we value as frank or honest, Koreans see as pre-sumptuous or bloated,” he said. “When you speak Korean you have to learn tocircumnavigate the word ‘I’.”

Richard Wiley makes a home for exiled writers in Las Vegas

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M A R C H 2 0 1 0 17Photo: Richard Wiley Archives

Wiley ended up spending two years in Korea and another five in Japan. “Istarted reading translations of Japanese writers,” he said. “They invested mewith the stark, minimalist aesthetic of the country. They were concerned withbeauty and the idea that less is more. I couldn’t get enough of it.”Wiley returned to the United States and earned his M.F.A. from the

University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. “My wife is from the Philippines andhad never been to the United States,” said Wiley. “It was a shock for her, butcoming back was a culture shock for me, too. I felt like a foreigner again.”The couple eventually moved to Tacoma where they started raising their

two boys. Wiley worked with the Tacoma public schools, which had a sister-school relationship in Lagos, Nigeria. It wasn’t long before Wiley moved thefamily to Nigeria, and then to Kenya, where he was the executive director ofthe Association of International Schools of Africa.“My interest was not in traveling, but in immersing myself in other cul-

tures,” said Wiley. “I wanted to actually live in different places and get toknow the moods and currents of the people.”

Taking a gamble on asylumWiley joined the creative writing faculty at UNLV in 1986. It was there thathe met Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. In 1994, Soyinka helped found theParis-based International Parliament of Writers (IPW) along with SalmanRushdie, Jacques Derrida, and Václav Havel, among others. IPW was estab-lished in response to the assassinations of several Algerian writers and had cre-ated a network in cities mostly in Europe to provide a safe haven for writersin danger and exile. Soyinka himself had experienced political repression and exile. As a play-

wright, poet and author, he had issued a written appeal for a cease-fire duringthe Nigerian civil war. The government accused him of conspiring withBiafran rebels and imprisoned him from 1967 to 1969. He left the country involuntary exile in 1970. He won the Nobel Prize in 1986.Soyinka told Wiley about his hope for an American city of asylum at din-

ner one night. “We laughed at the notion that Las Vegas could be the first,”said Wiley. “It was so counterintuitive.”But suddenly, all of Wiley’s experiences as a writer who had lived abroad

coalesced into a concrete purpose: to help writers in exile. He approached one

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of his former classmates from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Glenn Schaeffer.Schaeffer had become the president of Mandalay Resort Group, owners ofsuch luxury resorts as Circus Circus, Excalibur, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, andMonte Carlo. “In every city, there’s an angel,” said Wiley. “Glenn was ours.”With $20,000 from Mandalay Resort Group and another $5,000 from

Schaeffer, Las Vegas hosted its first writer in exile in 2000—Syl Cheney-Coker, a poet from Sierra Leone.Thus began Cities of Asylum in the United States. Since then similar

programs have been founded in Ithaca, New York; Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The IPW disbanded, but left inits place the International Cities of Refuge Network and the Cities ofRefuge North America. Both organizations continue to maintain an inter-national asylum network for writers.

“One writer at a time”Perhaps reflecting the profound influence Korean language had on Wiley asa young man, the member of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame is self-deprecating when it comes to his role in establishing the program and it

affect on the world.“We bring in one writer at a time and it seems

a small enough thing to do,” he said, avoiding thefirst person. “The point is to give a repressedwriter space and time; it’s up to them how to useit. They should have the freedom to succeed orfail, just like the rest of us.”

Wiley is the author of six books—his first novel Soldiers in Hidingreceived a Pen/Faulkner Award in 1987.

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HEAR RICHARD WILEY SPEAK ON WRITERS IN ASYLUM.

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No PlaceLike Home

By Desiree Cooper

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For most high school students, taking a litera-ture class is hardly a life-changing event.

Not so for Italo Vasquez-Velasquez. Born inEl Salvador, he attended a private highschool in the mid-1980s. His teacher assignedbooks like Nausea by French existentialistJean-Paul Sartre, which portrayed a fictionalhistorian’s increasing anguish as he questionsthe world around him.

No PlaceLike Home

“I was 16 or 17 and it made me feel powerful,” says Vasquez-Velasquez, nowin his 40s. “I thought about how cool it is to be able to speak your mind. Ifhe could do it, I could, too.”His admiration for the books he read was reinforced by his father, who

revered the El Salvadoran writers who risked their lives to challenge the sta-tus quo—writers like the poet and anti-government journalist Italo LópezVallecillos, for whom Vasquez-Velasquez was named. His reading continued after he graduated with contemporary writers like

the novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya—a writer whose work his father

Photo of Horacio Castellanos Moya: Renee Rosensteel

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introduced him too. Castellanos Moya’s 1997 El Asco (Revulsion) criticizedthe country’s ruling class. The book was both scathing and popular, makinghim the target of anonymous death threats. Considered El Salvador’s foremostnovelist, Castellanos Moya has lived in voluntary exile for more than a decade. As Vasquez-Velasquez attended college, he continued to read widely, both

the literature of his homeland and of other countries. They sparked his imag-ination and his political awareness. He became increasingly outspoken, partic-ipating in protests against social injustice.“Eventually, I had to leave El Salvador,” he said. “I felt like the society was

too narrow and conservative. I didn’t fit.”

Tension between countrymenNow an American citizen, Vasquez-Velasquez has lived in New York for 15years where he works as photo stylist and producer.“At first, I did what everyone does when they arrive in the United States,”

he said. “I waited tables and worked in coffee shops while I took classes.Eventually, I realized I didn’t have the passion to be a photographer—I’m morecomfortable behind the scenes. I started my own business as a producer.”In August of 2008, Michael Turek asked Vasquez-Velasquez to help on a

photo shoot in Pittsburgh. Turek had an assignment to take pictures of rowhouses redeveloped by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh (COA/P) for writers livingin exile. COA/P partners with local artists or allows the writers living the housesto make the buildings visual striking examples of artistic expression. The mostrecent house is called “House Permutation.” It features a sculpture by ThaddeusMosley on the outside and a door etched with the words of Nobel Laureate WoleSoyinka. READ SAMPSONIA WAY’S ARTICLE ON THADDEUS MOSLEY.

When they arrived, COA/P founder and director, Henry Reese, asked Italowhere he was from. “When he said he was from El Salvador, I said, ‘The writerwho lives in this house is from El Salvador,’” said Reese.When he found out the writer inside was Horacio Castellanos Moya,

Vasquez-Velasquez was elated. “I wanted to see what he was doing after leav-ing El Salvador. He is a great writer; I have always wanted to meet him,”Vasquez-Velasquez said. Turek and Vasquez-Velasquez asked if they could take pictures of

Castellanos Moya in the house. As a producer, one of Vasquez-Velasquez’s jobs

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is to help his clients relax before a photo shoot. He noticed that CastellanosMoya was a bit reticent, even shy. But he had no idea what was going throughthe famous author’s mind.“I thought that Italo was a spy!” said Castellanos Moya, laughing. “I was not

prepared to see another El Salvadoran. If I lived in New York or Los Angeles, Iwouldn’t be surprised. But in Pittsburgh, that’s not common. I had to wonderwhy this guy wanted to know so much about me.”It didn’t help that Vasquez-Valesquez encouraged Castellanos Moya to show

the photography team around his home. “In El Salvador, before there is anattack, they send someone to explore the site and prepare,” said the author. Themain character in his acclaimed 2007 novel, Senselessness, displays a similaruneasiness. The book is a powerful, witty commentary on the government geno-cide of indigenous people in Central America.

The freedom to writeVasquez-Velasquez tried to help the exiled writer loosen up. But it was not hisamiable demeanor that eventually disarmed Castellanos Moya—it was his name. “Italo is very uncommon; I don’t remember ever meeting another El

Salvadoran with that name,” said Castellanos Moya. “The only other one that Iknew was a famous poet. That’s what came to my mind. That was an importantfactor to relax me.”In Castellanos Moya’s attic writing nook, Vasquez-Velasquez was struck by

how the cozy room was flooded with light. “It made me think that CastellanosMoya couldn’t be doing this if he was back in EL Salvador,” he said. “Hewouldn’t have this special place to write or the freedom to do it.”Later, Vasquez-Velasquez called his father and told him that he had met the

great novelist. “My father thought that by me meeting Horacio, he had methim, too!” said Vasquez-Velasquez.The experience made him reflect upon how he had been profoundly influ-

enced by literature as a young man. “For people in other countries who are intim-idated and can’t say what’s on their minds, it’s important to support voices likeHoracio’s,” he said. “People must hear and follow those voices. That way you canchange lives, countries, and destinies. Thank God they exist.”

24 S A M P S O N I A W A Y

Horacio Castellanos Moya can be described asmischievous, witty, impatient, and brilliant. But it’s the omnipresence of vio-lence that characterizes his fiction. In an essay for Sampsonia Way, “Noteson the Culture of Violence and Fiction in Latin America” he wrote about thechallenges of writing about Latin America. In the wake of pervasive drug-related violence, including kidnappings and decapitations, the horrors of reallife trump the imagination, he argued. “A novel that in a European country could be regarded as cruel and dark, in

Mexico, Colombia, or El Salvador would seem to be light compared with whatwe read every day in the newspaper or what we learn in the streets,” he wrote.In the fall of 2009, Castellanos Moya received a fellowship from the Japan

Foundation to travel to Japan and study the works of Nobel LaureateKenzaburo Oe and his contemporary Kobo Abe. Both writers explore life onthe fringe and violence in modern society. “I want to study how they dealwith violence and healing,” said Castellanos Moya.

The Writer Who MakesSnakes Dance: AN INTERVIEW WITH

HORACIO CASTELLANOS MOYA By Desiree Cooper

M A R C H 2 0 1 0 25

While Castellanos Moya was in Japan,Dance with Snakes (Biblioasis) made itsEnglish-language debut in a translation by LeePaula Springer. The book is “a macabre andviolent farce,” according to the publisher,about an unemployed sociologist who assumesthe identity of a homeless man living in an old,yellow Chevrolet. The car is also home to fourpoisonous snakes. Together they wreak car-nage on the city of San Salvador.Castellanos Moya wrote Dance with Snakes

while living in exile in Mexico City. It was firstpublished in El Salvador in 1996. Before leav-ing for Japan, he paused to talk to SampsoniaWay about what it is like to be a writer in exile.

Since the success of Senselessness (NewDirections, 2008), more Americans arenow reading your work. How does it feelto have a growing American audience?When I wrote Dance with Snakes, I wasn’tthinking about today’s audience—or any audi-ence. I just wrote it and put it in a drawer. Peopledon’t understand the affect of growing up in ElSalvador, where writers were killed and book-stores were bombed. When I first saw a bookstorein Mexico, I said, “Wow.”

What have been the lingering effects of thatoppression upon your work?You have to understand what it’s like to grow upin an oppressive society. In El Salvador, to be awriter was to be a Communist. Writing wasn’tworth it if your goal was to be read. You wrote for yourself.I wrote all of my books except one in Mexico

where I was free. But I still had the idea that liter-ature had to be subversive. Not just subversive ina political sense, but in the sense that you don’t

agree with the values of the society. That ideadoesn’t go away just because you suddenly live in afree society.

How have you changed as a writer sincewriting Dance with Snakesmany years ago?It had been years since I’d wrote Dance withSnakes, but all of the phrases were still in my head.The book was so deep in my memory. Perhaps Iam the same writer I was a decade ago.

How do you see your work evolving nowthat it has been translated into French,German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish,Hebrew, Serbian, and English? I wrote Dance with Snakes without thinkingabout where I wanted it to go. Publishing was outof reach for me—there was no book market in El Salvador. Now, I do think about whether otherswill eventually read what I write. I know that oneday I will face people who have read my work. The big paradox is that having a readership can bea burden. Sometimes I discover myself thinking, “People

will love this.” But the moment I start thinkingabout what the reader will think, I stop writing. Ihave continued to write to fulfill my own needs. Ifmy writing changes, it’s because I have changed,not because my audience has changed.

READ AN EXCERPT FROMDANCE WITH SNAKES.

HEAR CASTELLANOS MOYA SPEAK ON THE LATIN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

READ AN EXCERPT FROMTHE SHE-DEVIL IN THE MIRROR.

HEAR CASTELLANOS MOYA SPEAK ON WRITING FEMALE CHARACTERS.