Blogger Yoani Sanchez Prepares For an International Tour

Yoani Sánchez

With her passport in hand, the world famous Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez is preparing for an international tour. On late February she will start a trip to several countries of America and Europe and hopes that the immigration reform in the island rush the “civic development” in their country.

“I feel like I won a victory after a very long battle,” said yesterday Sanchez after receiving her passport last Wednesday, which she obtained after the reform  that facilitates the travel of Cubans entered into force. “The hardest thing is going to be writing the itinerary because I have many pending invitations”, quoted the author of the blog “Generation Y”, who fought for five years against  government refusals to let her go out of the country.

Sanchez, 37, plans to travel to Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Argentina and Chile, where she has to collect international awards she has won, but she couldn’t collect because she didn’t get permission to leave Cuba. In Mexico, she is invited to the biennial meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).

She also will visit Spain, where she won the 2008 Journalism Award Ortega y Gasset, as well as Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, Switzerland (where she lived  between 2002 and 2004) and Germany. Her plans include the United States, particularly New York, to give lectures at various universities, and Florida, where her sister resides and she has not seen for eighteen months.