feminine-genius

Intrepid courage

We cannot take our liberties for granted, for so many live without them. This woman has been recognised for her brave efforts to make the truth known in Cuba:

Lord knows, but had the resourceful and courageous Yoani Sánchez, 32, come of age before the Internet, it's most likely that we would have never heard of her. Nor would we have had the opportunity to read her charming but pugnacious slice-of-life portraits of Cuba, which she has been sending out through cyberspace since April 2007 as the Generación Y blogger (desdecuba.com/generaciony).

Trained as a philologist in Havana but denied a career in academia—her dissertation, entitled Dictatorships in Latin American Literature, was perceived as a veiled criticism of the Castro regime—Sánchez has made a living working in Havana's tourist industry.

More important, under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech. The pieces she has been clandestinely sending out from Internet cafés—while posing as a tourist—are often funny, elegantly written and poignant. Her subjects have included the shortage of lemons, the turgid proceedings of the Cuban parliament and the slowness of meaningful reforms by Raúl Castro.

This effort to speak freely makes many of our American youngsters look like brats. Especially when they embrace the very thugs that make life so miserable for millions.

Filial tribute

There are few things that rank with gratitude on the part of our children. This is a fellow who appreciates:

Landing in Kingston, Jamaica, without a penny, it took the generosity of a stranger who approached her at the airport—a Good Samaritan and a Cuban whom she had never met before—to give her enough cab fare to get her and her two young children to the YMCA for shelter. The next morning, she called her anxious husband in Miami who awaited news of their escape. Days later, this young woman with the jet-black hair and the crystalline green eyes was on a plane to Miami to reunite with her husband and to reunite a family that had been apart for more than a year.

When I think of what this woman did, of how she mustered the courage to embark on her own with two small children and leave all she knew behind so that they could grow up in freedom, I cannot help but to feel awe.

It is a tragedy that anyone has to emigrate under such circumstances, and she was not alone. Another reminder of the audacity of communists, who tried to replace the theological virtue of hope with a misguided trust in political promises in so many places around the world.

Waiting for the graces that accompanied John Paul II to that island to burst forth.

Once again: bullies attack the girls

Communists hate the family, because it is a unit of organisation based on a hierarchy they cannot penetrate. They also hate Christianity for the same reason: God the Father doesn't mesh well with the dictatorship of the proletariat. So when a Christian won't bend to the Will of the State, what better way to attack him than through the bond of love?

Holguin, February 6, 2007 - A 13 year-old girl, Leyani Domínguez Velasquez, was arrested for the second time in less than one week by the political police in the town of Buenaventura, municipality Calixto Garcia in the Holguín province. The arrests are part of a repressive campaign against her stepfather, Delmides Fidalgo Lopez, a Christian pastor and president of the Christian Movement of Cuba.

According to the information provided by Juan Carlos González Leiva, a blind lawyer and president of the Cuban Human Rights Foundation, on February 5^th, a State Security official and another agent who is in charge of minors in Buenaventura, locked her up in the administration office of the Buenaventura Secondary School, which she attends. The officials attempted to force her to declare that her stepfather had molested her. González Leiva assured that the officials threatened to transport her to Havana to put her through a lie detector test if she did not acquiesce; they also wanted to gain information, through the young girl, about Fidalgo Lopez’ pro-democratic and independent Christian activities. The interrogation against the 13 year-old lasted one hour.

Prayers for her safety and well-being. Prayers for freedom of worship everywhere, and for families.

Terror in Guatemala

I don't think we have the full picture, but for some reason, the mutilation and murder of women in Guatemala is out of control and getting worse. The BBC notes:

The raped and mutilated body of Andrea Contreras Bacaro, 17, was found wrapped in a plastic bag and thrown into a ditch, her throat cut, her face and hands slashed, with a gunshot wound to the head. The word "vengeance" had been gouged into her thigh.

Sandra Palma Godoy, 17, said to have witnessed a killing in her home town, was missing for a week before her decomposing body was found next to a local football pitch. Her breasts, eyes and heart had been mutilated, reports said.

A look at the statistics shows a disproportionate amount of anti-woman violence.

According to Amnesty International, which has collated these stories and others in a new report on the killing of women in Guatemala, the country's leaders must share the blame for an epidemic of violence that has killed more than 1,500 women in under four years.

The brutality of the killings... reveal that extreme forms of sexual violence and discrimination remain prevalent in Guatemalan society Amnesty International report

In 2001, the first year separate records were kept for men and women, 222 women were registered as murdered, Guatemalan human rights activists have told the BBC.

By 2004 that figure had more than doubled, to 494. In the first five months of 2005, the tally reached 225 - considerably more than one killing every day.

Remember that Guatemala only has 13 million people -- it's a small country. The article mentions 36 years of civil war and a previously male-dominated society, but there must be more to it that is not visible with the few reports available. One linked story showed the rise of birth control, especially vasectomies as a way to limit the number of children. Of course, wherever contraception takes root, degradation of women increases. If there was already a gross misogyny present, birth control would only exacerbate it.

The Guatemalan government last year made the promotion of family planning and reproductive health a priority, and it is slowly catching on. The use of condoms is steadily increasing, for example, but they are not widely available. And challenging 'macho' attitudes is proving difficult.

"It's a socio-cultural problem. Vasectomies just haven't taken off here. But we have created special programmes to try and encourage more men to consider the option," Dr Roberto Santizo from the Guatemalan Health Department told the BBC.

So there are two problems -- each fueling the other, though only one is defined as a problem. No solutions in sight, but prayers needed all the same. Catholicism is not the backbone of society any longer and the decline has been brutal.