»I have no real job, I have no real social life. I am free«, Yania Suarez manages to laugh a lot in this conversation about the sad side of Cuban life. We talk about rum, dancing and palm trees as well though. Yania says every country has a stereotype. The Cuban stereotype on one side is the cheery people laughing and dancing all the time and on the other hand is the stereotype that Cuba is some kind of a happy free communist country. »But all of this is not true. In reality we are a country that has inherited the totalitarian Stalinist model.«
Yania Suárez Calleyro, Havanna/Cuba — Cultural journalism, Solitude fellow 2016
Yania Suárez is a writer and a cultural journalist from La Habana. She works for independent digital journals that have emerged whilst struggling against State censorship: as it’s impossible to work for a Government who owns everything and punishes »disloyalties«. For her, to work as independent digital journalist has been the way to exercise her freedom of expression and to connect with others Cubans in hope of a parallel, free, and future Island.