Blogger’s aims, methods are questioned in an official site, in a move to discredit her

President Obama's responses to the questionnaire sent to him by Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez are part of a project "I choose to call Operation Marketing, intended to promote and make visible a new counter-revolutionary figure in Cuba," wrote Esteban N. Martínez Saturday in Cubadebate.com.
The article, titled "Operation Marketing," was the first extended commentary on the Obama-Sánchez exchange to appear in an official website.
The otherwise unidentified Martínez said that "the blogger's position has changed from mild criticism of the Cuban revolutionary project to more open and aggressive stances that invite a confrontation."
Sánchez "aligned herself with the enemies of the Revolution, appearing frequently in articles and interviews on Radio Martí and El Nuevo Herald, mouthpieces of the most retrograde positions and the loudspeakers of the Cuban-America mafia in Florida," the article said.
After listing several public events at which Sánchez appeared, "seeking at any cost to make herself visible," Martínez said that Sánchez "concocted a new tale when she told everyone about her 'kidnapping' by agents of State Security who (she said) beat her.
"Without doublechecking the information and without verifying anything about that tale, many media outlets jumped on the campaign of 'kidnapping' and 'beating' of the well-known blogger," Martínez wrote, observing that she never showed any proof of the blows she allegedly received.
Sánchez's grab for headlines seems to have alarmed "the 'classical dissidents,' who fear losing their dollars, now redirected toward 'the competition,'" Martínez speculated. "In a desperate attempt to draw attention to themselves, Martha Beatriz Roque and her acolytes staged a show that included a 'hunger strike' and reports of 'a grave state of health.'"
But they couldn't top Sánchez's letter to Obama and the U.S. president's response, Martínez said.
After listing several questions that Sánchez did not ask but should have – among them the embargo, biological warfare, Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban Adjustment Act, and the Guantánamo naval base – Martínez closed by saying:
"The intention of Yoani Sánchez and those who promote her is to find greater global visibility in an Operation Marketing, a game Barack Obama has consented to play, either knowingly or duped by his advisers." To read the article, in Spanish, click here.
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.

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