Yoani Sanchez has good reason to fear retaliation by the Castro dictatorship when she eventually returns to Cuba; the regime of the Castro brothers does not look kindly on those who expose their tyrannical repression. Cuba's government is one based on violence, intimidation, and oppression, and when one of the slaves gets too uppity, the heavy hand of the Castro dictatorship always comes down hard on them.

But it seems Yoani does not have to wait until she returns home to get a taste of the Cuban dictatorship's vengeance. In an event in New York City where she appeared, Cuba's diplomatic mission at the UN dispatched their "Rapid Response Brigades" to carry out an act of repudiation against the Cuban dissident and blogger. It was classic Castro government intimidation with thuggish characters screaming epithets and hurling insults. The same government, I should add, that we keep hearing has "changed,"  that it's "moving in the right direction," and that the U.S. should be "talking to them."

Enrique Del Risco has the report and video of the altercation on his blog, Enrisco (my translation):

Prologue to a phrase

It was already too much. To allow Yoani Sanchez to spend two days in New York without someone screaming mercenary at her was too much to ask. Someone at Cuba's diplomatic mission at the UN has to justify their salary and supervise a small group of maladjusted individuals hellbent on defending a government under which they prefer not to live. Going back to Brazil, these well-organized acts seem to show they were ordered by Raul Castro himself, who cannot seem to find a way to portray the image he wants to portray and who cannot give up his old repressive habits. To the contrary, his acts of repudiation remain on autopilot as if he doesn't notice that every time he tries to smear Yoani she comes out stronger by the same measure in which the Cuban regime turns off many who would have liked to believe it has changed, that a conversation can be had with the leadership of the regime. One of them stood up with a protest sign and after him a handful of men and women stood up from their seats with signs as well -- none of them looked to be Cuban, which embarrassingly diminished the entire act -- and they did what they do best: yell. I lie, they also employed an original idea of passing out photocopies of dollar bills to demonstrate once again that the obsession Castroism has with money overwhelmingly exceeds that of the most avaricious capitalist or pirates. All that choreographed work only to give Yoani -- who remained calm as if all the noise was nothing more than the inconvenience of a neighbor playing an old record of the Pimpinela duo at full volume -- to say her best line of the entire afternoon.

-It appears that acts of repudiation will become the only product my country can export.

New York's Rapid Response Brigade not only offered a magnificent example of the repressive apparatus Cuban bloggers have been describing these past few days, but it also explained, without them wanting to, why their bosses have never created anything of value: because they never learn.