An independent Cuban blogger has launched the island's first digital magazine, with a variety of contributions from well-known authors in and out of the country but free of "any type of -isms."

"It's a vehicle for the rainbow of opinions in this critical moment that Cuba is going through," said Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, editor of Voces, or Voices.

"We want a more rational Cuba, without any type of -isms," the 38-year-old Pardo said by phone from his home in Havana.

The magazine's debut Monday marked yet another expansion of the island's blogosphere, where Cubans are increasingly writing about everything from their frustrations with daily life to dissident activities and praise for the government.

About 200 Cubans, usually journalists working for official media, write blogs that have government approval and about 100 others identify themselves as "independent" bloggers, expressing a range of criticisms of the country's communist system.

Voces' first issue carried 22 articles by authors such as popular Havana bloggers Yoani Sánchez and Claudia Cadelo, Miami essayist Emilio Ichikawa, Havana writers Ena Lucia Portela and Wendy Guerra and Ivan de la Nuez, Antonio Jose Ponte and Juan Abreu, who all live in Spain.

"The group of writers they have are among the best young Cuban voices anywhere," said Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor who follows the island's bloggers and writes his own, El Yuma.

Sánchez's article in Voces, commenting on Fidel Castro's recent public appearances, noted that "the man who was known as No. 1, the maximum leader, The Horse, or by the simple personal pronoun `He,' now appears shorn of his former charisma to confirm that THAT Fidel Castro -- fortunately -- will not return."

With 66 pages in PDF format to allow faster downloads, the magazine uses eye-catching graphics and high-resolution photos, all in black and white except for a color cover photo of the vastness of the ocean off Havana.

By Wednesday, Voces had received more than 700 visitors in just one of the several blogs that posted it, and Pardo said copies were circulating in Cuba on CDs, flash drives and the domestic network known as the "intranet."

Though the Cuban government blocks access to dissidents' blogs, people on the island can access the magazine on proxy servers, using the country's many computer clubs and computers at government offices. Pardo said a friend with a printer also had run off five hard copies of the magazine, with the hope they would be photocopied and passed on to other readers.

A 38-year-old graduate in biochemistry from the University of Havana, Pardo said he left the field 10 years ago and has been working as an independent photographer, writer and blogger.

He also produces the blog, Boring Home Utopics, which describes itself as "the Collective Memories from a Unique Man in the Brave New Zoociety" and Pardo as a "postographer" who "resides and resists in Habanaught."

Pardo said Voces, which he hopes to issue monthly, has no editorial policy and welcomes writers with all kinds of opinions.

Asked about the possibility that Cuban authorities will try to block him from publishing a second edition, he told El Nuevo Herald that he was optimistic. "This is a magazine that is nowhere and everywhere," Pardo said. "Now we'll see if this yeast ferments and we can make a delicious bread."

Fuente:MiamiHerald.com