In April of 2007 an unemployed Cuban professional living in Havana felt like jotting down her personal impressions of life in her island.

She chose to do it not on a personal journal, with pen and paper, the old-fashioned way, but on a lap top computer, which put her one step away from sharing her writing over the Internet, although access to it is close to impossible for ordinary citizens in the island of Cuba.

She ended creating a blog that, through the magic of the Internet, and help from a safe server located in Germany, has found millions of readers across the world, making her a celebrity inside and, mainly, outside of Cuba.

24 months later, and after writing 300 postings of those personal impressions she shares every other day with the world via the Internet, this young blogger has become the most often read Latin American writer, with a potential audience that keeps growing as her popularity expands.

10 millions of hits a month, and thousands of comments from readers every day, creating the largest dialogue on Cuban issues today on any media.

Her writing is not political, but it is so genuine that, thanks to the endorsement of her readers, it has ended up becoming a powerful political indictment of the Cuban government.

TIME magazine, EL PAIS newspaper from Spain, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy Magazine, and Gato Pardo Magazine from Mexico, are among the major media outlets that have acknowledged and given prestigious journalism awards to the Cuban blogger.

Even the ailing head of the Cuban regime, Fidel Castro, could not avoid recognizing her when he made indirect reference to her in book prologue published in Bolivia.

Her name is Yoani Sánchez, the author of the Cuban blog “Generation Y” (desdecuba/generationy.com), which just published this week her first book of her writings in Italy, in what could be the beginning of the next phase of her career.

All she does is to write with independence, speaking fearlessly truth to power and surviving only on the endorsement and support of her loyal readers.

The old-fashioned way.