In a country where one voice has dominated the political landscape for over 45 years, a University of Havana graduate has been successfully leading her own digital revolution one blog post at a time. Yoani Sanchez is the voice behind the award-winning blog Generation Y, a bilingual site that chronicles the daily struggles and bittersweet experiences of living in modern day Cuba. Being a blogger in the island is a tough task, especially since owning a personal computer and publishing anything outside of the revolutionary ideal isn’t necessarily encouraged.

Despite facing these adversities, the site has a steady readership of over 2 million and with the growing popularity came even more problems. In 2008, the Cuban government shut down her site, but with international support and a new URL she continues to run her blog today. However, in November of 2009 she faced a direct attack after being abducted, beaten, and detained by “secret police agents.”

Sanchez describes her experience as:

“They squeezed my wrists very hard, beat me in the back in the kidney area, and when people stepped in to do something, they said we were counter-revolutionaries…Clearly, the beating hurts even more a day later; I am still really affected by all of this, but it is not going to stop me from writing my blog.”