Cuban-American relates exile experience on Web log
Jennifer Mooney Piedra/KRT
Issue date: 2/2/05 Section: News
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Prieto's story is not unusual in Miami. But the way he tells it is. Several times a day, the 40-year-old Prieto -- a project manager for a South Miami architectural firm -- logs onto his home computer as "Babalu blogger," one of the first Cuban-Americans to chronicle the exile experience in the fast developing genre known as blogging.
From one-liners to longer, more passionate tales, Prieto routinely files posts onto his Web log, www.babalublog.com, about anything and everything Cuban. Especially, its infamous dictator.
"I wanted to have a place where people who don't know anything about Cuba can come and read the reality," said Prieto who added that there are only a few bloggers who write solely on Cuban issues. "I wanted to demystify the myths and clear up the misconceptions about this culture."
Since Prieto launched his blog in June 2003, the site has become a favorite to many computer junkies around the world, with some from as far away as Japan, Switzerland and Australia. Each day, about 1,000 people visit the site, Prieto said.
Readers often post remarks to Prieto's blogs, either thanking him for what he's written, criticizing him for his conservatism or asking him for more information on the topic.
One of the regular visitors to the site is A.M. Mora y Leon, a California journalist who uses a pseudonym to protect her identity because some of the topics she writes about are controversial.
Leon enjoys reading Prieto's blogs because his posts offer readers an insight into Cuban life, which, she said, is nearly impossible to find on the Internet.
"All over the Internet you can talk to people in rice paddies in southeast Asia, on the dusty plains in India and even in China, but you can't talk to anyone in Cuba," Leon said. "But Val is the closest thing to it. He fills that gap."
