Yoani Sánchez In Miami: What Questions Did Dissident Cuban Blogger Answer In Tweet Up?

Yoani Sánchez, the renowned Cuban dissident blogger, is in Miami this week as part of a worldwide speaking tour. The city, which has the largest concentration of Cubans outside the island, has largely received her with adoration. Upon her arrival in an auditorium on Monday, a crowd chanted "Libertad" or "freedom," according to ABC news. One man who shouted "mentira" or "lie" was silenced by the crowd.

On Wednesday, the Miami Herald reported that around 250 people had gathered at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts to see Sánchez at a town-hall style meeting. She responded to questions fielded both in person and through Twitter. Questions can be read at #askyoani and #yoaniresponde and a summary of the session, in Spanish, is on Univision's website.

Sánchez, a 37-year-old from Havana, writes opinion columns for her blog Generation Y, and her work is regularly published in the Huffington Post. In 2008 she won Spain's prestigious Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award but was denied permission to leave Cuba to receive it.

Sánchez's tour, which marks her first time outside of Cuba in 12 years, has been met with similar displays of adoration as well as protests against her. In Brazil, a group of about twenty protestors were waiting for her at the airport with signs and chants. In New York, protestors interrupted her during multiple presentations at NYU and the New School. During one, an audience member shouted, "That's a lie!" as Sánchez responded to a question, and the session was briefly suspended as protestors and audience members shouted and ripped signs. Detractors often accuse her of being paid by the CIA due to her columns criticizing the Cuban government for what she calls the lack of freedom in the country. She has said that she welcomes her critics' arguments, saying they represent a variety of opinion that she wished existed in her home country.

During the question-and-answer session in New York, she said she would not bring up the subject of the embargo - which she has frequently written should be lifted -- during her March visit to the White House, saying it was not her role.

For her blogging as well as her abundant use of Twitter, her criticisms of the Cuban government are often represented as symbolic of the power of social media and new digital technology. Rates of Internet use in Cuba are quite low -- the island has its own "intranet" which is more widely available -- even after a fiber-optic cable from Venezuela went up in January. In an article by PR Newswire, Sánchez said that "the virtual Cuba is influencing, directly and definitively, the real Cuba."

Also accompanying Sánchez for parts of her tour is Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, a fellow blogger and photographer from Havana.