Revista Voces vs. La Joven Cuba

Let a thousand bloggers bloom! Competition + Diversity (x Freedom) = Qualtiy!

A year ago when I launched El Yuma I quickly became acquainted with the emerging Cuban blogosphere.

Three blog portals that I highlighted early on here and here were DesdeCuba, Bloggers Cuba (now defunct), and Havana Times.

DesdeCuba has continued to grow during 2010 in the form of Voces Cubanas and now the three-month-old on-line Revista Voces.  Likewise, I have been impressed with the quality and diversity of the reporting over the past year at Havana Times (go here and here to learn more about HT from its editor Circles Robinson - they just celebrated their 2nd anniversary on-line at the end of October). 

However, between December 2009 and January 2010, Bloggers Cuba disappeared from the web inexplicably (I have heard rumors but have no facts).  Some of their leading bloggers, such as Elaine Diaz at La Polemica Digital and Yasmin Portales at En 2310 y 8225 continue to blog at their own sites but the group portal as such no longer exists.  The group still survives today in a PDF e-zine that has come out sporadically over the past year (see here, here, here, and here for examples).

Now there seems to be a new kid on the "blog": La Joven Cuba.

I'm still unclear on the whole story behind this new blog portal (the site says that it was born at the University of Matanzas) but it clearly casts itself as a voice of "revolutionary" Cuban youth and, though sometimes moderate and open to dialogue, seems mostly interested in staunchly defending the revolution and attacking its critics.

One interesting recent development courtesy of Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, editor of Revista Voces, is that that digital magazine's new web portal has been made to look exactly like the design of La Joven Cuba. (I assume by using the same standard wordpress theme?) 

Anybody care to comment on the resemblence between the two sites? (See the two screenshots, the newer site of Revista Voces at the top and La Joven Cuba here above).