Union was supporting the island and its communist revolution with tangible aid, nearly $9 billion in the final year. Sánchez's secondary and university years coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its subsidies to Cuba that had for nearly three decades provided about 80 percent of Cuba's international trade. During her high school years, she attended a "school in the countryside" about which she wrote: Sánchez studied for two years in the Instituto Pedagógico with a major in Spanish literature. She transferred to the Faculty of Arts and Letters in 1995, and gave birth to her son in August of that year. Sánchez graduated within five years with a degree in Hispanic philology and a specialty in contemporary Latin American literature. Her thesis was titled Words Under Pressure. A Study of the Literature of Dictatorship in Latin America. Sánchez says that by the end of her university studies she "understood two things: the first, that the world of intellectualism and high culture disgusted me and the saddest, that I no longer wanted to be a philologist." By September 2000, she had found a job with Editorial Gente Nueva, a publisher of children's literature. After a short period of employment with Gente Nueva, Sánchez asked to be released from her position, then focused on a higher paying job as a freelance Spanish instructor for German tourists visiting Havana. According to Sánchez, this was during a time "when engineers preferred to drive taxis, teachers worked as hotel desk clerks, and store counters were tended by neurosurgeons or nuclear physicists." In 2002, claiming disillusionment with her home country, Sánchez decided to leave Cuba and emigrated to Switzerland. She was eventually joined by her son and husband. Two years later she decided to return to Cuba citing "family reasons". However, since she had been out of the country for more than eleven months without special permission, Sánchez had lost the right to return. Sánchez states that she then flew home to Cuba "for a two-week family visit" on a round-trip ticket, and by destroying her passport was able to avoid being forced on a plane back to Switzerland. The Cuban government says that she was granted a waiver allowing her to recover her permanent resident status in Cuba. She finally resettled in Havana. During this time, Sánchez discovered her current profession, computer science. In 2004, she founded, together with