Granting of visa follows Yoani Sánchez's appeal to Brazil's president for help after being denied permission to leave Cuba
The Brazilian government has granted a tourist visa to the dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, adding pressure on Havana to allow her to leave the island.
The move comes days before Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, visits Cuba, where she is expected to meet the country's former leader Fidel Castro, and its current president, Raúl Castro.
"I now have a visa to [visit] Brazil," Sánchez wrote on her Twitter account on Wednesday, posting a photo of the 30-day visa. "Now the most difficult part – the exit permit."
Sánchez, who has been described as "an enemy of the Cuban revolution", has been unable to leave her homeland since 2004 because of rules that mean Cubans need government authorisation to travel.
Earlier this month the blogger launched an online appeal to Rousseff to allow her to travel to the Brazilian state of Bahia to attend the premiere of a documentary about her life.
"Please help me," she said. "Unfortunately I am forbidden from leaving my own country."
While Rousseff is not expected to make any major policy changes towards Cuba during her trip, analysts said the move suggested she was taking a more sympathetic stance towards its dissidents than her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In 2010 Lula came under fire after belittling the plight of political prisoners on hunger strike in Cuba.
"Imagine if all the criminals in Sao Paulo went on hunger strike to demand freedom," Lula told the Associated Press.
Following her 2010 election, Rousseff signalled she would place greater emphasis on human rights when formulating foreign policy.
"I have an historical commitment to all those that were or are prisoners just because they expressed their views, their public opinion, their own opinions," Rousseff, a former guerrilla who was tortured by Brazil's military dictatorship, told the Washington Post in her first interview with the international media.
Recent weeks have seen Rousseff win praise for distancing her administration from the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with whom Lula cultivated friendly ties.
Brazil was notably absent from Ahmadinejad's itinerary during his Latin American tour earlier this month, triggering a fierce reaction from Tehran.
Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a key government spokesman in Tehran, this week told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper that Rousseff had destroyed years of good relations between the two countries.
"The president has struck down everything Lula had achieved," Javanfekr said.
One senior western diplomat told the Guardian that Ahmadinejad's failure to visit Brazil was encouraging.
"We noticed that," the diplomat said with a smile.