Abel, 56 years old, who in 2003 lived in the Fontanar neighborhood, south of Havana, very close to the José Martí international terminal, remembers “that for two dollars he bought from a partner who worked at the airport the newspapers El País and El World of Spain. And to have a different approach to the news about Cuba, El Nuevo Herald and Diario Las Américas that were published in Miami. Newspapers and magazines were taken from international flights. According to protocol, foreign publications were to be pulped. But since everything was a mess at the airport, the people from Customs and 70, as the office in charge of security at the air terminal is known, let employees take newspapers and magazines home for gifts or money.
“Later, in the surrounding neighborhoods, that press circulated among people who wanted to be well informed. It didn’t matter that sometimes he was several days late. For us the information was new. That’s how we learned about the repression of dissent during the Black Spring, the writings of some independent journalists and about the achievements of Cuban athletes who were considered ‘traitors to the country’ and the official media did not publish about them,” says Abel.
Lucía, a housewife who lives in Vedado, near the United States Embassy, points out that “in the mid-2000s, in the former Interests Section, a summary of the foreign press on Cuban issues and publications by journalists was printed. independent. “All those who were going to manage procedures for family reunification could obtain these summaries for free.”
Then the bulletins circulated like a clandestine samizdat among dozens of friends and neighbors. Andrés, currently retired, confesses that “thanks to those publications, I was able to read an interview with Liván Hernández when the Miami Marlins won the World Series and be aware of Duque Hernández’s performances with the Manhattan ‘mules’.”
The Soviet-era Selena radio of Daniel, a music teacher, was the best instrument in times of the information blackout decreed by Fidel Castro’s regime. “I tell my children and they don’t believe me that listening to music from the United States was a crime in Cuba. We rock and jazz lovers went up to the roof of the building with the radio to listen to American stations on FM. In the mid-1980s, it became fashionable to listen to Radio Martí. We tilted the radio, put it almost lying down and thus reduced the interference. Through Radio Martí we learned that within the country there were Cubans who were fighting for democracy.”
Information censorship in Cuba ranged from politics, sports and culture to technological achievements in the United States and the West. “It was an insane thing. Now everyone here watches football. But for years many people followed the Spanish league on Tablero Deportivo, a program broadcast by Radio Exterior de España. Also, news where they reported on things that were happening on the Island that the government did not publish. My favorite stations were the Voice of America and the BBC in London,” says Daniel.
In the summer of 2004, Yadira, then a university student, was given a 512 KB flash memory by a Canadian friend and she hung it around her neck as if it were a necklace. “Thanks to that memory I was able to copy information that I didn’t know about what was happening in Cuba. Along with shortwave radios, flash memories were useful tools that helped break censorship.”
In those years, since the connection in Cuba was super slow and excessively expensive (two hours cost 15 dollars at the Saratoga hotel), there were people with Internet access at work or home, who copied editions of newspapers and downloaded journalists’ blogs. free and later passed them on to family and friends so that they could read it on the computers they had within their reach.
The clandestine satellite channels that were sold in Cuba for the equivalent of 10 dollars a month also contributed to diminishing the monopoly of information control administered by the communist party.
“It was a two-way business. A relative in Miami topped up the account and the business was set up here. The satellite dishes were made in Cuba. Through the airport, undercover, the equipment and cards were brought in. Despite the fire (repression), the snitches from the block and the CDR, the surveillance of ETECSA and State Security, which were dedicated to detecting who had an antenna, the satellite dishes spread throughout the country. In the end, a tacit agreement was reached with the authorities: you do your business, but you remove the channels with counterrevolutionary content from the news grid. That’s how the Package came about,” explains a Havana resident well informed on the subject.
Before the Castro regime authorized the commercialization of mobile telephony and the Internet, hundreds of thousands of Cubans already had telephone lines and Facebook and Twitter accounts, among other social networks. When Resolution No. 197/2013 of the Ministry of Communications came into force on Tuesday, June 4, 2013, on public access to internet services, 118 browsing rooms were enabled in different cities of the country and when shortly after, they began to To operate areas with a Wi-Fi signal that allowed a better connection, the number of citizens who surfed the Internet skyrocketed to five million.
At first, an ETECSA specialist details, “the population used the Internet as a purely communication tool, especially to talk to family and friends through video calls. Soon, those interested in emigrating created groups that allowed them to learn about the protocols to follow during the route from Ecuador to the southern border of the United States. Others used the Internet to obtain scholarships, postgraduate courses and jobs abroad.
“It was from 2014, with the arrival of internet data on mobile phones, due to having greater privacy, when many people began to search on sites that frequently publish topics about Cuba. Three or four years later, due to the obstacles of several commercial press sites that do not allow you to access the information if you do not pay, the trend has been to access more and more websites that address national issues. The most popular are Diario de Cuba, CubaNet, CiberCuba and 14ymedio, but there are also a dozen more sites where locals look for information, despite being blocked by the government,” the specialist clarifies.
Kevin, owner of a business specialized in repairing mobile phones and selling applications, comments that “any self-respecting telephone shop sells several high-quality proxies that allow you to access blocked sites.”
Inflation, a double-edged sword, has caused the price of food and the dollar to skyrocket, something that affects those who live on the Island, but benefits Cubans who live abroad when it comes to recharging their account. telephone to his relatives.
“Every time there is an offer from ETECSA, with $21 I charge seven people a surcharge and that is 16 gigabytes that allows them to connect to the Internet and talk for many hours on the phone. Since the dollar in Cuba is already 390 pesos, instead of recharging directly from the United States, I send the money and with that amount they can recharge almost eight times, which is more than one hundred hours of data. There people don’t have food, but those who have family outside can access the internet and see the atrocities and corruption of the government,” says Gerson, a resident of Hialeah.
The ETECSA specialist specifies that by being able to “have a greater amount of gigabytes, people connect for longer and can see direct messages from Cuban influencers living abroad. Many, especially young people, prefer to watch audiovisuals than read texts. Among the most followed influencers are Alex Otaola, Eliécer Ávila, Otaola, Carlos Calvo, Juan Juan Almeida, Alain Paparazzi and the Molinos de Libertad site that revealed various corruption scandals of MININT leaders and officials in the province of Cienfuegos. “Social networks have become forums where Cubans openly criticize the government, in particular Facebook, X and Instagram.”
According to the specialist, the MININT, ETECSA and the Defense Information Technology Company (XETID), “track all internet connections. It has been studied to establish, as in China or Russia, alternative social networks. But it would greatly reduce the fresh inflow of foreign currency to ETECSA, which depends a high percentage on top-ups from Cubans residing abroad and, furthermore, with a powerful proxy, any citizen could access those sites.”
The strategy used by the authorities has been to intimidate the population through decree-laws, such as 370 and 35, which allows the political police to apply fines and criminal sanctions if they believe that the person uses social networks “for “that threaten the security of the State.” The young people Yoan de la Cruz and Mayelín Rodríguez were sentenced to 8 and 14 years in prison just for spreading videos of street protests. Yoan, on July 11, 2021 in San Antonio de los Baños, Artemisa, and Mayelín, on August 18 and 19, 2022 in Nuevitas, Camagüey.
With an increasingly discredited government and a state press that misinforms rather than informs, a large segment of citizens tends to compare the news on independent sites. The best weapon for Cubans to show their discontent against the regime is a mobile phone. And a good proxy, in case the site is blocked.
