When two women at Havana’s Cuatro Caminos market began beating on pots and pans with spoons one day in August, their protest call for freedom echoed around the world.
At least 16 video entries, many of them the same or similar footage, were posted on YouTube and reposted on websites from Miami to Madrid. They showed the women calling out for freedom before police arrived to take them away. As a crowd followed, a rhythmic chant of “ Libertad, Libertad, Libertad’’ began.
Cuban dissidents have long demanded respect for human rights and for just as long, pro-government demonstrators have clashed with them. But what has changed in Cuba — and changed drastically — is that new media are bringing these events to the world almost as quickly as they unfold.
A protest by a group of women on the steps of the Capitolio building in Havana was likewise prime material for videographers, bloggers and Twitter aficionados. Members of the crowd can be seen holding up cellphones to capture the event.
During a meeting of dissidents in Palma Soriano — a small town northeast of Santiago that was a hotbed of protests this past summer — dissident José Daniel Ferrer, watching from a distance, posted tweets as security agents surrounded the home and broke up the meeting with tear gas.
“It’s undeniable that the new media is playing a role in the narrative of what is coming out of Cuba,” said Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor who has studied Cuban bloggers. “There is this network where people have learned to share their view of reality” through texting, sending videos, and blogging.
New media are capturing not only the protests of human rights activists such as the Ladies in White, who are calling for the release of political prisoners, but also the angry voices and aggression of pro-government mobs who try to break up their marches.
But for those who hope that the cascade of emails and texts that led to mass mobilizations during the Arab Spring might be repeated in Cuba, the island’s antiquated telecom system is a stumbling block. With only about 16 percent of Cubans with Internet access, it is the rest of the world rather than those inside Cuba who are more likely to see the videos and Internet updates.
“The Cuban Internet is like their old cars — Cuba is stuck at Web 1.0,” said Larry Press, a professor of information systems at California State University Dominguez Hills.
The Cuban Internet is slow, clunky and expensive, and the government can block websites it deems unfriendly.
But Press said Cubans manage to connect in various ways: at embassies, Internet cafés, through friends at universities, hotels and other workplaces or by paying someone who does have Internet access to send emails for them.
An undersea fiber optic cable connecting Cuba and Venezuela that should make Cuba’s Internet connections much quicker and more efficient has been completed for months but service still hasn’t begun.
While the cable eventually may provide a very fast international link, “the domestic infrastructure also has to keep up,’’ Press said. “Otherwise, it will be a strong link in a weak chain.’’
Still, dissidents and bloggers have expanded their repertoire and often exchange information on how to thwart government blocks on blogs and other websites.
Independent blogger Yoani Sánchez, who has established an international reputation writing about the activities of dissidents and her own thoughts on Cuban life, seems adept at getting around censors. The government is no longer blocking her blog and she has said sending SMS — text message — tweets from her mobile phone has become an important alternative when Internet access is lacking. Sánchez has nearly 165,000 Twitter followers and usually sends out several tweets daily.
“Yoani Sánchez is better known outside Cuba than inside Cuba,” said Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami’s Center for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. “She’s more famous outside than inside.’’
But Henken said sometimes there is an echo effect: A post may go international and then bounce back to Cuba through cascading emails or telephone calls from family abroad and then spread in Cuba through word of mouth.
Cellphone use has grown rapidly in Cuba, increasing from 621,000 registered phones in 2009 to 1 million last year, according to Cuban government statistics. But per capita subscriber rates are low, according to Press, exceeding those of only eight other nations — Somalia and North Korea among them — that report to the International Telecommunication Union.
“For the most part, it’s like the cellphones we used 10 years ago,” said Press. Most Cubans use their mobile phones for texting and talking and don’t have phones with Internet access.
Ninoska Pérez, a Miami radio host and director of the Cuban Liberty Council, which condemns Cuba’s human rights record, said the cellphone has made a difference in getting news from Cuban dissidents.
In one case, Pérez said, she was interviewing a dissident on Radio Mambí when a pro-government mob began to surround the home. She could hear the sounds of the crowd through the phone. Cubans, she said, sometimes send pictures to the station by cellphone or flash drives via friends or relatives.
Right now, said Gomez, the cellphone might be one of the more effective methods to encourage change in Cuba: “Travel to Cuba. Ttake a cellphone and leave it behind. Improve the social network. That is itself a major accomplishment.”
Havana has claimed that the United States is waging a “cyberwar” against Cuba with its recent attempts to distribute satellite Internet equipment. The U.S. says its effort is designed to encourage civil society. But it isn’t always successful. U.S. contractor Alan Gross, who tried to deliver communications equipment to the Jewish community in Havana, is now serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba.
Ironically, the dissidents may have become better known in Cuba because state-run media have aired or printed various reports in recent weeks to discredit them as paid mercenaries of the United States and to accuse the U.S. of mounting an international media campaign that presents a distorted image of repression and violence in Cuba.
A recent article on pro-government website CubaDebate that was picked up by various state-run media outlets said it’s not accidental that the United States has picked this moment, when the Arab world is in tumult, to mount a media campaign.
The videos and blog posts coming out of Cuba do give the impression that Cuban dissidents have become emboldened, and human rights monitors say short-term detentions of dissidents have increased this year.
Still, analysts say it’s hard to know if this is a high point in protest activity or whether it seems that way because of the ability to get the message out in a more dramatic fashion.
Current protests don’t seem to have reached the level of those in other times of economic crisis. During the summer of 1993, for example, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc sparked widespread food shortages and frequent power blackouts in Cuba, there were almost daily reports of spontaneous street demonstrations against the government, spraying of anti-government graffiti on walls, looting of shops or even the stoning of homes of government officials and state vehicles.
Still, Wilfredo Beyra said he believes dissident activity in his hometown of Palma Soriano is increasing.
Beyra lost his job as a doctor and was threatened with 20 years in jail after he and others formed the Pro Human-Rights Movement, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in the late 1990s. He sought political asylum in the United States and has been here for the past 11 years. But he recently returned to Palma Soriano for a visit.
“The dissident groups are growing, probably 500 percent between when I lived there and now,’’ said Beyra, who now lives with his family in Arizona.
“There are a lot of people involved — the majority of them are very poor people,’’ he said. “In places like Palma Soriano, they are just tired of the way things are.’’
Beyra said he’s glad to see there’s at least a small window that allows dissidents to get their texts and videos out. But he said that window needs to open more — not just for the outside world to learn more about what is happening in Cuba but for Cubans themselves.
“They don’t have enough information. Most don’t have the Internet; they don’t have Facebook,’’ Beyra said. “Really, no solutions are possible unless people get more information — and learn what they can do with their freedom.’’ |
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