Cuba restricts Web access as it seeks tech growth

Cuba restricts Web access as it seeks tech growth
By Ian Katz
Originally published June 25, 2006

HAVANA // A Microsoft Excel class is just getting started at 6 p.m. in a
steamy, cramped room at the Youth Club of Computing and Electronics. The
eight adult students are focused on their screens and their teacher's
every word.

The Youth Club, where Cubans of any age can take courses for free at 600
mini-schools nationwide, is the linchpin of President Fidel Castro's
grass-roots campaign to promote computer literacy. This branch sits on a
street strewn with garbage in Old Havana. Several windows at the front
entrance are cracked.

The computers are slow, but the teachers seem competent, and the
students are serious. When one student tries to get rid of the pesky
paper clip figurine that keeps popping up to offer help, he accidentally
closes his spreadsheet, and a full-screen photo of a young Castro appears.

The Youth Club reflects the complexities of Cuba's technology policy.
The government is not only trying to teach basic computing as part of an
overall push on education, but also hoping to develop a formidable
software industry.

For most Cubans, however, the ambitious tech plans stop at the Internet.
Cubans are allowed to use e-mail and an intranet of government Web sites
on topics from the weather to literature, but access is expensive for
the average worker. Typically the government approves Internet access
only for foreigners and a select group of Cubans. These include certain
officials, academics, journalists and employees of foreign companies -
though some people use the accounts of friends or relatives.

At a March ceremony in Havana marking the 15th anniversary of a national
computer education center, Castro said Cuba needs to get used to a "new
world that keeps changing around us." At the same event, he promoted the
idea of grooming software developers at the University of Computer
Sciences, a campus about 50 miles south of Havana that aims to attract
the country's brightest tech students and teachers.

That seemingly progressive approach contradicts Cuba's Internet policy,
said Damian Fernandez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at
Florida International University.

"The effort to curtail Internet usage goes against the government's
attempt to bring Cuba into the 21st century and globalize its economy,"
Fernandez said. "You can't have it both ways. You can't restrict and
modernize. This is condemning the country to the third or fourth world
decades from now."

The computer literacy campaign is part of Cuba's "long-term strategy for
development to take advantage of its well-educated work force," said
William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert and dean of American University's
School of Public Affairs. If the effort is successful, he said, the
government could develop a software industry along the lines of its
advanced biotechnology sector. However, the lack of Internet access
"puts a crimp in that strategy, because so much cutting-edge information
appears first on the Internet," he said.

Cuba's intranet offers software-related courses from database and Web
design to artificial intelligence. However, without permission to use
the Internet, prospective techies can't download software, take online
classes at Spanish-language programming site lawebdelprogramador.com or
ask for help on message boards.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has placed Cuba on a list of 15
Internet "enemies," in a group that includes North Korea, Myanmar, Iran
and China. In February, the group said Cuba uses the U.S. embargo as a
"pretext for a repressive policy toward the Internet. The chief reason
for keeping citizens away from the Internet is to prevent them from
being well-informed."

Analysts point out that the Internet is even more limited in Cuba than
in China, which allows widespread access but filters out content it
doesn't want users to see. In Cuba, the access itself is restricted.
Cuban officials have spoken about the need to manage what can be viewed
on the Internet. They also contend that the country would have more
connections if the embargo didn't prevent necessary infrastructure from
entering the country, a position the United States rejects.

The Youth Club, echoing the official view, says on its Web site that its
mission is to "teach our youth to correctly utilize the information
highway ... because it is a tool to communicate our truth, the reality
of the Cuban Revolution."

The government has set up kiosks where foreigners can access the
Internet and where Cubans have access to e-mail and the intranet. At a
separate network of kiosks, which have air-conditioning and better
computers, only foreigners are allowed.

For a Cuban, one hour online costs $1.60, about 15 percent of the
average monthly salary. On a recent morning at one Havana kiosk, all 20
computers were being used by Cubans sending e-mails, mainly to friends
and relatives outside the country. No one was using the intranet.

Government opponents complain that the government monitors e-mails.
Guillermo Farinas, a dissident journalist, went on a hunger strike in
January, telling journalists that the e-mail access he had used to send
articles abroad had been blocked. He has been fed intravenously at a
hospital, but the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists
reported June 6 that Farinas was unconscious and his health was
deteriorating.

Cuba's Internet policy contrasts with its effort to cultivate software
developers at the tech university, which was constructed in 2002. The
government did not grant a request to visit the school, though it
occasionally shows off the campus, such as during a November 2004 visit
by Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Ian Katz writes for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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