Cuba's next revolution
By Edan Ring
Tags: Bloggers, Cuba, Fidel Castro
About 1 million Cubans, young and old, packed Revolution Plaza in Havana
on September 20. Beneath the looming portraits of the heroes of the
Cuban nation - the revolutionary Che Guevera and the poet Jose Marti -
they came to see a performance by Latin America's leading rock star, the
Colombian singer Juanes, which was billed as the Concert of Peace
without Borders.
The concert, however unprecedented, does not herald a true change for
Cuba, which hasn't had free elections for over half a century, where
personal and political freedom is restricted and where the economy is in
a state of perpetual collapse due to the American embargo. The
significant indicators of the prospect of change are a growing group of
young Cubans who are expressing their critical opinions in blogs hosted
on servers outside Cuba, where the government cannot tamper with them, a
phenomenon that has been dubbed "blogostroika." In the weeks leading up
to the concert, Cuban bloggers waged a furious debate about its
political ramifications, and when it was over, they packed their blogs
with impressions and photos. In Cuba, this type of openness is a
concrete challenge to the status quo.
At the beginning of September, the Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ), an international organization based in New York, published a
report about Cuba's burgeoning blogging community. The report found
there are at least 100 Cuban blogs that do not have the regime's
authorization, about a quarter of which report regularly on local
developments. "Despite the continued repression, a new generation of
bloggers openly criticized authorities, offering some promise that free
expression may have found a home," the report states.
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Claudia Cadelo, a 26-year-old accountant and teacher from Havana, writes
a blog called "Octavo Cerco" (Eighth Circle, a reference to a poem
describing the Soviet influence over satellite states as rings of the
inferno), about the day-to-day life of the younger generation in Cuba,
the food shortages and substandard living conditions, and her peers'
fears and hopes. In a blog post following the Havana concert, she
described a young man arrested for wearing a T-shirt bearing the
statement "There is no peace without freedom." She called him "brave
enough to brandish the slogan we all wear under our clothes."
Last month, Cadelo won top prize in the first-ever competition of
independent bloggers in Cuba. In an e-mail interview, she says that to
maintain her blog, "I use all different types of tricks and deceptions.
I send e-mails to friends in Cuba and elsewhere, connect [to the
Internet] in hotels or give the text on a flash drive to friends who
post it."
Under Cuban law, only civil servants and members of certain professions
are permitted to use the Web freely. Independent journalists have been
interrogated and jailed, but Cadelo says she is not afraid.
"I do not think that maintaining a blog is a brave act," she says. "I
think it is a lot safer than going into the street with a sign. I have
confidence in the power of words, and above all I think I am not doing
anything that I do not have the right to do. More than anything, I'm
afraid of not being able to connect to the Web, and update my blog and
deal with technical problems."
Cuban surfers cannot access most independent Cuban blogs, but they do
receive content via e-mail and portable devices such as flash drives,
which are a big hit in Cuba. In some cases blogs are printed and
distributed.
The government, for its part, has dozens of people who post negative
talkbacks on the blogs. "I get a huge amount of insults on my blog,"
Cadelo says. "I am called a worm, anti-revolutionary, inferior, a spy, a
foreign agent - the government makes sure my observations get a good
dose of online repression."
The unchallenged hero of the new generation of Cuban bloggers is Yoani
Sanchez, 34, considered the pioneer of the Cuban blogosphere. She has
been maintaining her blog, "Generacion Y," since April 2007. Last year,
Time magazine named her one of the world's "100 most influential
people," and later this month, she will receive an award from Columbia
University School of Journalism. Sanchez will not, however, be in
attendance at the prize ceremony, because she was not given permission
to leave the island. She is certain that her phone is tapped and that
she is followed when she leaves the house. Nevertheless, she continues
to work to increase the amount of uncensored information that gets out
of the island.
The best recent example of the power of the blogs and the Internet is
the story of a 48-year-old Cuban named Juan Carlos Gonzalez Marcos.
Drunk, Marcos burst into a documentary film shoot on a street corner and
screamed into the cameras that the Cuban people are hungry. The segment
was posted on YouTube and quickly soared to popularity in Cuba and the
United States. Within days, Marcos, whose nickname is "Panfilo," was
slapped with a two-year prison sentence for being a "public menace,"
triggering an international online campaign for his release. Two weeks
ago, he was transferred to a rehab center, and following a stay there he
is to be sent home.
Alexis Romay, a Cuban writer and blogger who has lived in the United
States for the past decade, helped lead the campaign to free Panfilo.
Romay's blog, "Belascoain y Neptuno," is named for a street corner in
Havana. He believes the bloggers will make it very difficult for the
Castro regime to continue suppressing human rights. "The Cuban
government can no longer act without fear. Because of the digital age,
they are now living in a glass house and the whole world is watching
from outside. Cuba had an opposition in the past, but now, thanks to
e-mail and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, we have a
faster way to communicate and reach the international community and the
media," he says.
In a recent blog post, Yoani Sanchez described two young people sitting
three meters apart in a Havana park, and without arising suspicions,
exchanging video clips and photographs of artists critical of the
government via Bluetooth on their cell phones.
"Bluetooth technology is the nightmare of the censors," Sanchez wrote.
"Prohibited books in PDF format, songs you'll never hear on the radio,
blogs blocked inside the island and every kind of news missing from the
official media is transmitted through these radio frequencies."
She continued: "A digital culture leaves those who think revolutions are
made only with weapons and speeches out of the game. For them, these
omnidirectional waves are purely boys' play. It is better that they
think so."
Sanchez calls her blog "Generacion Y," because of all the Cubans her age
who were given Russian-sounding names that begin with "Y," such as
Yanisleidi, Yoandri and Yusimi. They are the first generation to mature
after the fall of the Soviet Union, and to use the Internet. They were
not raised to believe in the ethos of Soviet invincibility, and they are
not captive to the conception that Fidel Castro holds the absolute
truth. On the other hand, from birth they have experienced the stifling,
illogical American embargo, which is largely responsible for the
material distress on the island. Contrary to earlier opponents of the
regime, Sanchez and her friends do not espouse a clear political
doctrine, other than a desire to live with greater freedom.
"I don't like to talk about the future," Claudia Cadelo says. "One of
the reasons I started to write the blog is the feeling that I am living
in an eternity that continues from day to day. That sounds pessimistic,
but it's not all that bad. It's one of the things that give me the
strength to go on. But I have hope and faith. I am only 26, and I still
have a lifetime to see my country reborn."
Cuba's next revolution - Haaretz - Israel News (1 October 2009)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118244.html
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