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DHL toes party line in Cuba
From Yoani Sánchez's Generación Y blog in Havana:
Acouple of years ago I went to the DHL office in Miramar to send some
family videos to friends in Spain. The clerk looked at me as if I were
trying to send a molecule of oxygen to another galaxy.
Without even touching the Mini DVD cassette, she told me that the Havana
branch only accepted VHS. I thought it was a question of size, but the
explanation she gave was even more surprising: ``It's just that our
machines to view the content only read the large cassettes.''
When I tried to insist, the woman suspected that instead of the smiling
face of my son, I wanted to send ``enemy propaganda'' abroad.
Frustrated, I returned home -- where I have never received a piece of
regular mail -- and some time passed before I again had need of the
services of this German company.
Faced with the impossibility of traveling to Chile to present my book,
Cuba Libre, a few days ago, the publisher sent me 10 copies in a single
package marked ``express.''
Neither my numerous telephone calls to the office at the corner of First
and Calle 26, nor my physical presence there, managed to make them
deliver what is mine. ``Your package has been confiscated,'' they told
me, even though in reality they should have been more honest and
confessed that, ``Your package has been stolen.''
Although these are the same texts that, without descending into verbal
violence, have been published on the web for three years, the customs
censors have handled it as if it were a manual about how to make Molotov
cocktails.
Now, when headlines around the world are announcing the end of Google's
collusion with Chinese censorship, foreign companies located in Cuba
continue to obey ideological filters imposed by the government. With its
airs of efficiency, its tradition of immediacy, and its phrases such as,
``We keep an eye on your package,'' DHL has agreed to apply a political
filter to its customers.
To refuse to do so would earn it expulsion from the country with the
consequent economic losses, and so the company ignores the sanctity of
the mail and looks the other way when someone demands what belongs to them.
The red and yellow colors of the DHL corporate identity never seemed too
strident to me. Looking at them today I feel that instead of speed and
efficiency they represent a warning: ``Not even with us is your
correspondence safe!''
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/03/1561118/dhl-toes-party-line-in-cuba.html
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