Havana, Oct. 15 (Reuters): Susana has never set foot outside Cuba but
she has seen plenty of pictures of her friends' houses in Miami, their
new cars and even the fancy disco they went to the other night.
Like more and more of her fellow Cubans, she is getting a glimpse of the
larger world through Facebook, the Internet social network that is
allowing contact with the Cuban diaspora in ways previously unthinkable
from the communist-run island.
"It is a way of staying in touch with the rest of the world. You check
the pages of your friends living abroad and you see how they live, where
they go, who they hang out with. It's like being there," said the
24-year-old pharmacist. "All my Cuban friends who have access to the
Internet are now on Facebook," she said.
With at least 1.5 million Cuban exiles living abroad — most in the US
just 140km across the Florida Straits from Cuba — and international
phone calls too costly for most Cubans, Facebook provides a new way for
the divided Cuban world to come together.
President Barack Obama has lifted restrictions on Cuban Americans
visiting relatives in Cuba in a slight easing of the long-running US
trade embargo on the island, but thousands of Cuban families remain
separated.
Facebook does not disclose how many people in Cuba have subscribed to
the service, but there are several indicators that the number is on the
rise — no small feat in a country where Internet access is limited.
Alain Ramirez, founder of a Miami-based Facebook group for former
students of the prestigious Lenin secondary school in Havana, estimates
that 30 per cent of the group's 1,750 members are in Cuba. "The number
of users in Cuba is growing fast. There are more every day, but they are
not very active."
The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | International | Facebook links
Cubans with family abroad (16 October 2009)
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091016/jsp/foreign/story_11621802.jsp
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