The Internet - A Space for Diversity and Freedom of Expression

The Internet: A Space for Diversity and Freedom of Expression / Cubanet,
Ernesto Perez Chang
Posted on April 27, 2015

Young people are indifferent to politics. Cell phones, video games and
television series are their priorities (photo by the author)

We have to wonder how much the Cuban government invests in restricting
this essential information tool in our time, blocking it and even
minimizing the "harmful effects" of its free and generalized use

Cubanet.org, Ernesto Perez Chang, Havana, 24 April 2015 – Faced with the
problem of the limits on access to the internet in Cuba, one would have
to wonder not how much the Cuban government invests in expanding the
reach of this information tool, essential in our time, but how high the
costs will rise in order to restrict it, block it and even to minimize
the "harmful effects" of its free and generalized use.

It is known that every state enterprise, institute and agency has an
information department charged with not only managing the internet but
monitoring the navigation of every user, censoring it and reporting any
"suspicious maneuver." The specialists do not work of their own will
but must carry out to the letter the rigorous instructions provided by
the national Information Security team strongly tied to the Ministry of
the Interior.

A great portion of State resources are tied up in the strict control of
information and in filtering the communications of absolutely every
email account that is hosted on Cuban servers or that uses them,
according to a worker for the network Infomed, who prefers to remain
anonymous. According to this person, who makes a living from offering
email service on the black market, all messages that pass through the
server are rigorously investigated. Through specialized programs,
customers are studied, words and key names are marked, elements are
deleted as a routine practice.

A review of ads on the Revolico.com classified ads page reveals
immediately how exhaustively internet connections and email accounts are
monitored. Almost all who seek services from clandestine providers
advise that they will only employ them for "family" or "serious"
purposes. Although they sell on the black market, the vendors of hours
of connection forbid doing "problematic" searches or sending content
"contrary to the Revolution." Thus, any opponent in Cuba finds it very
difficult to make a deal for the purchase of an internet or email
account with an international outlet. The computer experts who take
risks with such clients are very few, and when they do it, they double
their prices due to the danger they may run.

Disguised censorship

On the threshold of a new millennium, the creation in Cuba of the
University of Computer Sciences (UCI) and the increase in software
development centers were not linked to a willingness to update our
knowledge in those new areas of the scientific universe but as a
defensive strategy in the face of the "penetration of information," the
most feared of all the ghosts in a totalitarian environment.

Nevertheless, all the projects of cyber defense have become a
double-edged sword due to the fact that a work of computer censorship so
huge and in a country sunk in misery must mobilize thousands of people
to whom access must be given to that which will have to be prohibited,
and these will use their "power" not to exercise it fully but in order
to find the cracks in the system that will permit them to personally profit.

Although the University of Computer Sciences is the study center most
monitored and controlled by the Cuban government, as much there as in
any of the country's other computer departments, there are many
students and specialists who live not on their stipends and salaries but
by clandestinely providing services related to the internet. Those who
review all the speeches by Fidel Castro where he addressed the topic of
the internet will be able to recognize his insistence, if not to say his
desperation, to create a cyber shield in order to hide the world and
continue his disinformation maneuvers.

Much software and many applications created in official Cuban
institutions are aimed at control of the web and its accessibility. The
so-called "initiatives" to carry information to all the people in Cuba
are intended not to share free connectivity with all citizens or to end
privileges but to create "monitored diversification" of the Cuban
internet and sites with the .cu domain that function as substitutes for
the true Worldwide Web, where the topic of "Cuba" is approached only
from the regime's perspective.

To diversify the Cuban platforms for blogs, continuing the history of
censorship from the first, loyalty to the system will continue to be
demanded along with abstention from free expression of opinion; it is
known that the sites classified as tied to the official press, more than
providing a service, are trying to displace the uncontrollable
Revolico.com; the Cuban encyclopedias, out of date and ideological,
badly imitate Wikipedia. These are some of the "sterile" products that
the government intends to fight the "dangerous internet."

When I hear Cuban leaders put forth with such insistence the idea of
"responsible use of information and the internet," I feel that they are
putting a patch over the immense information abyss that censorship will
generate. Undoubtedly, not being able to dominate the monster, they
will continue generating laws much more absurd than the current ones in
order to punish freedoms, so it will be as if someone said to me: "They
will allow all Cubans to set in front of a computer, but they will be
prohibited from turning it on."

It is surprising the number of computer students, particularly at the
mid-levels, who do not know what it is to navigate the internet. Some
do not even have a computer at home. In Cuban universities it is a real
ordeal, both for students and professors, to get permission to freely
access the internet.

Youth pass by worn out speeches

It is no longer news to assert that the great majority of Cuban youth
shy away from political speeches, from commitments of loyalty to a
regime and to its social model. Television, radio, press, newsreels,
round tables and all those devices of manipulation of the masses that
between the 60's and the 90's were effective for the regime, now are
distant worlds for the new generations who have learned, due to the
bitter experiences of their parents, to nullify that which they find
"bothersome" and to search for alternatives of escape, as much physical
as spiritual.

Several young people confess to having absolutely no interest in
anything related to the revolution and its leaders. Many admit to never
having read the newspaper Granma or having seen the newscast or the
Round Table. There are even those who have never heard or read a speech
by Fidel Castro, much less by Raul, in spite of it being required study
in all Cuban schools.

A young neighbor, a high school student, has told me: "I'd like you to
see the people in my school when the principal gets into those political
talks. Everyone puts on headphones and it's over. The same with the
classroom. No one is interested in any of that. When they require work
about Fidel or any of that trash, I tell my dad to do it or I pay the
teacher but I am not wasting my time. To make us read Granma, sometimes
they ask us to talk about some news item but people invent anything
about the Pope or the doctors in Venezuela or some gossip that came out
on the dish and with that it's dead. In the end, on the television they
always say the same thing, and the teacher doesn't waste his time on
that either."

Nevertheless, with each passing year technology will be developing new
means for information to reach everyone, and at the same time, get away
from the domination of a few. In spite of knowing that they are fighting
a losing battle, the Cuban leaders keep investing resources just to make
the imminent collapse much slower. Mobile telephones, the internet, and
the so-called "packet of the week" (international television programming
and other content prohibited in Cuba that people transmit by digital
media) have achieved in a few years what the regime's opponents have not
been able to manage in more than half a century.

The internet is delivering the coup de grace to the dictatorship and the
most interesting thing about that is that it has not done it with
political speeches or programs of action but by providing a space for
diversity and freedom of expression, the most feared enemies.

About the author

Ernesto Perez Chang (El Cerro, Havana, 15 June 1971). Writer, graduate
in philology from the University of Havana. He studied Galician
Language and Culture in the University of Santiago de Compostela. He
has published the novels: Your Eyes Are in Front of Nothing (2006) and
Alicia Under Her Own Shadow (2012). At the end of 2014, the publisher
Silueta, in Miami, will publish his most recent novel: Food. He is
also the author of books of stories: Last Photos of Mama Nude (2000);
Sade's Ghosts (2002); Stories of Silk (2003); Variations for the
Preliterate (2007), The Art of Dying Alone (2011) and One Hundred Deadly
Stories (2014). His narrative work has been recognized with prizes:
David de Cuento of the Cuban Gazette twice, 1998 and 2008; Julio
Cortazar Latin American Story prize on its first call in 2002; National
Critics Prize in 2007; Alejo Carpentier Story Prize in 2011, among
others. He has worked as editor for numerous Cuban cultural
institutions like the House of the Americas (1997-2008), Art and
Literature Publisher, the Center for Research and Development of Cuban
Music. He was Chief Editor for the magazine Union (2008-11).

Translated by MLK

Source: The Internet: A Space for Diversity and Freedom of Expression /
Cubanet, Ernesto Perez Chang | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-internet-a-space-for-diversity-and-freedom-of-expression-cubanet-ernesto-perez-chang/