Cuban Alternative Journalism - Challenges and Commitments

Cuban Alternative Journalism: Challenges and Commitments / Iván García

Ivan Garcia, 3 May 2016 — One morning in 1996, the poet and journalist,
Raúl Rivero, Director of the press agency Independent Cuba Press, called
me at home in Víbora, to ask me to cover the trial of a dissident in a
municipal court in Cerro.

The reporter, Ariel de Castro Tapia, (presently living in Turkey) and I
were to write up a statement after the judicial ruling and read it on
the Radio Martí news broadcast at noon.

"Improvise, but the news has to go out," Rivero told me, haltingly.
There were many problems. At that time, there were no cell phones or
Internet rooms in Cuba, and Twitter and Facebook were the stuff of
science fiction.

The trial was attended by agents of State Security. We verified the
number of a public telephone from which, although we couldn't
communicate directly with Radio Martí, we were able to establish a point
of connection.

We called Rivero so he could inform the broadcasting station, and with
the number we gave him Radio Martí communicated with us every half hour.
A source inside the trial came out at each break and told us how things
were going. A few minutes after the ruling was read, we went on the air
with Radio Martí News.

We did all this with only a notebook and a pen. Necessity generates
creativity. Like many independent journalists in the '90s, I took notes
by hand and then cleaned them up on an old, Soviet-era typewriter.

Once, a European journalist gave his laptop to Cuba Press as a gift.
Raúl Rivero decided that my mother, Tania Quintero, Ariel and I – we all
lived near each other in La Víbora – would share it. But the novelty
brought us a problem.

At that time, State Security had unleashed a spectacular hunt for
computers. Around 10:00 in the morning of June 2, 1997, agents of
counterintelligence, commanded by an official who identified himself as
Pepín, tore apart the house in search of the laptop.

They didn't find it. By foresight, we had hidden it somewhere else. We
decided to return the laptop to Raúl Rivero and to continue using the
typewriter. Once we edited our notes, we read them from a fixed line.

Until Fidel Castro's raid in March of 2003, when he imprisoned 75
peaceful dissidents, among them 27 reporters, the texts of independent
journalists were read by telephone, and collaborators in Miami posted
them on websites.

In spite of harassment from the political police, the arrests, acts of
repudiation and threats, we wrote from our own perspective about that
other Cuba that the regime wanted to hide, without any fuss or
pretensions to heroism.

I give this personal anecdote as an example of the fact that you don't
always need sophisticated computer or audiovisual equipment to do
journalism in Cuba, one of the worst countries in the world for the
profession.

Of course, with good tools and monetary backing, you can do a better
journalism, above all, outside Havana. The reality of the capital isn't
the same as that of Villa Clara, Las Tunas or Guantánamo.

But you can do high-quality work with just a few resources. If there is
any doubt, just read Periodismo de Barrio (Community Journalism), a
project begun by Elaine Díaz, ex-professor of the Faculty of
Communication at the University of Havana, who, with a part of the money
she received from a scholarship at Harvard, is creating wonderful Cuban
journalism.

Today there's a boom in free journalism. Whatever its bias or format,
the independent press is enjoying good health. Havana Times, On Cuba
Magazine and El Estornudo (The Sneeze) and El Toque(The Touch) are some
examples of alternative media. And several publications specializing in
sports, fashion, art and cooking circulate on the Internet, all Made in
Cuba.

There is also a more committed journalism, openly anti-Castro, which
supports a real democracy, like Primavera Digital (Digital Spring),
managed by Juan González Febles and edited by Luis Cino, one the best
ungagged journalists. They don't mince words. They call the Castro
Regime a dictatorship, and they don't turn away from criticizing the
dissidence either.

High-style journalism costs money. But the reporters for Primavera
Digital stopped receiving money from Switzerland two years ago, and they
continue publishing a weekly without one cent coming from the exterior.

Yoani Sánchez administers 14ymedio, a daily whose articles present a
balanced point of view. Dagoberto Valdés directs
Convivencia (Coexistence) in Pinar del Río. And in almost every province
there is some dissident media.

In a parallel manner, audiovisual journalism is taking steps. Ignacio
González, Claudio Fuentes and Augusto César San Martín figure among its
best exponents.

Ignacio is a man of many talents. Hyperkinetic and creative, he has an
online review named En Caliente Prensa Libre (In Caliente Free Press).
He has just created a debate program named La Ventana (The Window). And
he is thinking about the release of a news website.

There are now more alternative journalists, women and men, who write
freely. At the present time, around 300 reporters work for independent
media or foreign newspapers.

The quality has improved. Specialists have surged in subjects like
economics, history or politics such as Arnaldo Ramos, Orlando Freyre
Santana, Osmar Laffita, Miriam Celaya or Dimas Castellanos. Young people
like María Matienzo, Yusimí Rodríguez, Marcia Cairo, Ana León, Adriana
Zamora, Luz Escobar and Lourdes Gómez perform "street" journalism.

In the sphere of investigation, Elaine Díaz and her group of reporters
in Periodismo de Barrio (Community Journalism), and Waldo Fernández
Cuenca, author of a book that details how Fidel Castro's censorship
against the press began, do more exhaustive reporting about Cuban
society. Others, like Regina Coyula, collaborate with the international
media.

There are many challenges and difficulties, mainly from the State, which
continues to control the flow of information with an iron hand. The
political police still harass and blackmail alternative journalists to
keep them from working. Because of these pressures and threats, many
have left Cuba, opting for exile.

When you look for the nations with the least freedom of expression on
the world map, Cuba is colored red, belonging to the countries with the
least press freedom.

Of course the State hasn't actually killed any journalist. They kill
them in another way. They convert them into state reporters, scribes and
ventriloquists. Or they try to recruit them as snitches.

Alternative journalism still has some room to maneuver for its growth.
We're always going to be at a technological disadvantage, and we can't
compete with the foreign agencies for "scoops." Our strength lies in
telling stories from another context and showing the variety of opinions
that exist on the Island.

One piece of advice for Cuban journalists: Don't throw away your old
typewriter (I still have mine). In an autocracy like Cuba, you never
know when you might need it.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Source: Cuban Alternative Journalism: Challenges and Commitments / Iván
García – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuban-alternative-journalism-challenges-and-commitments-ivn-garca/