A new breed of Cuban dissidents is storming the Internet
by Gabriela Perdomo on Wednesday, February 8, 2012 1:00pm
Freedom— one tweet at a time
Desmond Boylan/Reuters
Cuba, with the lowest Internet penetration in the western hemisphere, is
hardly social networking's next frontier. Despite the barriers, though,
a new breed of dissidents is finding ways to speak out against the
Castro regime online. Yoani Sánchez, one of the movement's pioneers,
blogs, tweets, and is on Facebook. Yet, like the vast majority of
Cubans, she has no regular Internet access. "We're inventing the
Internet without Internet," Sánchez says from her home in Havana. Since
2007, she has been blogging at Generación Y. Its slices of daily life in
Cuba—a "prison," she calls it, where people live under a "patronizing"
state—are like essays, carefully crafted by the trained language
scholar. The blog has become a roaring success, translated by volunteers
into 17 different languages.
Sánchez relies on friends and readers to update her blog. She'll dictate
posts over the phone to someone with Web access, in Cuba or abroad, or
send digital photos of the document through her phone. There is no such
thing as home Internet for Cubans; the service is reserved for elite
officials or foreign residents with deep pockets. Internet cafés are too
public and expensive, but hotels are a good resource. "I write and
accumulate eight or nine posts, and once I've saved enough money to go
to a hotel, I program my posts to come out once a week," says Sánchez.
An hour online costs about $8, an astronomical sum for a Cuban whose
monthly salary is close to $20.
When Sánchez was born in 1975, Fidel Castro had already been Cuba's
leader for a decade. She grew up in middle-class Centro Havana, near
where she currently lives with her husband and teenaged son. Sánchez
earned a degree in Hispanic philology from the Centre for the Arts and
Letters in 2000, but academia frustrated her; she preferred speaking
about "real problems," she says. After working for two years as a
freelance Spanish tutor for tourists, Sánchez emigrated to Switzerland
in 2002. But family and her love of Cuba got the better of her; she
returned in 2004, vowing to "never leave" again.
It was then that Sánchez discovered a passion for computers and
journalism, and a deep distrust of the Castro regime. In 2004, with no
formal training, she founded Desde Cuba, a Web portal for citizen
journalists. Both Sánchez and her husband, Reinaldo, are now
journalists, reporting for alternative media or freelancing for foreign
outlets. Sánchez earns her income writing a biweekly column for the
Spanish newspaper El País, though she only gets paycheques when someone
travelling to Cuba can hand-deliver them—she doesn't trust the postal
service, and money transfer services don't exist. Day-to-day life in
Cuba is hardly easy.
Since taking over from his brother Fidel in April 2011, President Raúl
Castro has promised more tolerance of dissidents. But the regime's
critics continue to be harassed. Hundreds remain in jail; many are
tortured in detention centres. Civilian-clad police barge into
demonstrations, beating women and men, detaining some for days without
explanation. Sánchez, tired of feeling helpless, opened a Twitter
account in 2008—she wanted to capture life under a dictatorship in real
time. Through trial and error, she figured out how to tweet without
going online: by using her cellphone. She pays $1 per tweet,
140-character messages like this: "Feel sorry for official journalists.
1 reports female soccer match with Canada and can't say two players
defected." Some of @yoanisanchez's more than 200,000 followers help by
adding money to her cellphone account. Twitter has become the most
important weapon of free speech for her and her fellow revolutionaries.
They teach others how to use the Internet without Internet, offering
free workshops in their living rooms. Luis Felipe Rojas, or @alambradas,
has offered Internet tutorials in rural areas to at least 100 people in
the last three months alone. He reports arrests, harassment and beatings
of dissidents—including himself. "I know a tweet doesn't save a life,"
he says. "But it does make impunity of the state less likely."
If not a real threat, Sánchez and her army have, at least, become a
thorn in the regime's side. Sánchez, listed as one of Time's 100 most
influential people in 2008, recently ridiculed Raúl Castro's daughter
after calling out her "double standards" on tolerance on Twitter.
Mariela Castro, who travels the world defending gay rights, called Cuban
dissidents "despicable parasites" in an exchange with Sánchez that made
headlines around the world. She has won several democracy and journalism
awards, but the government has so far denied all her requests to leave
Cuba. She will try once more this month: Brazil announced it has granted
a visa to Sánchez, who hopes to interview President Dilma Rousseff.
Whether Castro allows her to travel to Brasilia remains to be seen.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/02/08/freedom%E2%80%94-one-tweet-at-a-time/
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