Freedom Highway or Road to Nowhere
By Maria F. Durand. ABC News. July 24
H A V A N A, July 24 — As the elevator opens at the fourth floor of Cubalinda.com’s offices, located in a residential building in the busy Vedado section of this city, visitors are welcomed by the scent of bistec and cigarettes.
And the smell of change.
This is the office and part-time home of Philip Agee, a former CIA agent and now one of Cuba’s handful of Internet entrepreneurs. Not far from the kitchen, in the roomy, modern and well-lighted offices that he has turned into what Agee calls Cuba’s only American-owned business,
young Webmasters are hard at work luring people to the island — helping travelers from around the world research, book and pay for trips to the island nation.
"We are making it possible for all those who want to see what Cuba is with their own eyes, not to have someone tell them what is," says Cuban-born Armando Tabio Aranda, who helps Agee run the site.
But Aranda is at the heart of a movement that is not just making Cuba a little closer to the world, but the world a little closer to Cubans.
"It has opened up a whole new way of communicating in Cuba, not only in administratively and academically, but also in a personal and cultural level," says Uva de Aragon, assistant director for the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in Miami, who uses
e-mail daily to communicate with colleagues in Cuba.
"It’s a beginning and as it grows it will make the control of information more difficult."
A New Revolution
The Internet revolution began only recently in Cuba and it is very different from anything envisioned by Che Guevara.
Today, the Cuban government says 40,000 Cubans have access to the Internet or e-mail, not including students or tourists. And the more than 18,000 Cuban-based Web pages available on the World Wide Web get more than 15 million hits a week. The country has four service providers that give
access to the World Wide Web and several others that provide access to a national Web.
The Ministry of Information and Communication says there is one computer for every 100 people in Cuba, and Juan Fernandez Gonzalez, coordinator for the Cuban commission on electronic commerce, says the government is sponsoring a campaign to provide Internet access in 150 youth computer
clubs, which also provide computer training for youths and adults, and more than 2,000 post offices nationwide.
Up till now, one of the major roadbloacks to the Internet has been the antiquated telephone system. But much as old Havana buildings are getting a facelift with major renovations and brand new paint jobs, the government is promising that modern phones lines will bring Cubans access to the
Information Age.
"We must keep up with research all over the world," says Maria de la C. Galiano, a child psychiatrist and professor at the University of Havana.
In her Havana clinic, which is one of the country’s best, secretaries still work with typewriters and Witeout. Although they have one computer, it does not have Internet access.
Galiano just received a grant from the World Bank to track the progress of a drug program recognized as one of the most successful ones in the world. For the project, the World Bank has donated two computers with Internet capability and other programs.
"It will make our life a lot easier," says Galiano.
Roadblocks to the Information Highway
Despite government promises to expand access to the Internet, the hurdles are still high for most. Besides hotels that provide Internet access to tourists and the International Press Center, where foreign journalists can check e-mail and surf the Net, public access is limited.
At the Capitolio, one of the few places that offer public Internet access, computers sit behind glass windows in one of the library’s reading rooms.
But the services are not for everyone and most must pay.
Foreigners may access the service at a cost of $5 an hour — a hefty fee for a country where the average per capita income is $150 a month.
Even if they have the money, Cubans must also show proof they are working on research or belong to an accredited institution in order to gain access.
Jose Luis Saez, an Argentinian biochemist who received a scholarship to study in Havana, must make his way daily to the Capitolio office to e-mail family and friends
"It’s a little expensive compared to Argentina," he says of the hourly fees. "And you always end up staying a lot longer than you planned."
And while the Internet may be accessible for some white-collar workers, the technology is virtually nonexistent for dissidents and opposition journalists.
"The Cuban state is very watertight. The general public does not have access to the Internet," says Hector Maseda, the vice president for the Liberal Democratic Party in Cuba. "This service does not exist as it does in the rest of the world."
According to Maseda, in 1998 an organization in the United States donated a word processor, which was later confiscated from Maseda’s home by security officers.
"They just came in when they knew I wasn’t there and just took it," says Maseda. "We tried to go to the police department to try to claim it but I have never seen it again."
But according to de Aragon, the Florida professor who writes back and forth to Cuba daily, among the nonpolitical citizens, it is normal to know at least one person with e-mail.
She says most people know their personal e-mail may be subject to review from state authorities. But since most conversations are either academic or personal, most people don’t worry about censorship.
But as Cubans get more familiar with the technology and the numbers of Internet users grow, de Aragon thinks the government won’t be able to control all the Web activity generated by the increased numbers of users.
"It’s baby steps, but it is inevitable," de Aragon says. "There will be a time when they won’t have enough people to control all the information."
The Cuban I Generation
In some ways, the Internet in Cuba works the same way it does in the rest of the world.
Luis Ahmed shows some of the designs he created for Cubalinda.com. Ahmed is part of Cuba’s small but energetic Internet generation. (ABCNEWS.com)
Young, well-educated and Internet-savvy surfers and programmers who see the creative potential of a whole new medium are jumping to learn all they can.
Luis Ahmed and Pedro de la Lastra work at Cubalinda.com designing pages and taking orders from would-be customers.
Ahmed is an architect who ditched 3-D models for the virtual world when he couldn’t find work.
"I just fell in love with the technology so I just started learning on my own," Ahmed said.
De la Lastra studied at the University of Havana and then began working as a computer engineer.
In his previous jobs, he didn’t work in the Net and couldn’s surf the World Wide Web. He only had access to the national Cuban Web — sites with .cu, of which about half are accessible from outside the country.
But it’s been only since he began working at Cubalinda.com that he has understood the power of competition.
"You think you are doing a good job until you start surfing other sites," he said. "It’s then you realize, ‘Wow, that is a really good job.’"
He now has access to most of the latest design technology and is putting it to work.
And like many other young people in Cuba are finding, the Internet is bringing them closer to the rest of the world.
— Maria F. Durand, ABCNEWS.com
Copyright ©2000 ABC News Internet Ventures.
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