HAVANA, June 6 (Juan González, independent journalist) – A number of people here are reporting they have received the first course of a distance learning series on journalism from the International Media Center at Florida International University.
The recepients are, for the most part, independent journalists; the rest are opponents of the present Cuban government or their sympathizers. They had all previously registered for this course.
The arrival of the instructional materials contradicts statements previously published by the official Cuban press which went so far as to forecast the failure of this initiative on account of supposed organizational deficiencies, fraud and embezzlement in Florida academic and political circles
linked to the Cuban-American community. [Mr. González, as most Cubans, is not allowed access to the foreign press and therefore has no way of knowing that the statements published by Granma, the Cuban Communist Party daily, were based on a three-part series published under the byline of Pablo
Alfonso in the Miami daily El Nuevo Herald.]
The professional improvement of the Cuban independent journalists provides a necessary second wind to a movement that, according to several sources, is experiencing a terminal crisis.
The general opinion of many sympathizers of the opposition and of the independent press is that receipt of these study materials could be of assistance to this important segment of the civil sector—the only one plying its trade in a systematic way in spite of harassment by the government—to
meet the basic material needs of those risking their liberty to discharge their professional duties from Cuba.
Versión original en español
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