Paul Knox. The Globe and Mail. Saturday, February 12, 2000
Havana -- It's a familiar scene to anyone who knows Havana: a living room in a faded building, with high walls, bare floors and a blaring colour television set.
But until a few months ago, this wasn't just any living room. It was one of Havana's clandestine videotape rental outlets, challenging both Cuba's state-dominated economy and its curbs on freedom of information.
Susana, the dark-haired young woman who helped run the business, says she closed it down because she was afraid of being raided, fined 500 pesos (about $140) and having her television and video-cassette recorder confiscated.
Now she's glad she did. For last month, according to several residents, police shut down several illegal video stores in the Cuban capital.
No public reason was given. But reports circulating here say the crackdown is related to the drama of Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old boy at the centre of a U.S.-Cuba custody battle after he was found clinging to an inner tube off Florida on Nov. 25.
Residents said some illegal video operations were renting out tapes of U.S. news programs on the Elian affair -- an alternative to the nightly broadcasts on state television backing the official campaign for the boy's return to his father in Cuba.
Other videos said to have angered authorities included films with graphic violence and sexual content.
President Fidel Castro's Communist government has opened the economy to capitalist investors over the past decade, but tight controls remain on access to information and culture.
"Video stores here will always be illegal," said Susana, who asked that her real name not be used. "They'll never allow it, because of the ideological problem we have."
Elian, whose mother drowned trying to take him to the United States, has been portrayed here as a victim of kidnapping by his Miami relatives (who are fighting to overturn a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service decision to send him home).
But the independent news agency Cubapress reported that one video circulating recently featured Elian happily celebrating his sixth birthday in Miami. Others included footage of Cuban-born baseballers now playing for U.S. teams.
Susana said she used her home as a base for renting out a friend's stock of 600 films and soap operas, many from Mexico. "Arnold was very popular," she said, referring to U.S. action hero Schwarzenegger.
She said she did not rent pornographic films, news programs or anything with political content, and would have been happy to be licensed to run the store.
But she said authorities fear politically suspect tapes would be imported by visitors. More than 1.5 million tourists visit the island each year, including 276,000 Canadians, and Cuban-Americans are also visiting in growing numbers as restrictions are relaxed.
"The problem is that so many tourists are coming in and they can bring lots of videos that are ideologically unacceptable," Susana said.
The gap left by the clandestine rental shops is being filled by what Susana called "courier service" -- telephone orders delivered to the viewer's door.
Several Havana residents said itinerant peddlers show up periodically on their doorsteps with shopping bags full of tapes.
One told of watching the movie Titanic on tape six months before it was available in North American video stores. The copy appeared to have been illegally filmed in a movie theatre.
Cubans living on the island's north coast say aerials with booster attachments bring in Florida channels, some of which broadcast in Spanish. Satellite dishes are theoretically reserved for official use, but residents say they are also used to record illegal tapes.
Distributing unauthorized material can land a Cuban in jail on charges of "enemy propaganda." But the law is selectively applied, and Cubans get contradictory signals about the threat represented by unfiltered information.
One recent broadcast featured Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba's parliament, discussing newspaper articles on the Elian affair -- articles published in the United States.
Paul Knox reports on international affairs for The Globe and Mail.
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