Still, on communist isle, Web not exactly worldwide
By Laurie Goering. Tribune Staff Writer.
Chicago Tribune. February 22, 2001
HAVANA -- Tony Borrego, a Havana poet and literature specialist, spends a
few minutes each day checking his e-mail in a little cyber-cafe hidden behind
blue doors at Old Havana's historic Plaza de Armas.
For 10 pesos a month, about half a U.S. cent, he and other Cuban artists
have unlimited access to four computer terminals, and a door to the world
outside Cuba.
Foreign newspapers and magazines are conspicuously absent at communist
Cuba's public newsstands, and would be beyond the wages of most Cubans anyway.
But using his e-mail account, Borrego can exchange work with other poets in
Spain, Norway, Peru and the United States, as well as e-mail his relatives in
Miami.
"Almost every day I send something" to Miami, he said. "I
could never afford to call. This has been a big help."
In government offices, universities, hospitals--even in the back rooms of a
few private homes--e-mail and the Internet are arriving to Cuba.
The communist-run island of 11 million has 3,600 legal Internet accounts
provided through four government servers, according to government figures. There
are about 40,000 e-mail accounts, half of them with access outside Cuba, and a
small but growing number of people finding ways to access the Internet on their
own.
Over the last decade, hundreds of thousands of Cubans, particularly the
young, have learned to use computers as part of an effort by Cuban leader Fidel
Castro to ensure the nation is not left behind in a high-tech era.
But while e-mail is slowly becoming more accessible, chances for the average
Cuban to navigate the World Wide Web remain extremely limited.
Many of the legal Internet accounts in the country are in the hands of
government ministries and businesses, joint-venture corporations, and
foreigners. Universities, hospitals and youth centers provide Internet access
but put limits on how widely users can browse. The island's only fully
Internet-accessible cyber-cafe is off-limits to Cubans, even if they could
afford the $5 per hour fee.
Just as difficult is Cuba's lack of Internet infrastructure. The island has
only 473,000 telephone lines, one for every 23 Cubans. Power outages are
frequent and home computers with modems are rare. Cuban officials complain that
the long U.S. economic embargo has left them without money to extend Internet
service to more of the island.
"We have to be realistic," Sergio Perez, director of the computer
firm Teledatos, told the Communist Party newspaper Granma recently. With Cuba
rationing food and medicines, "how are we not going to be limited in giving
citizens access to the Internet?"
For Cuba's government, the arrival of the Internet represents an opportunity
to confront the 40-year-old U.S. economic embargo.
For years, cash-poor Cuba suffered from a lack of access to technical
information, from papers on the latest heart-surgery techniques to civil
engineering journals. Now, thanks to the Internet, it can download much of what
it needs for free.
The government also has complained that news reports about the island fail
to reflect what it sees as the Cuban reality. Now, with access to the Internet,
Cuba's leaders can offer their unfiltered ideas to the world.
Granma is available on the Web. A British Web site design company, working
in cooperation with the Cuban government's main software company, now has 40 Web
sites about Cuba online, getting about a million hits a month. The company
hopes to add 130 more sites this year on everything from Cuban culture to
specific towns on the island.
"By October 2001, Cuba will be the only island in the Caribbean with a
full, concise informational network visible from the outside," says Stephen
Marshall, the British entrepreneur whose firm, Dimension W, has created most of
the highly professional sites.
For a Cuban government long interested in maintaining tight societal
control, however, the Internet also is seen as a risk.
At Havana's elegant Capitol building, Cuba's first cyber-cafe is open for
business, but only for foreigners, who must show identification before sitting
down at one of the busy terminals.
Across Old Havana, in a historic palace facing the Plaza de Armas, writers
and artists have unlimited access to four computer terminals and to e-mail, but
they cannot access the Internet. Instead the computers connect only to Cuba's
growing "intranet" of national Web sites, users said.
At Havana's huge Central Computing Palace, hundreds of youths sit at
computer terminals each day, learning basic computer skills beneath a sign
reading, "We Believe in the Future."
Such centers, which officials say now exist in 179 municipalities in Cuba,
offer courses in Web design, if few opportunities to use the Web itself. A
handful of students working on limited-term "special projects" are
checking their Yahoo e-mail accounts, but most students must take Web search
requests to an information center, which looks up the material and returns the
results.
"It's better this way, since most people don't know how to do a search,"
says Damien Barcaz, subdirector of the center. "The Internet is very new
in Cuba."
Such limitations are the rule in many Cuban universities, hospitals and
other sites with Internet access. At each, a director can block sites considered
inappropriate, something Cuban officials say is perfectly normal in the
Internet world.
"In what part of the world is a doctor permitted, for example, to use a
hospital computer to visit pornographic sites, pirate information or chat
online with a friend instead of attending to their responsibilities?"
Perez noted in Granma.
"It's absolutely false that the government is ordering controls over
some specific site," he said. "It's the businesses or institutions
connected to the Internet that decide where their workers or students navigate."
Still, many Cuban Internet users complain that they are limited to visiting
sites only within their specialties, and that general surfing of the Web is
blocked.
Users who try to call up the CNN in Spanish Web site, for instance, receive
a message that "the Web page you have solicited is not available at the
moment." A foreigner, trying to access the same site at the same time on an
unlimited Internet account, gets the information with no problem. Other Web
sites offering news, sports scores or the opportunity to download music, are
similarly blocked.
That's a frustration for Cubans like Alexander Hernandez, 25, a tour guide
and writer at the artist's cyber-cafe. He says he is fascinated by archeological
digs at ancient Hittite cities of Turkey and would love to find out more about
them on the Web--but he doesn't have full Internet access.
The Internet "would be pretty useful," he says.
Over a year and a half, one computer programmer in Havana cobbled together a
homemade computer from outdated parts, combined with $50 in pieces bought new
from sympathetic store clerks.
The telephone line he borrowed from a neighbor's house. And the sign-on and
password were loaned by an acquaintance. For four hours recently, for the first
time in his life, the 30-year-old managed to get on the Internet.
"CNN in Spanish is the best site," he says, eyes lighting up at
the memory. He read about Vladimir Putin in Russia, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and
about the United States, "to know what's happening," he said.
He dialed his relatives in Miami, using a phone service site. He checked out
the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Web page, and that of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"My time was so limited I wasn't going to be wasting it on porn sites,"
the science buff said.
Still, unofficial use of the Internet remains relatively minor in Cuba,
largely because so few Cubans have access to all three things needed to surf the
Web: a computer, a local account and a phone line.
Computer sales are carefully controlled in Cuba, and buyers must pay by
check from a Cuban bank and present a letter of accreditation. The same type of
letter is needed to open a local Internet account with access to sites outside
Cuba. Modems are not automatically included with computers, as they are in the
United States.
A black market exists for computer components. But, as computer aficionados
attempting to build their own machines at home quickly find out, a 17-inch
monitor is not an easy thing to sneak past the legions of police who guard
street corners in Havana.
Accounts, too, can be difficult to get.
"If I went to Infocom [one of Cuba's leading Internet providers] to ask
for an account, they're going to say, `What for?'" said one young
programmer. "The one time I asked for an account [at a different provider],
I was told I needed a letter from the Chamber of Commerce."
E-mail remains far more widely available in Cuba than the full Internet. And
computers are slowly changing the lives of a growing number of Cubans,
particularly those in remote parts of the island who now have better
communications access.
Maritza Rodriguez, 40, keeps up with overseas clients for her tour guiding
services via an e-mail account borrowed from a friend at the artists'
cyber-cafe. In Cuba's communally oriented socialist society, e-mail accounts are
often shared with neighbors, friends and co-workers, giving more Cubans access
than the official numbers suggest.
In Cuba, everyone agrees, the future of access to e-mail and the Internet
will be at public cyber-cafes, rather than in private homes. Marshall says he
hopes by the end of the year to work with the Cuban government to open three or
four cyber-cafes in Havana that will cater in part to Cubans.
Under Cuba's socialist system, "you can't have some people with and
some without" access, said Marshall, Cuba's main Web site creator.
Related news
FROM CUBA / E-Mail In
Cuba / Héctor Maseda and Leonel Pérez Bellette, Grupo Decoro
FROM
CUBA / Internet: Not For Domestic Consumption / Eduardo G. Estrada / ANC
Cuba not so libre with the net / Wired
News
Questioning Cuba's dotcom revolution / The
Christian Monitor
Web of resistance rises in Cuba / The
Washington Post
In Castro's Cuba, Internet Hookups Are Few
and Far Between / LA Times | 