By Cami Téllez
For nearly two decades, Cuba’s regime has engaged in an active effort to deprive its citizens of Internet access. The United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union ranked the island nation 125 out of the 166 in Internet connectivity in all of the countries in the world along with the lowest web penetration in the entire Western Hemisphere. On average, around 5 percent of Cubans have access to the Internet, while some experts say that number is closer to 3 percent. The lack of technology in Cuba has greatly inhibited the development of the nation and set Cubans generations behind the rest of the rapidly developing nations. However, with recent talks to normalize relations with the U.S. and a new spirit of cooperation within the Cuban government, the world is hopeful that Cuba will perhaps enter a new technological age.
Sebastian Arcos, Associate Director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University spoke with World Policy Journal to express his vision for the reality of Cuba. “Even the regime’s elite acknowledge that widespread broadband access is fundamental to grow and diversify a modern economy,” he said. However, as much as the regime may like a more advanced economy, they have prioritized for many years their grip on the Cuban people over allowing their citizens access to a free-flow of information. For the majority of Cuban’s the only access they have to the web is Cuba’s intranet, which is available through ETECSA (Empresa de Telecommunicaciones de Cuba S.A), a government-controlled office that is bound to the censorship rules of the regime.
Cuba has had a long history of aggressively censoring the Internet. In 1996, the Cuban government approved Decree-Law 209, which states that citizens cannot use the Internet “in violation of Cuban society’s moral principles or the country’s laws.” Cuba’s justice system penalizes any online endeavor considered “against the national independence” or “pre-criminal danger to society,” leaving the government a significant amount of leeway when trying dissident users of the Internet.
In January of 2014, more than 3,000 known pro-internet activists and bloggers were detained by government officials at the Carribean and Latin American States summit (CELAC). Many dissident pro-democracy voices that have phone numbers associated with Twitter had their phones blocked in the past few years. Government-installed software to monitor email accounts in offices is still common in Cuba. Ultimately, is clear that the government’s attitude towards the Internet is still aimed towards preserving Castro’s socialist society and stamping out any inklings of a conflict or revolution.
However, there have been some recent improvements that represent a glimmer of hope for Cubans. At the beginning of 2008, the regime allowed Cubans to buy personal computers and a select few citizens are allowed to connect to the World Wide Web through a government-issued permit. However, these passes are granted to only a handful of officials, doctors, and professors and the price of computers is prohibitive to most Cubans. In June of 2013, high-speed internet was available to Cuban citizens, but only in restricted “CyberPoints” at the high price of $5 an hour, a fee that very few can afford on the already impoverished island where the average salary is $20 a month.
To solve the infrastructural crisis of a slow connection, the government partnered with Venezuela in 2010 to tap into the underwater fiber optic cable for Internet that runs between both countries called ALBA-1. The announcement came with promises of increased data transmission by 3,000 fold at a cost to the island of $72 million dollars. Yet for two years, the Cuban government was silent on the activation of ALBA-1. NPR reported in 2011 that the regime was alarmed by the integral role that social media was playing in the Arab Spring and was afraid that expanding access to the Internet would grant a means of subversion for the Cuban people.
In 2013, ETCESA finally announced that the cable would be activated, but it “will not mean that possibilities for access will automatically multiply.” Many believe that the Cuban government is creating intra-Cuban social media sites like RedSocial (“Social Network” in Spanish), a Facebook knockoff they launched in 2011, before they open the Internet to more people. Ted Henken, chair of Baruch College’s Sociology and Anthropology Department and blogger at elyuma.blogspot.com remarks, “looking forward it will be interesting to see how much the Internet changes Cuba, or how much Cuba changes the Internet in it’s own authoritarian image.”
However, many shrewd Cubans have found ways around the harsh censorship and high prices to gain access to worldwide information. Enter “Paquete Semanal” (Weekly Packet), a collection of content spanning from news articles to TV shows that Cubans can illegally purchase on flash drives from their neighbors. While this method has given many smart Cuban citizens a way to educate themselves, it is still dangerous since it is against the law.
In the past few months, Airbnb, the online room and home rental start up, has entered the Cuban market with over 1,000 locales for users of the site. Many see the company's strong presence as a sign that the island will become a hot tourist destination for Americans, as it once was in the early 1950s, now that Obama’s administration has lifted many traveling bans. Since Cuba has no major exports, tourism driven by the Internet could be the force necessary to revitalize the impoverished nation’s economy.
However, the more interesting question here is, will the increased economic gains afforded by internet-driven tourism actually give way to democratic reform? José Azel, senior scholar at the Institute for Cuban Studies at UMiami, has a more pessimistic vision for the island’s future: “for over 30 years more than 3 million tourists from all over the world have visited Cuba and they have not been able to impact Cuba’s government, why would we believe that American tourism is any different?” Furthermore, the majority of hotels and tourist areas are already owned by Castro’s regime, so any economic advances made by these ventures and expansions will go directly to strengthening the wallets of the upper echelon of Cuba’s government, making it unlikely that they will trickle down to improve the overall quality of life on the island.
Despite these difficult realities, many experts and diplomats have championed Cuba’s supposed “new direction” as talks with the U.S. demonstrate some openness from the regime. Yet Sebastian Arcos refutes that vision for the island. “The question here is whether or not Cuba is engaged in a transition to democracy… the short answer is no… the Cuban regime is moving to stand still; it is only making the absolutely minimal reforms necessary to remain in power,” he remarks. If the island is moving in any direction, it seems to be towards Putin’s Russian model, Arcos argues: “it seems like the model favored by the Cuban regime is Putin’s Russia: a slow transition to crony-capitalism and controlled elections, with the elites in control all the way.” Azel agrees, “it seems that Cuba is moving towards a kleptocracy because currently the military controls around 80 percent of the economy, just as in Russia where ex-KGB members hold positions of power in the economy.”
As Cuba moves forward with plans to open an embassy in the U.S., the world is looking to the nation for any sign of modernization after decades of extreme censorship and bans on even the most basic technology. While there have been a number of very surface-level changes, it is clear that the regime is a long ways off from allowing Cubans true Internet freedom.
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Cami Téllez is a former editorial assistant at World Policy Journal.
[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]