A group of Cubans stare intently at their smart phones here in Old Havana, checking emails and Googling news stories. They, and the millions of other Cubans who got access to Internet upgrades last month, defy the image of Cuba as a totalitarian state where citizens face Internet censorship.
Cubans can now subscribe to monthly plans providing roaming Internet connections for $7 per month. Others access the Internet from wifi hotspots for even less.
The Cuban government blocks access to the U.S. propaganda station TV Marti, as well as to some pro-U.S. blogs, but citizens have easy access to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and even the ultra-conservative Spanish edition of the Miami Herald. Twitter, Facebook, and cell phone apps such as IMO are also easily accessible.
“There's virtually no Internet censorship in Cuba.”
“There's virtually no Internet censorship in Cuba,” a U.S. journalist based in Havana told me during a recent trip.
Cuba has vastly improved Internet connectivity over the past fifteen years, but only about 40 percent of Cubans have Internet access, compared to a projected 61 percent for the rest of Latin America. This is largely because all smart phones must be imported and remain expensive for the average Cuban, who earns about $30 per month. I saw older model Samsung phones priced at $60 at one Havana store. A monthly plan providing 1 gigabyte of broadband with roaming costs $10.
Conservatives in the U.S. have argued that the Cuban government deliberately uses the high cost of connectivity to keep Cubans unaware of the benefits of U.S.-style democracy. When I first began reporting on the issue in the early 1990s, connecting to the Internet meant paying $12 an hour at a tourist hotel. In the ensuing years, Cubans could use a computer at a local post office at the rate of $5 an hour for an extremely slow connection.
But Internet access improved after 2012, when Venezuela laid a new optic cable to Cuba. More Cubans became able to use home dial-up connections along with wifi hotspots in parks, cyber cafes, and other public spaces. Students at University of Havana and other colleges now have free, but slow, wifi access.
Cuban government officials told me that the U.S. embargo on business dealings with Cuba serves to keep connectivity costs high for some users. The U.S. government stopped U.S. phone companies from laying new cables from Florida to Cuba, forcing the island to rely on far more expensive satellite connections.
Juan Fernández, a professor at the University of Information Sciences and advisor to the Communications Ministry on Internet issues, told me during a previous trip that U.S. companies control a lot of the computer hardware used for modern Internet connections.
“The U.S. is very close and could sell everything very cheap,” he said. “Yes, we can buy it in Asia, but it’s more expensive.”
“We face great pressure, practically an economic war, from the most powerful country in the world,” Fernández continued. “Every day the United States tries to make our system disappear. For fifty years the United States has been trying regime change in Cuba.”
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the U.S. government agency in charge of propaganda broadcasts to Cuba, has admitted to promoting mobile phone apps that spread propaganda. It distributed free smartphones loaded with programs called ZunZuneo and Piramidio, designed to foment discontent with the government.
“My students started getting text messages on their cell phones with news reports about demonstrations that never happened,” Néstor García Iturbe, a former Cuban diplomat at the United Nations, once told me. “The United States is trying to create a climate to protest against the Cuban government.”
“My students started getting text messages on their cell phones with news reports about demonstrations that never happened.”
In 2009, the Cuban government arrested Alan Gross, a USAID contractor, for distributing satellite phones aimed at establishing wifi hotspots to be used by Cuba’s small Jewish community. He was convicted of spying and sentenced to fifteen years. He was released in 2014 when the U.S. and Cuba established full diplomatic relations under President Barack Obama.
So far, U.S. government attempts to kickstart a Twitter revolution have failed. In addition to Internet access, many Cubans buy the “Paquete” (Packet), a weekly download of massive amounts of news and entertainment. A customer brings a thumb drive to a Paquete distributor, pays as little as 50 cents and can get the latest foreign newspapers, magazines, TV shows, movies, and even U.S. propaganda broadcasts.
But the most frequently downloaded choices, according to many Cubans I interviewed, are soap operas.