Internet for Everyone in Cuba - Myths and Realities

Internet for Everyone in Cuba: Myths and Realities
March 14, 2015
Yenisel Rodríguez Perez

HAVANA TIMES – It seems as though decisive steps to make Internet
services widely available in Cuba will finally be taken. Much pressure
has built up in connection with this issue as a result of the heated
disputes that are probably taking place between different interests
groups on the island.

Who could doubt that cyberspace is the political arena where the
country's sociopolitical and economic fate is to be defined?

Speaking of a Cuban civil society within this context, to then ascribe
it a leading role in this struggle, is entirely naive. "Civil society"
continues to be a euphemism in Cuba.

Using the concept of civil society to refer to the pressure exerted on
the government by people is placing barely effective initiatives
undertaken by individuals or small groups (all of them minorities that
are invisible at street level) under a single category.

These political initiatives, though defined in their political aims,
have a very limited sociopolitical impact owing to the atomization of
our society and its highly depoliticized nature.

It would therefore be more precise to speak of different interest groups
linked to power centers (and I don't know whether I'm still being too
optimistic with this description).

Ultimately, it is unquestionable that the steps being taken towards
making Internet services more accessible reflects the consolidation of
neo-liberal and pro-Right tendencies in Cuba's political panorama.

We could think of a map that situates the government's passive and
leading opponents. We first come across those who wish for total and
unrestricted Internet access in order to facilitate the complete
overthrow of the Castro regime, following the logic of the Arab Spring.

On the other extreme we have those who oppose all changes and are
interested in preserving the status quo on the basis of misinformation
and the centralization of global information flows, represented by the
governmental gerontocracy and their lackeys.

Last but not least, we have the reformists, interested in more or less
far-reaching and organized reforms in the area of Internet access, who
aspire to efficient and "democratic" government control, inspired by a
center-right type of capitalism that seems unfeasible in a world as
crisis-ridden as ours.

I wonder about the revolutionary Left, about Cuban anarchism. Has any
path been traced by resistance and recycling, through which we hope to
be able to channel all of our strength, in the interests of a future
with greater access to the world-wide web? Will we be able to take
advantage of the loopholes left unguarded by the powerful in their
political maneuvers and their strategy of everyone-for-himself?

As an individual, I have been adjusting my personal expectations in
connection with all of this. I know that the Internet is not a magic
lamp that comes to fulfill our wishes, much less if our wishes are of a
political nature.

Technology can point towards the distant horizon, but it is ultimately
mired in daily social relations (relations we could ironically refer to
as "analogic").

What we are unable to overcome through social praxis, face-to-face among
individuals or before the social institutions around us, no Facebook,
Twitter or Saint Google is going to grant us.

I have come across very little reflection and political awareness on the
Internet. Rather, I've run into the same realities that one can see from
my window, in the dirty and poetic neighborhood where I live: plenty of
gossip and a whole lot of profanity.

Let us improve our aim!

Source: Internet for Everyone in Cuba: Myths and Realities - Havana
Times.org - http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=109959