Cubans evade censorship by exchanging computer memory sticks, blogger says

Posted on Saturday, 03.09.13

Cubans evade censorship by exchanging computer memory sticks, blogger says
By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Newspapers

PUEBLA, Mexico -- Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez on Saturday told
newspaper publishers from around the Western Hemisphere that "nothing is
changing" in Cuba's ossified political system and that "the situation of
press freedom in my country is calamitous."

But Sanchez said underground blogs, digital portals and illicit
e-magazines proliferate, passed around on removable computer drives
known as memory sticks.. The small computer memories, also known as
flash drives or thumb drives, are dropped into friendly hands on buses
and along street corners, offering a surprising number of Cubans access
to information.

"Information circulates hand to hand through this wonderful gadget known
as the memory stick," Sanchez said, "and it is difficult for the
government to intercept them. I can't imagine that they can put a police
officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn't."

Sanchez said "these little gizmos" have "helped us a lot to pass
information."

After five years of requesting travel documents to receive multiple
awards outside of Cuba, Sanchez, 37, received a passport in late January
and was allowed to depart on a tour of 12 countries in South America,
Europe and North America. She expects to return to Cuba when her tour
ends after nearly three months.

Sanchez's blog, Generation Y, is translated into more than 20 languages,
and she has nearly 440,000 followers on her Twitter account.

Dissidents who come into the sights of the Cuban regime led by Raul
Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel in 2008, are being
repressed in ways that "don't leave fingerprints," Sanchez said.

"Often, activists, including independent journalists, are detained on
the street, pulled into cars without plates, pushed, threatened (and)
questioned by civilians who never identify themselves," she said, only
to be freed after a few hours.

Sanchez said recent measures to loosen controls over self-employment do
not mark significant change to the economic model that has kept the
Castro brothers in power on the island since 1959.

"These are adjustments to … prolong their power," she said.

Speaking in an auditorium filled with several hundred publishers,
editors and journalists gathered for a semi-annual meeting of the Inter
American Press Association, Sanchez was asked when dramatic change might
come to Cuba.

"It's the big question that 11 million Cubans are asking ourselves," she
responded. "It's no mystery or secret to any of us that the generation
(of leaders) in power is arriving at the midnight of their lives."

She said her homeland faces "exhaustion of this system" and that "we're
on a countdown to what will occur."

Once the octogenarian Castro brothers leave power, she said, "it will be
very difficult for the heirs to maintain control of the nation." They
have neither the charisma nor the popular support to hold the reins of
power for long, she added.

The death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, whose socialist government
provides Cuba with a lifeline of nearly 100,000 barrels of crude a day,
"might catalyze – who knows? – a series of openings in our country," she
said.

Predicting change in Cuba is difficult, and Sanchez said she liked to
use as a metaphor the decrepit mansions in Old Havana, which can often
withstand hurricanes "even though they are at the point of falling down."

"The Cuban system is like one of these old mansions, facing into the
wind and not falling down," she said. "But one day, they want to fix the
door. They take out screws, and the house collapses."

Sanchez dismissed Cuban government estimates that 20 percent of the
island has access to the internet, saying her own observations suggest
it may be only 3 percent.

"The number (of users) is very difficult to know because in Cuba not
only opinions can get you sent to jail, also polling. My own personal
thermometer, from what I see around me, is that there is a true network
of viral information."

Still, she said, any Cuban who wants to look for information will find
it, although disagreeing with the government remains a punishable offense

"The average Cuban no longer swallows the pabulum of information given
by the government. He or she is looking for more," Sanchez said.

As a result, Cubans are creating and distributing information on the
sly, sometimes captured web-pages or even homemade TV dramas taped in
their living rooms, she said.

"The power and ingenuity of the alternative media in distributing
information in Cuba is incredible," she said.

The Castro government, she added, "is on the defensive."

"It either opens the media to other voices, or another kind of
journalism that is more objective and real and shows what is happening
in Cuban society," she said, "or it stays as it is now, totally
defensive, attacking, insulting, creating libel campaigns (and) media
lynchings."

Email: tjohnson@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @timjohnson4
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/09/v-fullstory/3276747/cubans-evade-censorship-by-exchanging.html