Cuban Twitter story a big ‘So What?’

Posted on Thursday, 04.03.14
IN MY OPINION

Fabiola Santiago: Cuban Twitter story a big 'So What?'
BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO
FSANTIAGO@MIAMIHERALD.COM

On first read, the Associated Press report on the "Cuban Twitter" sounds
ominous and cloak-and-daggerish — like an old Cold War caper.

It has secret operatives and secret meetings, front companies and an
overseas account — and impeccable timing. The report was released
overnight Thursday after Cuba's most celebrated blogger, Yoani Sanchez,
on her third U.S. visit, held a Twitter talk from Washington D.C.

What else could one possibly want now that Russia has invaded Crimea?

A good tussle with Cuba, of course.

Headlined "U.S. secretly created 'Cuban Twitter' to stir unrest," the
lengthy report chronicled in detail the existence of a short-lived
social media project the news agency said was "aimed at undermining
Cuba's communist government."

As if a Cuban could overthrow a 55-year-old dictatorship in 140 characters.

According to the AP, the operation used a Cayman Islands bank account
and recruited contractors who didn't know they were working for the U.S.
government. The techies met in a Casablanca of sorts, Barcelona, and
came from places reminiscent of the Iran contra affair, like Costa Rica
and Nicaragua, and from Washington and Denver (although I failed to
detect a marijuana connection).

The techies, given what we know from the report, had no idea who was
signing the paychecks.

One of the contractors wrote in a memo that the U.S. government's
involvement should not be mentioned, as it was "crucial" that the
"Mission" (note the capital M) be kept secret.

It's only the seventh paragraph of a lengthy story, but by now, you're
already seeing Bogart in a trench coat.

But when placed in the context of history, the U.S.-sponsored creation
of a Cuban social media network sounds more like just another
run-of-the-mill U.S. Cuba policy fail.

This was not a CIA plot, but a project funded by the U.S. Agency for
International Development, which not only delivers humanitarian aid
abroad, as the AP pointed out, but also funds all sorts of international
projects more successful than this one.

A dedicated Cuban communications zone — even one cleverly dubbed
"ZunZuneo," after what Cubans call the sound of a hummingbird — in a
country where people earn an average of $20 a month and own little if
any technology, is not exactly a prescription for "smart mobs," flash
crowds, and a Cuban Spring.

To tweet, or even to do so as Sanchez often does from the island via SMS
messaging, one needs a cell phone, no?

Not to mention, as retired University of Miami scholar Andy Gomez
reminded me Thursday, that what keeps people in Cuba from protesting en
masse is not the lack of a tweet but the brutal repression to which
they're subjected for much lesser offenses.

"Youth in Cuba are more interested in getting out of the island than in
taking to the streets and taking over the government," Gomez said. "The
repression is so bad, why would they want to take on the government?"

All that aside, what's the difference between Radio and TV Marti,
founded during the Reagan administration, and the Obama administration's
Cuban Twitter?

The answer is two decades of modernity — the explosion of social media
and technology — and the fact that the hawkish President Reagan publicly
announced the creation of radio and television stations that would
broadcast news and information to Cuba.

President Obama, on the other hand, only hinted when he was in Miami
last November the need to be "creative" when it came to U.S. Cuban policy.

Now we know — or think we know — some of what Obama may have been
talking about the night he met with Cuban dissident leaders at the home
of the president of the Cuban American National Foundation.

"We've started to see changes on the island," Obama said that night.
"Now, I think we all understand that, ultimately, freedom in Cuba will
come because of extraordinary activists and the incredible courage of
folks like we see here today. But the United States can help. And we
have to be creative. And we have to be thoughtful. And we have to
continue to update our policies…. And what we have to do is to
continually find new mechanisms and new tools to speak out on behalf of
the issues that we care so deeply about."

So why not a "Cuban Twitter" — a site in which Cubans could communicate
with each other — from a maverick president who was the first to
successfully campaign and press his agenda on social media?

Too bad it didn't work, and that the only Cuban Spring is the travel
roster of a few brave dissidents, who have earned international acclaim
yet speak in a voice heard only outside Cuba.

And so here we are, the rest of us in Miami in the same place where we
were before we delved into the AP report — but a little more exhausted,
desgastados, following another sad installment of a never-ending saga.

There's even a name these days for what ails us.

Cuba fatigue.

Source: Fabiola Santiago: Cuban Twitter story a big 'So What?' - Fabiola
Santiago - MiamiHerald.com -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/03/4037869/fabiola-santiago-cuban-twitter.html