Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba

2. Media Technologies and "Cuban Democracy"

t 2 MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES AND “CUBAN DEMOCRACY” One of the essential advantages of this new technology [the Internet] is that it is the proper means through which we can reveal to the world, on a more even field of struggle than that of other mass media, the realities of our country and of the Revolution. Therefore, in addition to its being a strategic necessity for the country, it is also an important challenge not only technologically, but also economically and politically. —Carlos Lage Dávila, vice president of the Cuban State Council, 1996 Search for “Cuban students” on YouTube, and you’ll find numerous versions of a public meeting held at UCI that turned into an international media story.1 Six months prior to elections for the Cuban National Assembly in January 2008, Raúl Castro launched a national debate on Cuban society, inviting Cuban citizens to critique the state of the nation. The call appears to have prompted over a million written responses from a national population of just over eleven million. The open forum at UCI between students and Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, president of the National Assembly of Popular Power, was videotaped and the video anonymously provided to the BBC in Havana. Uploaded to YouTube, the four-minute video (a longer version was eventually also uploaded to the Internet) made provocative headlines: “Videos Hint at Public Discontent in Cuba,” “Students Challenge Regime in Rare Video,” “People in Cuba Are Becoming More Vocal in Their Calls for Change.”2 International news sources, including CNN, covered the story, and the video ran on various Web sites. Among the students seen in 68 DIGITAL DILEMMAS the video, Eliécer Ávila would become the unwitting online celebrity for his tough questions about Cuban inequities and travel restrictions—why, for example, could he not visit the place in Bolivia where Che Guevara died? Most surprising was Alarcon’s evasive reply and the anachronistic worldview it embodied: if six billion people traveled at once, he lectured, imagine the resulting gridlock of people. The video clip, copied onto flash drives and distributed hand-to-hand around the country, took about two weeks to reach international audiences. From Ávila’s point of view, the type of personal freedoms he desired in no way contradicted the purpose and ideology of the revolution. Other online videos of the conversation between the students and Alarcón reveal similar concerns, agreements, disagreements, and exchanges of personal anecdotes. The political volley that followed on the Internet developed the story in several directions: potential changes to result from the new leadership of Raúl Castro; media manipulation; matters of truth; ongoing repression; examples of authoritarianism; and examples of openness by the Cuban regime. At the core of discussions about the exchange lies an understanding that media is malleable, digital, and difficult for a single agency to control. Taken together, the semiotic analysis reached surprising levels. Participants in the on- and offline analysis of the Alarcón–student exchange reviewed the body language of students and other audience members for signs of nervousness, assessed clothing for symbolism (Avila’s tee-shirt bearing the @ sign was thought to be an emblem of anarchy), and attached importance to the order in which students presented their claims. While this live, political event continued the entrenched pro- versus anti-Cuba debate, it also multiplied the connections between media spaces on and off the island in its widespread, multimedia distribution, from video and Web to television and newspapers. However low the percentage of Cubans officially connected to the Internet , the Internet is clearly connected to Cuban society, even as the government attempts to manage its visibility. Wherever and however they log on, users increase the role of media technology within political and private life. Awareness by the regime that this would occur can be seen in predictions such as that by Carlos Lage, vice president of the Cuban Council, who said in 1996 that deployment of the Internet in Cuba would bring political challenges . The heated 2008 exchange between students and politician, along with the students’ impassioned responses, surely represent such a challenge, but one whose forms lend unexpected complexity. MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES AND “CUBAN DEMOCRACY” 69 Beyond (and because of) the assertions of repression or censorship, the students’ views reiterate that Cuban society has moved on from its earlier revolutionary character, as reflected in the shift in how people talk...