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Cuba’s Digital Revolution
Cuba’s Digital Revolution
Citizen Innovation and State Policy
A wide-ranging examination of the ways digital technologies are impacting Cuba’s Revolutionary project
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution gave the Communist Party a monopoly over both politics and the mass media. However, with the subsequent global proliferation of new information and communication technologies, Cuban citizens have become active participants in the worldwide digital revolution. While the Cuban internet has long been characterized by censorship, high costs, slow speeds, and limited access, this volume argues that since 2013, technological developments have allowed for a fundamental reconfiguration of the cultural, economic, social, and political spheres of the Revolutionary project.
The essays in this volume cover various transformations within this new digital revolution, examining both government-enabled paid public web access and creative workarounds that Cubans have designed to independently produce, distribute, and access digital content. Contributors trace how media ventures, entrepreneurship, online marketing, journalism, and cultural e-zines have been developing on the island alongside global technological and geopolitical changes.
As Cuba continues to expand internet access and as citizens challenge state policies on the speed, breadth, and freedom of that access, Cuba’s Digital Revolution provides a fascinating example of the impact of technology in authoritarian states and transitional democracies. While the streets of Cuba may still belong to Castro’s Revolution, this volume argues that it is still unclear to whom Cuban cyberspace belongs.
Contributors: Larry Press | Edel Lima Sarmiento | Olga Khrustaleva | Alexei Padilla Herrera | Eloy Viera Cañive | Marie Laure Geoffray | Ted A. Henken | Sara Garcia Santamaria | Anne Natvig | Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Arechavaleta | Mireya Márquez-Ramírez, Ph.D.| Abel Somohano Fernández | Rebecca Ogden | Jennifer Cearns | Walfrido Dorta | Paloma Duong
A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez
Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“The most comprehensive English-language compendium on the contemporary aspects of Cuban internet practices, material forms, policies, and histories. . . . An instantly valuable resource.”—NACLA Report on the Americas
“Weaves together themes of dispute, repression, social activism, and ideology to illustrate the Cuban society of today where the official narrative silences the alternative discourse and knowledge, and citizens are learning to skillfully use digital media as an agent of change.”—Transmodernity
An important contribution to the study of the Cuban media landscape. Cuba’s Digital Revolution examines changes brought about by recent expansion of Wi-Fi access points through attention to how independent journalism, media distribution, activism, entrepreneurship, and media culture are developing alongside local and global technological and political changes.’—Cristina Venegas, author of Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba
Ted A. Henken, associate professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Baruch College, City University of New York, is coauthor of Entrepreneurial Cuba: The Changing Policy Landscape and the author of Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook. Sara Garcia Santamaria, associate professor of media and communication at Universitat Ramon Llull and Universitat Jaume I, is coeditor of Media and Governance in Latin America: Towards a Plurality of Voices.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Introduction. In Medias Res: Who Will Control Cuba’s Digital Revolution?
Ted A. Henken
PART I. History, Media, and Technology
1. The Past, Present, and Future of the Cuban Internet
Larry Press
2. Historical Itineraries and Cyclic Trajectories: Alternative Media, Communication Technologies, and Social Change in Cuba
Edel Lima Sarmiento
PART II. Politics
3. ICT, State Power, and Civil Society: Cuban Internet Development in the Context of the Normalization of Relations with the United States
Olga Khrustaleva
4. Ghost in the Machine: The Incompatibility of Cuba’s State Media Monopoly with the Existence of Independent Digital Media and the Democratization of Communication
Alexei Padilla Herrera and Eloy Viera Cañive
5. The Press Model in Cuba: Between Ideological Hegemony and the Reinvention of Civic Journalism
Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Arechavaleta
6. Digital Critique in Cuba
Marie Laure Geoffray
PART III. Journalism
7. From Generación Y to 14ymedio: Beyond the Blog on Cuba’s Digital Frontier
Ted A. Henken
8. Independent Journalism in Cuba: Between Fantasy and the Ontological Rupture
Sara Garcia Santamaria
9. Perceptions of and Strategies for Autonomy among Journalists Working for Cuban State Media
Anne Natvig
10. Independent Media on the Margins: Two Cases of Journalistic Professionalization in Cuba’s Digital Media Ecosystem
Abel Somohano Fernández and Mireya Márquez-Ramírez
PART IV. Business and Economy
11. Online Marketing of Touristic Cuba: Branding a “Tech-Free” Destination
Rebecca Ogden
12. “A Una Cuba Alternativa”? Digital Millennials, Social Influencing, and Cuentapropismo in Havana
Jennifer Cearns
PART V. Culture and Society
13. Without Initiation Ceremonies: Cuban Literary and Cultural Ezines
Walfrido Dorta
14. Images of Ourselves: Cuban Mediascapes and the Postsocialist “Woman of Fashion”
Paloma Duong
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
