CUBA'S BLOCKADE: LITTLE INFORMATION FROM THE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HAVANA 000660

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA/CCA
STATE FOR WHA/PD MLEE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/23/2019
TAGS: PGOV ECPS PHUM CU
SUBJECT: CUBA'S BLOCKADE: LITTLE INFORMATION FROM THE
OUTSIDE WORLD ALLOWED THROUGH

REF: A. 08 HAVANA 796 (CUBANS TUNING OUT LOCAL NEWSPAPERS)

B. HAVANA 594 (CUBA CHAMPIONS DEMOCRACY IN
HONDURAS)

C. HAVANA 629 ("CUBAN BLOGGER")

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Classified By: COM Jonathan Farrar for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)


1. (C) Summary. It is hard to overstate how isolated Cubans
are from the outside world. Cubans have little or no access
to outside news or media, foreign TV or radio programming, or
even internet or email. There is little in the way of local
content to make up for this dearth of information. What is
broadcast or published in Cuba is narrowly filtered, omitting
all inconvenient news and information, and laden with
self-congratulatory spin. Once information gets through,
however, it seems to flow with little impedance, perhaps
making communications within the island as important as with
the world outside. End Summary.

FROM ELECTIONS TO MLB, CENSORS LET LITTLE THROUGH
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2. (C) News and information from outside Cuba are tightly
controlled. Through the government monopoly on print and
broadcast news, and through vigorous self-censorship by the
few non-government publications that exist, anything that
challenges the status quo, encourages self-action or public
participation, or hints of political reform is suspect and
will usually be blocked. In the official press particularly,
foreign demonstrations of support for Cuba and negative
stories about the developed world's democracies are played up
prominently. Thus, fuel depot explosions in Puerto Rico,
layoffs in New York and deaths in Afghanistan are fair game
and receive extensive coverage, while little to nothing is
reported on riots in Tehran, or the economic recovery in
Europe and North America. Like any other day, the official
newspaper Granma's October 29 edition ran the following
headlines on page three: "Fidel's Commitment to the Health of
Cubans is Impressive," "Peace Cruise in Havana," "Spanish
Foreign Minister Receives the Wives of (imprisoned Cuban
spies) Gerardo and Rene," "Cuban Heroes Honored at Freedom
Park," and "Pakistan: More than 90 Deaths After Hillary
Clinton's Arrival." Readership of Granma and its companion
publication, Juventud Rebelde, is correspondingly small.


3. (C) Information that may cast Cuba in a less-than-ideal
light almost never makes its way into print or on the air.
As a result, other than by word-of-mouth, Cubans have no idea
about the crimes that take place in their cities and
neighborhoods, of local diseases or epidemics, or even road
accidents because these too are excised. The state censors
do not stop at "hard" news. They clamp down just as
zealously on media, communications, entertainment, technology
and sports news. There is absolutely no coverage, for
instance, of the baseball World Series or professional
boxing, two hugely popular sports, lest Cuban athletes get
ideas about going pro or, worse, if Cubans get to see their
athletes prosper in foreign leagues.


4. (C) There is no reporting on policy debates at the high
levels of government, the Communist Party or the National
Assembly. When public debate is allowed (as is currently
taking place on how to tackle agricultural shortcomings,
Septel),it is narrowly defined, kept within
tightly-controlled settings, and unlikely to generate
unexpected or unsolicited criticism.

OFFICIAL AVERSION TO OUTSIDE NEWS
--------------


5. (C) A day after the General Assembly vote on the embargo
resolution, the newspapers printed the Cuban Foreign
Minister's verbatim reply to Ambassador Rice without
publishing a single word from her statement. The blackout is
so pervasive that the Nuevo Herald reproductions that USINT
distributes freely are said to be bartered for food and other
goods, according to an article in the Herald published last
September. The official aversion to outside information "has
reached truly incomprehensible levels," a Cuban priest who
settled back in Havana after a long stint in the Dominican
Republic told us. "Cuba should be proud of how little crime
there is here, and yet they're not willing to even admit to

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what little goes on."

NEWS AS PROPAGANDA
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6. (C) The propaganda approach to information dissemination
by official media channels here is evident. Newspapers,
radio and TV stations will turn from one topic to the next in
unison, from popular pressure for Zelaya's return in Honduras
(Ref A),to the plight of the "Five Heroes" jailed in the
United States for espionage (Septel),to the embargo, and
again to the Five Heroes, as they have done in sequence from
September to November. Turmoil in Honduras was front page
news for months; the U.S. and OAS-brokered resolution to the
crisis was buried on page six while the GOC tries to figure
out its next move. "The Cuban press is a soldier of the
revolution," the editor of a Catholic journal -- one of the
few independent publications here -- told us on October 28.
A former TV newsman said how the Orwellian-sounding Directory
of Revolutionary Organization imparts weekly instruction to
all media outlets on what to run.


7. (C) Ironically, some of the soldiers themselves complain
about the dearth of information. No one has done it more
publicly than Juventud Rebelde columnist Jose Alejandro
Rodriguez, whose piece, posted online on October 16, railed
against the "demons of kidnapped information" who keep Cuba
sequestered from the rest of the world. Rodriguez went even
further, attacking official media outlets, including standard
bearers Granma newspaper and the TV program "Mesa Redonda"
(Roundtable),for their trivialization of information, and
the GOC itself for its unwillingness to allow the
dissemination of anything that may cast it in a bad light.
Rodriguez's column never made it to the printing presses; it
was pulled from the Juventud Rebelde website within hours of
its appearance, but not before it was rescued by dozens of
bloggers and international news outlets, who promptly gave it
widespread coverage.

MIXED RESULTS AT GETTING THROUGH
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8. (C) Attempts to circumvent the information blockade have
had mixed results. Non-official print media is extremely
limited, and mostly confined to religious publications.
Cuban bookstores and official libraries only carry
officially-sanctioned media that results in numerous volumes
of revolutionary literature but little else. The largest
newspapers, Granma and Juventud Rebelde, have less than ten
crudely laid-out pages. Their content is just as crude, much
of it propaganda from the Soviet-era playbooks. There are no
entertainment magazines or publications.


9. (C) The few non-official publishers must overcome
significant obstacles in order to print anything. The GOC
directly controls or licenses all printing presses. Printers
are scarce (even more so than computers),desperately
sought-after and the GOC strictly controls the supply. Even
with a computer and printer, an organization will be
hard-pressed to find cartridges, ink and paper. While
foreign missions and small, independent libraries provide
limited access to some printed materials, demand considerably
outstrips supply.

TV AND RADIO
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10. (C) TV and radio are just as tightly controlled. Often
serving as little more than spoken versions of the print
media, the stations regurgitate the same propaganda about the
U.S. embargo, cataclysms in the United States and the
overwhelming popularity of presidents Chavez, Morales and
Ortega, but little on elections elsewhere, economic recovery,
etc. Radio Marti is much more accessible than its televised
counterpart but still faces daily interference. Voice of
America can be picked up with heavy interference, but only
with a shortwave radio, which are not available in Cuba (many
of our contacts treasure the ones that they have received
from USINT over the years). Ironically, the
officially-sanctioned Venezuelan station Telesur station
provides some of the few glimpses of foreign news that most
people elsewhere take for granted. Illegal satellite feeds

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are coveted by Cubans, and the GOC is constantly on the
lookout for illegal dishes.

ELECTRONIC MEDIA
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11. (C) Electronic media is more widely distributed, partly
because the GOC has not figured out how to clamp down on it
as effectively as it does with other media. The GOC has the
wherewithal to and does intercept email, and block access to
the most famous blogs and pro-democracy sites (Ref B). Just
as effective, however, are its efforts to place Internet
facilities beyond the reach of most people. On November 2,
the press reported that a Craigslist-like site, Revolico.com,
where Cubans buy and sell goods and services, was being
blocked. Some of the services offered included satellite
internet and cable, which the advertisers proclaimed, "so you
never get blocked again."


12. (C) Only few Cubans have permission to have access to the
Internet. The Brookings Institution cited numbers that rank
Cuba below Haiti in internet connectivity. When access is
granted, it is restricted by content (either by blocking
sites or by providing a barebones GOC-centered, intranet),
data transfer (with limits of around 30Mb per month),price
(the Catholic Council of Bishops' GOC-run broadband costs
$650 a month, while dial-up runs at about $75 monthly,
equivalent to 3.5 times the average monthly salary) or
monitoring of pages visited (as we have heard is the case
with Latin American Medical School students who are called to
account when they visit "suspect" websites). Some of those
who have access run illegal internet cafes throughout the
island (Septel),and some Cubans also access the Internet by
paying for expensive, hourly access at hotels, but both are
subject to GOC blocks.

DOMESTIC DISSEMINATION
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13. (C) Despite the blockade, information does make it onto
the island. DVDs of World Series games, for example, are
available within a day or two. AM radio stations from the
Florida Keys are audible at varying times most evenings, at
least in Havana. For some reason, the GOC is not as
aggressive in pursuing information that gets through as it is
in trying to block its entry into the country. Harassment
for possession of what the GOC considers objectionable
materials, such as the Miami Herald, and the news summaries
or books that USINT distributes, is rare. Internet bloggers
report being able to distribute DVDs of their blogs and other
blocked sites with little interference from the authorities.


14. (C) Increasingly, our Cuban contacts are also pointing to
the arts and cultural world as a freer channel for
information flow and dissemination (Septel). Unlike most
Cubans, artists get to travel outside and are much more
familiar with news, information and ideas from the outside
world. An essay by a famous Cuban actor currently filming in
Spain is circulating in the island. In it he decries the
lack of internet in Cuba, and laments that the information
isolation in the island is only matched by North Korea.

COMMENT: A FERTILE PATCH IN BARREN GROUND
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15. (C) Whether by neglect or with intent, the GOC has left
some space that, though still small, is growing. Once Cubans
get their hands on information that is suppressed in the
official media, independent journalists, internet advocates
and independent libraries, among others, do their best to
disseminate it. Although for the most part their reach
continues to be limited, the proliferation of cell phones,
bluetooth devices and other means of electronic transfers is
making it easier to disseminate information domestically, and
harder for the authorities to continue blocking it. As
computer and cell phone ownership continue to rise, the
challenge of containing the flood of information will
likewise grow.
FARRAR