The Right to Communicate

It was one of those days. One of those days where all you really want to do is talk to Mom. You don't feel like exploring the country, writing, or learning new Spanish verbs. You just want to talk to Mom.

For my generation, (at least in my country), communication is practically a human right. Sure, you may be a starving student, with outstanding loans, no health care and two jobs, but god damnnit, you have a cell phone and a Facebook account. And you can check it even if you yourself can't pay for wifi--at the local library, cafe or friend's house.

Here it's a different story. Although it's hard to get anyone to tell me exactly what the rules are, what seems clear is that to have an approved internet connection in your home, you need the government's permission and a job that merits the need for access. Of course, plenty of Cubans have found ways around this, getting black-market connections, which from what I can tell are extremely expensive and deliver only very slow and limited dial-up. One friend of mine is paying 20 dollars a month for a personal connection, which I believe only gives him access to email. 20 bucks is on the high end of the average salary per month here.

So using the internet in hotels, as expensive as it seems to me--(about 16 bucks for two hours)--is still an extreme privilege. So why did I feel so wronged, so infuriated when after an entire afternoon and night of trying, I still couldn't Skype with my mom?

Because to me, communication seems like a basic right--assuming I can pay for it.

It's in these moments, where I'm ready to curse this country for it's lack of bandwidth that I feel most 'American'--entitled, impatient and hungry for some 'real' food. The very technology I felt was suffocating me back home suddenly feels absolutely necessary now that I'm more or less without it.

Here, communication is not seen as a right. It's a privilege. When I returned home to my casa particular, I started a conversation with the owner, Mauricio, about access to information. Mauricio is a kind man who obviously likes to play by the rules. He documents every guest and payment meticulously and does everything by the book. But ten years ago, he tells me, leaning in, he used to get illegal satellite TV.

--I liked PBS the best, it was the most balanced. Fox news, I didn't bother with. But then, around the time the Iraq War was starting, watching CNN would make me upset. I saw how the propaganda was building, how there was going to be a war based on false evidence. I'd turn off the TV at night and feel nervous. That, along with the fact that I could have gotten in trouble, was the reason I stopped the satellite.

The idea that a Cuban, someone constantly surrounded by government propaganda, could actually feel sick watching our 24 hour news cycle, is certainly a damnation of our media. That said, someone watching the news here isn't accustomed to 'bad' news in the way we are. Bad news (at least as it occurs in Cuba) is never on the news, and a local segment is more likely about a new art exsibit than about politics. Still, Mauricio says he still gets the Washington Post and Democracy Now's newsletters through his email. That, he says, is how he stays informed.

It's hard for me to find Cubans who are willing to openly talk about their own country's journalistic shortcomings. I find most people I talk to are quick to criticize America, but I wonder if that criticism is an opportunity to also vent some of their frustrations about their own country. I'm always able to find people here with opinions about Obama, the US media and the global economy. What's hard is getting anyone to talk about Fidel, their media or Cuba's economy.

And I don't think it's that people are afraid, or at least not so afraid as we might imagine. After all, are these not the same Cubans risking jail time for internet and cable?

Maybe they're afraid, with reason, that I'll write down what they say. But the blank expression I tend to get when I ask people if they feel their media is censored continues to confuse me. I feel an eerie absence of understanding when I use terms like 'freedom of expression' to little recognition in such an educated county.

What I'm starting to realize is yes, Cubans want more rights. But those rights are not usually conceived of on a grand scale. Like the college student back home, rights here are understood in a more practical way. Here, the lack of access to and inequity of communication can be understood by who does or doesn't have access to the internet.

For me, this right was more or less taken for granted, until I was denied access to hear my mom's voice.

And when that happens, you'd be amazed how 'freedom of information' starts to seem more like an interesting concept than the pressing injustice in the room.