Ten lies in Spain
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde Read Spanish Version
On June 13, the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia published an article titled "The Internet and Chávez, according to Antonio Pasquali" that should be studied in communications schools as a model for the fabrication of news by an expert through the use of half-truths, lies and speculations.
Let us give Antonio Pasquali, the author of "Understanding Communications," the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume that he did not have time to incorporate part of the information hinted at in that article (or that the newspaper had no space for it) and therefore the message is not only false but also contradictory and unsustainable in places.
In any case, there is no way to exempt from slander the basic gist of this article, as stated in the opening paragraph: "After the nationalization of the CANTV telephone company by President Hugo Chávez, a process of 'Cubanization' of telecommunications has intensified in Venezuela that undoubtedly will increase the control over conversations, data transmission and eavesdropping capability."
Let us look at some of the assertions:
1. It is a source of concern that an underwater fiber-optics cable, 1,552 kilometers long, is being laid between La Guaira (Venezuela) and Siboney (Cuba).
What's so strange about that? Why did Pasquali (or the reporter who quoted him) forget that in Cuba all Internet connections are via satellite — a much slower and costly method than optic fiber — because of the laws of the U.S. blockade against the island?
Cuba does not blockade itself or any other country. The successive U.S. administrations have prevented Cuba from connecting to the worldwide web of underwater fiber-optics that has eight points in the Caribbean (very close to Cuba) and would extraordinarily optimize communications.
The ARCOS system (Americas Region Caribbean Optical-ring System) connects the U.S., Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean with optic fiber and provides high-speed broad-band service. But ARCOS is co-owned by 28 regional carriers and is headed by the New World Network, whose largest shareholder — the United States — owns 88.2 percent of the stock.
2. Venezuela would supply to Cuba a monstrous capacity of 160 gigabytes per second that has no application in an island that's technologically backward.
Through a mutually beneficial accord, Venezuela would supply to Cuba the legitimate right to enjoy and link to the Worldwide Web. Official U.S. documents explain why Cuba belatedly entered the Internet, with a weak infrastructure that is further burdened by its high cost, because the U.S. blockade forbids the sale of U.S. technology to the island. And, as we know, the U.S. dominates the hardware and software industries.
3. Cuba has only 124 megabytes per second in satellite download and 65 mb/s in uplink. That's a ridiculous figure.
That's right; it is a ridiculous figure. But Pasquali did not say that the rate is imposed by the United States, which decides how broad a band Cuba can lease. Any hotel or Internet cafe not on the Cuban archipelago has a bandwidth equal to, or broader than, the entire bandwidth at Cuba's disposal for Internet transmissions.
Why does Pasquali overlook this information? Why does he avoids saying that each megabyte costs Cuba four times more than to anyone else in the world, and that Cuba must struggle hard to get it?
The island obtained international navigation in 1996, under a political condition: it is part of the Torricelli Law package (1992) "to democratize Cuban society." This law also decrees that each megabyte (rate of connection speed) leased from U.S. companies or their subsidiaries must be approved by the U.S. Treasury Department. That decree is in effect today.
Washington limited the contract and imposed extraordinary sanctions — fines of $50,000 for each violation — to those who, in the U.S. or outside, favor doing electronic business or bringing Cuba the slightest economic benefit through the Web.
4. The new Venezuelan cable will multiply by more than 2,500 times Cuba's communications capacity. This investment is a mystery; Cuba's telephone density is one of the world's lowest.
That's excellent news for Cubans and, at the same time, a contradiction in the information supplied by Pasquali. On one hand, Pasquali says it's ridiculous for Cuba to have such a narrow bandwidth (he implies it's a government decision) and on the other he worries that the Cubans might want to multiply their connection capability and increase their telephone density.
Such a formulation would make no sense if Pasquali's intention were not to slip in a prejudice: "The satanic island will gain the technology in order to spy on everyone." The writer would have us believe, without providing any evidence, that the victim is actually the criminal — an absurdity usually found in noir novels.
5. The number of Cuba's connections to the Internet is the smallest in Latin America (0.9 per 100 inhabitants). What's the hidden reason to expand Cuba's computer capacity if the population have no access to the Internet?
More of the same drivel to prepare the ground for another manipulative argument. Cuba has had to build a social and intensive access project, so that more than 90 percent of the computers are used by more than one individual.
It's pure common sense. If you have to distribute a hotel's connection capability to 12 million people, you can do only two things: either give it to a small group of people or find an alternative that guarantees the widest and most rational utilization of that resource.
Cuba has done just that. It has given priority to the universities, cultural and health centers, the news media and the Youth Computer Clubs, more than 600 centers that operate everywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, and offer courses to people of all ages so they can learn to use the technology.
One million people have graduated from these courses. All schools have computer labs, with an average of 20 students per computer. In Cuba's remote mountain towns there are 146 classrooms attended by just one child who is taught by a teacher and several instructors, one of them a computer instructor.
Why would a blockaded and poor country invest millions of dollars in teaching its people, beginning with the very young, electronic communications? If the government is interested in limiting and censoring Internet access, why does it teach (using the most modern computers available) more than 2 million children and teenagers, including those who live in remote mountain areas? Why is this fact — which is easily verifiable — silenced?
6. Cuba is one of the 13 countries that most censor the Internet.
Where is the proof? So far, the only basis for that assertion is its constant repetition, without any real support. The most ferocious proponents of this campaign, merrily quoted in all U.S. State Department reports, tried to prove it and used illegal methods for the purpose.
[The French organization] Reporters Without Borders in October 2006 sent a French reporter to the island. She spent one month there and later submitted the results of her espionage mission, under the pseudonym Claire Voeux.
The Miami Herald interviewed her and reported the results of her research, which, according to her, "were surprising." The Internet cafes in hotels and post offices permitted free access to Web sites, included those that were considered "subversive," Voeux said. "I was surprised to visit all the Web sites," she told the newspaper. "It is a question of access control, not of censorship." Indeed, that's the report, but mysteriously no one has paid attention.
7. The ordinary Cuban cannot use the Internet.
False. No one can use such a narrow channel of navigation, not even for all the money in the world. If the country turned over to a few the narrow band of satellite linkups, navigation in the Web would be impossible for the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who now sail it.
The fiber-optic cable that will connect Cuba and Venezuela is a great hope to us. It will not only improve the quality of navigation but also will enable us to extend this service to every Cuban home, a dream that is a lot older than one might suppose.
The Central Institute for Digital Research (ICID, for the Spanish name) was created in Cuba in 1969. If you look at President Fidel Castro's speeches for that period, you'll run into these words: "We are a country without natural resources, but we have a very important resource: the intelligence of the Cuban people. Computers are a part of that, and I am convinced that each Cuban will in the future have machines like these." What other objective could a country that's teaching computer use to millions of people have?
8. Tourists can download their e-mail in hotels only if they're willing to pay very high fees.
I have yet to see an uprising over Internet access fees in tourist destinations in Europe, where such fees are unbelievably more expensive than in Cuban hotels and where Europeans don't suffer our situation.
And here's another hidden fact: the fees paid in Cuba by tourists cover only a small part of the cost of Internet access. Every year, the Cuban government pays 10 times more for that 124 mb/s conduit than one of the Hilton hotels in Miami for the same service. And the Hilton hotels have the advantage that they don't deal with delayed satellite transmission and don't have to pay for overseas communications.
9. "For what purpose? I fear the worst. With one tenth the capability of that cable [from La Guaira to Siboney] they could reroute to Havana all telephone conversations made in Venezuela, on fixed lines and cell phones, to filter and tap them."
Another absurd speculation. This highly sophisticated data-mining technology is almost the exclusive property of the United States. There is enough documentation to prove that the U.S. is the only country with the ability to process 9 trillion e-mails, 1 billion cell-phone calls and 1 billion fixed-line calls every year, passing through the nodes that control 90 percent of Internet transmissions.
The New York Times has explained that the U.S. can do it "because the National Security Agency has enormous influence over telecommunication companies, which are obliged to cooperate on intelligence matters. Through back doors carefully established by presidential orders in the name of the war on terrorism, U.S. intelligence officials gain access to the major nodes through which the world's communications pass." An expert like Pasquali must be perfectly aware of this.
10. Chávez granted a Cuban-Venezuelan joint venture a contract for $134 million to print the identity papers and passports of Venezuelans. According to Venezuelan Interior Minister Pedro Carreño, "very important information about each citizen will be stored away." This way, information about 26 million Venezuelans is turned over to a foreign government.
This is the same logic followed by George W. Bush, who, in his 2004 Plan for Cuba, arrived at the simplistic conclusion that, because Cuba is capable of producing biotechnological products for health care, it is also producing bacteriological weapons. He offers no proof, but — so what?
Pasquali picks up the tune. If Cuba can produce software to prop up its infrastructure, ameliorate the blockade and derive revenue, it will surely control the use of that technology, which was developed for third parties. It's like saying that after you buy an empty bottle, someone tries to tell you that the liquid you pour into it is the property of the glass-blower who made it.
It's another absurdity, but it is not questioned because it helps to demonize and alienate Cuba and Venezuela. Why doesn't someone talk about the PDVSA precedent? People with a good memory will recall that the management of that Venezuelan oil company and all its products were controlled by a U.S. corporation linked to Washington's intelligence services, which violated Venezuela's sovereignty with impudence.
But, of course, that's something else altogether. To overcome his own prejudice, Antonio Pasquali would have to understand not abstract communication but the difficulties faced by people who don't have a voice. For that, there is no space in La Vanguardia or in the prosperous market of hatred toward our countries.
Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a renowned Cuban journalist.
