Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Nonetheless, a growing network of informáticos, or technologically savvy
individuals, has contested these restrictions, and in the U.S., conservative groups
such as the Cuban American National Foundation maintain web sites criticizing
the regime. World famous blogger Yoani Sanchez, for example, has a blog
''Generation Y'' that has become the unofficial voice of the Cuban domestic
opposition. Diplomatic cables sent from the U.S. Interest Section in Havana
released by Wikileaks in 2010 suggest that Cuban government officials view the
island's bloggers as a ''most serious challenge'' to the country's political stability.
In 2009 Cuban newspapers called on journalists to ''man the cyber-trenches'' to
defend the revolution by setting up their own blogs and criticizing anti-government
blogs. However, Cuba's hard line attitude may be softening. In his 2007 keynote
address at the Informatica Conference in Havana, then-Minister of Informatics and
Communications Ramiro Valdés Menéndez embraced ''the wild stallion of the
new technologies.'' Finally, the Cuban government has built an Intranet known as
Red Cubana, which Cubans can use at universities, youth computing clubs, and
post offices, but it is not connected globally. Reporters Without Borders found
almost no filtering in Cuban cafes with international connections. On the other
hand, in cafes with domestic-only connections, RWB found that:
Users have to give their name and address at the door. If they write something containing
suspect key-words, such as the name of a known dissident, a pop-up message appears
saying the document has been blocked for ''state security'' reasons. The application—
word processor or browser—that was used to write the text is automatically closed. So it
seems that a programme installed on all internet cafes automatically detects banned
content.
After Cuba, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez's Venezuela is Latin America's second
worst internet censor. Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega argued that ''the
internet can't be a space free from the law, all activities that occur in this national
territory must be subject to legal regulation.'' In December 2010, the government
announced controls over ISPs requiring them to report violent material posted on
websites they host. Venezuela's major provider, CANTV, was renationalized in
2007 and controls 90 % of its internet market and 100 % of high-speed connec-
tions in the country. The Venezuelan government has periodically blocked access
to websites such as Wordpress.com and blogger.com, and has repeatedly shut
down Noticiero Digital, which has been especially critical and often insulting of
Chavez, who accused it of promoting a coup d'etat. However, opportunism is at
work in Venezuelan politics as everywhere else: Chavez originally attacked the
internet as a ''current of conspiracy,'' and Twitter users as terrorists and traitors.
However, in 2010, in a classic case of ''if you cannot beat 'em, join 'em,'' he
started using Twitter himself, and today has 500,000 followers.
Many Latin American governments with unsavory human rights records in the
past, such as Brazil, now are remarkably open with regard to the internet, although
Brazilian courts have ordered ISPs to block access to certain blogs and YouTube
videos that carry material ''defamatory'' to the state. In September 2010, the
satirical website Falha de São Paulo was removed from the web by an injunction
imposed by the Brazilian courts. Brazilian national and regional governments
