France24: Cuba restores internet access after protests, but not social media. “Cuban authorities restored internet access on Wednesday following three days of interruptions after unprecedented protests erupted over the weekend, AFP journalists said. Access to social media and messaging apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter remained blocked on 3G and 4G, however.”
AP: Cuba’s internet cutoff: The go-to tactic for global despots. “Cubans facing the country’s worst economic crisis in decades took to the streets over the weekend. In turn, authorities blocked social media sites in an apparent effort to stop the flow of information into, out of and within the beleaguered nation.”
AFP: Cuban hip hop group shoots to world fame via social media. “With no other platform on which to ply their trade, 16-member Cuban dance troupe Datway (a play on That Way) have taken to Facebook and Instagram to display their unique brand of hip hop moves, blended with more traditional, home-grown styles. It has launched them to international fame, even catching the eye of Daddy Yankee, dubbed the King of Reggaeton — a Latin American music style that borrows heavily from hip hop and rap.”
Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation: IPLC Launches the Cuban 27N Movement Web Archive. “The Cuban 27N Movement Web Archive preserves and provides access to a broad range of websites related to the Cuban 27N Movement initiated in November 2020 by protesters in Havana, Cuba, demanding freedom of expression and other civil rights.”
CPJ: Cuban authorities harass journalists, block social media amid protests. “Since November 26, amid protests following the arrest of artist Denis Solís of the San Isidro Movement, a local freedom of expression and artistic freedom group, Cuban authorities have obstructed members of the press from doing their jobs, and have intermittently blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Instagram, according to news reports and four local journalists who spoke with CPJ via messaging app but asked to remain anonymous, citing security concerns.”
On Cuba News: Cuba reports 48 new cases of COVID-19, 28 of them imported. “At the close of this Saturday there were 378 active cases, and 3,143 patients were hospitalized for epidemiological surveillance, of them 755 suspected of having the disease.”
Human Rights Watch: Cuba’s Government Targets Social Media Influencers. “On October 14, police arrived at the homes of four Cuban YouTubers about to participate in an online forum discussing Cuban politics. Two—Jancel Moreno and Maykel Castillo—were detained, Iliana Hernández and others had their internet cut. One, 21-year-old Ruhama Fernández, had to hide to participate in the discussion by phone.”
Havana Times: Ireland & Cuba: Entangled Histories. “PhDs Margaret Brehony and Nuala Finnegan, both from the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the National University of Ireland in Cork, refer to this distinctive seal in their collection of essays Ireland and Cuba: Entangled Histories. They are written with little or no angles, nothing doctored, and therein lies the book’s greatest uniqueness. The book talks about anti-slavery movements, ethnic whitening processes, women in the Irish diaspora, the slave trade… The following is our conversation with Margaret Brehony about a slice of history that interweaves both islands.”
Twitter Blog: Disclosing networks to our state-linked information operations archive. “Today we are disclosing five distinct networks of accounts to our archive of state-linked information operations. The accounts that we have published in our archive today – the only archive of its kind in the industry – include independent information operations that we have attributed to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Thailand and Russia.”
El Nuevo Herald, and the article is in Spanish, but I’ll provide a machine translation of the salient paragraphs: Cuentas falsas y coordinación con Venezuela: cómo Cuba disemina propaganda en Twitter. “On his Twitter profile, user Kaleb Guevara reproduces a phrase attributed to Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: ‘the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.’ The profile photo also reminds of the controversial Argentine figure, a young brunette with a beard, with a cigarette on his lips. But it does not belong to a person called “Kaleb Guevara” but to the Canadian model Nick Bateman. These are just two examples of more than a hundred of what appear to be false profiles that appear on … a new site that identifies Twitter accounts that spread propaganda and disinformation from Cuba.”
The Harold: Launch of long-awaited Havana Archive Project!!!. “The Hampshire College Library is thrilled to announce the launch of the Havana Archive Project, an Open Access digital photographic archive containing over 8,000 photographs of the 1,055 most significant buildings in the Historic Center of Havana, Cuba (as determined by Dr. Eusabio Leal, Director of the Office of the Historian) at the beginning of the restoration of Havana in the early 1980s.”
Slate: How to Get Online Illegally in Cuba. “In Cuba, I would sit with a dealer, who would count for me the number of people connected to their hot spot. Identifying those dealers could be tricky. I would start by finding a user in the area I needed to approach for the password. Users are easy to spot—they’re the people sitting around using their phones.”
New-to-me, from Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas: Cuban journalist uses creativity to dig for information and maintain database for other media. “For a year, Cuban journalist Barbara Maseda has been running Proyecto Inventario, whose mission is to publish any and all available data about Cuba. It is intended to serve as a database for consultation and use by other independent journalists writing about the island.”
Reuters: Twitter restores some blocked Cuban official accounts. “Twitter Inc has restored some of the accounts of Cuban state-run media, journalists and government officials it had blocked on Wednesday, although others like that of Communist Party leader Raul Castro remain suspended.”
BBC: Twitter suspends government-run accounts in Cuba. “Twitter has suspended several accounts run by the Cuban government including those of state-run media and of officials including the daughter of Communist party leader Raul Castro.”
