Video games spread in Cuba despite limitations

Pirated Computer and Video Games, along with CDs and DVDs are sold "legally" on the streets of Cuba.

Despite the many limitations on access to digital-age technology in Cuba, a taste for computer games is spreading in this country, giving rise to a youthful movement that is beginning to conquer new public spaces.

Starting in the 1990s, a small group of mainly young people in this socialist island nation began to enter the world of video games. Over time, the number of people involved grew, and they became keen on face-to-face competitions and meetings, instead of just virtual interaction.

This gave rise to the nongovernmental Cuban Electronic Sports Group (ADEC), created in November 2007, which works to "spread the culture and wholesome entertainment" of these types of games, Ian Pedro Carbonell, the group's president, told IPS.

StarCraft, a strategy game created in 1998 by the U.S. company Blizzard, is the best promoted and most popular among the young people who belong to ADEC. Since its launch on the market, it has gained followers worldwide, and in some countries, such as South Korea, it is considered a "sport".

It can be played on computers with minimal technical requirements, although they need to be able to connect to a network for playing in groups, a more engaging option than a single person playing against the computer.

"In Cuba, not everybody has access to this technology," Jessica Sori, one of the few women who have participated in the StarCraft tournaments, told IPS. "As a serious sport, it can only be played by those who don’t have heavy work or study commitments, because it requires a lot of time," explained the young University of Havana sociology major.

Very few young women compete in the tournaments, more popular among men, which are organised by ADEC at least five times a year for both individuals and teams. Sori said young women are not attracted to this type of game because of a sexist upbringing from an early age.

The Blizzard game, which has spread to all parts of the world in either paid or pirated form, recreates an imaginary universe inhabited by the Terran, Protoss and Zerg civilisations. Each has its own weaknesses and strengths, allowing players to chart their strategies.

To win, players must be familiar with the potential of each civilisation, develop mental agility and know the keyboard commands to execute each action as fast as possible. In addition to StarCraft, the Cuban group of about 300 members sponsors games that it considers electronic sports, such as Warcraft.

With no profit motive, young people, especially university students, organise get-togethers to play in cities like Holguín, Sancti Spíritus, Camagüey and Matanzas. "In other provinces, the electronic sports movement is practically null," Osmani Grau, a computer programmer in the central province of Sancti Spíritus, told IPS.

The scant access to communications via telephone or cell-phone hinders the enjoyment of this hobby in teams, Grau commented. According to a National Office of Statistics survey of about 38,000 homes conducted in early 2010, only 2.9 percent of Cubans had direct access to the Internet in 2009.

Nevertheless, the tournaments began a few years ago in private homes. In fact, the first Havana StarCraft League existed before ADEC was established. Later, the Havana Teams League formed, and the idea of going public gradually gained force.

In Havana, the first gathering in an institutional space took place in 2009, in the University Student Centre, run by the federation to which all university students belong. For the past year, the Maxim Rock auditorium in the capital, home to the Cuban Rock Agency, has accommodated ADEC events.

At the Maxim, as this Cuban temple to rock music is popularly known, the group adds other expressions of electronic culture to its programme. Cuban DJs and VJs (music video jockeys) provide the music for the tournaments, which have become more and more frequent.

The main aim of this youthful initiative, however, is to be recognised as an organisation by the National Institute of Sport and Recreation (INDER), the state entity that regulates this area in Cuba. But "INDER has a complicated financing situation; it is impossible for it to take us on right now," Padrón said.

Talks with INDER led only to an agreement of possible support for locales and infrastructure, said Padrón, a cybernetics student at the University of Havana. "We asked them to at least recognise this new form of wholesome recreation, and in the future, to validate it as a sport."

If these games are classified as a sport, ADEC could aspire to its own venue, better technology for other games, and even sending talented Cubans to international tournaments, Padrón commented. For now, they finance their activities with the support of companies and producers like singer-songwriter Pablo Milanes’s PM Records.

Informal networks using thick cables running from window to window, or wireless connections with telecommunications devices such as AP (wireless access points), liven up the underground, almost clandestine, world of electronic games in Cuba.

This form of entertainment, which tends to become an addiction, explodes when played over the web. Cubans have devised creative alternatives, according to a 29-year-old Havana man who asked for anonymity. He told IPS he knows of five wireless networks near his neighbourhood, each of them comprising about 20 people, set up for that purpose. The technology for these connections is not sold in authorised stores. On the underground market, however, accessible on websites like Revolico, buyers can find everything from video cards to APs for connecting some 30 computers within the radius covered by the antenna’s signal.

By Dalia Acosta

Source:  Caribbean360

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Iconoclastic Young Filmmakers Look at Real Issues in Cuba

Lighting up dark areas of Cuban society with youthful vigour, Muestra Joven (the Young Cinema Exhibition), a local independent film event, reached its 10th anniversary characterised by experimentation and subjects that are both complex and invisible in the national media.

"The exhibition has earned a place for itself, against all the odds," Danae Diéguez, a member of the organising committee since 2006, told IPS about the festival that took place Feb. 22-27.

The sharp criticism expressed in the films has clashed more than once with the authorities, as seen for instance in the attempt to censor the documentary "Revolution", by Mayckell Pedrero, about the underground Cuban hip hop duo Los Aldeanos. The film was awarded several prizes in 2010.

Filmmaker Carlos Y. Rodríguez said one of the virtues of the festival is that it creates "a space for works that deal with controversial real-life problems."

Rodríguez, who is from Santiago de Cuba, 861 kilometres east of Havana, told IPS that this goal has been achieved "prudently, by educating filmmakers and also, to a lesser extent, society."

The festival, launched in 2000, was called the New Directors' Exhibition until this year, when it was renamed Muestra Joven (Young Cinema Exhibition).

Cuba's film institute, ICAIC, coordinates the event, but according to Diéguez it upholds the "open mentality" that is a hallmark of the new generation of Cuban filmmakers.

Thanks to the growing availability of video cameras, democratisation of technology in the country had already progressed by the start of the new century.

Works by those who picked up a camera and recorded films purely for pleasure were collected in the late 1980s and early 1990s and exhibited by the Asociación Hermanos Saíz, a non-governmental cultural organisation for young artists, paving the way for ICAIC's initiative.

The aim of the ICAIC exhibitions was to "bring together, attract and identify the group of people who make alternative movies, outside the bounds of the film industry, with different approaches to production, media, and to some extent style," Diéguez said.

Films presented at the festival attained new qualitative heights with the advent of digital technology, which expanded the potential for filming and editing. The costs of a production of this type are paid by the filmmakers and any personal supporters they may have who can contribute funding.

"Independence is both material and mental," said Diéguez.

Prostitution, violence against women, drug addiction, small farmers forced to abandon their land because of lack of resources, shortcomings in the public education system, the superficiality of Cuban institutions, and poverty are some of the topics addressed by the films each year.

Film expert Enrique Colina says the young people who gather at the exhibition have a passion for the burning issues of Cuba's day-to-day reality, which arises from the absence of critical and social journalism in this Caribbean island nation where the mass media have been in state hands since the mid-1960s.

Social criticism plays a leading role in the festival films. "It has allowed people to express all those things that have damaged them deep down, including intense and hard-hitting social issues," Ariagna Fajardo, who works for Televisión Serrana, a community video and TV project in the east of the country, told IPS.

This 27-year-old creative artist has been singled out for distinctions at the festival, in 2010 for "¿A dónde vamos?" (Where Are We Going?) about rural migration, and this year for "Papalotes" (Kites), which deals with the inertia that has overtaken people in Cuba.

This year there were 69 competition entries, and the main categories were fiction, documentary, animation and original score.

"Memorias del desarrollo" (Memories of Development) by Miguel Coyula won the fiction and original score prizes. It is the first movie to be filmed and exhibited in both the United States and Cuba since the U.S. embargo was imposed in 1962. The film was made possible by its independent, not-for-profit status.

The film takes up the story of Sergio, the leading character in "Memorias del subdesarrollo" (Memories of Underdevelopment), an iconic film by the late Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.

Fajardo said the exhibition helps get local stories onto the screens in cinemas in the capital, some of which later resonate with audiences in other countries. But in spite of the attractiveness, strength and topicality of many films, "perhaps they will not generate dialogue beyond Havana's movie houses," she lamented.

However, experts say the main distribution circuit for these films is as alternative as the exhibition itself.

USB flash drives that plug into computers are used for person-to-person circulation, often on the black market, of films like "De leones, buzos y tanqueros" (2008), about people who scavenge recyclable materials on the streets and in garbage dumps, to survive.

On the so-called "USB market", pirated local or international films, television serials or shows recorded on compact disks, DVDs or external storage devices are informally rented or sold.

It is also a Cuban custom to swap or give away all kinds of digital-format audiovisual products, for entertainment or information purposes.

Amateur films compete on equal terms with those by professional directors at the exhibition, which in its first 10 years has launched now-recognised filmmakers like Lester Hamlet and Pavel Giroud, and has helped drive the current boom in independent films in Cuba.

Since 2009, a selection of the films presented at the Havana exhibition has subsequently toured all the country's provinces. "But they cannot get to regions that are remote from the provincial capitals. That population is left out, and does not find out what's going on," Fajardo stressed.

On several occasions, Magali Cavus, a researcher at the University of Lyon in France, has taken Cuban Young Cinema works and alternative films to France. "The films help people to see Cuba not just in black-and-white, but in many more shades," she told IPS.

By Ivet González

From: IPS

Trailer for the documentary "Revolution", screened in 2010 at Muestra Joven

Revolution
Mayckell Pedrero Mariol / Norway / 2010 / 50 min.
This film, by Cuban director Mayckell Pedrero Mariol, is currently one of the most controversial works on the "island of freedom". It had only one public screening in Havana. Just to be on the safe side, journalists and bloggers were not allowed to attend. The protagonists of this documentary are members of the hip-hop group Los Aldeanos, whose lyrics faithfully describe the true reality of Cuban life. For Aldo and El B rap is a war, the Cuban leader is Pinocchio, and free speech is one of the most basic human rights. With their incisive and politically incorrect hip-hop, they have gained considerable popularity among young Cubans. Even though their records are self-released, they are constantly winning music awards. Besides interviews with the group's members and footage of their concerts, this formally inventive film - riotously edited in the style of a music video with a large dose of hip-hop - also presents black-and-white glimpses of everyday life on the streets of Havana, where Los Aldeanos are trying to light the way towards better times.

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Cuba: Cyberwar? Video Sparks Debate, Anger, Skepticism

A video posted February 1^st on Vimeo features a 52-minute presentation on new information technologies and a “ciberguerra” allegedly being waged on Cuba by the United States government and US-based NGOs. The man delivering the presentation has since been identified as Eduardo Fontes Suárez, a cyber security official at Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior (MININT). Initial reports called this a classified government video that had been leaked, but some bloggers (on and off the island) are questioning this assertion.

La Ciberpolicia en Cuba

You can watch the video here or go directly to: 
La ciber policia en Cuba on Vimeo.

The full transcription in English is available at Translating Cuba.

Posted by Coral Negro, a Vimeo account holder who offers no profile information of any kind, and has posted no other material, the video has ignited an international debate about its origin and its content. An original transcript of the video can be found at Café Fuerte [es], and an English translation can be found at Translating Cuba. The presentation provides a detailed description of US government efforts to establish unauthorized Wi-Fi connection spots on the island, with the help of dissidents and representatives from US-based NGOs, mainly the International Republican Institute. Fontes indicates that Alan Gross, the jailed USAID worker who was arrested in December of 2009 for illegally distributing IT equipment to Cubans, was involved with Washington’s project to establish these hot spots.

He describes bloggers such as Yoani Sánchez as counterrevolutionaries who, with the support of the Spanish and US governments, are attempting to use new technologies in order to spark a popular uprising against the Castro government. He also discusses the Cuban government’s latest plans for ICT use on the island, and the benefits of certain technologies, remarking on Hugo Chávez’s use of Twitter as a political tool.

Penúltimos Días [es], a Cuba-focused blog based in Spain, reposted the video, and soon thereafter a former (and now exiled) high school classmate of Fontes’ identified him and posted photographs of Fontes as a teenager in the late 1980s. On Cuban exile community blogs such as Babalú [es], readers seemed to delight in ridiculing Fontes, calling him a “cíberesbirro” or “cyberthug.” Fontes’ Facebook page has been deactivated since he was identified on Penúltimos Días. His Twitter account remains active, but he has not tweeted since December of 2010.

It is clear that Fontes is a real official of Cuban intelligence. What remains unclear is whether his presentation and the leak were “real” as well.

Regina Coyula, a former employee of the counterintelligence unit at MININT who is now the author of La Mala Letra [es] believes the video is authentic, and has denied another blogger’s accusation that she herself leaked the video. She reasons that the video contains far too much information about the power of ICTs to be a fake. She writes:

[L]a conferencia [es] un tanto didáctica. Así me entero de unidades satelitales wi-fi de alta velocidad como parte de un módulo que incluye blackberries y notebooks destinadas a blogueros…y contrarrevolucionarios tradicionales; me entero de que a través de ese servicio cualquier persona de pronto pudiera tener en su pc el mensaje de estás conectado; [Fontes] reconoce que es peligroso que la gente se conecte por la libre, y admite que nadie beneficiado va a quejarse ni a averiguar.

[T]he conference [is] quite didactic. Through it I learn of high-speed Wi-Fi satellite units as part of a module that includes blackberries and notebooks intended for bloggers…and traditional counterrevolutionaries. I learn that, through that service, any person could suddenly get the “You are connected” message on their PC; [Fontes] recognizes the dangers of people’s freedom of Internet access, and admits that nobody who benefits from this will either complain or inquire about where the connection came from.

Yoani Sánchez [es] was unequivocally certain that much of what Fontes said was untrue. But she wondered whether it was he, or someone above him, who was responsible for this misinformation.

¿Usted es de los que fabrica las mentiras o de los que se cree las mentiras? Me gustaría hacerle esta  pregunta al ponente que despliega una complicada teoría de la conspiración en este video. Si se trata de alguien que sólo transmite un mensaje, entonces la respuesta es sencilla: la falsedad se cuece más arriba y él es apenas un emisario. Pero me temo que parte de lo que expone frente a esos adustos militares –que exhiben una constelación de estrellas en sus uniformes– es de su propia cosecha, se ha gestado en su interior.

Are you one of those who fabricates lies? Or one of those who believes them? I would like to ask this question to the speaker who deploys a complicated conspiracy theory in this video. If it’s someone who is just sending a message, then the answer is simple: the falsehood is concocted higher up and he is just the messenger. But I fear that part of what he is expounding in front of those grim soldiers — with a constellation of stars on their uniforms — is  his own production, cooked up by himself.

Sánchez also pointed out that Fontes' description of social media platforms reflected a limited understanding of their applications. Reinaldo Escobar (who blogs at Desde Aquí), wrote in an article on Diario de Cuba [es] that the content of the presentation had to have been fabricated. He referred specifically to Fontes’ claim that bloggers like Yoani Sánchez (Escobar’s wife) have been “created” and supported by the US government.

Si [Fontes] miente por iniciativa propia de presentarse como…imprescindible ante sus jefes, o si miente cumpliendo estrictas orientaciones de una mano tenebrosa, eso no puedo saberlo. Pero sé que miente. Me consta. La blogosfera alternativa cubana no es una creación del imperialismo norteamericano sino fruto de una conjunción de factores entre los que se destacan el fracaso del sistema socialista, la inconformidad ciudadana, especialmente entre los más jóvenes, y el desarrollo de la tecnología a nivel mundial.

Whether [Fontes] lied on his own initiative, […] wanting to appear talented and indispensable before his bosses, or if he lied to satisfy the strict demands of a dark hand, I can’t tell. But I know he’s lying. I know. The alternative Cuban blogosphere is not a creation of U.S. imperialism, but the fruit of a [combination] of factors among which are the failure of the socialist system, public discontent — especially among young people — and the worldwide development of technology.” [Translation courtesy of Translating Cuba.]

The Cuban Triangle’s [en] Phil Peters believes that the video was created and intentionally released (under the guise of a leak) in order to send a message. He reasons that, unlike a typical leak, the video appeared to have been edited thoroughly, and was conspicuously devoid of information that could harm the Cuban government.

There is nothing in the briefing that is remotely inconvenient to the Cuban government; nothing that compromises an operation or breaks an important secret…[M]uch of the video conveys messages that Havana would probably want to present to international audiences. The cachet of a “leak” from the heart of a communist security apparatus ensures that those messages fly farther and wider than would words on paper.

Whether or not the video is “real,” US officials and IRI have firmly denied Fontes’ claims regarding WiFi connection spots. But regardless of whether it is entirely true or not, the message Fontes communicates here is clearly aligned with recent ICT policy directives of the Cuban government, which have focused closely on the nation’s “ciberguerra” against the United States.

A coincidence?

The Cuban novelist and blogger Zoe Valdés, who now lives in Paris, shares Peters’ contention. It is not a coincidence, she suggests, that the video surfaced at the height of the popular uprising in Egypt, given the critical role of social networks and ICTs in the movement. News from Cairo has prompted many journalists and bloggers to wonder whether, given the gradually increasing number of ICTs in Cuba, Parque Central could become the next Tahrir Square.

Valdés also points to “Por un levantamiento popular en Cuba,” a Facebook group created last week by members of the Cuban exile community in Spain, urging Cubans to follow the example of Egypt and rise up against the Castro government.

Valdés writes that while this is troubling, she believes that the Cuban government chooses to openly condemn bloggers because they are an easy target.

[E]llos prefieren a disidentes cibernéticos …frente a justicieros callejeros que podrían multiplicarse por miles en mínimo tiempo. Los primeros no son considerados peligrosos, los segundos sí, y mucho. La propia Yoani Sánchez ha declarado que su blog no se ve en Cuba,* así que muy poca gente lee sus crónicas dentro de la isla.
[…]
Ese video, entonces, forma parte de la nueva estrategia del raulismo light, ignorar a los que son realmente dañinos a la dictadura ha sido siempre la elección de los castristas. Ellos saben que mencionar es reconocer, y que ignorar es desaparecer, fulminar, borrar.

They prefer cybernetic dissidents to those who fight for justice in the streets, who can multiply by miles in little time. The first group is not considered dangerous, the second is, and very much so. Yoani Sánchez herself has declared that she can't see her blog within Cuba,* so few people read her chronicles on the island.

[…] That video, then, forms part of the new raulismo light strategy. Ignoring those who are truly harmful to the dictatorship has always been the way of Castrists. They know that to mention is to recognize, and that to ignore is to disappear, to fulminate, to erase.

Her point about “raulismo light” does well to elucidate important intricacies in how Cuban state intelligence works. But while Valdés implies that there lies a clear distinction between dissidents in virtual and real space, the powerful online presence of dissident groups like the Damas de Blanco and the OZT Yo Rechazo movements disprove this—they demonstrate how this distinction is increasingly blurry, if not indecipherable.

In sum, it seems that whether or not the presentation was “real,” and whether or not it was a true leak, the video (if not entirely truthful) gives the world a rare, intimate window into the thinking and dialogue on ICTs and blogging that is happening within Cuban intelligence. However uncertain its origins, it holds valuable information for all those who have a stake in the future of ICTs in Cuba.

*Sánchez's blog became accessible in Cuba on February 8, 2011.

By Ellery Biddle

From: Global Voices

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Video shows armed Cuban police breaking up student protest

A Cuban anti-riot squad, previously unseen but surprisingly well-equipped and with fixed bayonets, quelled a Pakistani student protest in Matanzas, a video of the event shows.

“Our hand will not tremble in the face of violence,” one Cuban official warns the medical school protesters in the video, broadcast on the Maria Elvira Live program on MegaTV.

The official adds that it’s the second protest by the Pakistanis but gives no dates for either, and says 15 leaders of the latest manifestation were to be flown home immediately.

A statement by the Cuban Embassy in Pakistan on Thursday, after parts of the video were posted on the Internet, confirmed the protests but did not mention the students’ complaints of inadequate education and living conditions.

“Unfortunately, since the first months of 2007 and until now, grave violations of discipline have repeatedly been committed by a small group of students,” the statement said.
“Such violations of discipline have included, among others, disrespect for their professors, disregard to the Cuban authorities, failing to attend class, misbehavior, physical aggressions . . . along with acts of violence,” said the statement, published by the online Pakistan Observer.
 
The video shows scores of members of the anti-riot squad dressed in black and equipped well for a country where riots are extremely rare — with tear gas guns, riot batons, dogs, face shields and U.S.-styled helmets. Several had bayonets fixed on their AK assault rifles.
About five squad members are seen briefly pushing back a group of a few dozen students, some wearing skull caps. But the video did not show any signs of violence.

WELL PREPARED
It’s not clear if the unit, previously unseen in public, belonged to the police or military, but its deployment signaled that the government is well prepared for street disturbances.

“This is a super well-equipped unit, which we have never seen before but which showed that it was ready for something serious,” said Camilo Loret de Mola, who appeared on the Maria Elvira Salazar program that broadcast the video.

Loret de Mola said the video was received from a Cuban he declined to identify. The program broadcast segments on Wednesday and Thursday.

The protest took place at the Maximo Santiago Haza Medical School in Jagüey Grande, in Matanzas province, where nearly 1,000 Pakistanis have been studying on scholarships arranged after a devastating earthquake hit Pakistan in 2005.

Pakistani media reports indicate that it occurred sometime before March, and that at least five of the students were sent home.

The video, apparently taken on cellphones, shows the riot squad virtually surrounding the campus and posted on rooftops as the students are warned by Rolando Gómez, a foreign ministry official who helped set up the scholarship program.

FUTURE AT STAKE
“Think well about what’s at play here,” Gómez cautions them, because “today is the day that you decide if you want to be doctors or you want to go home.”

El Nuevo Herald phone calls to a number listed for the embassy went unanswered.

Under the scholarship program, about 400 Pakistani students arrived in Cuba in 2007 and another 600 arrived a year later. They were sent to the Matanzas school rather than the better known Latin American School for Medicine near Havana, which has about 30,000 students from 126 countries.

A letter purporting to speak for the 1,000 Pakistani students in Cuba, posted Sept. 17, 2009 on the website Overseas Pakistani Friends, detailed a slew of complaints against Cuban and Pakistani authorities.

“We are very much frustrated and feel our future on stake, as we do not even know whether our degree is valid or not” once they return to Pakistan, the letter notes.

While the scholarship program touted Cuba’s medical education as “world leading,” the letter added, the Matanzas school “by no definitions of the word can be called a world leading university.”

The converted Spanish-language school lacks facilities such as a “library, proper laboratory, no specimens (The dead bodies etc) are available for the dissection, and even the nearest hospital is far away from our school.

“How can one think of a medical school without any hospital attached?” the letter asked.

Video (Spanish):

From: SignalFire

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