The Out-of-Date Updating

Alfredo Fernandez Rodriguez

HAVANA TIMES — Recently, I read with amazement about the news of Professor Elaine Diaz announcing the “farewell” of her blog.

The fact somewhat dismayed me, because — though I don’t share her faith in the salvation of the Cuban regime — I do respect her for the seriousness with which she generally presented her writings, well removed from the rigidity of the national press.

Just over a month ago we witnessed the “death” of the website Joven Cuba, run by pro-government young academics who also said they “decided” to shut down their blog.

However shortly after they said they’d be reopening it with new opportunities for access. After six weeks though, there’s still no trace of Joven Cuba. Hopefully it will reopen when their new school year begins.

There’s an old saying that goes: “In politics, what’s real is unseen.” If that’s so, then we can speculate about the closing of these two sites where young government supporters felt freer than in the written press.

There they criticized real things, though without going into too much depth into the causes, while defending the revolution as a viable system as long as the necessary changes are made.

Things must be going pretty bad for the Cuban government if it has to pressure even its younger defenders to give up their efforts on the Internet.

If there’s anything indisputable about the “updating of the Cuban model,” it’s that its essential to maintain people out-of-touch such as always occurs with censorship and the abduction of words, all of this in order to survive.

I should reiterate that I have no evidence that Joven Cuba or Elaine Daiz were pressured by the agencies of state security to close their respective blogs, but I find it all too suspicious.

Now that it seems that Raulism can’t even put up with its “independent defenders” in a medium such as the Internet — with very low impact on Cuban public opinion — it seems logical to speculate on who will be the next pro-government blogger to “say farewell.”