Apretaste! A Craigslist for the Island of the Disconnected / Yoani Sanchez

Home page of the site Apretaste!

Tatania wants to sell a stroller, Humberto is interested in some sneakers, and the retired woman on the corner is offering a mahogany desk. Individual barter and buying-selling alleviates the shortages in state markets. So it’s become common to see walls plastered with ads offering houses for sale or the services of someone who repairs furniture. The classified sites on the Internet also trade in anything you can imagine, from an illegal satellite dish to birdseed.

Despite the poor connectivity, Craigslist-style sites are very popular on the Island. Some of them have developed strategies to reach Cuban readers, such as the distribution of classifieds via email. This is the case with Apretaste! which offers the service of sending and receiving information via email for users on our “Island of the Disconnected.” Winner of a hackathon held in Miami this February, the site has great potential and boasts a simple design that loads quickly.

Visiting Apretaste!, I remember a phrase I always repeat when I encounter something hard. “Creativity is the capacity to open a window when the door is closed,” I tell myself, like a mantra in complex situations. And this classified portal is a diminutive and promising window that has opened in the iron wall of disconnection. A breath of air flows through it.

I hope that one day Tatiana, Humberto, and the retired lady on the corner can not only use the powers of Apretaste! through email, but also enter it on the web, click, enter a phrase into its simple search engine and find, in this way, whatever they need.

7 April 2014