Seated in the armchair of a hotel with my laptop open, I note the slow blinking of the WiFi transmitter and watch the stern faces of the custodians. This could be one more day trying to enter my own blog with an anonymous proxy, jumping over the censorship with a few tricks that let me look at the forbidden. On the bottom of the screen a banner announces that I’m navigating at 41 kilobytes a second. Joking with a friend I warn her we’d better hold onto our hair so it won’t get messed up from “speeding.” But the narrow band doesn’t matter much this February afternoon. I’m here to cheer myself up, not to get depressed all over again by the damned situation of an Internet undermined by filters. I have come to see if the long night of censorship no longer hangs over Generation Y. With just a click I manage to enter the site that, since March of 2008, has not been visible from a public place. I’m so surprised I shout and the camera watching from the ceiling records the fillings in my teeth as I laugh uncontrollably.
After three years, my virtual space is again sighted from inside Cuba.
I don’t know the reasons for the end to this blockade, although I can speculate that the celebration of the 2011 Havana International Computer Science Fair has brought many foreign guests and it is better to show them an image of tolerance, of supposed openings in the realm of citizen expression. It is also possible that after having proved that blocking a website only makes it more attractive to internauts, the cyberpolice have chosen to exhibit the forbidden fruit they so demonized in recent months. If it’s because of a technical glitch that will soon be corrected, once again throwing shadows over my virtual diary, then there will be plenty of time to loudly denounce it. But for the moment, I make plans for the platforms www.vocescubanas.com and www.desdecuba.com to enjoy a long stay with us.
This is a citizen victory over the demons of control. We have taken back what belongs to us. These virtual places are ours, and they will have to learn to live with what they can no longer deny.
