The press advances with cautious steps, not confronting but questioning, it says that “there are differences of opinion,” and serves at the citizens’ table a menu of political and social diversity. True, they are small unsure steps, contained and small still — baby steps — but they’ve started to walk.
Some journalists on the Cuban television information system air critical writings and audiovisuals, as in one denouncing the manager of a hard currency store who declined to give an interview. It is interesting to imagine how such reports pass the heads of the censorship department, the news director, who surely must in turn consult with the vice president or president of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television.
I’m pretty sure that the curtains of this budding opening are have the authorities at the helm; but is the result it could have in society — in fact, is already influencing — and in the Cuban media the same as if it were natural and spontaneous?
The effect is evident in the media universe itself, as it increases the number of workers in the media who dare to “take the leap” of freedom of information and publicize problems that for decades, were shoved under the rug of censorship under the anachronistic carpet of immobility.
The comedians also do their thing, mainly in the capital, lowering the bar each time a little more than permitted — despite fifty years of limitations and the to-be-expected fear — and extract humor rather than pus in their shows. I’m sure the time will come in which as if at a free national auction, with a wide catalog of freedoms and rights, we will stand openly “without auctioneers” and ask: Who offers more?
October 7 2012
