Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sánchez
Commemorative plaque in Havana for the first telephone conversation in
Spanish, which occurred in that city on 31 October 1877
It weighs more than a "bad marriage," my grandmother used to say about
that enormous black telephone in the neighbor's house. It had a very
short cord and after making a call my index finger was covered with the
dust from under the dial. Still, I waited anxiously for the shout that
announced my mother was calling from her work or from some province. We
went running up the stairs to glue our ears to the receiver and listen
to what the almost metallic voice said on the other end. Among the more
than ten families living in that tenement, only two had telephones. So
any quarrel with the owners of this important gadget would leave you
helpless, incommunicado.
If, in March of 2008, Raul Castro had imagined the role cell phones
would play in Cuba's incipient civil society, he probably never would
have authorized their use. Before that date, Cubans had to ask a
foreigner to take out a cell phone contract and then allow them the use
of the service. The desired SIM card could only be acquired by the same
people who could enjoy the hotel rooms and car rentals, in short, by
people who had not been born on this Island. Fortunately, this apartheid
ended almost four years ago, and since that date more than 1.2 million
users have contracted with Cubacel for prepaid service. This figure
shouldn't please us, because we are still far behind the rest of the
Latin American nations.
Despite the limitations of its high cost, low coverage area in many
places in the country, and the temporary suspensions of service to
"inconvenient" users, cell phones have changed our lives. At this time,
the ability to send and receive text messages has strengthened contact
between citizens, fostered the exchange of news, and given us the
invaluable ability to post Twitter messages without Internet access. A
few days ago the price of internal text messages was reduced by 44%,
though we are still light years above the prices in effect in the rest
of the world. If the objective of the country's only telephone company
is to attract more customers and raise profits, they will also have to
accept the collateral affect of the freeing up of information and
communications that this will bring. Cubacel calculates the economic
benefits, but it is incapable of realizing — in its true potential — the
powerful social tool that we now carry in our pockets.
7 February 2011
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