The Cuban Internet -- a look back and looking forward

Does Raúl Castro still fear the Internet? Does he have reason to do so?

I recently attended the 2015 Conference of the Association for the study of the Cuban Economy, where I was on a panel on the future of the Internet in Cuba with two friends who played significant roles in Cuban networking history. A third colleague, Juan Blanco, was in the audience.

Jesus Martinez, Juan Blanco and Óscar Visiedo

Óscar and later Jesus were the directors of CENIAI, the National Center for Automatic Interchange of Information, and were responsible for Cuba's first computer network activity. Juan ran political interference for them -- using his social-political contacts to argue for the adoption of email. (Juan says the debate focused purely on email, ignoring the Usenet News groups).

CENIAI staff, 1990. Photo by Óscar Visiedo, Jesus Martinez second from left in the back row

CENIAI began networking in 1982 with connections to Soviet and European databases and limited email. By 1992, CENIAI had 62 staff members, and was part of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment.

They were not on the Internet, but connected by phone several times a day to exchange batches of email and discussion forum posts. The discussion groups, known collectively as Usenet News, covered a wide variety technical, cultural and political discussion. They were part of an asynchronous global network that used the Unix to Unix copy protocol (UUCP):

UUCP connections, 1988

By 1995, Cuba was among the networking leaders in the Caribbean. CENIAI and three other networks with international UUCP links were transferring over 60 Mbytes of international email and had nearly 2,600 users:

Monthly international email traffic in 1995

Cuba's UUCP connection was to the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) in Canada. APC provided connections for many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and that attracted the attention of politicians, who saw NGOs as subversive. There was debate and the Interior Ministry argued that material sent to and received from APC should be blocked since it could not be controlled.

Juan Blanco argued that the Ministry of the Interior was only concerned with control of communication at the expense of arresting national development, saying that had their view prevailed when Lenin was around there would be no phone system in the USSR. His argument was effective and the UUCP traffic to APC was allowed to continue.

Óscar Visiedo left for the United States and Jesus Martinez took over as director. Under his leadership, CENIAI established their first Internet connection, a 64 kbps IP link to the US National Science Foundation (NSF) backbone. The cost was born by the NSF International connections program, which connected academic and research networks from 28 nations.

Martinez and his colleagues were proud and happy to be on the Internet, but the Internet was no longer under the radar. In June, 1996, the Executive Committee of the Cuban Council of Ministers issued Decree 209 regulating the use and development of information networks and Internet services within Cuba. The decree established an inter-ministerial commission with responsibility for all matters relating to access to and the information on computer networks of global reach. The commission was to be chaired by the Minister of Metallurgical Industry and Electronics and include Ministries of Science, Technology and Environment, Communications, Interior, Revolutionary Armed Forces and Justice. Many interests were represented.

It appears that power was consolidated in January 2000, when Decree Law 204 created the current Ministry of Informatics and Communications (MIC) with control over Information technology, the electronics industry, telecommunications, broadcasting, radio spectrum and the postal service – traditional media and computer networks.

Today, the Cuban Internet is far less developed than would be expected in a nation with Cuba's level of education and development. This is due to the embargo, the poor economy at the time of Cuba's connection to the Internet and government fear. All three must change for the Cuban Internet to thrive.

The fear was based in part on the collapse of the Soviet Union. In October 1997, Raúl Castro said:

Glasnost, which undermined the USSR and other socialist countries, consisted in handing over the mass media, one by one, to the enemies of socialism.

In a 1995 interview, Cuban researcher Gillian Gunn noted that since the spring of 1993, there had been Cuban government memos calling for increased audit and control of NGOs and Raúl Castro commented on her report, noting that NGOs were a threat.

The Cubans may also have been aware of the role of the global UUCP network in thwarting the 1991 Soviet Coup attempt against Gorbachev.

In spite of these reservations, there was debate within Cuba. Óscar Visiedo demonstrated the network for Fidel Castro, who he says was positive. (Fidel inaugurated the Youth Computer Clubs). At the same time as Raúl Castro spoke out against the Internet, pragmatic Finance Minister (?) Carlos Lage reiterated Juan Blanco's view, saying:

One telex can cost twelve dollars [whereas] the same message costs 75 cents in the form of a fax and 3 cents via the Internet ... in spite of our blockaded circumstances, we are in a relatively good position [to face the challenges of such scientific and technological changes], due to the educational and scientific work developed by the revolution.

This time the hard liners prevailed, deciding to limit access to the Internet, but today US support for the embargo is declining, the Cuban economy is in better shape than it was in 1996 and it will improve further post December 17. One issue remains -- does Raúl Castro still fear the Internet? Does he have reason to do so?

Cuba led early Caribbean networking -- might they lead in the future?

Grenada's Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell, who heads CARICOM (the Caribbean Community Secretariat), has announced that CARICOM will send a science, technology and innovation committee delegation to Cuba with the hope of strengthening the regional ICT structure.

At first it may seem surprising that CARICOM would be looking for leadership in the nation with the worst Internet access in the region, but, upon reflection, it is not so strange. In the period just before their connection to the Internet, Cuba was the leading networking nation in the region. In the pre-Internet days, Caribbean networks exchanged traffic asynchronously, doing bulk international transfers once or twice a day.

As shown in the following table, Cuba's pre-Internet international traffic volume was second only to that of the Dominican Republic in early 1996.

Country	Traffic MB/month	Nbr. of networks
Dominican Republic	63.62	2
Cuba	45.54	4
Trinidad & Tobago	17.14	1
Belize	13.74	1
Saint Lucia	11.72	1
Barbados	8.59	1
Bahamas	4.15	1
Suriname	2.29	1
Antigua & Bermuda	1.06	1
St. Vincent & The Grenadines	.79	1
Greneda	.63	1
Guyana	0.10	1
Total	169.37	16

However, international traffic volume does not tell the whole story. Cuba had four significant networks with international links. Three served specific user communities -- Medical researchers and practitioners, Biotechnology researchers and young people at Cuba's Youth Computer Clubs. These networks had their own technicians and knowlegeable users. (The Domincan Republic had two networks but one was dominant, with 94% of the nation's traffic).

The fourth Cuban network was operated by CENIAI, the Center for Automated Information Interchange of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. CENIAI began networking in 1982 and was the Cuban interface to Soviet block networks. They had a large staff and they offered email, discussion forum access, database access, consulting services, etc. Later in 1996 CENIAI established Cuba's first direct connection to the Internet.

CENIAI staff in 1990

(It is interesting to note that Cuban Internet connectiivty was initiated in the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment and it is now overseen by the Ministry of Informatics and Communications -- paralleling the evolution of the Internet from a research and education network to one for general use).

Together, the four networks had 3,386 users -- by far the most in the Caribbean. This and the statistics shown above are from a 1996 article, Cuba Networking Update, which concluded that:

Cuba has developed a sizable user community, with networking skills and applications. The community has grown out of both a long-standing commitment to education throughout the society and major research, development, and therapy programs in biotechnology and medicine.

Given Cuba's networking history, relatively large population, policy on education and research and the present thaw with the United States, CARICOM may be quite right in their expectation that Cuba will become a significant force in Caribbean ICT.

Anne Nelson's visit to Havana

Anne Nelson, who teaches New Media and Development Communication at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs has described her experience with the Internet during a trip to Havana.

The post is quite interesting. She talks with a lot of young people about the Internet, accessing the Internet from hotels, Cuban policy and more. Her post also includes pictures she took, like this one of the Youth Computer Club headquarters building.

I was struck by the contrast between her visit there and mine nearly twenty years ago, when the Internet was fresh and the networking community optimistic. She was turned away at the door -- no foreigners were allowed in and no photographs. When I visited one evening, I was welcomed. I spent a couple hours hanging out and had a long meeting with the director. I also recall watching US satellite TV on one of those old RGB TV projectors and snapped this photo of a framed note from Fidel, written when he dedicated the Youth Computer Clubs in 1991.

I came back later during the day and watched kids -- mostly playing computer games -- and computer classes in progress. I also recall a warm reception at the Youth Computer Club booth at the Informatica conference and exposition:

Times have changed :-(. Check out Anne's post -- you'll like it.

Informática 2013 and 1992

The fifteenth Cuban international trade show and conference, Informática 2013, took place this week. Below, you see a photo of the opening session and a picture taken on the exhibit floor.

I looked around the Informática Web site and found a couple of interesting things. Below, you see the logos of the "diamond" sponsors. Note that four are Chinese (top row) and six Cuban (two universities). This reminded me of a recent post on Chinese tech companies in Cuba.

Informática is a collection of technical conferences on various topics as well as a trade show. (We have already described the health conference) The technical presentations were categorized as follows:

• XV Congreso Internacional de Informática en la Educación “INFOREDU 2013”
• 1er Foro Internacional de TV Digital
• XI Simposio Internacional de Automatización
• VI Congreso Internacional de Tecnologías, Contenidos Multimedia y Realidad Virtual
• I Congreso Integracionista de las Ciencias y las Tecnologías Informáticas, Santiago de Cuba 
• IV Simposio Internacional de Electrónica: diseño, aplicaciones, técnicas avanzadas y retos actuales
• VIII Congreso Internacional de Geomática
• IX Congreso Internacional de Informática en Salud
• VI Simposio de Telecomunicaciones
• II Conferencia Internacional de Ciencias Computacionales e Informáticas
• Energía y Medio Ambiente
• IV Simposio Informática y Comunidad
• VI Taller de Calidad en las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones
• XI Seminario Iberoamericano de Seguridad en las Tecnologías de la Información
• III Taller internacional “Las TIC en la Gestión de las Organizaciones”

The papers are not online, but abstracts, comments and the email addresses of the authors are.

I could not help noticing that the Web site was a bit amateurish. For example, author's photos were sometime distorted -- re-sized without maintaining the original aspect ratio and HTML tags were visible in many of the abstracts. These are minor quibbles, but they are jarring in 2013.

As Muchas Gracias points out in a comment on a recent post, Cubans were required to pay registration fees in CUC this year rather than Cuban pesos. (In the US, conferences often admit people to the exhibit hall only free or at a reduced price -- perhaps that was also the case at Informática).

Informatica 1992

Muchas Gracias' comment also reminded me of my visits to Informática 1992 and 1994. Cuba did not yet have IP connectivity at that time, and the Internet was not well known outside of the technical community. The Internet community was open and friendly to a professor from the US, and I presented papers and met many people. Since I've begun reminiscing, here are some photos that my colleague Joel Snyder took at Informática 1992:

Pabexpo -- the site of Informática 

Attendees coming for the opening speeches

The stage for the opening

Two rows of dignitaries

Looking down on the exhibit hall

On the exhibit floor

On the exhibit floor

An East German computer

Cuban hardware running Russian software

Russian chips

The Youth Computer Club booth

Ceniai booth

In the Ceniai booth

Relaxing afterward at the Bay of Pigs

CENIAI staff photo taken in 1990

CENIAI -- The Center for Automatic Interchange of Information -- was Cuba's networking link to the Soviet bloc during the pre-Internet days. The CENIAI staff understood the potential importance of networking for Cuba and were enthusiastic members of the international networking community.

This photo, showing many members of the CENIAI staff, was taken on the malecón in Havana in 1990 by Oscar Visiedo who was director of CENIAI at the time. You can see Oscar's proud comments and the names of the people by following this link to Oscar Visiedo's Facebook page. (Jesus Martinez, who was CENIAI Director six years later when Cuba connected to the Internet, is second from the left in the back row).

This was taken six years before CENIAI got their first IP connection to the Internet.

These were the Cuban Internet pioneers.

US Army jeep at the Bay of Pigs and networking pioneers in Cuba

I have done several studies of the Cuban Internet over the years, and my colleague Joel Snyder just found a bunch of pictures he took during a 1992 trip. Here are two -- more later.

We took a couple days off from interviews and presentations and went to the Bay of Pigs. Some folks were driving around in a jeep that had been abandoned by the US invaders. That is me standing in the back.

The second picture shows some of the people at CENIAI, the Cuban organization that, at the time, was responsible for pre-Internet connectivity to other Soviet block nations. They were the networking pioneers in Cuba and, in 1996, established an IP link to the Internet. Oscar Visideo has provided the names of some of the people here.

If you are curious to read more about the history of the Internet in Cuba, click here.

Cuba's first Internet connection

Jesus Martinez (l) and Internet pioneer Vint Cerf

Cuba's first Internet connection was made in September 1996. CENIAI, the National Center of Automated Data Exchange, installed and managed the link. As was the custom in those days, CENIAI Director Jesus Martinez sent an email to his colleagues in the networking community announcing the connection. It read:

From: Director CENIAI/ Jesus Martinez/IDICT
To: enredo@conicit.ve
CC: jemar@amauta.rcp.net.pe
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 20:22:41 -0300 (EDT)

Dear friends,

After so many days, years of sacrifice and vigilance, I have great satisfaction to announce that our beloved Cuba, our "Cayman of the Indies," has been connected to the Internet as we had desired. We have a 64 Kbps link to Sprint in the U.S.

Many friends helped us and it would be unfair to mention some because of the risk of overlooking others. To be honest, major recognition goes to the Forum of Latin American and Caribbean Networks, first convened in Rio and most recently held in Lima. The Forum gave us the opportunity to meet, share strategies and estimate the size of our tasks to better plan our work. The Forum helped us achieve our connection to the Internet through technical teaching and solidarity.

Our greatest thanks go to my young colleagues at CENIAI, who had full confidence in our ability to make this historic connection.

A new era has just begun for us. We will soon announce our Web site and value-added services to do as much as we can to help develop our region and our culture.

A good Caribbean greeting,
Jesus

(The Forum Martinez refers to was a group of network leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean who held annual meetings sponsored by the Organization of American States and the US National Science Foundation).

I'm posting Martinez' announcement because it conveys the spirit of the small, international networking community he belonged to. He thanks The Forum for their assistance and solidarity. They did more than meet annually -- they collaborated year around using their new tools like email, threaded discussion, file transfer, Gopher (a limited, text-based precursor to the Web), remote login and eventually the Web. They were among the first to form what networking visionary J. C. R. Licklider had predicted thirty years earlier -- a community "not of common location, but of common interest."

Martinez was clearly proud of Cuba, but he also shared the values and enthusiasm of the international networking community, who believed, correctly, that the Internet would profoundly impact individuals, organizations and society. Cuba (CENIAI) had been among the leaders in pre-Internet networking. They came to the Internet a little late, but were confident of their ability to help develop the region and culture.

That ambition has been achieved to varying degrees around the world, but Cuba has fallen far behind. That's the bad news. The good news is that times are changing, and Cuba has a well educated population ready to use, shape and be shaped by the Internet. When the time comes, they will bring a Cuban perspective to the task, and will develop and use it in Cuban ways.

For example, Cuba has invested in medical education and health care for years and they are poor -- might that prepare them to invent new applications and devices for low-cost, decentralized medicine? Or, might they show us ways to fund the development of the Internet without heavy reliance on advertising and consumer sales?

Yes, I know I am being a Pollyanna, but humor me -- Martinez' vision will eventually be realized.

---

Much of the early history of Latin American networking is captured at the Network Pioneer site. You can browse the site or focus on The Forum or on Martinez' contribution. Links to reports of the seven annual Forum meetings are here.

For a short article on CENIAI written four years before their Internet connection, see Press, L. and Snyder, J., A Look at Cuban Networks.

Here is Martinez' email in Spanish.

From: Director CENIAI/ Jesus Martinez/IDICT 
To: enredo@conicit.ve
CC: jemar@amauta.rcp.net.pe
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 20:22:41 -0300 (EDT)

Queridos amigos;

Despues de tantos dias, annos, de sacrificio y desvelo, tengo la gran
satisfacion de comunicarles que nuestra querida Cuba, nuestro caiman
antillano ha podido ser conectada a INTERNET como habiamos deseado.
La conexion a 64 Kbps por el momento, se realiza a Sprint en E.U.

Muchos son los amigos que nos han ayudado, apoyado y seria injusto el
mencionar a alguien sin correr el riesgo de olvidar algun nombre, creo que
para ser honesto mi mayor reconocimiento lo voy a dirigir al FORO DE REDES
LATINOAMERICANAS Y DEL CARIBE,desde Rio hasta Lima. El FORO que nos dio la
oportunidad de conocernos, de compartir estrategias, de dimensionar
nuestras tareas, de proyectar mejor nuestras misiones y nos ensenno que
lograr conectarse a Internet no se hace solo con la tecnica, tambien se
hace con solidaridad.

Nuestro mayor agradecimiento a mi joven colectivo de CENIAI, que ha
confiado plenamente en nosotros y que ha sabido concretar este hecho.
historico.

Una nueva etapa acaba de comenzar para nosotros, pronto comenzaran ha
conocer de nuestros WWW y de nuestros servicios de valor agregado, de
nuestra realidad y de lo mucho que podemos ayudar al desarrollo de
nuestra region y de nuestra cultura.

Un saludo bien Caribenno.

Jesus

-----
Update 4/4/2016

In a chat with some friends last week, Jesus described events surrounding that first Internet connection. Their goal was to connect on his birthday, July 22, but finalizing the agreement with Sprint and testing took longer than expected. The actual connection was made on the afternoon of August 22. Jesus was out of the office in the morning and when he returned the workers were waiting with the news that they were online -- it was a "great thing that one can never forget."

-----
Update 4/7/2016

My friend Luis Germán Rodríguez found a Wired Magazine article on the Cuban Internet, published about a year and a half after their connection was established. It includes a visit to CENIAI and an interview with Jesus Martinez (below) in which he says that "The problem of the Internet in Cuba has never been technical or economic. As in any country, it's 70 percent political."

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Update 8/23/2016

Jesus Martinez has sent a note commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Cuba's connection to the Internet. In it he notes a number of achievements during that time, but he acknowledges the connectivity gap between Cuba and other nations in the region and calls for the use of technology by and for the benefit of all -- "the last mile is not the business, home or individual, these are the very first mile".

You can download a copy of Jesus' 20th anniversary note (shown above) and his original Internet connection announcement twenty years ago, here.

-----
Update 8/25/2016

Jesus sent me a couple more dates leading up to the 20th anniversary.

In November 1994 He and a colleague spent a month in Montevideo, where, among other things, they set up a Gopher server with Cuban information -- they were "on the Internet" without being on the Internet.

Jesus requested a class B address block in late December, 1994.

On January 12, 1995 Internic assigned Cuba the 169.158.0.0/16 block, with CENIAI as the administrator.

One more point -- ETECSA, not the US National Science Foundation (NSF), paid Sprint for the initial satellite connection. As I recall, NSF solicited bids for their international connection program and Sprint won. I would not be surprised if NSF subsidized the program, reducing the cost for ETECSA and all others. Regardless, there was no charge for peering with the NSF backbone.

Finally, Jesus sent me a copy of the October 4, 1996 letter he sent to Sprint saying that they had been awarded their IP address block.

The dictator's dilemma

Lage

Castro

Glasnost which undermined the USSR and other socialist countries consisted in handing over the mass media, one by one, to the enemies of socialism.

Raúl Castro
October 1997

One telex can cost twelve dollars [whereas] the same message costs 75 cents in the form of a fax and 3 cents via the Internet ... in spite of our blockaded circumstances, we are in a relatively good position [to face the challenges of such scientific and technological changes], due to the educational and scientific work developed by the revolution.
Carlos Lage
March 1966

The Internet was the subject of high-level debate when it came to Cuba. Carlos Lage, Executive Secretary of the Council of Ministers, saw the promise of the Net, while Raúl Castro was unwilling to risk political instability in order to achieve its benefits. Castro and his supporters prevailed, opting for a small Internet effort with tight control over content and access. (He cited Khrushchev's "glasnost" (openness and transparency) policy as a cause of the demise of the Soviet Union and noted the role the Relcom network had played during the Soviet coup attempt of 1991).

I hadn't planned for the "dictator's dilemma" be the topic of the first post to this blog, but developments in Tunisia and Egypt have pushed it to the front of the queue.

In the 1990s, I would have agreed with Castro that the Internet was destined to bring democracy. Today I have a more nuanced view -- the Internet is used by dictators and terrorists as well as democrats. Furthermore, happy, well-fed citizens (for example in China) are relatively complacent in their attitudes toward Internet openness.

The Internet did not cause the governments of Egypt and Tunisia to fall -- Mubarak and Ben Ali get credit for that, not Mark Zuckerberg -- but it played a key emotional and logistical role in the demonstrations that pushed them over the edge.

Mubarak tried to shut the Internet down, but that backfired. As Google marketing executive Wael Ghonim pointed out in a 60 Minutes interview, cutting the Internet showed the people that the government was afraid and caused them to go out into the street to learn what was happening. It was too late -- perhaps Mubarak would still be in power if he had chocked the Internet the way Cuba did in the mid-1990s.

I wonder how the Internet and these events are seen by Cuban leaders today.

Valdés 

In his 2007 keynote address at the bi-annual Informatica Conference in Havana, Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, then Minister of Informatics and Communications, embraced "the wild stallion of the new technologies," which "could and should be controlled and used to serve peace and development" in spite of the fact that it constitutes one of the "mechanisms for global extermination." He sounded like a combination of Lage and Castro on steroids -- still focused on the dictator's dilemma.

Perdomo

The tone was different at the 2011 Informatica conference held this week. Deputy Minister of Informatics Communications Jorge Luis Perdomo, who chaired the conference organizing committee, said that limitations on Internet access were technical, not political and he stressed the government's willingness to open Internet access to the general public. The government also unblocked access to over 40 Cuban Voices blogs, including that of dissident Yoani Sánchez.

Are the times changing? (Valdés and Perdomo certainly look like they are of different generations). Will Cuba have the will and infrastructure (human and physical) to utilize the bandwidth of the new undersea cable?

What about the Army? The new Minister of Informatics and Communication is an army general and last month Telecom Italia sold their share of ETECSA to Rafin S.A. Dissident blogger Iván García tells us that "Rafin" stands for "Raúl Fidel Inversiones" and that it is run by military businessmen. Garcia says "Since 2008, Cuba has changed into a country almost basically controlled by the military. The majority of the ministries are occupied by active duty or retired olive green officers." The military running business sounds a bit like Egypt.

Stay tuned.

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Update 11/9/2016

Yesterday's election in the US got me thinking about our early optimism regarding the Internet and the "dictator's dilemma."

I discussed the dictator's dilemma in several reports and articles on Cuba in the mid-1990s. For example, in a RAND report, I described it as "the desire to have the benefits of the Internet without the threat of political instability" and said a dictator must ask "how do you give people access to information for health care, education, and commerce while keeping them from political information?"

That being said, I remained optimistic in describing the potential benefits of the Internet for developing nations in general and Cuba specifically.

I'm having second thoughts today.