Public hotspots connect families
On a recent Sunday afternoon, entire families — grandparents, newborn babies and teenage girls snapping selfies in their most-fashionable clothes — were gathered on the steps, walls and curbs of a plaza in the Playa neighbourhood.
But they weren’t there for a social event. What brought them together was the quest for connectivity. In July, the government began rolling out 35 new and improved Wi-Fi hotspots. In most cases, the Cubans at the Playa hotspot were paying more attention to their cellphones and other gadgets than each other.
To say Cubans have embraced connectivity doesn’t begin to describe their new love affair with Facebook, imo (a video call application) and phone connections robust enough to send photographs and selfies to friends and family abroad and around Cuba. They perch on park benches tapping at laptops, lean against building walls staring at tablets or sit on curbs with their cellphones as traffic whizzes past.
What’s interesting to Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor who has studied the Internet in Cuba, is that Cubans are living out some of their most personal moments — family reunions and introductions to new babies and spouses — not in the intimacy of their own homes but in public plazas and parks. “It’s all happening out there in a public place,” he said.
Blogger Yoani Sanchez calls the 35 new hotspots a “social phenomenon.”
Marlene Velarde, her husband and grandson recently visited the office of ETECSA — the state telecom monopoly — in Playa, and plunked down 6 Cuban convertible pesos (almost $8) for three hours of Internet service. They spent the first hour or so learning the imo application so they could make a video call to Miami.
The new Wi-Fi sites are proving popular across Cuba.
“Thank goodness they brought the Internet,” said Armando Aguilera, a 19-year-old college student at the main square in Holguin, a city in eastern Cuba, who was sending Facebook messages and trying to video-chat with his mother in Angola. “Here, we’re a thousand light-years away from other technology.”
Imo, a video app Cubans use because Skype isn’t available, has opened up new opportunities for those who could only reach out to friends and family before through phone calls or perhaps an occasional email.
At Holguin’s Park of Flowers, Beatriz Ricardo paced under the shade of a tree, trying to get rid of her cellphone’s glare by covering it with her hand. She spoke for 25 minutes with her husband, who recently moved to Nicaragua. He showed off his new place on video.
“I saw his kitchen and his bedroom and everything!” a beaming Ricardo said at the end of the conversation. “Email is cheaper. But then you can’t see where they live.”
But imo has its limitations, said 21-year-old Xiulee Ochoa, a medical student trying to reach her boyfriend in Canada from a sidewalk bordering the Park of Flowers, one of two new hotspots in the city of about 300,000.
“It’s kind of obsolete,” she said. “You also can’t download a movie or a music video.”