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Cellphones, Freedom and the Cuban Embargo

Started by TLF · 11 months ago

It’s long been clear that America’s 40-year embargo on trade with Cuba has been an abject failure. It didn’t lead to an ouster of the Castro regime and has probably hurt the Cuban people much more than it has helped. As my old Cato colleague Dan Griswold put it: ... Continue reading »

4 comments

Richard Bennett
1 year ago

I like that last thought. Perhaps we should construct Radio Free Europe for the 21st century, through WiMax towers and free radio modems. Give the downtrodden victims of communism access to the free market of ideas and they'll rise up and overthrow their reactionary ruling class. This could become a movement!

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Mike Sullivan
1 year ago

Your article is the first one I've seen that points out the need to have adequate cellular infrastructure covering Cuba. Most stories on this simply report that the White House will encourage U.S. residents to set up and pay for accounts to be used with the phones, but never question what good it will do a Cuban to have an account with Verizon or AT&T and a U.S. number, when those operators aren't in Cuba and don't have a network partner or roaming deal in Cuba, so the phone and account would be useless.

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Jerry Brito
1 year ago

Adam, What's changed from 10 years ago that makes this policy change now possible is that it's only been recently (since Raul took over) that Cubans have been allowed to own mobile phones and computers. See:

http://www.jerrybrito.com/2008/04/23/cubas-slow...

I'm with you though that the embargo makes no sense and that the program shouldn't be limited to family members and NGOs.

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