In Whispers and Furtive Glances: Assessing Digital Literacies and (H)ac(k)tivism in Post-Embargo Cuba

As various purveyors of digital technologies begin to descend on Cuba in the wake of the recent dissolution of the longstanding economic, trade, and travel restrictions enforced between the United States and Cuba, it is important to locate Cuban digital literacies within the interstices of Cuba’s social, cultural, and historical contexts and its particular intersections with digital technologies dating all the way back to the early-1990’s.

 

To overlook or disregard the unique shape and tenor of these Cuban digital literacies, is to not only assume that digital literacies are strictly predicated on and/or produced by material access, but also to perhaps leave Cuba open to neo-colonialism, exploitation, and cultural appropriation, therefore replaying in many ways a long, drawn-out history of Spanish and American colonialism and occupation and dictators and exiles. Organizations like Raices de Esperanza (Roots of Hope) have even emerged in the last decade, organizations whose focus rests on "empowering youth in Cuba through technology and entrepreneurship." Yet, even the most well-meaning organizations underestimate the prospects for Cuban digital literacies when they represent themselves as developing for Cuba, or, as they say, "them."

 

Ultimately, Cuban digital literacies exist, but if digital humanists fail to answer the call of Cuba's unique social, cultural, and historical contexts, they risk missing out on the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from Cubans, and, more important, they also silence the "lenticular logic" that inheres when narratives of digital literacies intersect with particular historical trajectories.