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There has been little reason to laugh in Cuba lately. But on a recent episode of “El Enjambre,” a weekly podcast produced on the island, the three hosts were screaming at the state-owned telecommunications company’s latest form of censorship.
“If you send an SMS with the word freedom, the message does not reach the recipient,” Lucía March told her incredulous co-hosts, referring to the Spanish word “libertad”. “It evaporates, it vanishes! I’m serious.”
The exchange was fun, informative, and light-hearted, traits that made “El Enjambre” one of the biggest hits among the dozens of new Cuban-made podcasts now vying for resident attention and internet bandwidth. limited.
Cubans only started accessing the internet on smartphones in 2018. Since then, podcasts on politics, news, history, entrepreneurship and language have shaken up the way Cubans get their information, expanding the common ground among hyperpartisan content generated by government media. the media and newsrooms funded by the US government are very critical of the authoritarian rulers of the island.
“There has been exponential growth, and I predict it will continue to multiply,” said Yoani Sánchez, a Cuban journalist who records a daily news podcast by plugging stories into the independent news portal that ‘she runs, 14yMedio.
The Cuban government is blocking access to several news websites, including 14yMedio, and recently passed a measure criminalizing the posting of content critical of the Cuban state on social media. But authorities have yet to take action to censor or block access to the more than 220 podcasts produced in Cuba or intended largely for Cuban audiences, said Carlos Lugones, founder of Cuba Pod, a platform that promotes and lists Cuban podcasts.
“It’s very difficult for a government to censor a podcast because there are so many ways to broadcast it,” Lugones said. “Podcasts generate debate in society all the time. They make people think.
A desire to do just that prompted Carlos Condis, an industrial engineer, to launch “El Enjambre” – Spanish for bee swarm – at the end of 2019. The heart of the show is a lively and spontaneous conversation between Condis and his co- animators, March and Yunior García Aguilera.
No subject is forbidden.
“El Enjambre” provided detailed coverage of the remarkable July 11 anti-government protests in Cuba and the harsh criticism of the ruthless crackdown that followed.
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