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The Weekly Package
How Cubans deliver culture without internet
Wall, Kim http://harpers.org/archive/2017/07/the-weekly-package/
Publisher: Harper's Magazine
Year Published: 2017
Resource Type: Article
With limited resources and government restrictions on internet access in Cuba, a thriving underground industry selling digital information has developed.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
Cisneros's building had no internet connection- in Cuba, only apparatchiks and hackers could get online at home. But when she plugged the drive into her laptop, another world revealed itself, in folders within folders - containing MP3, AVI, JPEG, and PDF files - arranged in alphabetical order from "Antivirus" to "Trailers." El Paquete Semanal ("The Weekly Package"), as the compilation is called, is part newsstand, part mixtape, part offline streaming service - a drive curated with magazine articles, Hollywood films, YouTube videos, phone apps, classified ads, and more. It has become the country's largest private industry, reaching about half the population and generating at least $1.5 million a week. Underground hustlers keep the operation running with some 45,000 foot soldiers. Almost any media can be downloaded, though not quite everything; El Paquete producers scrub out politics, religion, and pornography, knowing what is likely to upset government censors -- who, of course, receive drives of their own.
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