Regional IFLA/UNESCO Workshop about the Internet for Central America and the Caribbean (español)

"We’re living in an interesting and exceptional world, of which we have talked on other occasions. A world in the throes of globalization which brings with it tremendous problems and enormous challenges. Our main interest is that our people have the knowledge, the culture and, above all, the political and scientific awareness to prepare itself for this world that is enveloping us at a very fast rate.

Our wish today, 45 years afterwards, is that our people study and get an education. We have to look further afield, work out new ideas, set new targets, new principles stemming from the same feelings, eternal love for human dignity and justice which brought us here amidst so many obstacles, struggling against the most powerful empire in world history which has placed enormous obstacles in our path over which we have triumphed. We will continue fighting for we have reason enough to feel confident."

Speech given by President
of the Republic of Cuba, Fidel Castro Ruz,
at the main ceremony for the 45th anniversary of the
attack on the Moncada and Carlos
Manuel de Cespedes Garrisons,
held in Santiago de Cuba, July 26, 1998

On November 17th and 18th, 2005 in Havana, Cuba IFLA-UNESCO held the regional workshop on the Internet for Central America and the Caribbean. With a full work program the primary objective of this workshop was the analysis, discussion and modifications proposed by the workshop's participants about Manifiesto sobre Internet de la IFLA.

For the three days of this workshop, chaired by Mr. Stuart J. Hamilton of the IFLA/FAIFE Office along with Martha Delia Castro, Assistant Director of Library Services of the University of Vera Cruz, Mexico, the realities, weaknesses, challenges and perspectives of computerization were shown, not only in our society, but also Central America and the Caribbean region. Additionally, free accessibility to the contents of the Internet and its various web pages in this area were shown.

The work summarizing the responsibilities of the National Public Library System, the National School Library System, the Department of Communications, Cuba's National Library, the National Science and Technical Library, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information, the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications, Library and Information Sciences careers, the Computer Youth Club, the information system for health professionals (INFOMED), and the NGOs for Cuban librarians: SOCIT (Cuban Society of Scientific-Technical Information) and ASCUBI (Cuban Association of Librarians) was analyzed.

The Internet Manifesto, the main topic analyzed, has its theoretical basis in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Beginning with this analysis, the accessibility of Cuba to the Internet is clearly shown, its pages and contents are only limited by problems with the infrastructure, permissibility of access and impossibility of connecting to the fiber optic international networks surrounding our country.

Some of the important weaknesses and those the specialists noted, are around the following aspects:

- The communications infrastructure, the computer equipment, telephone networks and lines either rented and/or sold must be improved. It needs to take into account that our country needs to double its efforts to buy these materials in third countries, or with prices inflated to twice its value, due to the impossibility of doing it in the United States, main marketer of these items, due to the restrictions of the blockade.
- It must continue insisting on technological literacy, training and specialization of information workers, as the users of the country's different systems.
-To expand the entire work of the specialists and information workers in every sector in order to contribute to better content organization as well as a correction to the indexing of the resources, ensuring that the search and information recovery is appropriate for the end users.
-The impossibility of our country accessing all the content on the Internet, including those considered "free", like the case of Sun Microsystem's Java and other library resources such as OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), must be reported to IFLA/FAIFE and their support requested to reverse this situation.
-Cuba connects to the Internet via satellite that is expensive and increases the difficulties of access, despite the fact that international fiber optic networks surround our country, a situation provoked by the restrictions of the blockade.
- The use of Spanish language needs to be strengthened, given that Spanish speakers make up one of the largest groups of Internet users. According to published statistics, the most used languages on the Internet are English, Spanish, German and Japanese. IFLA is requested to include Spanish translations of all its pages.
- The need for searches of alternative sources for the acquisition, creation, and production of software, must be prioritized in our country.

From this analysis there was consensus in the ideas suggested as possibilities to be included in the future manifesto, ideas which head towards a living, useful and objective manifesto. The ideas expressed by the participants are the following:

- The manifesto should start from the idea that full access to the Internet guarantees neither the individual or social freedom of the individual, nor social democracy.
- It needs to unequivocally include that no country in the world should or can try to control the entire Internet
- The coercive use with a political nature of the Internet to must be
explicitly prohibited
- In the point "Free access to the Internet offered by libraries and information services helps communities and individuals to obtain freedom, prosperity, and development", must include "so that their cultural diversity, their language and their idiosyncrasies are respected."
In the section "Freedom of Access to Information, Internet, Libraries, and Information Services. "Everybody can present their interests, knowledge, and culture so that others may learn of it" must be added: "for this purpose they should be based in principle on balanced social justice, equality of participation, access to education, and a functional and technological literacy."
- It must be understood that, although "Libraries and information services have the responsibility of facilitating and promoting public access to information and quality communication", the government's social responsibility in supporting all levels of this access must be added.
The manifesto, which states that "Libraries and information services should respect the privacy of their users and recognize that the resources that they used should be permanently confidential" must declare itself against laws like the Patriot Act which they oppose, as well as the extraterritorial laws like the Helms Burton Law and others which support the blockade against Cuba. We Cuban librarians ask IFLA/FAIFE for its support in the right of Cuba to connect to the fiber optic network surrounding us, in order to facilitate a broader access to the Internet and its resources and contents for all Cubans.
It must be taken into account that we Cuban librarians defend the social use of the Internet, which should be supported and guaranteed by all governments, bodies, and organizations worldwide. At the same time, the financial support needed to provide it should be requested from those entities.
- The manifesto, as well as IFLA/FAIFE must support and defend the noncommercial use of the Internet.

"We urgently need to confront the extreme poverty of our group of countries concerning global information networks, Internet and all the state-of-the-art means for disseminating information and images. That shining world where knowledge and images are thus exchanged remains unfamiliar and out of reach to our countries. To use Internet it is indispensable to be able to read. Then, have access to a telephone line and a computer, and be fluent in English, the language used in 80% of the material on the network. Anyone of these requirements and even more so all of them together, would be difficult to meet by many countries in the Group of 77. The truth is that with less than 5% of the world's population the United States of America and Canada are home to over 50% of Internet users, and there are more computers in the United States than in the rest of the world.
This extreme inequality rests on the meager opportunities for development- oriented research. A mere 10 countries account for 84% of worldwide spending on research and development.
The new communications technologies have divided the world into those who are, and those who are not connected to the global networks.
Being connected to this knowledge and participating in a true globalization of information that amounts to real sharing as opposed to exclusion, and that puts an end to the widespread ‘brain drain’, is a strategic imperative for the survival of our cultural identities in the coming century."

Fidel Castro Ruz, message to the participants at the Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, Havana, September 19, 1999.