Tag: Communication

In a cool room in a post office in Havana’s Vedado district, a row of seven young Cubans lean over computers that let them send e-mail, enter a single Cuban-run chat room and surf a small corner of the Internet. The center, which opened last month, is one of four such facilities in Havana, and the plan is for them to spread to post offices across the communist-ruled island. In a sense, they are like cyber-cafes without the coffee — or the full-fledged Internet. Their limitations typify Cuba’s slow entry into the cyber world. It is not that President Fidel Castro’s government has not seized on the Internet with enthusiasm as a tool to spread its political message and even sell its wares. The several hundred sites it has set up or approved in recent years range from details on the Communist Party and the single labor union through online state media, business, the arts and sports.