From the International Herald Tribune (English)

"For the past few years there have been several cybercafes where Cubans can surf the Web. The cheapest price is five dollars an hour, which means that a physician would spend his whole monthly salary in four hours. Given the slow connection, one needs to have rich cousins abroad who send cash, or a foreign spouse."

"The Cuban paradox is that here the Internet is a tool that the government uses to better control us, to catch its own citizens in this tangled web it weaved."

(The writer is vice president of an independent association of Cuban journalists, "Manuel Márquez Sterling" and co-editor of its samizdat review, "De Cuba." Her husband, Osvaldo Alfonso Valdés, is serving an 18-year sentence for opposing the regime.)