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: 
--

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.
Insert T_CxShareButtonsHorizontal.html here