Havana (AFP)

Monica Baro's investigation into lead poisoning in Havana has won her a prestigious Latin American journalism award. But the site for which she writes is blocked in Cuba, where the government sees the independent media with a suspicious eye.

Two years in the field, six months of fact-checking: behind the publication of his article on the Periodismo de Barrio site, a long-term race.

"In a less hostile context, this investigation could perhaps have been made, written and verified in a year, but here everything is much more complicated", explains the 31-year-old reporter, on the sofa of her Havanese apartment which serves her also office.

When she heard of lead poisoning in the popular district of San Miguel del Padron in 2016, Monica Baro went to meet the locals. Many were afraid, information was scarce, confused.

Most official sources refused to speak to him. For internet, she had to connect to public wifi at 2 dollars an hour. And always this possibility of being followed, harassed, threatened.

In this country ranked 168th out of 180 for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), independent journalism is illegal in the eyes of the state even if it is tolerated, lip service.

The efforts of the journalist, who now works for another site, paid off: she received in October in Bogota a Gabo award (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), one of the most recognized on the continent.

- "Bias vision" -

Distributed exclusively online, the Cuban independent media have been shining abroad for a few years: in 2017 a Gabo award for El Estornudo, in 2018 a Spanish environmental award for Periodismo de Barrio, in 2019 an online journalism award for El Toque.

But at what cost. On January 16, the director of an official information portal published on the internet a list of 21 unofficial media, denounced as "platforms for the recovery of capitalism in Cuba".

Two days later, several of these sites were temporarily inaccessible on the island. Some were already permanently blocked.

The socialist government equates them with opposition journalism, practiced by sites generally managed from Miami, and accuses them of being financed by the American government. The famous list of 21 mixed the two genres.

"Independent media does not exist, neither in Cuba nor, I believe, anywhere in the world," said journalist for the official weekly Trabajadores Francisco Rodriguez Cruz, 49.

They are "media dependent on the outside" of which "very often (the) too biased vision favors only the critical elements of the Cuban reality", he continues. "It is easy (...) in a society like ours, under embargo of the American government (since 1962, Editor's note) and with multiple economic difficulties".

- Third way -

Born for the most part during the relaxation between Cuba and the United States (2014-2016) and driven by the arrival of the mobile internet at the end of 2018, these new media have the declared ambition of finding a third way, stripped of all ideology, between state and opposition press. They took advantage of the short opening to work more freely.

Funded, depending on the case, by a Swedish foundation, European embassies (Norway, Netherlands, etc.), a British NGO, a Dutch radio station, they include in their editorial staff a dozen young reporters who have passed through the same benches of the journalism university as their comrades entered the state media.

An assumed choice. If their salary can be three to four times higher - which earns them criticism -, they depend on the arrival of foreign funds, often living modestly, working at home with their own equipment, without certainty about the future. of their publication.

- Touch all -

Their credo is to touch everything with international standards, to cover subjects hitherto neglected by the official press, environment, domestic violence, animal welfare, etc.

On their websites, we can read a survey on the state of dilapidation of Havana's homes after the death of three girls crushed by the fall of a balcony, a multimedia project on "the faces of drought" in Cuba, a report on major hotel projects in the country.

They "show a healthy autonomy to achieve responsible journalism in the context of the island, even if indeed the autonomy of a media is always relative", observes Abel Somohano, Cuban academic who writes in Mexico a thesis on the subject.

Their objective? "Defend their possibility of expressing what is not seen in the speech of the official media".

President Miguel Diaz-Canel deplored in 2018, in an interview with Telesur, "the excess of apology" of the state media, not always "capable of reflecting certain themes".

But, in a climate again tense with Washington, distrust of the independent media is heightened.

For each report, discretion is the rule, especially in the provinces: "If you leave Havana, the mechanisms of State Security (Cuban intelligence services, editor's note) work perfectly and spot you", says José Jasan Nieves, editor-in-chief of El Toque, 32 years old. "You enter a village to do a report and you end up arrested and expelled".

"You depend on the will of a source to give you information (...) because she feels sympathy for you or because she has a very open vision of information, which is exceptional in Cuba "where the population is generally afraid to speak openly to the unofficial media, underlines Monica Baro.

The pressure goes further: around 50 Cuban journalists, bloggers and activists recently called in an open letter for the "end of the repression" and the "harassment" of the authorities against them.

They refer to "arbitrary detentions and incarceration, house searches, confiscation of equipment, interrogations". Or even "a presence at the foot of the home to prevent news coverage", as was the case for ten of them on December 10, International Human Rights Day.

"Cuba Posible", Cuba's most important blog of independent intellectuals, had to close in 2019, denouncing pressures that have undermined its network of collaborators and cut off all access to funding.

- "Besieged place" -

"In a context where American aggressiveness continues to increase, (the government) returns to the mentality of the besieged place," analyzes José Jasan Nieves, as demonstrated by the recent arrests of dissident José Daniel Ferrer or the journalist of the media d Cubanet opposition Roberto Quiñones.

This renewed firmness towards dissent made independent journalism a "collateral victim", regrets José Jasan. Because for the State, "a freelance journalist from an alternative media is like a political opponent, so he applies the same control tools to him".

Maykel Gonzalez, director of Tremenda Nota, 36, has been arrested three times in recent years. He regularly receives calls from the State Security, undergoes blackmail and threats online. At the beginning of December, when he was preparing to leave for Europe, he learned of his ban on leaving the country.

"For them, we are counter-revolutionaries," he sighs. "Some days I wake up very discouraged." It evokes a friend who made the choice to work in an official media to "have a quiet life".

Some confreres have already abandoned the battle and left the country. Today, "there is more fear, more departures," says Monica Baro. "All the time, I wonder if I should leave, if I'm not fed up. For me, it would be easier to go tell stories elsewhere."

© 2020 AFP