Since graduating from the University of Havana’s faculty of journalism in 2021, Pedro Sosa, 24, has photographed families of political prisoners and written about the chronic lack of medicine and syringes in Cuba’s fraying medical system.
It was risky work on an island that brooks little dissent, but in September things came to a head: he was interrogated by state security and told that if he didn’t renounce his work for the independent media outlets El Toque (the Touch) and El Estornudo (the Sneeze) he could face jail.
“It was tough,” he said. “I was doing what I loved, trying to be an honest journalist … After that I fell into a deep depression.”
Rumbled by a deep economic crisis, a growing domestic opposition and the return of tense relations with Washington, Cuban authorities are cracking down on journalists.
Begrudgingly tolerated a few years ago, Cuban reporters are now regularly detained, can have their phones and laptops seized, and their internet cut. Independent journalism in Cuba – usually supported by foreign funding – has blossomed since 2018, the year in which the state punctured its monopoly on information by unleashing relatively uncensored mobile internet.
With half the population now online, readers have chosen well-designed websites like El Toque which offer real reporting over stodgy state media, which is highly censored and rose-tints reality.
Talented young journalists have migrated to new private outlets, which overwhelmingly take an anti-government line, where they can work with more freedom.
They’ve blazed a trail: covering the effects of lead poisoning in children in Havana, independently monitoring election results and reporting on the exile of prominent activists – all taboos for state media.
Tiny state salaries have also been unable to compete with the private sector: the maximum salary for a journalist at Granma, the Communist party daily, is the equivalent of $23 a month; El Toque pays $200 a month.
In December a new criminal code came into effect, under which reporters receiving foreign financing face up to 10 years in prison. Amnesty International described it as “a chilling prospect for independent journalists”.
The new law comes as repression is on the rise: 670 Cubans remain imprisoned after last year’s mass protests, according to Justicia 11J, a local human rights group.
El Estornudo, which can only be accessed via VPN on the island, lists the US National Endowment for Democracy as one of its funders. El Toque said it has received US federal funds “indirectly” as part of a mix of money from corporations and foundations that make the website sustainable.
José Jasán Nieves, El Toque’s general editor, who emigrated to Florida with his wife and young children in 2019 after being detained for several hours in his house in Havana because of his reporting, vigoro
