U.S. messages

As the American Secretary of State prepares to tell Spain’s Prime Minister what she thinks of Madrid’s policy toward Cuba, I’ll drag out one element of her own “transformational diplomacy” as applied to Cuba.

Last year the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba erected an electronic signboard to deliver messages to the Cuban public on the streets below. The Cuban government responded by building a sea of flagpoles (under construction in news agency photo, right) that blocks the sign from view.

The signboard’s content is available on-line.

In the beginning, it included daily messages in addition to news. Apparently, the messages were not well received, so in mid-2006 they were discontinued. Now, only news headlines appear, resembling the crawl of headlines that run across the screen of a television news channel.

Some of those messages were jokes about the Cuban condition, as if Cubans can’t make their own jokes and need a foreign government to help them.

Others, such as this one, seemed to instruct Cubans how to think about political matters:

Reading Granma today is like reading it yesterday, or reading it tomorrow. The date changes but the content stays the same…Granma publishes the fantasy that all is well in Cuba, that things have been well for decades. Who believes Granma? What’s more, who reads it? (2/24/06)

Or this one:

The tourist who comes to Cuba and enjoys the island also feeds a repressive regime. They drink rum, smoke tobacco, go to the Tropicana, and fall in love with the girls. They have a great time. They don't know the Cuba that you live in. The tourist says, "I feel safe in Cuba." Of course…police states are famous for maintaining security. (4/10/06)

This one reminded me of the dictums from Fidel that you see on billboards and painted on Cuban highway bridges:

Do not forget the unbreakable link between social justice and democracy. (3/1/06)

Some seemed to taunt, such as this one:

Eight workers in a butcher shop won $22 million each in the Power Ball lottery. (2/22/06)

Or this one, a real gem:

Miami public schools adopted a new menu to attract more children to school breakfast. Eggs, sausages, pancakes, cereal, yogurt, milk, dried fruits, nuts, raisins, and cookies are some of the choices. The federal government pays for the breakfast of all children in Miami public schools. (3/8/06)