Cuba, Daily periodical review: ‘Granma’

Does Cuba have newspapers? Of course it does. Everybody has newspapers. That's probably true, but my experience with newspapers in Cuba was very different from what I experienced anywhere else on my trip. Cuba may a have a newspaper but very few people pay any attention to it.

The first thing you notice is the absence of news stands of the sort you see pretty much everywhere else. That's not to say that periodicals (mostly magazines) do not exist, only that you generally will not find them on street corners at kiosks with vendors hawking their wares. I'm not sure if that is a result of the absence of convenience items (gum, sodas, candies) which add to the profitability of selling newspapers - or if it's mainly a result of the simple difficulty of selling newspapers in the first place.

Granma is Cuba's primary news organ. It is named after the yacht that brought Fidel and his compatriots to Cuba in 1956, the event that sparked the Revolution. Granma is, of course, published in Spanish and sold on the streets for pesos (not CUCs) - centavos actually - .25 (about one cent). They are not very expensive, but I saw very few people selling them, reading them, carrying them or even throwing them away. While I was in Cuba, Egypt was in the midst of its upheaval and I wanted to see how it was being covered. I looked for a Spanish Granma. (An aside: the English Granma was sold for .50 CUC by hawkers who hung out in tourist zones - same stories, 50 times the cost)  Even though I had no pesos, I figured out they would take .10 CUC, gladly.

Granma did cover the story - "People rise up to jettison US toady."  About what you'd expect from a communist propaganda organ - though I did think the underlying message: "masses protest, government flees," may not be the message they want Cubans to get. Since being home and reading it online regularly you can see why no one buys it. There's no news in it. The stories are just the thoughts the government wants you to have. Even a big story has no news to it. Recently, with much fanfare, the government announced the economic reforms that were the product of months of deliberation.  And the details? I had to go to the New York Times for that. All Granma said was: "they were the great products of a wonderful democratic process." Great. Not worth .50 CUC.