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Cubans risk raids to get satellite TV
Police in Havana to close these illegal windows on the world.
By Eloise Quintanilla | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 12, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 3
Havana - Before the police raid, the Perez family paid $7.56 per month for a DirecTV window on the world.
Daniel, a literature major at the University of Havana, watched the Chicago White Sox on ESPN. His mom, Marisel, never missed an episode of "La Fea Más Bella" (The Prettiest Ugly Girl), a popular Mexican soap opera on Univision. And Daniel's younger brother was an avid fan of the VH1 music videos.
Now, they are stuck with four Cuban TV channels – and two of those are devoted to educational programming.
"Cuban TV is boring.... There isn't much variation," says Daniel Perez (who fears arrest, so asked that his family's real name be changed). "I like being in the loop, knowing about the newest trends and feeling like I'm in touch with the world."
Having a satellite TV, cellphone, or Internet connection at home is illegal for most Cuban citizens. But that hasn't stopped the spread of such services on the black market.
Pedro, a young underground entrepreneur, gets his nightly news from Channel 23 (Univision), "because Cuban TV doesn't give me unbiased coverage of world news.... But neither does American news. So I watch both and compare them."
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