"Things you can't say" How Cuba's Youtubers trick the slowest internet in the world

A video entitled "The true face of Cuba's capital" has been viewed more than three million times on YouTube within six weeks. It shows a walk through Centro Habana, a neighborhood next to Havana's old town.

It shows ancient cars, bicycle cabs, street vendors, queues of people, pools of sewage, piles of garbage - and houses that appear to be on the verge of collapse. "This street is a danger, but everyone knows it's not the only one," comments a voice. This is followed by an excerpt from a video that has gone viral on social media - of a woman who is said to have been injured by the falling debris of a house in the same neighborhood.

The voice belongs to Jorge Luis Llanes. His channel "The Spartan Vlog" has almost 400,000 subscribers. This makes Llanes one of the most successful Cuban Youtubers - something that has only been around for a few years in a country that, according to the tech company NordVPN, has the slowest internet in the world. The 39-year-old comes from Centro Habana. For his videos, he not only walks through Havana, but also travels to other parts of the Communist Party-ruled Caribbean state.

Showing everything of Cuba

"My intention is to show everything about Cuba" without sweeping anything under the carpet, says Llanes to the German Press Agency. That can be risky. German citizen Luis Frómeta Compte is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for filming a demonstration in July 2021. On July 11 and 12, 2021, thousands of Cubans demonstrated peacefully in numerous places against mismanagement and for freedom. These were the largest protests since the 1959 revolution, which the communist government of the Caribbean one-party state portrayed as an attempt by the USA to destabilize Cuba and responded with harshness. Hundreds of participants in the demonstrations are still behind bars today. Even a post on social media that displeases the state can be punished by law.

"For an average Cuban who earns between 10 and 15 dollars a month, it is extremely difficult to get enough money together to buy an apartment, even though apartments in Centro Habana are getting cheaper and cheaper," explains Llanes in the video. "If the owners sell them with everything inside, it's because they're leaving the country - which is very common these days." According to official figures, Cuba's population shrank by almost ten percent in 2022 and 2023 alone.

The internet is slow and expensive

Mobile data has only been available in Cuba for almost six years; before that, you could only go online in parks via an expensive public network. To this day, hardly anyone has WLAN access - and those who do have it have to buy time cards from the authorities. Llanes has to upload his videos using mobile data - which, according to him, takes about an hour and a half. The internet is not only slow, but also expensive. You also have to cope with frequent power cuts. Sometimes internet access is blocked - like after the protests three years ago, which also gained momentum through social media.

The internet allows the outside world to see the reality in Cuba via YouTube videos, among other things. But it also offers Cubans the opportunity to look beyond the island. "With Internet access, we could see what is really happening in the world and how the world works," says Llanes. "Beyond what we are told at school, in books and on television." However, some websites and apps are blocked due to both state censorship and the US embargo.

Showing Cuba to Cubans abroad

Olivia Solís discovered the first generation of Cuban Youtubers, including Llanes, two and a half years ago and then tried it herself. First, the 32-year-old made videos in which she gave beauty tips. Then her mother, who lives in Miami, gave her some advice: "Why don't you make something about Cuba? People like that - especially us Cubans abroad who want to see what's happening in Cuba," recalls Solís, who lives with her husband and a cat in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana.

The computer science graduate now has more than 82,000 subscribers and, like Llanes, lives off her YouTube income. However, these cannot be sent to Cuba due to the embargo, so her mother in the USA has to receive the payments and then pass them on.

Solís also makes many videos, which consist of visual tours or trips through the streets of Havana, with a voiceover in which she talks about current issues in Cuba. Her most popular video consists of tips for visitors to Cuba. She now also has a second channel: a video diary in which she shows, for example, how she opens parcels containing donations that viewers send her from abroad - mainly food, which Solís uses to support four needy families in her neighborhood.

The limits of what is permitted

Other Cuban Youtubers have since left the country because they got into trouble with the state. One of them, Dina Stars, was arrested at her home during a live interview on Spanish television. Solís says she herself tries to avoid problems, but has sometimes spoken out about Cuba's problems. "There have been videos where I've said: Jesus, now they're coming for me," she says. "I don't know if I'm lucky or what, but so far everything is fine."

"There are things you can't say because the state will quickly ask questions," says Llanes. Talking about political prisoners, for example, is problematic. According to activists, there are more than 1100 of these in Cuba.

Llanes has not yet had any major problems because of the content of his videos. Nevertheless, he wants to emigrate - preferably to Germany. He wants to leave Cuba for the same reasons as everyone else, he says. "Because in Cuba - no matter how much you earn - you can never lead a full life because of all the problems."

SDA