No #Internet? No Problem. Inside #Cuba's Tech Revolution - #ElPaqueteSemanal #Vistar #AlaMesa

An excellent article on the young tech entrepreneurs leading the way in Cuba from Forbes. 

No Internet? No Problem. Inside Cuba's Tech Revolution

Elio Hector Lopez helps to put together El Paquete Semanal, a weekly digital package of movies, TV shows, digital magazines, software and apps that gets copied and distributed throughout Cuba. (Alejandro Gonzalez for Forbes)

Robin Pedraja, a lanky 28-year-old former design student from Havana, walked into the Cuban government’s office of periodicals and publications early last year seeking approval for a dream: starting an online magazine about Cuba’s urban youth culture. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans in recent years have been able to obtain licenses for small businesses, albeit only in a limited set of service categories such as restaurants, hair salons and translation. Media remains under strict government control. An online magazine? Pedraja was laughed off even before he could finish his pitch.

He decided to publish anyway, without identifying the magazine’s creators. The first issue of Vistar came out last March. “We had nothing to lose,” he tells me on a recent visit to his office, a room the size of a walk-in closet in his Havana apartment. Vistar is packed with attitude and eye-catching photography, covering music, art, ballet, food and celebrities. “It’s a reflection of a new Cuban generation,” says Pedraja, who grew up among artists and musicians in Havana. Soon the artsy young Cubans who were reading Vistar all seemed to know who was behind it. So Vistar published its masthead a few issues later, with Pedraja’s name at the top, e-mail address included.