Cuba Virtual versus Cuba Real

Una visita a la idílica Cuba virtual en Second Life, por alguien que estuvo en la Cuba real.

In virtual Cuba, you will find a couple of lovely fruit and vegetable stands, with tasty looking mangos, watermelon, eggplant and other produce. The reality of Cuba is that there are frequent food shortages and restrictions, to the point that most Cubans do not get access to fresh fruits like mangoes and papaya, while tourists find them plentifully in hotels all over. It's actually illegal for a Cuban to eat shrimp or lobster, which are only available for tourists. [...]

If somehow you managed to get Second Life to run in Cuba -- where the Internet is locked down tighter than anywhere in the world except maybe Myanmar -- I have to wonder what an average Cuban would think of this digital representation of their country. I imagine they might find it hilarious, in the same way that New Yorkers laugh derisively when they encounter the "New York New York" casino in Las Vegas. Or maybe they would find it sad that we had the time to amuse ourselves with unreal playgrounds like Second Life, while they lived often hand-to-mouth existences, closed off from the rest of the world.

Lean la whole thing.