TV viewers in Cuba got access to President Obama’s inauguration

MEXICO CITY -- Television viewers in Cuba reportedly had the chance to watch U.S. President Obama’s inauguration on Monday via a news feed from Venezuela’s Telesur network.

A real-time news feed from Telesur was made available to Cuban TV viewers only since Sunday, “for a few hours a day,” state media said.

Obama’s inauguration speech was aired Monday on Telesur accompanied by a commentator who cast doubt on some of the U.S. president’s assertions, reported Mexico’s state news agency Notimex from the Cuban capital, Havana.

It was unclear whether viewers in Cuba also watched the recitation of “One Today,” the inaugural poem by Richard Blanco, a son of Cuban exiles.

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez wrote that the “biased vision of Telesur” and the Communist state outlets are “not, today, our only choices.” An alternative or pirated digital media market has been active in Cuba “for months now,” Sanchez wrote.

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