EcuRed, Cuba's Castro-Approved Wikipedia Clone, Launches, Has Curious Take on Miami

It's just like Wikipedia, except Fidel gets to edit all your changes.

​The resurgent Fidel Castro -- riding a new high as the world's foremost peddler of Bilderberg conspiracies -- has lately been helping his island nation lurch toward the Information Age. Last year, we wrote about Cuba's answer to Craigslist, Revolico.cu, where jerry-rigged '50s Buicks are hot sellers.

Now, Castro's regime has launched its own version of Wikipedia: EcuRed! It's just like Wikipedia, except that the government probably edits all the "user-written" material, which leads to some odd takes. Like, for instance, describing the Magic City as a place where "terrorists peacefully walk the streets."

The site, which was developed by the swinging-sounding Youth Club of Computing and Electronics, doesn't exactly aim to copy Wikipedia's neutral, well-referenced articles.

The founders, instead, pledge that it will help "create and disseminate knowledge from a standpoint of decolonization."

In EcuRed's entry on the U.S., for instance, the site notes that America has taken "by force territory and natural resources from other nations, to put at the service of its businesses and monopolies." Presidents gazed longingly at fertile, delicious Cuba "like those who admire a beautiful fruit that will end up falling in their hands."

Mmmmm. Fruit.

Miami's entry, meanwhile, starts off reasonably well: We're third in the U.S. in tourism! We're known for our beaches!

Then comes the entry "Terrorismo en Miami," and rhetoric cranks up. "The gang of criminals, torturers and embezzlers left Cuba and found a new home in Miami, cradle of the Cuban terrorist Mafia," EcuRed announces.

There's also a nice photo of Luis Posada Carrilles and a caption reporting that "Cuban terrorists peacefully walk the streets of Miami."

Unfortunately for Fidel's tech crew, they should have perhaps focused a bit less energy on busting the colonial myths and a little more on securing bandwidth.

The site officially launched yesterday, but has been all but impossible to access so far.

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