r o a d c a s t i n g

B
M o d e r n i t y e l e v ision,
l T
n C o m mercia ivero
Cuba y M . R
50 – 19 6 0  Y e i d
19
BROADCASTING
MODERNITY
Cuban Commercial Television,
1950–1960

Yeidy M. Rivero
Duke University Press
Durham and London
2015
 © 2015 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper ∞
Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan
Typeset in Minion Pro by Copperline

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Rivero, Yeidy M.
Broadcasting modernity: Cuban commercial television,
1950-­1960 / Yeidy M. Rivero. 
pages cm — (Console-­ing passions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-­0-­8223-­5859-­6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
isbn 978-­0-­8223-­5871-­8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Television broadcasting — Cuba — History — 20th century.
2. Television and state — Cuba — History — 20th century. 
I. Title.  II. Series: Console-­ing passions.
he8700.9.c9r58 2015
384.55097291'09045 — dc23
2014036010
isbn 978-­0-­8223-­7568-­5 (e-­book)

Cover art: Illustration by Courtney Baker, based on

two images: a promotion for Noticiario Unión Radio and
“En la Televisión se hizo historia,” Bohemia, July 26, 1959 (both
courtesy of the Cuban Heritage Collection, University of
Miami Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida).

Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges

the University of Michigan, College of Literature,
Science, and the Arts, and Office of Research,
which provided funds toward the publication
of this book.
 To Agustín Rivero Quintero
and
To the witty and gifted coquí who,
for more than twenty years,
inspired me
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction. Broadcasting Modernity,

Spectacles, and Television  1

1 Prelude to the Spectacles: Constituting

a Modern Broadcasting System through
the Law, 1923 – 1950  23

2 Spectacles of Progress:
Technology, Expansion, and the Law  45

3 Spectacles of Decency:
Morality as a Matter of the Industry
and the State  75

4 
Spectacles of Democracy and a Prelude
to the Spectacles of Revolution  102

5 Spectacles of Revolution:
A Rebirth of Cubanness  129

6 From Broadcasting Modernity to

Constructing Modernity  163

Epilogue 176
Notes 181
Bibliography 221
Index 233
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The idea for this project began in Puerto Rico, while I was conducting re-
search for my book Tuning Out Blackness. During the research process, I
engaged in numerous formal and informal conversations with several media
professionals who had worked in Cuban television before the Cuban Revo-
lution of 1959. While listening to their stories and to the anecdotes of Puerto
Rican producers who were familiar with Cuban television, it became clear to
me that Cuba had played a pivotal role in the development of the medium
in Latin America. My first words of gratitude, then, go to these late Cuban
and Puerto Rican producers and creators who, without realizing it, sowed
in me the seeds of curiosity.
While my interest began in Puerto Rico, my passion for the project de-
veloped at the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection (chc). It
was at the chc that I had the privilege of meeting and working with one
of the most knowledgeable Cuban studies librarians in the United States:
Lesbia Orta Varona. Lesbia introduced me to a wide range of sources, was
always on the lookout for information that could help my research, and
even scanned materials on a tight schedule so I could have all the sources I
needed for my analysis. Lesbia also put me in contact with her good friend
Dr. Araceli García Carranza, the head librarian at the Biblioteca Nacional
José Martí in Havana, Cuba. I am immensely grateful for Lesbia’s ongoing
support and enthusiasm for this project. I also want to thank the chc’s new
director, María Estornio Dooling, and new librarian, Meiyolet Méndez, who
digitized many of the images included in this book. A big thanks goes to all
members of the chc’s previous and current teams: Esperanza de Varona,
Gladys Gómez Rossie, Zoe Blanco-­Roca, Annie Sansone-­Marínez, and Rosa
Monzon-­Alvarez. Their helpfulness, friendliness, and daily cafecitos made
the research at the chc an enjoyable experience.
 In Havana, Dr. Araceli García Carranza offered valuable information for
this research and opened the doors to the Centro de Investigaciones del
Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión. I want to thank her for helping me
maneuver some of the bureaucracy in Havana and for welcoming me to
the city with open arms. At the Centro, Fabio Fernández Kessel provided
access to the invaluable Anales de la cmq Radio-­tv and made sure I had
everything I needed for my research. Fabio and all the compañeros and com-
pañeras there made me feel like part of the family (and, yes, the daily cafecito
with a lot of sugar was also part of the experience). Special thanks go to
Horacio Rodríguez, who on many occasions came to the office early and
stayed late so I could spend more time conducting my research. In Havana,
I also thank Juana García Abás for introducing me to an important figure in
the history of Cuban television and Norge Espinosa Mendoza for being on
the lookout for information that could be useful for my research. Norge also
introduced me to the theater scene in Havana, and in doing so, he brought
me back home.
While I was completing the final phase of the book, Philip Hallman at
the University of Michigan’s Department of Screen Arts and Cultures library
and Alex Hofmann at the Paley Center for Media iCollection for Colleges
were able to get last-­minute materials I needed for my research. I thank
them both for their prompt responses to my queries and, in the case of Alex,
for digitizing programs I needed for my analysis.
This project greatly benefited from my semester as a scholar in residence
at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.
I am indebted to Barbie Zelizer, whose program provided me not only with
time to write but also with the opportunity to share my work with scholars
I highly respect and admire. The research support from the University of
Michigan was also fundamental to finishing this project. The College of
Literature, Science, and the Arts’s (lsa) Humanities Award and the Asso-
ciate Professor Support Funds gave me the time and financial backing to
complete this book.
Throughout the years I had opportunities to present parts of this re-
search at a number of venues. Portions of what became the introduction
and chapter 2 appeared in different versions in “Broadcasting Modernity:
Cuban Commercial Television, 1950 – 1953,” Cinema Journal, vol. 46, no. 3. I
want to thank my former colleagues Matthew Pratt Guterl and Vivian Nun
Halloran for selecting me to participate in the “Variations of Blackness”

x  ac kn ow l e d g m e n ts
seminar at Indiana University Bloomington; Patrice Petro for inviting me
to present my work at the 2006 Society for Cinema and Media Studies con-
ference plenary session; L. S. Kim for her invitation to speak at the Film and
Digital Media Department Spring Colloquia at the University of California,
Santa Cruz; Lillian Guerra for the opportunity to present my research at the
Council for Latin American and Iberian Studies’ Colloquium Lecture Series
at Yale University; Karin Wilkins for welcoming me back to my intellectual-­
institutional home, the Department of Radio-­tv-­Film at the University of
Texas at Austin to share my new project at the “New Agendas in Global
Communication and Media” symposium; Susan Douglas for inviting me to
present a portion of this research at the University of Michigan’s Depart-
ment of Communication Studies colloquium; and Anna Cristina Pertierra
and Graeme Turner for their invitation to the “Locating Television: Zones
of Consumption” symposium at the University of Queensland’s Centre
for Critical and Cultural Studies in Australia. At the aforementioned sites
and at the Annenberg School for Communication, I shared my ideas and
engaged in fascinating dialogues with colleagues. I want to thank Nancy
Morris, Katherine Sender, Patrick Murphy, Elihu Katz, Deborah A. Thomas,
John L. Jackson Jr., Devra Moehler, Monroe Price, and Joseph Turow (the
Annenberg-­Philadelphia crowd); Joseph Straubhaar, Shanti Kumar, Michael
Curtin, Michele Hilmes, Aswin Punathambekar, Flor Enghel (the “New Agen-
das” symposium); Amanda Lotz, Paddy Scannell, Robin Means Coleman,
Derek Vaillant, and Shazia Iftkhar (the University of Michigan’s Department
of Communication Studies); and John Sinclair, Tania Lewis, Jack Qiu, Zala
Volcic, Jostein Grupsrud, Mark Andrejevic, Sukhamani Khorana, Jonathan
Corpus Ong, Tom O’Regan, and Jinna Tay (the “Locating Television” sym-
posium). Last and definitely not least important is Marwan Kraidy, a col-
league who has been part of several academic adventures; I am fortunate
to have shared my work with someone who is not only brilliant but also a
great human being.
Intellectual dialogues with César Salgado, Cristina Venegas, Anna Cristina
Pertierra, Luisela Alvaray, Richard Bauman, Licia Fiol, Gilberto Blasini,
Victoria Johnson, Ariana Hernández Reguant, Tasha Oren, Arlene Dávila,
Brenda Weber, and Naomi Warren enriched this research. Special thanks
go to Stephen Berrey, who provided instrumental feedback during various
stages of this project. Additionally, I thank two extraordinary anonymous
reviewers who took time to carefully read this manuscript and offer help-

ack n ow l ed g men ts   xi
ful suggestions. It is also a pleasure to join the Duke University Press team
once again and to work with Ken Wissoker as my editor. Thanks to Ken,
Elizabeth Ault, and Sara Leone for their support and editorial assistance in
the birth of this book.
I had originally planned to finish this project in 2012, but life took me
down an unexpected path. I was fortunate to have colleagues, staff, and grad-
uate students at the University of Michigan’s Department of American Cul-
ture and Department of Screen Arts and Cultures who offered support and
help during that difficult year. I am especially indebted to Evelyn Alsultany,
Daniel Ramírez, Penny Von Eschen, Silvia Pedraza, Gregory Dowd, Judy
Gray, and Mary Freiman in the Department of American Culture and to
Richard Abel (and Barbara Hodgdon), Caryl Flinn, Giorgio Bertellini,
Markus Nornes, Daniel Herbert, Philip Hallman, Matthew Solomon, Marga
Schuhwerk-­Hampel, Mary Lou Chilipala, Carrie Moore, Erin Hanna, Katy
Ralko, and Courtney Ritter in the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures. I
am also grateful for the love, care, and unconditional support of my selected
family: Gilberto Blasini, Deborah Carthy-­Deu, Axel Cintrón, Marithelma
Costa, Yinan Estrada, Sallie Hughes, Harry Nadal, Shirley Santos, Rochelly
Serrano, Eva Cristina Vázques, and my numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins.
This book is dedicated to two boricuas who, while they never realized it,
made a significant impact on the professional person I am today.

xii  ac kn ow le d g m e n ts
 INTRODUCTION
Broadcasting Modernity, Spectacles,
and Television

The building that holds the Yara Cinema in the Havana neighborhood of El
Vedado is considered one of the best examples of Cuba’s modern architec-
ture. Built in the 1940s, the structure was part of an architectural renaissance
in the early to mid-­twentieth century that aesthetically positioned the island
alongside economically developed countries.1 Yet, the building generally
known today as el Yara (in reference to the 1868 battle that initiated Cuba’s
movement for independence from Spain) is not the only modern feature
associated with the structure. Originally called Radiocentro, it served as the
headquarters for cmq-­tv, the most important television network in 1950s
Cuba (see fig. I.1). Emanating from a period when many Latin American
media professionals saw Cuban television as the most advanced system in
the region, cmq-­tv, like the building itself, was a symbol of Cuba’s progress.
Nonetheless, if Radiocentro/el Yara became a modern icon the moment it
was completed, the relationship between television and Cuban modernity
was, in the 1950s, much more of a work in progress.
Throughout the approximately ten years that television functioned as a
commercial media outlet (1950 – 60), the medium became directly and in-
directly entangled with Cuba’s politics and society. As the country changed,
television changed circuitously, particularly in terms of its uses and the
attention paid to it by Cuba’s elite (Havana-­based, educated, middle-­and
upper-­class individuals) and people in power (e.g., government officials).
Television critics, owners, media creators, government officials, regulators,
audiences, and nonaudiences (people who did not have access to television)
assigned different meanings to the technology based on their economic, cul-
tural, political, and social positions and interests. However, underlying these
Figure I.1. Radiocentro, cmq Radio-tv. Courtesy of the Cuban Heritage
Collection, William González Photograph Collection, University of Miami
Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida.

multiple and shifting significations of television was the notion of broad-

casting modernity. Regardless of the convoluted state of Cuba’s political,
economic, and social structures, television — the ultimate media innovation
in the post – World War II era — would showcase Cuba’s modernity to its
citizens and the world. Television became a metonymy for Cuban moder-
nity, and thus the medium was continually being reinvented technologically,
culturally, and discursively to conceal any signs that belied Cuba’s image as
a modern nation-­state.
“Broadcasting modernity” refers to the technological, legal, business, pro-
duction, cultural, geographic, and narrative efforts to employ television as
a stage to represent Cuba as a developed nation. First and foremost, broad-
casting modernity was about representation and perception. It operated
by “reflecting, selecting, and deflecting,” aspects of Cuba’s society, culture,
politics, people, and television.2 This was done by multiple actors through
a range of scenes. By highlighting Cuban television’s innovations, interna-
tional successes, production quality, high-­culture performances, and mor-
ally appropriate programming (read, Catholic and sexually contained); by

2  in troduc t i on
attempting to repress or censor particular acts, genres, people, and voices of
dissent; and by exalting the progress of the new revolutionary Cuban nation
via programming strategies, television owners, regulatory entities, critics,
and the state selected and interpreted Cuban modernity for television.
Delineating how to broadcast modernity was a complex process. Ques-
tions regarding what aspects of Cuban culture should be depicted, what en-
tities should regulate the transmissions, what segments of the Cuban popu­
lation television should serve, and what labor conditions should prevail,
among other issues, were important factors in determining how to represent
modern Cuba. That said, historical circumstances that were shaping the na-
tion during the 1950s became a major source of signal interference. Between
the introduction and development of television in Cuba, the nation-­state
moved from a democracy to a dictatorship (by way of Fulgencio Batista’s
military coup of March 10, 1952), from having relative economic prosperity
to financial decline, from a general sense of societal stability to a growing
feeling of insecurity, and from a revolutionary struggle to a state of rejoicing
over a revolutionary victory. These rapid and unexpected transformations
continued until 1960, when the revolution, initially intended to return the
nation-­state to its democratic-­constitutional principles, began to change its
course, showing signs of socialist doctrine. Cuban television was born in a
democracy, matured during a dictatorship and a revolutionary struggle, and
was born again when the nation-­state began to adopt a socialist perspec-
tive. The broadcasting of modernity, then, materialized and responded to
the particularities of Cuba’s contemporaneity while also appropriating and
reformulating external influences.
Historical legacies, time, and place played diverse and substantial roles
in the broadcasting of modernity. The imaginings and structuring of televi-
sion in Cuba incorporated U.S. ideologies regarding technological progress,
capitalistic expansion, the division of labor, work ethics, and mass consump-
tion. As a legally regulated technology, television was also initially influ-
enced by the U.S. broadcasting system in terms of its commercial structure
and democratic rules. Nonetheless, with changes in the political sphere, the
technology went through various legal redefinitions, distancing itself from
the principles of cultural protection and democratic dialogue that had been
part of the Cuban broadcasting system since its first legal provisions in the
1930s. Television’s visual and aural presence in the living rooms of well-­off
and middle-­class families’ homes was, to a certain extent, imprinted with

int roduct ion   3

Cuba’s social, class, and racial marginalities. The Eurocentric cultural, gen-
dered, and racial stratifications that defined what it meant to be civilized and
uncivilized permeated Cuba’s television, particularly regarding its cultural
performances.
Parts constituting the broadcasting of modernity had their origins in
colonial and neocolonial encounters. Cuban discourses of socioeconomic
modernization were intertwined with, and to a certain extent responded,
to Cubans’ view of the United States as the most progressive country in the
world.3 This narrativization of the United States as the location of moder-
nity had its roots in historically based economic and political convergences.
Cuba’s incorporation into the U.S. economic system before the Spanish-­
American War of 1898 and its total immersion into the U.S. market econ-
omy and consumer culture during the early twentieth century propagated
a complicated notion of Cuban modernity. Even though Cubans created a
sense of “self and consciousness,” a Cuban national culture and identity, the
United States was a dominant force in the foundation of Cuban modernity.4
As historian Louis A. Pérez writes, “It was [to] the North Americans that
Cubans compared themselves.”5 Cubans imagined themselves in the van-
guard of the Latin American path to modernization, as a close second to
the United States.
Still, in terms of social norms and racial hierarchies, Europe was also a
foundation of modernity and, as such, a constant impediment to represent-
ing Cuba as Western and modern. Michel-­Rolph Trouillot reminds us that
modernity “always require[s] an Other and an Elsewhere.”6 The ideology,
symbolism, and rhetoric of modernization attached to U.S. capitalistic cul-
ture was part of Cuban modernity, framing the way Cubans saw themselves
and their geographic neighbors. Nonetheless, at the same time that the
Other was placed elsewhere (in terms of socioeconomic modernization),
the Other not-­modern element (as defined by the legacy of European co-
lonialism) was an undeniable part of Cuba’s national self. Within a nation
composed of whites, blacks, and mulatos, and that since the late nineteenth
century had been represented as a mestiza “Cuban race” (racially mixed), the
ideologies of Cubanness appeared in contrast to notions of Western moder-
nity.7 However, despite the national culture’s inscription of equality, inter­
woven factors around gender, sexuality, and class informed Cuba’s margin-
alities.8 Either by culturally foregrounding the mulata as a highly visible icon
that “contrast[ed] sharply with [nonwhite women’s] social invisibility” or by

4  in troduc t i on
ethnographically recounting what was defined as the hypersexual, crimi-
nal, and infantilized practices of Cuban black males, the Cuban mulataje/
mestizaje functioned through what literary scholar Jossianna Arroyo calls
travestismos culturales (cultural transvestisms).9 For Arroyo, this represents
the theories and writing strategies that Cuban intellectuals developed to ap-
pease racial difference in the discourses of a racially mixed nation, while also
objectifying and sexualizing the black gendered Other.10 Thus, the ideology
of Cuban homogeneity and equality operated in a discursive conjunction of
heterogeneity and difference that allowed intellectuals and elites, as several
scholars have argued, to reposition themselves as modern, Western people.11
Considering how colonialism and neocolonialism pervaded aspects of
the discourse of Cuban modernity, one could say that components of the
broadcasting of modernity were influenced by what Aníbal Quijano labels
the “coloniality of power,” that is, “the transhistoric expansion of colonial
domination and the perpetuation of its effects in contemporary times.”12 The
broadcasting of modernity retained the ideology, symbolism, and rhetoric
of modernization attached to U.S. capitalistic culture while at the same time
embracing class-­based and racially inscribed cultural practices associated
with a European high-­culture tradition.
Nevertheless, modernity, as several scholars contend, “is not one but many,”
and it is imbued with pastiches of historical, political, social, economic, cul-
tural, collective, and individual processes and elements from the past and
the present.13 While manifestations of modernity differ from one nation to
another, the incorporation, perception, and experiences of modernity and
modernization can also vary within a particular nation. These national-­
internal disparities function through the redefinition, conciliation, or am-
bivalent acceptance of non-­Western and Western cultural discourses, re-
spond to colonial and/or neocolonial economic-­capitalistic expansion into
particular geographic areas, and are influenced by internal and external po-
litical processes. Consequently, the ways in which people see themselves as
modern, conceptualize modernity, or assess modernization are not identical
in culturally akin regions, nor are they performed in the same way within
national borders.
In the case of Cuba, while the United States and Europe represented the
basis for what it meant to be modern, the precarious political, economic,
and social conditions of the 1950s led some citizens to question their po-
sition in and path toward modernization. As Pérez writes regarding the

int roduct ion   5

uncertainty that wrought this decade, “At the heart of the deepening crisis
was the collapse of the central formulations by which a people had come
to define themselves. This was far more complex than a political conflict.
It was a crisis of individual identity and inevitably a crisis of nationality.”14
This crisis of nationality that Pérez describes informed the debates about
television in the 1950s.
Media scholars Marita Sturken and Douglas Thomas observe that “tech-
nological development is one of the primary sites through which we can
chart the desires and concerns of a given social context and the preoccupa-
tion of particular moments in history.”15 For Cuban commercial television in
the 1950s, the more unstable Cuba’s political, economic, and social structures
became, the more rigorously television was monitored, the more palpable
were the debates regarding the function and uses of television, and the more
numerous were the questions about what it meant for the medium to be and
remain Cuban. Thus, while the main objective of the broadcasting of mo-
dernity was to represent Cuba as a Western nation-­state, the discussions and
debates that surfaced regarding Cuban television’s uses, functions, program-
ming, working conditions, and reach reveal challenges to the representa-
tion of a Western-­inspired Cuban modernity on television. These dialogues
about the medium interrogated how the industry and government officials
(and some reviewers and audience members) were crafting the representa-
tion of Cuban modernity, thus pluralizing its meanings. Hence, I argue that
the broadcasting of modernity operated as a series of spectacles, represen-
tations in which the industry, the government, and some reviewers utilized
mediated images, language, signal distribution, technology, transmission,
and laws to convey Cuban progress, democracy, economic abundance, high
culture, education, morality, and decency. However, as staged productions,
they faced the criticism of unsatisfied audience members and creators who
questioned these representations.
Certainly, on some occasions the particular political moment established
limits to people’s interrogations of the broadcasting of modernity and its
spectacles. With the intensification of the revolutionary movement in the
late 1950s, Batista’s censorship tactics made it impossible for the national
media to discuss the “lawful” and “unlawful” repression of dissent that took
place across the island.16 On the other hand, the furor invoked by the Cuban
Revolution made it difficult to express critical views of the government and
its leaders. Nonetheless, what I want to foreground is that even as there

6  in trodu c t i on
were moments when public dissent was out of the question, the technology,
regulations, programming, and the apparatus itself became sites and tools
that constituted a particular view of modernity that was then ideologically
dismantled by television professionals, reviewers, audiences, and nonaudi-
ences. Television was used to both stage and contest Cuba’s modernity.
In using the word “spectacle,” I draw on Guy Debord’s conceptualization
of the term. In Society of the Spectacle, Debord defines spectacle as “not a col-
lection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images,”
a worldview that “has become actual, materially translated.”17 According to
Debord, the power of the spectacle resides in its representation and its ca-
pacity to convey positive outcomes for citizens and society at large. Debord’s
theorization positions citizens as passive entities immersed in and blinded
by the spectacles — an inertia that does not completely apply to Cuba in
the 1950s, given the emergence of a revolutionary movement. In borrowing
his term, then, I am more interested in examining how the broadcasting
of modernity articulated an appearance of progress, sustained Eurocentric
racial and class norms, and positioned democracy as the state’s primary goal
during a period of political, economic, and social chaos. In other words if,
as Jonathan Crary writes, spectacle is “not an optics of power but an ar-
chitecture,” then how did the broadcasting of modernity and its spectacles
serve as building blocks in Cuba’s architecture of power?18 In which ways
did television’s regulations, technology, and prime-­time programming be-
come barometers of larger sociopolitical and cultural processes? Last, but
not least important, what do the debates surrounding the Cuban medium
in the 1950s reveal about the role of television and popular culture in tran-
sitional societies?
These questions guide my analysis of the broadcasting of modernity and
its spectacles of progress, decency, democracy, and revolution. While I explain
each thematically focused spectacle separately in subsequent chapters, I want
to stress that all were interconnected and constantly evolving based on the
specific political, social, and economic conditions of the period. Further-
more and closely related, even though each chapter chronologically analyzes
moments within which discussions about progress, decency, democracy, and
revolution took center stage, it should be clear that these concepts had been
part of Cuba’s broadcasting laws and dialogues about broadcasting since the
1930s. Therefore, it is possible to argue that the broadcasting of modernity
in Cuba began with the institutionalization of radio on the island in 1922.

int roduct ion   7

Nonetheless, even though modernity became intertwined with radio before
the arrival of television, it was the medium of television that constituted the
broadcasting of modernity. By way of laws, signals, images, transmission,
reach, buildings, studios, technology, antennas, and the actual sets, television
offered the literal and symbolic possibilities of screening — that is, examining,
disguising, and broadcasting — Cuba’s development, progress, and democ-
racy. As Anna Cristina Pertierra and Graeme Turner write, “There would
be some justice to claim that since television is, in a sense, an instrument
of modernity, what television does within any one system is related to the
formation of modernity it serves.”19 In Cuba, the broadcasting of modernity
originated with television.
The 1950s — when the rhetoric of modernization signified economic and
technological developments à la the American way, and Cuba ranked as
one of the top economically developed nation-­states in the region — serve as
discursive background for the spectacles of progress.20 Technology and the
mastery of it were indispensable to these representations. The prominence
of being the first Latin American country to establish a television network,
the second country in the world to incorporate color television, and the
first country to use an airplane as a relay antenna to transmit a live event
(the 1954 World Series of baseball) were some examples that television own-
ers, media professionals, and critics cited to demonstrate Cuba’s television
superiority. Television owners and media professionals viewed themselves
as front-­runners in the race to innovate the medium, so they tried to keep
up-­to-­date with the latest gadgets, production processes, and business ini-
tiatives. Staying a close second in relation to the technological advances of
the United States or pioneering particular aspects of television production
was critical to the spectacles of progress.
The incorporation and development of television on the island reaf-
firmed Cubans’ image of themselves as progressive and technologically,
economically, and culturally advanced in comparison to the rest of Latin
America, and as keeping apace with the United States. In many ways, the
descriptions of television successes functioned through what Pérez cate-
gorizes as the “narrative on nationality,” that is, an “imagery of self repre-
sentation: a mixture of pride and self-­esteem, of conceit and confidence.”21
Television owners and some critics employed terms such as “progressive,”
“advanced,” “civilized,” and “modern” to explain Cuba’s television and its
media professionals’ accomplishments on and off the island. These televi-

8  in troduc t i on
sion achievements, along with the language and narrative used to describe
them, constituted the spectacles of progress. In these spectacles, Havana
was cast as a protagonist in the global television world, and every aspect of
television was supposed to match or surpass each technological, business,
and production triumph.
The spectacles of decency addressed cultural representations on tele-
vision and implied not only performances but also an audience who, ac-
cording to some media producers and reviewers, would have preferred a
televised culture defined by high-­culture artifacts and morally appropriate
programming. The main objective of these spectacles was to conceal aspects
of Cuba’s popular culture that challenged the perception of Cubans as white,
Europe-­oriented, Catholic, and sexually constrained people. Television crit-
ics used words such as “uncultured,” “indecent,” “uncivilized,” and “vulgar”
to describe performances, genres, and people that defied the image of Cuba
as European modern.
In some ways similar to Latin American early cinema and its mediated
modernities, the broadcasting of modernity — particularly the spectacles of
progress and the spectacles of decency — operated within a process of “neo-­
colonial dependency typical of Latin America’s position in the global capital
system.”22 In Cuba, however, this neocolonial economic condition was ex-
clusively interrelated with the United States and its well-­established political
and economic hegemony. As well, and different from the responses emerg-
ing around early cinema in the region, the Cuban “elites” did not have a “civ-
ilizing desire [to] ignore the ‘barbarism’ of the national ‘others.’ ”23 Quite the
opposite. Some members of this Havana-­based, educated, and somewhat
class-­differentiated group strongly advocated eliminating elements they
deemed uncivilized, vulgar, and barbarous. Navigating between Western
ideals of culture and Cuban vernacular cultures, commercial imperatives,
and increased governmental censorship, these “elites” attempted to imple-
ment a national television project with a “civilizing,” Eurocentric imprint.
The main goal of the spectacles of decency was to reposition Cubans as
modern, European-­like people.
But the process of repositioning Cuba as modern was ongoing and com-
plicated, given the circumstances on the island in the 1950s. On the one
hand, class discrepancies, illiteracy, and the rural-­urban divide served as
reminders of the nation’s “discontinuous” path toward socioeconomic mod-
ernization, wherein colonial and neocolonial political and economic factors

int roduct ion   9

shaped national and regional routes to development.24 On the other hand,
the presence of a dictatorial regime functioned as a shadow in the broadcast-
ing of modernity. Fulgencio Batista’s route to power destroyed the liberal-­
democratic government instituted by the 1940 constitution and, with his
dictatorship, the foundation and hopes for a democratic present and future.25
Even as his form of government kept some elements of democratic partici­
pation and dialogue in an attempt to, as political science scholar Jorge I.
Domínguez observes, garner support from the United States, a repressive
environment took over as soon as he perceived discontent and uprising.26
Batista’s recurrent and somewhat erratic imposition and then lifting of
media censorship, his legalization of censorship in 1957 and 1958, and his
attempts to create a series of legislative proposals to preserve the illusion of
democracy formed the spectacles of democracy.
Although one can trace the beginning of these spectacles to 1952, when
democracy collapsed and the first instances of media censorship occurred,
I pay particular attention to the performance of democracy in the late 1950s
to foreground the theatricality of the spectacles. First and foremost, the
spectacles of democracy were produced for a U.S. audience. As a result, by
focusing on a period during which the U.S. media disclosed that rebel Fidel
Castro and his soldiers were fighting in the mountains of Sierra Maestra to
reinstate Cuba’s constitutional democracy, we can see Batista’s contradictory
efforts to appear committed to freedom and civil liberties. The legal stipu-
lations enacted in the late 1950s decorated the final scene on the theatrical
stage that Batista constructed to maintain the fantasy of democracy.
If in the spectacles of democracy the United States was seen as the pri-
mary audience, in the spectacles of revolution the United States was the
creator of a preamble to the spectacles. Herbert L. Matthews’s New York
Times articles on Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement, published
in February 1957, and the U.S. media’s focus on and fascination with Castro
prior to the Cuban Revolution’s victory promoted a series of images and
themes that influenced the spectacles of revolution. Although the spec-
tacles of revolution refer to the government’s political use of television in
combination with the programming and structural changes that occurred
during 1959 and 1960, the iconography that defined the spectacles began to
take shape in the United States. The barbudos (bearded ones) were invited
first into U.S. homes (via newspapers and television), and then, after 1959,
entered the home of Cubans via television. Equally important, the fact that

10  in trodu c t i on
Cuban television was technologically developed and that Cuban producers
and technical staff were highly experienced media professionals greatly fa-
cilitated Castro’s political use of the medium. Thanks to the U.S.-­inspired
spectacles of progress, the spectacles of revolution and its creator and pro-
tagonist, Fidel Castro, successfully marketed the revolution to the Cuban
people.
While the spectacles of revolution, similar to the other spectacles, oper-
ated via a commercial system, a new conceptualization of modernity began
to take shape during 1959, emerging from changing ideas about progress,
morality, and democracy. As historian Lillian Guerra writes, “Starting in
January 1959, the mutual interplay of the media, citizen activism, and mass
rallies launched the Revolution’s story of national redemption and posited
Fidel Castro’s guerrilla as its primary authors. . . . By the late fall of 1959,
citizen-­based efforts to redeem the poor, defend national sovereignty, con-
nect to the campo [countryside] and cleanse consumer culture of its im-
perialist habits continued apace.”27 The broadcasting of modernity became
the broadcasting of the Cuban Revolution, which progressively symbolized
a break with a neocolonial past and present. Feeding themselves with the
fast-­paced transformations taking place in Cuban society, and incorporat-
ing new ideals of progress, decency, and democracy derived from the Rev-
olution, the spectacles of revolution absorbed the spectacles of progress,
the spectacles of decency, and the spectacles of democracy. In the liminal
stage of 1959 – 60, the spectacles of revolution were the only ones guiding the
broadcasting of modernity, foreshadowing some of the ways in which the
state would use television in the early 1960s.
Yet even as, via television programming, the spectacles of revolution in-
tegrated alternative ideas of what it meant to be Cuban and modern, these
spectacles could not subsist in socialist Cuba. They contained traces of a
political, economic, and cultural system that the Cuban Revolution aimed
to dismantle and erase from the annals of Cuban history.28 Aspects related
to television genres, production processes, and commercial television’s con-
ceptualization of the audience, among other things, were linked to U.S. im-
perialism and capitalistic exploitation. To use Debord’s words, the spectacles
of revolution came from a “society without a community.”29 As a result, the
state pushed those spectacles and the broadcasting industry that created
them off the national stage by the end of 1960.
With the nation’s rebirth, television was born again, and in the pro-

in t roduct ion   11
cess of ideological and structural transformation, the state assigned new
uses and functions to the medium. While in early socialist Cuba, televi-
sion continued to broadcast a style of modernity formed by new notions of
citizenry, politics, culture, and temporalities, its primary function was to
help construct the island’s socialist modernity. In other words, by utilizing
the medium to support literacy campaigns, by incorporating propaganda-­
oriented programming, and by providing the television audience with ac-
cess to “high culture,” television helped build socialism in Cuba while also
reinforcing the advances and, thus, the benefits of the Cuban Revolution.
In building socialist modernity, television was concomitantly broadcasting
modernity.
As historian David E. Nye observes, “A technology is not merely a system
of machines with certain functions; rather, it is an expression of a social
world. Electricity, the telephone, the radio, television, the computer, and
the Internet are not implacable forces moving through history, but social
processes that vary from one time period to another and from one culture
to another.”30 Following Nye’s argument, one could say that, in Cuba, the
revolution was televised not only because television broadcast the revolu-
tionary victory but also because some of the causes of discontent and the
impetus behind the revolutionary struggle permeated different aspects of
television. In this regard, the spectacles of progress, decency, democracy,
and revolution serve as reminders that the radicalization of the Cuban Rev-
olution might not have been a deus ex machina developed by powerful Cold
War conspirators but, instead, a domestic drama a long time in the making.
Broadcasting Modernity, then, tells the story of how this drama unfolded via
the various aspects associated with the most powerful media outlet of the
time: television.
This book analyzes the debates, meanings, purposes, and readings as-
signed to television in Cuba from 1950 to 1960, when the medium operated
as a commercial enterprise. By focusing on the industry’s business practices,
its regulations, and its entertainment programming, as well as the state’s and
Cuban citizens’ responses to the medium, the chapters examine how Cuban
television was understood as a technology, a cultural artifact, a regulated
space, and a political place. This broad view also reveals how transforma-
tions on the national stage affected the industry. Broadcasting Modernity
is about television, 1950s Cuba, modernity, and change. This book is also
about the past and, as such, it is a selection and reconstruction of particular

12  in trodu c t i on
moments that occurred in another time period. As historian Keith Jenkins
writes, “The world/the past comes to us always already as stories and . . . we
cannot get out of these stories (narratives) to check if they correspond to the
real world/past, because these always already narratives constitute reality.”31
As I explain below, several factors and narratives came into play in selecting
the subject and in reconstructing the Cuban commercial television past that
animates the pages of this book.

Cuban Commercial Television: Sources and Narrations

Recuperating a key missing link in the history of Latin American televi-

sion was one of the primary motivations behind this research. Although the
last decade has seen numerous studies published in the English language
that focus on Latin American and U.S. Spanish-­language television, most of
the research has dealt with contemporary television flows, powerful media
conglomerates, and the popularity of telenovelas (soap operas) around the
world. Television systems and countries that are not global business players
today have been left out of the scholarly spectrum. Thus, by focusing on
Cuban television in the 1950s, I am calling attention to the importance of
temporal, geographic, cultural, and social specificity in the studies of televi-
sion across the region. Not only do television owners, the professionals, the
government, the critics, the audiences, and the nonaudience present diverse
perspectives on the medium, but these sometimes intertwined, sometimes
disconnected “sites” are constantly being transformed by a variety of com-
peting forces. In both the Latin American and the Spanish Caribbean tele-
vision “past” and “present,” multiple political, economic, cultural, and legal
circumstances and people define and redefine the medium. To eliminate a
particular television system either because it ceased to exist or because it
is not one of today’s television exporters is to erase a portion of television
history and of the social actors that were and are part of that history. How-
ever, even though I would argue that the business of television has defined
most of the scholarship on the medium and, thus, the erasure of Cuba in
the Latin American television literature, the lack of research on Cuban tele-
vision might be a product of other factors as well.
In her seminal essay, “Greater Cuba,” film scholar Ana López takes up the
task of examining the creative trajectory and artistic production of Cuban
exiles and Cuban American filmmakers beginning in the 1970s and evolving

in t roduct ion   13
up to the 1990s. Early in the piece she posits an intriguing question: Why is
it that when cinema scholars analyze exile cinema, the studies unavoidably
focus on the production of exiles escaping conservative and murderous re-
gimes, leaving aside the creators who have left socialist states such as Cuba?
As López writes regarding the marginalization of Cuban exile filmmakers,
“Although buttressed by official U.S. policies and actions against Cuba since
1961, Cuban exile film-­and video-­makers have, paradoxically, had a difficult
time articulating their arguments and being heard. Within artistic circles,
their exile has, in general, not been a privileged position from which to
speak.”32 While López convincingly explains the relevance and ideological
diversity of the Cuban exiles’ cinematic productions, the fact that she needs
to justify her analysis or clarify that not all Cuban exiles are reactionary rich
people who want to see the system collapse reveals some of the issues facing
those who research nonrevolutionary Cuban media.
Cold War politics still frame academic discussions and silences about
Cuba. Dealing with nonrevolutionary Cuban culture invariably comes with
left-­wing and right-­wing baggage that affects what is and is not being re-
searched and what is or is not said about an object of analysis.33 And, in
many cases, what is said immediately puts the scholar on one side of the
ideological spectrum, where in-­between positions are usually missed not
necessarily by those speaking but by those listening. Probably because of
this baggage, open dialogue and criticism of the revolution are mostly ab-
sent in U.S. and Latin American academic discussions outside of Cubanist
circles.34
Of course, this black-­and-­white dichotomy that is part of academia is per-
formed differently in the nonacademic world. As historian Lillian Guerra
writes in the first pages of her pathbreaking book, Visions of Power in Cuba:
Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959 – 1971, when recounting one of
her visits to family on the island, even her hard-­core revolutionary fam-
ily members criticize the system while also recognizing the legacy of co-
lonialism that defined the prerevolutionary past. As a result of the fall of
the Soviet Union, Guerra explains, the “historically rooted story of national
redemption was undoubtedly disintegrating, but it also served as the com-
mon anchor of a society left adrift in rough political seas. Long accustomed
to defining cubanidad according to positions of allegiance or opposition to
this narrative, Cubans experienced disorientation with the end of the Cold
War.”35 Whereas at the Centro de Investigaciones del Instituto Cubano de

14  in trodu c t i on
Radio y Televisión, one of the two main places where I conducted my re-
search, no one openly criticized the government, those compañeros who be-
came friends did not hesitate to complain about the Castro brothers’ regime
in private conversations. Yet, this private/public division and the additional
pressure of focusing on the contributions of the Cuban Revolution when
talking in public (and particularly in front of a foreigner such as myself),
influenced one of my projected research methodologies.
Early in the project I had planned to interview people who were involved
in the development of Cuban commercial television and its transitional pe-
riod. In Havana, I had the opportunity to talk to a woman who not only
began to work in the industry in the mid-­1950s but also was on camera nar-
rating the entrance of Fidel Castro and his caravan into the city of Havana
on January 8, 1959. Every time I asked her to explain the transitional period
of 1959 – 60 in relation to programming genres and themes, she invariably
talked about “the great Fidel” and “our revolution,” never answering my
questions. She sounded as if she was giving me a memorized speech that
she had probably presented on camera to mark every anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution. The politics of the revolution and the fear of possible
repercussions — perhaps related to my tape recorder, which was not turned
on — defined my conversations with her as well as my dialogue with another
potential interviewee in Havana.
In Miami, in contrast, an antirevolutionary passion permeated many of
my conversations. At the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection
(chc), the second location where I conducted most of my research, I had
the opportunity to meet many elderly Cuban exiles who frequented the col-
lection, usually to do some research to satisfy a personal curiosity. Similar
to the people I met in Havana, they were all interested in my research and
wanted to help by introducing me to friends who had worked on tv in the
1950s (the friendliness and sense of humor that define Cubans transcend
generations of political differences and geographic distance). In Miami my
problem was not finding people who would talk about Cuban commercial
television; the issue arose once we reached the year 1959, when “todo se
fue al piso” (everything went downhill). For the exiles I talked to, nothing
positive came after 1959, and there was no way to transcend this rhetoric.
Thus, because of the exiles’ antirevolutionary politics and what I would
describe as the “walking-­on-­eggshells” encounters in Havana, I decided
to abandon interviews as a research methodology. Even though this work

int roduct ion   15

has been enriched by the interviews with television professionals included
in the documentary Hasta el último aliento (Until the last breath, 1995),
in a thesis written by a University of Havana student, and in the chc’s
Luis J. Botiffol Oral History Project, the bulk of the research came from
archives.
Although I conducted research at the State Historical Society of Wis-
consin (where I looked specifically at the papers of Martin Codel, a for-
mer journalist, editor, and media consultant for U.S. media corporations
invested in Latin America), most of the sources utilized in this project, as I
have noted, were found in two locations: Miami and Havana. At the Univer-
sity of Miami’s chc, I gathered information from the magazines Bohemia,
Carteles, Gente de la Semana, and Show, as well as the newspapers Diario de
la Marina and El Mundo. In addition, all the broadcasting laws analyzed in
the book were obtained from La Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba, also
available at the chc. In Havana, as mentioned previously, my research was
conducted at the Centro de Investigaciones del Instituto Cubano de Radio
y Televisión, which holds the Anales de la cmq Radio-­tv, a collection of
newspaper and magazine clippings related to cmq and the broadcasting
business in general. The Anales included clippings from the magazines and
newspapers just mentioned, in addition to television-­and broadcasting-­
related stories published in newspapers such as Alerta, Ataja, Avance, El
Crisol, Diario Nacional, El País, Prensa Libre, Pueblo, Información, Vocero
Occidental, Revolución (1959), and Noticias de Hoy (1959) and the magazine
Cinema. I looked at the Anales from 1949 to 1959, all of which included vol-
umes for all twelve months of each year. Unpublished materials regarding
commercial radio, television surveys, and audiences were also found at the
Centro.
The newspapers and magazines I utilized for this research came from a
broad ideological spectrum. For example, I read television reviews and stories
published in the highly conservative Diario de la Marina; in the government-­
influenced Alerta (owned by Ramón Vasconcelos, minister of communica-
tion during Fulgencio Batista’s regime) and Pueblo; in the politically mod-
erate and intellectually engaged Bohemia; in the politically moderate and
popular-­culture-­oriented Carteles and Gente de la Semana; and in the enter-
tainment magazine Show. While most of the voices present throughout the
chapters come from television reviews, commentaries, and letters published
in the Diario de la Marina, Bohemia, Carteles, and Gente de la Semana (all

16  in trodu c t i on
of which had established television sections and respected television review-
ers), the history narrated in this book was also informed by politically liberal
sources (e.g., Cinema and Prensa Libre).36 Television-­related pieces published
in the communist newspaper Noticias de Hoy and the government-­run news-
paper Revolución and inra magazine helped me analyze the period after the
triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
While in Cuba, I obtained a few clips from television shows broadcast
during the 1950s, segments that were part of Hasta el último aliento, a pro-
gram devoted to the history of Cuban television. As documentary segments,
the clips were already literally and figuratively reframed through montage
and voice-­over. They, to use Bill Nichols’s theorization of documentary film-
making, “reference[d] . . . a ‘reality’ ” that articulated a particular point of
view.37 In this case, the narrations of reality positioned the revolution as the
beginning of a new nation and as the producer of the one and only reality.
The television past was recounted with a mixture of factual data, omission
of positive outcomes, and sporadic criticism of the commercial period. For
example, when discussing the transitional phase of 1959 – 60, the voice-­over
indicates that “the process of the television intervention was gradual and
circumstantial. Nineteen sixty was a defining moment for the country and
for television. . . . Television began to palpitate together with the Cuban
people.”38 Even though Hasta el último aliento represented Fidel Castro’s
participation on commercial television as an important use of the medium
by the leader, the official narrative, or what has become the history of the
new post – 1959 Cuban nation, erased commercial television’s role in 1959 as
a major promoter of the Cuban Revolution. The fact that Hasta el último
aliento did not consider commercial television’s sponsorship of the revolu-
tion and of Fidel Castro is certainly not surprising. “Collective memories,” as
Barbie Zelizer writes, “allow for the fabrication, rearrangement, elaboration,
and omission of details about the past, often pushing aside accuracy and au-
thenticity to accommodate broader issues of identity formation, power and
authority, and political affiliation.”39 In socialist Cuba, the official narrations
of the nation are made to accommodate the binary construction of Cold
War political rhetoric.
With the intention of analyzing some of the television shows depicted
in the documentary, in 2008 I met with the writer and director of Hasta
el último aliento, the late Vicente González-­Castro. During our conversa-
tion he indicated that almost nothing was available. The extremely difficult

int roduct ion   17

economic phase of the Special Period (the economic crisis of 1990 through
the 2000s), the lack of technological equipment to transfer the material for
preservation, and, last but not least, the fact that until very recently televi-
sion was not seen as part of Cuba’s cultural patrimony influenced the dete-
rioration of the material and thus, the limited programming available. Hasta
el último aliento has been digitized and is now the primary source for those
interested in studying television on the island.
In Miami, I was able to find various websites that sold a few episodes and
clips of 1950s Cuban television. While it is not clear to me how those selling
the shows obtained the material, the nostalgia for a prerevolutionary Cuban
past that still defines the Miami exile culture (a culture that, given the age of
the 1960s exiles, might disappear with the generation that developed it) has
created commercial ventures designed for those who want to reproduce a
temporarily static and idyllic 1950s Cuba.40 In addition, YouTube had some
visual material, although, contrary to the “collectibles” sold in Miami, many
of the videos were ephemeral — subject to removal from one day to the next.
Still, all of these disjointed fragments of programming served as background
information for analyzing the broadcasting of modernity and its spectacles.
The sophistication of Cuban television scenery, the inclusion of high-­culture
performances on variety shows, the participation of black Cuban singers on
television, and the theatricality of Fidel Castro’s televised persona were pres-
ent in the fragmented programming, providing a visual and aural reference
to the accounts included in newspaper and magazine articles.
Regarding the written sources utilized for this research, I would like to
point out that even as they provided multiple views of the business and cul-
ture of Cuban television, they were not equally distributed across the class
spectrum. Television reviewers and the people who sent letters to magazines
and newspapers came from the middle class, upper-­middle class, and upper
class. References to international travel and professional affiliations listed
in some of the letters provided hints regarding the class position and cul-
tural capital of the reviewers and those who wrote letters. This suggests that
the racially heterogeneous and geographically dispersed working class was
not involved in the national dialogues and debates about television. While
economically disadvantaged Cubans residing in Havana and some of the
eastern provinces probably had the opportunity to watch television, either
in other people’s homes or through store windows in the 1950s, it is not until
the end of the decade that their viewing patterns were recorded via surveys.

18  in trodu c t i on
Hence, although the Cuban working class was directly and indirectly im-
plied in the discourses of television, its voices were absent.
In addition to the class dynamic, there were different levels of power
behind those who discussed the medium of television and those who exer-
cised changes in the industry, even as, on many occasions, these categories
intersected. At the top of the power hierarchy was the state. In different
moments, presidents, ministers of communication, and legislators tried to
control the medium primarily via laws and censorship tactics. At the end of
the decade, of course, the main exercise of power came with the national-
ization of the industry.
The industry followed the power of the state. This broad categorization
included television owners and advertisers at the top of the pyramid, followed
by producers, directors, writers, performers, and technical staff. Whereas per-
formers and technical staff were the least powerful individuals within the
industry, on some occasions they freed themselves from power constraints
and momentarily impacted the culture being televised. Additionally, though
with less power than the state, television owners, and advertisers, entities
such as labor unions and private organizations also influenced industry prac-
tices when it came to television morality. And, mediating all these inter-
ests were the television reviewers. Passing judgment within the ideological
boundaries of the newspaper or magazine that employed them and pro-
viding factual information, television reviewers were powerful individuals.
Their power resided not in legislation or economic maneuvers but in how
their words demarcated the discourses about television.
The last aspect I want to address regarding the narration of Cuban com-
mercial television’s past is my relationship to the object of study. As a non-­
Cuban, I did not grow up listening to visceral rampages about Fidel Castro
or romantic accounts about the wonders of the pre-­Castro era. Certainly,
the topics were not foreign to me given that some of my best childhood
friends were Cuban and that the theme of Castro and the Cuban Revo-
lution was all over television in Puerto Rico, where I was raised. Still, an
obsession with destroying the ideology that informed the revolution and
a longing to return to Cuba, while familiar topics, were not part of my
familial interactions. Thus, my interest in the subject was personal only
in the sense that I consider Cuban commercial television an important
component of the region’s history; as such, I believed it had to be studied.
Needless to say, what I present here is only one approach to that history.

in t roduct ion   19
In Cuba, researchers such as Raúl Garcés, Reynaldo González, Oscar Luis
López, Mayra Sierra Cúe, and a new generation affiliated with the Centro
de Investigaciones del Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión and the
magazine En Vivo have embarked on analyzing different aspects of Cuba’s
broadcasting. I see my work as complementing those studies, examining
facets of the history of television in Cuba and the place of television during
a limited period of Cuban history.
My narration begins before the arrival of television in Cuba. Chapter
1, “Prelude to the Spectacles: Constituting a Modern Broadcasting System
through the Law, 1923 – 1950,” analyzes the legislation that regulated Cuba’s
broadcasting prior to the launching of television. By exploring how national
and transnational circumstances influenced legislation and its conceptu-
alization of broadcasting, the chapter traces the ways in which notions of
modernity began to infiltrate the legal and regulatory imaginings of Cuban
media. In addition, this chapter draws attention to the development of Ha-
vana as an important radio center in Cuba and Latin America. The prestige
of Havana-­based media industries across the region, a reputation that began
in the 1940s, became one of the narratives of the spectacles of progress, the
focus of my second chapter.
Chapter 2, “Spectacles of Progress: Technology, Expansion, and the Law,”
examines how narratives about Cuban television’s technology, business, and
production accomplishments during the early years of television’s establish-
ment on the island were used to highlight Cuba’s progress. Whereas these
narrations promoted an understanding of Cuban modernity aligned with a
U.S. conceptualization of socioeconomic and political development, the un-
even processes of geographic modernization, the destitution of a democratic
government, and the decline in economic growth began to reveal the artifice
behind the spectacles. Audiences and nonaudiences became important play-
ers in dismantling the spectacles of progress, calling attention to the stag-
ings created by media owners, some television critics, and the government.
Chapter 2 also examines the television law of 1953, legislation that drastically
altered the conceptualization of Cuba’s broadcasting, particularly regarding
television programming, media creators, and audiences.
Chapter 3, “Spectacles of Decency: Morality as a Matter of the Industry
and the State,” centers on the ways in which television reviewers, private
entities, some audience members, and the state conceptualized morality for

20  in trodu c t i on
television, from the incorporation of the medium in Cuba to the 1955 – 56 pe-
riod, when the government began to intervene in entertainment program-
ming. While initial discussions about morality and decency on television
intersected with ideals of education, high culture, and bourgeois norms of
conduct, increasingly debates about morality became a way for the govern-
ment to blame those in charge of media industries for the island’s social
decay. As a result, morality on television turned out to be more than a com-
mentary on the performances of the body; it became an excuse to avoid
addressing the performance of the state.
The legalization of media censorship at the end of the decade and the
government’s transformative interpretation of morality and decency in
entertainment programming are the subject of chapter 4, “Spectacles of
Democracy and a Prelude to the Spectacles of Revolution.” As the chapter
demonstrates, for the government, morality not only related to the topic of
sex on television but it also entailed themes that could convey transgressive
behaviors about law and order. Whereas the government proclaimed that
all regulatory changes enacted during the 1957 – 58 period were designed to
protect Cuba from communist threats, the U.S. media had already been dis-
mantling the spectacles of democracy by reporting on Fidel Castro and the
26th of July Movement soldiers. This U.S.-­mediated imagining of the rebel-
lion was prominent in the cbs documentary Rebels of the Sierra Maestra:
The Story of Cuba’s Jungle Fighters (1957), the first television program de-
voted to Cuban revolutionaries. Even as the documentary attempted to
adhere to the norms of objective reporting that defined U.S. journalism in
the late 1950s, the Hollywood-­style shots and themes served as a preamble
to some of the narratives that formed the spectacles of revolution.
Chapter 5, “Spectacles of Revolution: A Rebirth of Cubanness,” centers on
the first year of the Cuban Revolution and examines how the revolution’s po-
litical, cultural, and social transformations and the citizens’ enthusiasm for
the revolutionary victory shaped television. My analysis of the production
of fiction and nonfiction programming about the revolution, Fidel Castro’s
ongoing appearances on television, and changes in commercial television’s
programming flow demonstrates how the commercial medium promoted
the revolution and how the government utilized it for political gain. During
1959, television was revolutionized, and in this process of transformation, it
began to merge with the government.

int roduct ion   21

 The last chapter, “From Broadcasting Modernity to Constructing Mo-
dernity,” explores the state’s top-­down restructuring of television. Beginning
with the nationalization of all television industries, new station names, high-­
culture-­oriented programming, and a new broadcasting law, the state cre-
ated a new television system. Absent of commercial interferences and U.S.
influence, the socialist revolution was televised.

22  in trodu c t i on
 NOTES

Introduction. Broadcasting Modernity, Spectacles, and Television

1 See Rodríguez, The Havana Guide; Hyde, Constitutional Modernism.
2 According to Kenneth Burke, people select specific ways to describe themselves
and their surroundings, and their language selection (what he calls “terministic
screens”) unavoidably filters other ways of conceptualizing reality. As he writes,
“Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a
terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function
also as a deflection of reality.” Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 45.
3 For an extensive historical analysis of U.S. – Cuba relations before 1959, see
Pérez, On Becoming Cuban.
4 On Becoming Cuban, 7.
5 On Becoming Cuban, 351.
6 Trouillot, “The Otherwise Modern,” 224.
7 Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets. For an analysis of race and the incorporation of black
cultural elements as part of the Cuban nation, see de la Fuente, A Nation for All.
8 de la Fuente, A Nation for All, 12.
9 Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets, 7; Arroyo, Travestismos culturales.
10 Arroyo, Travestismos culturales, 7.
11 Hanchard, “Black Cinderella?” See also Wade, Music, Race, and Nation, 3 – 7.
12 Moraña, Dussel, and Jáuregui, “Colonialism and Its Replicants,” 2. See also
Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Social Classification”;
Mignolo, “The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference”; and Qui-
jano, “The Colonial Nature of Power and Latin America’s Cultural Experience.”
13 Gaonkar, “On Alternative Modernities”; Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity”;
Trouillot, “The Otherwise Modern.” See also Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities.”
14 Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 459.
15 Sturken and Thomas, “Introduction,” 1.
16 Domínguez, “The Batista Regime in Cuba,” 126.
17 Debord, Society of the Spectacle, secs. 4 and 5.
 18 Crary, Suspensions of Perception, 75.
19 Pertierra and Turner, Locating Television, 123.
20 For an analysis of the Cuban economy during the 1950s, see Farber, The Origins
of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered; Pérez, Cuba; and Mesa-­Lago, Market,
Socialist and Mixed Economies.
21 Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 348.
22 López, “ ‘A Train of Shadows,’ ” 149.
23 López, “ ‘A Train of Shadows,’ ” 154.
24 As Jesús Martín Barbero observes, the historical circumstances that shaped
Latin American nation-­states and their political development (long periods
under colonial rule, economic dependency, neocolonialism, and struggles to
incorporate the popular classes into the political project) influenced their path
toward modernization. Martín Barbero, Communication, Culture and Hege-
mony, 150 – 51.
25 Pérez, Cuba; and Arnavat, “The Cuban Constitution and the Future Demo-
cratic Transition.”
26 In the words of Domínguez, “Batista believed that his tolerance of some op-
position would gain him support, above all in the U.S. government. For this
reason he authorized various ‘dialogues’ with civic groups to find a solution to
the problem of political legitimacy, whose only plausible outcome was his own
resignation.” Domínguez, “The Batista Regime in Cuba,” 126.
27 Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, 74, 76.
28 As Rafael Rojas explains, one of the first goals of the revolutionary leaders was
to “destroy the experience” of the Cuban nation throughout the first part of the
twentieth century. Rojas, La máquina del olvido, 72.
29 Debord, Society of the Spectacle, sec. 192.
30 Nye, “Technological Prediction,” 171.
31 Jenkins, Re-­thinking History, 11.
32 López, “Greater Cuba,” 40.
33 As expected, this left-­wing/right-­wing dichotomy has had the effect of stifling
the discussion of other areas beyond cinema and television. In reference to
the limited research on the Visual Arts section of the Pan American Union
(pau) and on its influential leader José Gómez Sicre, Claire F. Fox remarks,
“But the main reason, I believe, for the critical avoidance of the pau arts pro-
grams is ideological, a legacy of the Cuban Revolution’s polarizing impact on
American intellectual sectors.” Thanks to Fox’s meticulous research, the com-
plexities of this Cuban man and his contribution to the internationalization of
Latin American art are appreciated beyond a simple characterization such as
an agent of U.S. empire. Fox, Making Art Panamerican, 14.
34 For a recent analysis of the academic left’s refusal to criticize the revolution, see
Duanel Díaz Infante, “Revolución cubana, crítica latinoamericana, y academia

182  n ote s to i n t rodu c t i on

 norteamericana,” Diario de Cuba, April 28, 2013, accessed April 29, 2013, http://
www.diariodecuba.com/de-­leer/1367137602_2990.html.
35 Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, 2.
36 For information on newspapers in Cuba prior to the Cuban Revolution, see
Salwen, “The Dark Side of Cuban Journalism.”
37 Nichols, Representing Reality, 107.
38 González-­Castro, Hasta el último aliento.
39 Zelizer, Remembering to Forget, 3.
40 For an excellent analysis of Cuban exile and Cuban American cultures, see
Pérez Firmat, Life on the Hyphen.

Chapter one. Prelude to the Spectacles

1 Classen, Watching Jim Crow, 16.
2 Nye, America as Second Creation, 16; see also 1 – 42.
3 Here, I am referring to elements of U.S. modernity that emphasize technolog-
ical and economic progress, not the particularities of American culture that
foment individualism and secularism.
4 Similar legal practices took place in other colonized territories. See, for exam-
ple, Larkin, Signal and Noise; and Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land.
5 Both Oscar Luis López and Michael Salwen characterize Cuban broadcasting
laws as copycat versions of U.S. laws. As López writes, “The government lim-
ited itself to adopt[ing] simple regulatory measures copying some dispositions
that were prevalent in the United States of North America. . . . Everything was
left to the private sector with the recommendation of ‘respecting morality and
good customs’ although none of the legal codes defined what was moral and
what the good customs were.” See López, La radio en Cuba, 63 – 64; and Salwen,
Radio and Television in Cuba.
6 Alfredo Zayas, President, “Secretaria de Gobernación,” Gaceta Oficial de la
República de Cuba, 1923, 3233 – 36.
7 See Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation; and Streeter, Selling the Air.
8 While advertisements were prohibited by law, some stations began to air ads
in 1926, mostly from small local corporations. Additionally, the 1923 legis-
lation did not include any explanation regarding membership and general
duties of the Department of Communication. It was not until the 1934 Radio
Law that the specific duties of this office were outlined. The Department of
Communication would be in charge of regulating Cuban broadcasting for the
next thirty-­nine years. For information on Cuban radio, see López, La radio
en Cuba.
9 Streeter, Selling the Air, 87.
10 López, La radio en Cuba. See also Salwen, Radio and Television in Cuba, 7.

n ot e s to cha p t er one   183