I should begin this review by acknowledging that I have a special stake in the topic of Yeidy Rivero’s new book. In 1951, my father, Rafael Duany Navarro, began to work as a television director and producer of variety shows, soap operas, musical programs, and plays in Cuba. Shortly after the Revolution triumphed on January 1, 1959, probably in December, my father moved to Panama, where he helped establish the first television channel in that country. I imagine that he felt displaced by the nationalization of the Cuban television stations, CMQ and CMBF, where he had worked before. In 1966, my father landed another job in Puerto Rico and our growing family would relocate to the Island, where I lived for most of my life. My father later moved to Ecuador, where he remarried and passed away several years later. He also worked briefly in a Miami television station. So the television industry has shaped the places where I have lived, studied, and worked—in Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the United States.
Given this personal background, as well as my current position as a “professional Cuban,” I looked forward to the publication of Yeidy Rivero’s groundbreaking work on Cuban television during the 1950s. Broadcasting Modernity appraises Cuba’s pivotal role in the origins and development of the medium in Latin America—and even before, since radio broadcasting had already established Havana as a “media capital” in the region. In particular, Rivero underlines that CMQ-TV became the leading television network on the Island and in much of Latin America at the time. More broadly, the author analyzes how television was deeply entangled with Cuban politics and society from its beginnings as a commercial enterprise until it was nationalized by the Cuban government.
Rivero’s research unveils the contested meanings of television for various kinds of social actors, including station owners, state officials, television critics, media professionals, intellectuals, and members of the audience. Some of the most prominent characters that appear throughout Rivero’s chronicle include media moguls Goar Mestre, Gaspar Pumarejo, and Amadeo Barletta; Ministers of Communication Ramón Vasconcelos and Enrique Oltuski; television critics Alberto Giró, Emma Pérez, and Enrique Núñez Rodríguez; and telenovela scriptwriters like Delia Fiallo. Rivero’s scrutiny of the public record on Cuban television during the 1950s clearly shows that “television was used to both stage and contest Cuba’s modernity” (p. 7).
the overarching purpose of Cuban television was to “broadcast modernity,” albeit inflected by diverse and often opposing discourses of Cuban national identity
Rivero’s thesis is precisely that the overarching purpose of Cuban television was to “broadcast modernity,” albeit inflected by diverse and often opposing discourses of Cuban national identity. The author begins her fine-grained historical analysis with how “broadcasting modernity” was institutionalized during the creation and expansion of radio broadcasting in Cuba between 1923 and 1950. The new medium of television was supposed to represent Cuba as a developed and civilized Western nation-state, characterized by technological sophistication, economic prosperity, high culture, appropriate moral values, and a democratic government (at least until Fulgencio Batista’s coup d’état in 1952).
The book’s narrative breaks down this process of media representation into three main phases: (1) 1950–52: the last cycle of Cuba’s short-lived democratic experiment, which began in 1940, and which coincided with a period of sustained economic growth; (2) 1952–58: the Batista dictatorship, characterized by political turbulence and violence, as well as financial decline since the mid-1950s; and (3) 1959–60: the first two years after the triumph of the Revolution, when the new government became increasingly radical and eventually embraced socialism. According to Rivero, each of these stages corresponds to a different set of “spectacles” promoted by Cuban television: (1) spectacles of progress, associated with the adoption of U.S. ideologies, technologies, and commercial structures; (2) spectacles of decency, reflecting a dominant narrative to protect and police the tenets of a Eurocentric and Catholic morality; and (3) spectacles of democracy and revolution, initially linked to the struggle for the restoration of a constitutional government and civil liberties and then to a rupture with U.S. dependence and capitalism.
Broadcasting Modernity dwells on the legal, journalistic, and business aspects of Cuba’s television industry.
Rivero’s methodology relies primarily on extensive archival research at the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries and the Research Center of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television in Havana. She also consulted some primary sources and staff at the José Martí National Library in Havana. Most of her documentary evidence derives from Cuban magazines, newspapers, laws, and video clips about television programming on the Island during the 1950s. The book’s endnotes refer particularly to periodicals reflecting various ideological persuasions, ranging from the conservative Diario de la Marina to the liberal Bohemia, and including Carteles, Gente de la Semana, and La Gaceta de Cuba. Rivero had originally planned to interview key informants who participated in the growth and decline of Cuban commercial television, but eventually decided not do so because of their polarization into prorevolutionary militants in Havana and antirevolutionary exiles in Miami. As a result of this methodological decision, Broadcasting Modernity dwells on the legal, journalistic, and business aspects of Cuba’s television industry, rather than on the lived experiences of pioneering protagonists in the medium and its reception by ordinary Cuban citizens.
One of Rivero’s main findings is that Cuban legislation approached radio (and later television) broadcasting as both a commercial enterprise and a public service. This underlying tension between entertaining and advertising to consumers, on the one hand, and informing and educating citizens, on the other, persisted at least until 1953, when a new law privileged a capitalistic media environment similar to that of the United States. At first, Cuban television promoted “spectacles of progress,” drawing upon a narrative of technological innovation and expertise, which required familiarization with the U.S. model of commercial broadcasting. However, the demise of a constitutional government, economic stagnation, and industrial restructuring in Cuba undermined that narrative.
After 1954, public discussions about regulating Cuban television became increasingly concerned with “spectacles of decency,” designed to contain and sanitize popular expressions of gender, sexuality, and race—such as men in drag, female mambo dancers (mamboletas), Afro-Cuban rituals, and other “indecencies.” Between 1957 and 1958, “spectacles of democracy” were often produced for U.S. and Cuban audiences, dramatizing the themes of law and order, even as political dissent was widely censored on screen. Finally, “spectacles of revolution” (1959–60) mirrored increasing media control by Fidel Castro’s regime, which by the end of the latter year had expropriated all television stations, and centered on the telegenic figure of Fidel Castro, the consolidation of revolutionary ideology, and the promotion of socialist programs.
Rivero concludes that the revolutionary government reconfigured the meaning of Cubanness through television and other media, eliminating all commercial advertising on the Island and creating a powerful state-run media apparatus. The new task assigned to Cuban television was to build a socialist consciousness among the Cuban people, together with a nationalist project. As the author notes, “the Cuban Revolution and themes associated with Cuban culture, history, and society became the topics of all television genres” (p. 161).
Not surprisingly, the nationalization of the television industry spurred an exodus of media professionals (including my own father) to other parts of the Americas. Former television owners, managers, performers, scriptwriters, directors, producers, and technical personnel would help launch and staff commercial broadcasting and advertising corporations in Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Panama, Peru, the United States, and other countries. In an insightful 2001 article, Rivero assessed the foundational role of Cuban exiles in Puerto Rican commercial television. I still remember numerous Cuban television personalities who settled in Puerto Rico during the 1960s and 1970s: Guillermo Alvarez Guedes, Olga and Tony Alvarez, Lissette Alvarez, Rosaura Andreu, Rolando Barral, Tony Chiroldes, Angel Comesañas, Ofelia d’Acosta, Guillermo de Cún, Flor de Loto, Luis Echegoyen, Pucho Fernández, Pablo Frankel, Blanca Rosa Gil, Marino Guastella, Emilio Guede, Tito Hernández, La Lupe, Ramiro Martínez, Rolando Menéndez (“Míster Cien”), Joaquín Monserrate (“Pacheco,” who was Spanish-born, but came from Cuba), Frank Moro, Raúl Nacer (who had arrived in 1956), Evelio Otero, Lucy Pereda, Roberto Prohías, Gaspar Pumarejo, Marilyn Pupo, Felo Ramírez, Armando Roblán, Manolo Urquiza, Nobel Vega, Pepe Yedra, and Raúl Xiqués. Many of them were friends of my father’s.
In my judgement, Broadcasting Modernity contributes substantially to the interdisciplinary literature in Cuban studies by focusing on a poorly understood but significant topic: the social and political role of television before and after the Cuban Revolution. The book advances a nuanced perspective on the repercussions of television for popular culture in Cuba and other Latin American countries. Rivero’s painstaking research helps reconstruct the multiple links among media, society, and politics during a critical decade in Cuban history, which witnessed the swift transition from a democratically-elected government and capitalistic economy, to the Batista regime, to a one-party state that monopolized the mass media and later all means of production. Her well-grounded and theoretically sophisticated work raises crucial academic and political issues such as the corrosive effects of state censorship on cultural creativity; the competition between the commercial and educational functions of the mass media; and the ideological clashes among various sectors of the population as they seek to define and control the media. On a more personal note, Broadcasting Modernity helped me understand better the historical juncture in which my father’s early professional career unfolded.
Future studies of Cuban television might revisit the use of oral histories and intensive interviews with some of the remaining survivors of the 1950s in both Havana and Miami. They might also retrace the trajectories of exiled media professionals in countries like Panama, Venezuela, Argentina, and the United States. Finally, the analysis of contemporary media in Cuba might follow Rivero’s suggestions about the return of imported commercial programs from the United States and elsewhere—as demonstrated by the recent popularity of the paquetes, the underground USB drives containing movies, television series, sporting events, and news programs. These and other questions can now be posed more sharply thanks to Yeidy Rivero’s outstanding research on the Cuban mass media.
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Duke University Press Books (March 27, 2015)
ISBN-10: 0822358719
ISBN-13: 978-0822358718