Broadcast Wars

FIDEL CASTRO ONCE CALLED IT “AN ELEC-
tronic war between David and Goliath…that Biblical
character [who] was defeated by his stupidity.”I The Cuban
leader was referring to T.V. Marti, the most recent in a long
line of U.S. government propaganda stations directed at
Cuba.
In March, the U.S. Information Agency began experi-
mental television transmissions to Cuba from a blimp float-
ing over South Florida.’ The new station, named after Jos6
Marti, nineteenth-century hero of Cuban independence,
broadcasts on a standard Cuban television channel each night
that weather permits the blimp to be sent aloft. Its program-
ming includes dubbed U.S. sitcoms (“Kate and Allie”),
sporting events, music videos and other seemingly innocu-
ous entertainment, intertwined with the U.S. government
version of Cuban domestic news. The cost to taxpayers will
be nearly $40 million during the first two years and approxi-
mately $15 million annually thereafter.
Describing it as “television aggression,” the Cuban gov-
ernment immediately began jamming the signal, claiming its
“legitimate right to reject any action against its sovereignty.'”
After President Bush gave final approval to the project in
August, Cuba stood poised to retaliate by transmitting its
own radio broadcasts throughout the continental United
States, and thereby causing serious disruption to the U.S.
broadcast system.
“Castro likes to tout his revolutionary credentials,” said
un a riavana sireei: u.z. propaganda seeKs Io neigmen discontent with images of “development”
Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-SC) early this year, “but he cannot
begin to match the revolutionary potential of television.” 4
Proponents of T.V. Martf like Sen. Hollings claim that
President Fidel Castro’s angry response is indicative of his
fear that U.S. news and entertainment will facilitate the
downfall of his regime. Cuban officials interviewed over the
past six months, however, argue that sovereignty, not the
content of the broadcasts, is the central issue. They say the
Cuban government welcomes Western programming and
Havana has sought to negotiate exchange agreements with
public and commercial television in the United States. A flow
of media between the United States and Cuba is inevitable,
they say, given advances in communication technologies and
the proximity of the two countries.
What they do not want is U.S. programming forced on
them as an intervention in their internal affairs. Any sign of
official weakness in responding to this challenge, they be-
lieve, would invite domestic opposition and further U.S.
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
John Spicer Nichols teaches at Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity and writes frequently on communications and U.S.
foreign policyde Cuba!” (“Long live Christ, Hallelujah, and an end to
the blockade of Cuba!”) Two years later, when the
political winds in Washington changed, Espinosa de-
nounced el didlogo in Soldier of Fortune magazine,
claiming he had been recruited by Cuban intelligence to
spy on the community.
The agreements reached allowed 3,000 political pris-
oners, former prisoners and members of divided families
to emigrate, and permitted Cubans living abroad to visit
the island-even many who had participated in military
actions against Cuba. Initially, right-wing groups tried to
intimidate people by bombing travel agencies that ar-
rapged family visits, threatening to bomb planes, and
harassing those who did travel. For example, in 1979
Rosario Moreno, head of a Los Angeles travel agency that
arranged trips to Cuba, came home to find her two
children cowering in a corner after shots were fired
through her living room window. That same year, over
twenty bombs went off in the homes and businesses of
supporters of an opening toward Cuba. Carlos Mufiiz, a
founder of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and Eulalio
Negrin, who participated in the dialogue with the Cuban
government, were both assassinated.) 4 Mufiiz, a 26-year-
old father of two, was driving home from his job at a travel
aggression. “Opposition can not be built with lies and psy-
chological warfare,” Fidel Castro said of T.V. Marti earlier
this year. But, he added, “Some of those subversive plans [of
the U.S. government] might be successful if we sit idly by and
do nothing.”‘
T.V. Marti is, in essence, an electronic version of the Platt
Amendment, which Cuba was forced to incorporate into its
constitution in 1901 as a condition for the withdrawal of U.S.
troops. It gave the United States the right to intervene at will
in Cuban affairs. While sitcoms and news are unlikely to
cause the unraveling of the Cuban Revolution, T.V. Marti
constitutes an overt intervention in violation of international
telecommunications regulations that recognize the sover-
eignty of national broadcasting systems.
A well-developed body of international law grants each
country the right and responsibility to decide, free from
outside interference, how its electronic media are organized,
financed, programmed and regulated. In other words, what
appears on U.S. television screens is the business of the
United States, not Canada, Mexico or Cuba. This simple
logic is the basis for the highly technical treaties that govern
international telecommunications, which reserve standard
radio and television frequencies for domestic use only and
confine cross-national broadcasting to shortwave bands.
Despite the lack of an international enforcement mechanism,
most countries do comply with these accords. The United
States and Cuba are notable exceptions.
H OSTILE BROADCASTING HAS LONG BEEN A
primary tool of Washington’s policy toward the Cuban
regime. Within months after Fidel Castro came to power,
clandestine stations calling for the overthrow of the new
government began operating from the United States or with
U.S. government support. At least a score of these stations
agency in San Juan, Puerto Rico that arranged trips to
Cuba for Cubans, when gunmen riddled his car with
bullets. He died the next day.
Nevertheless, in the first year after the dialogue, more
than 120,000 Cubans visited the island. Once the Right
realized that people were going to Cuba anyway, they
began encouraging travellers to bring back “intelligence”
information about life in Cuba and to cause as much
damage as they could while on the island-by flushing
articles of clothing into hotel toilets, etc.
Much to the chagrin of the Cuban-American Left,
visitors often came back more embittered than before.
Many felt that the Cuban government was exploiting their
desire to see relatives by charging outrageous prices,
which at one point reached $1500 for a one-week trip from
Miami, even if the traveller stayed with relatives. The
Cuban government viewed visits by relatives as a source
of foreign exchange. Special stores were opened where
visitors could pay top dollar for consumer goods in short
supply, to give as presents. The corruption they encoun-
tered in Cuba required them to hand out still more money,
and further antagonized them. The Cuban-American Left’s
hopes that the trips would encourage good will were
dashed.
have broadcast to Cuba over the past three decades, at a cost
of hundreds of millions of dollars. By any measure, it has
been the most concentrated propaganda blitz in hemispheric
history. 6
The CIA plan for covert actions against Cuba which
President Eisenhower approved in March 1960 included the
establishment of a clandestine radio station. Two months
later, Radio Swan began operations from Swan Island, a tiny
dot in the Caribbean claimed by the United States. The
mission of the station was to soften up Cuban audiences for
the impending Bay of Pigs invasion. Produced by anti-Castro
exile groups in Miami, the broadcasts mixed traditional
Cuban music, soap operas, and other entertainment with
venomous attacks on the regime. “Radio Swan is not a radio
station but a cage of hysterical parrots,” Cuban government
radio responded. 7 After the Bay of Pigs debacle, the station
was renamed “Radio Americas” and moved to Florida,
where it continued to urge the Cuban people to burn crops,
sabotage public utilities, and rise up against Fidel Castro.
The inability to maintain complete control over its do-
mestic airwaves has been a major source of aggravation to the
Cuban revolutionary leadership. Fidel Castro placed great
importance on electronic media in the creation and consoli-
dation of his regime. During the revolutionary war, he
effectively used Radio Rebelde, a clandestine station oper-
ated from his mountain stronghold, to harass the dictatorship
of Fulgencio Batista. After Batista fell, Castro capitalized on
Cuba’s relatively well-developed radio and television sys-
tem to mobilize support for his revolutionary government.
Herbert Matthews, the late New York Times editorialist
and chronicler of the Cuban revolution, described the phe-
nomenon: “… a religious faith which came pouring over the
radio waves and through the television screens in the words
and presence of Fidel Castro. I coined a phrase at the time:
VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 3 (NOVEMBER 1990) 31Cuba II
The effect on the Cuban population was equally dra-
matic. With visitors bringing in consumer goods, the
black market surged. Those who did not have relatives in
the United States or other countries did not receive the
same benefits, and many objected to the uneven distribu-
tion this fostered. The release of prisoners also exacer-
bated tensions inside Cuba; the United States dragged its
feet processing visas, in effect creating a bottleneck of
discontented people.’ 5
On April 6, 1980, a group of Cubans in search of
asylum crashed their car into the Peruvian Embassy in
Havana, killing a guard. When the Peruvian government
refused to turn them over to Cuban authorities, Cuba
withdrew its guards and announced that anyone who
wanted to leave the country should go to the Embassy.
Within days more than 10,000 Cubans jammed the com-
pound. The government then opened the port of Mariel,
west of Havana. Like the Camarioca incident in 1965,
Cuban-Americans sailed from Miami to pick up relatives.
Over the next few months, over 120,000 Cubans were
processed by U.S. immigration officials.
Mariel was devastating for progressive Cuban-Ameri-
cans. They had been convinced that the Cuban Revolution
enjoyed broad support. Mariel not only proved to the
government by television. The Revolution came in a flood of
talk, as Fidel exhorted, explained, reasoned with, and aroused
Cuba’s millions day after day, night after night, four, five, six
hours at a time. The world was amused; Cubans listened
enthralled.” 8
Not only did Castro use television as a tool of governance,
he also felt the media were precious resources that must be
used to solve the country’s mammoth social and economic
problems. The nationwide coordination of print and broad-
cast media in 1961 to help eliminate illiteracy was one of the
revolution’s finest moments.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the White House ordered
an intensification of U.S. broadcasting to Cuba. Overt radio
broadcasts under the auspices of the USIA’s Voice of America
began in November 1962, while planning for additional
covert broadcasting continued. A month later, USIA Direc-
tor Edward R. Murrow reported in a secret memo to President
Kennedy that the United States had developed the capability
to beam television programs to Cuba from airborne transmit-
ters. The declassified memo describes how two specially
equipped DC-6 aircraft flying at a maximum of 18,000 feet
just outside Cuban airspace could deliver U.S. television
propaganda to Cuban audiences.’
The project was part of Operation Mongoose, the infa-
mous CIA campaign to unseat Castro. Gen. Edward G.
Lansdale, chief of the operation and the United States’
premier psychological warrior, was eager to deploy the
airborne television system. But Murrow urged caution. The
legendary broadcast journalist, whose televised denuncia-
tion of Sen. Joseph McCarthy helped stem the anticom-
munist hysteria of the 1950s, appreciated the political power
of the medium and recognized its potential for abuse. In his
memo, Murrow counseled the President: “We should not use
this equipment to place television in Cuba under other than
Relatives reunite in Havana, 1981: Both Havana and Washington have played politics with family visits
world that many problems existed, it raised doubts about
whether the revolution was as irreversible as they had
assumed. The Cuban-American Right renewed its calls
the most grave circumstances.”‘” Murrow and his aides
expressed concern that Cuba could easily jam the T.V.
signals and might be tempted to retaliate against U.S. broad-
casters. He recommended that the television system be used
only if the United States invaded. Kennedy took his advice.
OR THE NEXT TWO DECADES, U.S. PROPA-
ganda broadcasts to Cuba continued at a low ebb. Voice
of America reduced its Cuban programming transmitted
from Florida, and most of the clandestine stations disap-
peared as the CIA redirected its attention and resources
elsewhere. But in the 1980s, the means and ends of the 1960s
were revived. Describing the programs of the USIA as “the
greatest weapon of all,” President Reagan ordered the larg-
est peacetime expansion of U.S. propaganda activities ever.”
Growth of the USIA budget during this period far exceeded,
on a percentage basis, the defense build-up for which the
Reagan Administration is noted.
Of course, a primary target was Cuba. In 1985, the
Reagan Administration launched Radio Marti to supplant the
old VOA service that had broadcast to Cuba since the Missile
Crisis. The new station, operating on both shortwave and a
standard AM broadcasting frequencies, beams 24 hours of
programming to Cuba daily, at an annual cost of approxi-
mately $12 million. The Cuban government immediately
lashed back by suspending an important immigration agree-
ment with the United States, and it briefly disrupted U.S.
commercial radio broadcasts as far away as Utah and Iowa as
a “test and demonstration” of its ability to respond.
Cuba and the United States soon realized that the lack of
an immigration agreement hurt both sides, and in 1986 they
began secret negotiations in Mexico. Cuba wanted Radio
Marti removed from the air as a pre-condition; the United
States refused. Finally, in 1987, Cuban negotiators agreed to
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
– —
“—for invasion.
It immediately became apparent when the boatlift
immigrants (dubbed “Marielitos”) landed on U.S. shores,
that they were not the white middle-class exiles of the
1960s. Many were dark-skinned and most of them were
poor or working-class. A significant number had criminal
records, and there were also many homosexuals–as
unwelcome among Cuban-Americans in Miami as they
had been at home.
Those calling for an invasion of Cuba expected that the
Marielitos would join them in their plans, but they showed
little interest; they had left the island for reasons other than
clearly defined anticommunism. Many Cuban-Ameri-
cans began distancing themselves from the new immi-
grants. Some claimed that sending the Marielitos was a
Castro plot to tarnish the image of the community. Rumors
spread that the Marielitos were not really Cubans. “There
were not that many Blacks in Cuba,” was an oft-heard
remark, “These are Angolans.”
The Marielitos added a new dimension to the already
diverse Cuban-American community. After 30 years of
socialism, these newer arrivals tended to be politically
more heterogeneous and liberal than the immigrants of
the 1960s, and-perhaps because their memories of the
drop the demand in exchange fora U.S. promise to seek equal
access for Cuba to U.S. broadcast frequencies.
In principle, the Cuban position was perfectly reasonable.
If the U.S. government could broadcast to the Cuban people,
the Cuban government should be able to broadcast to the U.S.
people. In practice, a Cuban station comparable to Radio
Marti would be an engineering, legal, and political nightmare
for any U.S. administration. The standard broadcasting band
in the United States is jam-packed. Any attempt by the
federal government to clear just one AM channel for Cuban
use would seriously disrupt the system, undoubtedly would
be challenged in the courts, and would be intensely unpopu-
lar with large sectors of the political spectrum.
Further, U.S. negotiators insisted that the proposed Cu-
ban station comply with the regulations of the Federal
Communications Commission and international telecom-
munications regulations. Yet Radio Marti operates without
approval of the Cuban Ministry of Communications and in
apparent violation of international agreements. 2
With U.S. negotiators unable to grant Cuba a broadcasting
quid pro quo, the talks stalled. When the United States
announced plans for T.V. Marti in 1988, they broke down
completely. Because their efforts at negotiation were re-
warded with U.S. escalation, Cuban officials now believe
they must stand fast against T.V. Marti in order to forestall
additional U.S. tests of Cuba’s sovereignty.”‘
C UBA, TOO, HAS A HISTORY OF HOSTILE
broadcasting to the United States. Shortly after the
CIA launched Radio Swan in 1960, Cuba responded with
Radio Havana, a shortwave service which, particularly in the
early years, broadcast virulent propaganda calling for the
overthrow of the U.S. government and its Latin American
allies. From 1962 to 1966, Cuba beamed Radio Free Dixie on
homeland were fresher–they wanted closer ties to Cuba.
However, their arrival coincided with the ascendancy of
the New Right, and their potential to create a political
alternative was limited from the start.
WITH THE ADVENT OF THE REAGAN AD-
ministration in 1980, all hopes of better relations
evaporated. Cuba responded to Reagan’s threats and
economic pressure by closing the doors to the Cuban-
American community. First, it restricted the number
allowed to travel to Cuba per month. And in 1985, when
the Reagan Administration launched Radio Marti, a Voice
of America station aimed specifically at Cuba-with the
highly visible participation of the right-wing Cuban
American National Foundation-the Cuban government
ended all travel by the community. Even the Antonio
Maceo Brigade was shut out. Cuba also suspended the
immigration accord which would have allowed 20,000
Cubans to emigrate to the United States each year. Cuban-
American progressives, who had defined their political
agenda by defending their right to travel to Cuba, became
further isolated in the community. Now it was Cuba who
was denying entrance to the island. Progressives were
reduced to negotiating for their own entry visas.’ 6
standard AM broadcast frequencies to the southern United
States. It routinely encouraged North American blacks to
burn their cities and commit other violent, subversive acts.
But, in comparison to U.S. efforts, Cuban counter-broadcast-
ing has been sporadic, low-powered and financially modest.
Since Radio Marti was announced in the early 1980s,
however, Cuba has been preparing to take a dramatically
more aggressive stance on the broadcasting battlefield. If the
United States continues to be an uninvited guest on Cuban
domestic airwaves, then Cuba promises to respond in kind.
It recently built a massive arsenal of high-powered radio
transmitters whose signal could easily be heard throughout
the continental United States. Some of these monster Cuban
transmitters have 500 kilowatts of power-ten times that of
any radio station licensed in the United States.’ 4
A technical study by the National Association of Broad-
casters concluded that such a Cuban action would “wreak
interference havoc from New York to California.”I Scores,
perhaps hundreds, of U.S. radio stations would lose large
chunks of their coverage areas to invading Cuban signals.
This prospect has prompted U.S. broadcasters to lobby the
White House and Capitol Hill to reconsider T.V. Marti.
Cuba defeated the U.S.-sponsored invasion force at the
Bay of Pigs, survived numerous other covert actions of the
Central Intelligence Agency, and resisted decades of U.S.
economic and diplomatic pressure, but it has never been able
to fully protect itself from a massive U.S. electronic assault.
T.V. Marti differs little in basic concept from its numerous
predecessors. More than a radical escalation, it indicates
business as usual in U.S. efforts to influence domestic Cuban
affairs. But the intrusive properties of radio waves cut both
ways. A spiral of ever-more powerful, unregulated radio and
television broadcasts across the Straits of Florida are in the
long-term interests of neither side.
Broadcast Wars
1. Granma Weekly Review, April 22, 1990.
2. Television is line-of-sight broadcasting. Therefore, TV Marti
must transmit from very high altitude in order to reach Havana,
which is beyond the horizon from any ground-level point in Florida.
3. “TV Marti takes off but will it fly?” Broadcasting, April 2,
1990.
4. Neil Hickey, “TV or not TV? America’s bold plan to’invade’
Cuba with television,” TV Guide, Feb. 10, 1990.
5. Granma Weekly Review, April 22, 1990.
6. For details, see Lawrence C. Soley and John S. Nichols,
Clandestine Radio Broadcasting (New York: Praeger), pp. 163-189.
7. David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government
(New York: Random House, 1964), p. 334.
8. Herbert L. Matthews, Revolution in Cuba: An Essay in
Understanding (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), p. 126.
9. John S. Nichols, “The Problem of Radio Interference,” in
Wayne S. Smith and Esteban Morales Dominguez (eds.), Subject to
Solution: Problems in Cuban-U.S. Relations (Boulder: Lynne Rien-
ner Publishers, 1988), pp. 124-137 & 145-153.
10. Edward R. Murrow, “Memorandum for The President, Air-
borneTelevision Capability,” Dec. 3, 1962. President’s Office Files,
Departments and Agencies USIA, John F. Kennedy Library. The
author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Suzanne K. Forbes,
Foreign Policy Archivist at the JFK Library.
11. New York Times, Oct. 5, 1981.
12. Washington Post, July 10, 1986; New York Times, Nov. 21,
1987; Granma Weekly Review, Nov. 29, 1987.
13. Author’s interview with Carlos Aldana Escalante, Cuba’s
chief negotiator at the Mexico meetings, Dec. 23, 1989.
14. National Association of Broadcasters, “Cuban Interference
to United States A.M. Broadcast Stations,” testimony before U.S.
Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Radio Broadcasts into
Cuba, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., July & Aug. 1982, p. 274; see also, John
Spicer Nichols, “Video Invasion,” The Nation, April 2, 1990.
15. National Association of Broadcasters, “Cuban Interference,”
p. 274.