Long before the world was immersed in the digitalized communication systems that govern our lives today, and long before the boom of the " Mad Men " era (the one we saw starring Jon Hamm), a Caribbean nation was experiencing a great revolution that would shape one of the most emblematic social communication and propaganda structures of the 20th century: we are talking about Cuba .
The death of the commander
The recent death of Fidel Castro has undoubtedly marked controlling directors email list a before and after in the Caribbean nation. He will be remembered as the architect of revolutionary Cuba, of a generation that fought important battles such as the Bay of Pigs, where he would be a commander alongside José Ramón Fernández, Efigenio Ameijeiras Delgado and the emblematic Ernesto “El Che” Guevara.
Fidel Castro and his history are a before and after for the Cuban people, but there is something that he leaves as a great legacy to all those who want to study and analyze him from different perspectives: his propaganda or mass marketing apparatus.
The Cuban Revolution itself saw much of its development through the propaganda exerted by Castro and his comrades; the organized intervention over decades by Fidel and his cronies initially contributed significantly to the rebels' victory in 1959, and later, it was their mass marketing that shaped widespread Cuban thought and feeling from the 1960s to the present day.
Regardless of the regime under which it finds itself, Cuba today has a powerful social communication machinery, which fulfills its objectives . These include agencies, magazines, newspapers, supplements and public relations groups, among others, which have shaped the communication practice of the now deceased Fidel Castro for decades.
The components of mass marketing in Cuba
The most important components of Cuban propaganda during the revolutionary stage included the radio broadcast of “ Radio Rebelde ” (a broadcast established by Che Guevara from the Sierra Maestra, eventually reaching to be re-transmitted in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia and Argentina), pre-arranged interviews with journalists from the global press (like the New York Times ) and publicity schemes , which were a bit dirtier but which put the public eye where Fidel wanted, like in the kidnapping of the speedster Juan Manuel Fangio.
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Once the revolution was over, a number of new components were added to the mass marketing unit in Cuba . It is interesting to see how it has evolved to this day, where these media continue to exist and have adopted the digital era to a greater or lesser extent (from radio to Internet broadcasts, from printed gazettes to newsletters):
Granma : A national newspaper that included international and national news, always with spaces for propaganda for the Castro regime. Granma served as a conduit for placing in the vox populi the idea that the United States and the entire global capitalist regime were something similar to Hitler's Nazi society, and that Cuba and all those on the revolutionary and socialist side were societies of progress and good morals.
Prensa Latina : An important part of the propaganda apparatus is the Prensa Latina Agency, not only because of its accumulated audience capacity but also because of the integration of data and intelligence it generates. In its first years, Prensa Latina was sufficiently prepared to launch printed supplements as far away as Egypt, the former Yugoslavia and Poland. After a year of creation, Prensa Latina already had offices in Washington, New York, London and Paris, as well as in almost all of Latin America (with the exception of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua).
Radio Habana : Before Castro, there were no radio broadcasts in Cuba with a reach outside the island , but that changed with Radio Habana in 1961. Thus, together with Radio Rebelde, it became the radio hub of the Cuban nation, but Radio Habana was a broadcast with a much more globalized approach.
ICAP : The Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples is a social organization officially established on December 30, 1960. This organization was established with the objective of promoting and channeling, with universal projection, the relations of solidarity that the Cuban Revolution aroused from its beginnings in all corners of the world and thus give viability to the interest of multiple representative groups of the popular and progressive sectors from all over the world to visit Cuba and learn from within the social, economic and political transformations that the nascent Revolution carried out.
Casa de las Américas : Established in 1959, Castro brought together the intellects of several Latin American poets, authors and creatives. It is conceived as a space for meeting and dialogue of different perspectives in a climate of innovative ideas, fostering exchange with institutions and people from around the world.
