Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Television, 1950-1953

Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Television,1950–1953by Yeidy M. Rivero

Abstract: The essay argues that through television questions about Cuban moder-nity entailed issues of technology, class, race, gender, morality, sexuality, and ge-ography, as well as the nation’s relationship to the United States and to other LatinAmerican countries.

ARS advertising agent: And how do you do that [a television dramatic show]? Do youput together scenes from old movies?

CMQ-TV producer: No, it is a live program, made in a studio, with sets specially builtbased on the show’s theme.

—“La TV en Venezuela,” Bohemia, May 24, 1953

This conversation between an agent from the Venezuelan advertising agency ARSand a producer from the Cuban television network CMQ took place in Caracas,Venezuela, sometime in early 1953. ARS was looking for a director for its televi-sion department, and the agency’s management understood that the “man theyneeded” was in Cuba. By describing the incipient industry in the “land of Bolivar”and the Venezuelan advertisers’ limited knowledge of television production, thestory published in the Cuban magazine Bohemia was employed to highlight theadvances of Cuban commercial television. After all, it was possible for ARS to finda manager for its television department in Mexico or Brazil, the two countries thatalong with Cuba incorporated the technology in 1950. However, ARS wanted tohire someone who had mastered the medium’s commercial, technological, and cul-tural aspects, and by 1953 Cubans were considered the experts in television pro-duction across Latin America. For many media professionals at the time, Cubantelevision represented the successful adaptation of the U.S. commercial televisionmodel, epitomizing the regional possibilities of a highly expensive and complextechnological system.1

An important yet less obvious aspect of Bohemia’s “La TV en Venezuela” ar-ticle relates to discourses of Cuban modernity. Since the nineteenth century, andemerging in particular during the last stages of the Spanish colonial regime,Cubans envisioned themselves as progressive people who were in the vanguard of

© 2007 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007 3

Yeidy M. Rivero is an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Cul-ture at Indiana University–Bloomington. She is the author of Tuning Out Blackness: Raceand Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television (Duke University Press, 2005).

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the Latin American path to modernization. The colony’s incorporation into theU.S. economic system before the 1898 Spanish-American War and its total immer-sion into the U.S. market economy and consumer culture during the early twenti-eth century propitiated a complicated notion of Cuban modernity. While creatingand maintaining a distinct sense of cubanidad [Cubanness], Cuban discourses ofsocial-economic modernization were intertwined with and, to a certain extent, re-sponded to Cubans’ vision of the United States as the most progressive country inthe world.2 Thus, the “La TV en Venezuela” article and many of the news storiespublished about the medium from 1949 (the year before the establishment of thefirst two stations) to 1953 (when five stations were broadcasting from Havana)were utilized to reposition Cuba as a nation-state whose television would becomeas developed as it had been in the United States and would be the most innova-tive system in Latin America. Television became a signifier of Cuban modernity.

Nonetheless, in using the term “reposition” I am foregrounding the practicesof representing, challenging, and negotiating Western modernity through televi-sion. In the period when television was incorporated and developed, and the plansfor a national network began to unfold, when there was an explosion of commer-cial stations, when the importation of television sets increased exponentially, andwhen the nation moved from a democracy to a dictatorship (by way of FulgencioBatista’s March 10, 1952, military coup), radio critics, owners, the nongovernmen-tal Commission on Radio Ethics (CRE), audiences, and nonaudiences (those whodid not have access to TV) provided divergent understandings of the medium.3

These distinct and sometimes conflicting interpretations of “television” reveal, as Idiscuss throughout this essay, Cubans’ “creative adaptations” regarding the mediumas an emblem of the nation’s alternative modernization.

Regarding non-Western societies’ alternative modernities and the need for alocal and culturally specific interpretation of modernization, Dilip ParameshwarGaonkar argues:

Creative adaptation [in relation to modernization] is not simply a matter of adjustingthe form or recoding the practice to soften the impact of modernity; rather, it pointsto the manifold ways in which a people question the present. It is the site where peo-ple “make” themselves modern, as opposed to being “made” modern by alien and im-personal forces, and where they give themselves an identity and a destiny.4

Modernity then “is not one but many,” and it is imbued with pastiches of histor-ical, political, social, economic, cultural, collective, and individual processes andelements from the “past” and the “present.”5 However, while manifestations ofmodernity differ from one nation to another, the incorporation, perception, and ex-periences of modernization can also vary within a particular nation. These national-internal disparities function through the redefinition, conciliation, or ambivalentacceptance of non-Western and Western cultural discourses—they respond tocolonial and/or neocolonial economic-capitalistic expansion into particular geo-graphical areas, and are influenced by internal and external political processes.6

Consequently, creative adaptations are not identical in culturally akin regions

4 Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007


(such as Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean); neither are they similarly per-formed within national borders.

Although the ideology of modernity informed Cuba’s national culture and,according to Louis A. Pérez in his lengthy study of U.S.-Cuban relations, “servedas the imagery of self-representation: a mixture of pride and self-esteem, of con-ceit and confidence,” in the case of 1950s Cuba, class discrepancies, illiteracy,the rural-city divide, the racialization of non-white citizens, U.S. hegemony, andpolitical-democratic instability led Cubans to question their position in and pathtoward modernization.7 Therefore, whereas television’s technology and the mas-tership of that technology symbolized Cuban progress a la the American way, thedialogues about television cultural representations, morality, commercialism, andaudiences generated multiple debates regarding the desired functions for televi-sion in early 1950s Cuban society. Between 1950 and 1953, broadcasting moder-nity not only signified technological advancement and excellent programming, italso conveyed what kind of culture and for whom that culture should be televised.

In some ways similar to Latin American early cinema and its mediated moder-nities, broadcasting Cuban modernity operated within a process of what LatinAmerican cinema scholar Ana López terms “neo-colonial dependency typical ofLatin America’s position in the global capital system.”8 In Cuba, this neocolonialcondition was exclusively interrelated to the United States and its well establishedpolitical and economic hegemony. However, different from early cinema in the re-gion, the Cuban “elites” did not have a “civilizing desire [to] ignore the ‘barbarism’of the national ‘others.’”9 Quite the opposite; some members of this Havana-based,educated, and somewhat class differentiated group (composed of middle andupper classes) strongly advocated the elimination of elements they judged as un-civilized, vulgar, and barbarous. Navigating between Western ideals of culture andCuban vernacular cultures, commercial imperatives, and increased governmentalcensorship, these elites attempted to implement a national television project witha “civilizing” Eurocentric imprint.

What follows is an examination of how radio critics, television owners, audi-ences, nonaudiences, and the Commission on Radio Ethics (CRE) defined televisualmodernity. Because of their material, cultural, and/or social capital, these individu-als possessed various levels of power, although they were not an ideologically homog-enous group.10 Generally speaking, their distinct views about television were mostlikely influenced by their employment (for example, working for the conservativenewspaper Diario de la Marina, the politically moderate and intellectually engagedmagazine Bohemia, or the politically moderate popular culture magazine Carteles);market imperatives (television owners’ objectives to realize maximum profits); ortheir geographical location (Havana or a region untouched by economic modern-ization). Additionally, I want to emphasize that, at least in Cuban magazines andnewspapers, the racially and ethnically heterogeneous and geographically dispersedworking class was not involved in these mediated debates. During this three-yearperiod, the cost of the least expensive television sets fluctuated between 350 pesos



(in 1950) to 287 pesos (1953). While economically disadvantaged Cubans residingin Havana and some of the eastern provinces probably had the opportunity towatch television either in other people’s homes or through store windows, there isno information available about their viewing patterns and opinions. Be that as itmay, the Cuban working class and some of their racialized cultural practices weredirectly and indirectly implied in the discourses of television modernity even be-fore the incorporation of the technology in Cuban society. Through the radio critics’columns, television, Cubanness, audiences, and modernity began to be defined,redefined, and contested. It was precisely the radio critics who, as I explain below,initiated the broadcasting of Cuban modernity.

Defining and Redefining Television.We hope that Cuba will take advantage of this wonderful medium for the benefits ofthe educational enterprise.

—Alberto Giró, Diario de la Marina, September 7, 1950

Extensive discussions about television began to unfold in the radio and enter-tainment sections of Cuban newspapers and magazines in the year leading up toOctober 14, 1950, the day Unión Radio-TV became the first television station tobroadcast in Havana. Radio critics from the newspaper Diario de la Marina andthe Cuban magazines Bohemia and Carteles dedicated weekly columns on U.S.


Figure 1. “Television CastingRoom.” Front cover, Carteles,

October 1, 1950. From theCuban Heritage Collection,

University of Miami Libraries,Coral Gables, Florida.


television programs, technological advances, and educational experiments.Whereas the critics kept the readers informed about the early plans of establish-ing television stations in Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela and devotedsome attention to the British public service television system, the vast majority ofstories centered on the U.S. medium. For Cuban critics, U.S. television conveyedartistic, cultural, and technological excellence, a model of television that Cubansshould emulate. In the eyes of the critics, U.S. television was television itself.

The critics nonetheless tended to ignore two of the defining aspects of theU.S. broadcasting system: commercialism and entertainment. Although some sto-ries indicated that vaudeville acts, comedies, and dramas were audience favorites,press coverage focused on U.S. networks’ (specifically NBC’s) broadcast of “highculture” programming such as classical music, opera, and theatre, the utilizationof television in educational institutions, and the medium’s capacity to keep the U.S.population informed about important national and international events.11 Little at-tention was paid to the central role of commercial sponsorship to produce televisionshows or to the U.S. medium’s endorsement of mass consumption. In an attemptto delineate the future functions of television in Cuba and the types of programsthat should be televised, the Cuban critics reconstructed U.S. television as a mediaoutlet that promoted education, high cultural values, and information. Hence, bydownplaying the commercial and entertainment elements of the U.S. television


Figure 2. An advertisementfor a Westinghouse televisionpublished in Bohemia May 25,1952. From the CubanHeritage Collection, Universityof Miami Libraries, CoralGables, Florida.


system, the medium’s primary purpose in Cuba would be to enhance the “high cul-ture” education of the Cuban citizen.

However, culture and education were not the only aspects that Cuban criticsconsidered in their pre-television stories. Television’s technology and the masteryof that technology played an important role in the critics’ discussions. As a result,what was discursively (re)conceptualized as U.S. television would become “Cuban”not only by representing elements of the nation’s culture and by educating the au-dience about high cultural performances and local and international events butalso by the Cuban media professionals’ skillful knowledge of the technology. Tech-nological superiority would define Cuban television.

In a period of approximately a year, the critics’ descriptions of the soon-to-beCuban television shifted from wishful comments such as, “We ask ourselves, whenwill we be able to enjoy all the educational advantages of television?” to more criti-cal perspectives such as, “in the North [the United States], a good one-hour televi-sion program requires the collaboration of 150 people (for example, ‘El gran teatroLucky Strike’). Are we going to be able to do something like that in Cuba…or arewe going to correct the masters? And if we correct them, how would the newbornbe?”12 Despite this last critic’s implicit doubts regarding Cuban media profession-als’ capabilities for improving upon U.S. television expertise, the notion of Cubanmodernity generally informed the critics’ views of the future of television in Cubaand, in some cases, prompted unrealistic expectations. For instance, in October1949 one critic reported, “We will have color television in Cuba thanks to GoarMestre [owner of CMQ-TV, Cuba’s second commercial television station, launchedin December 18, 1950], who has already decided so, in order that, in the area ofelectronics, Cuba will be in the vanguard together with the most progressive na-tions in the world.”13 Even though color television had not yet been incorporatedin the United States, Cuba, in the eyes of the critic and of Goar Mestre, would havethe technology. The critic’s assurance of the technological advances of the forth-coming Cuban television articulated Cuba’s modern nationally imagined self.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, technological progress was still couchedwithin the nation’s previous economic wealth. Although by the early 1950s Cuba’seconomy (sustained through the sugar cane industry) was already in crisis, the na-tion’s prior market prosperity and the middle- and upper-class massive consump-tion and high standards of living informed Cuban elites’ understanding of theirmodern selves in relation to the modern world.14 Thus, while the fragmented ele-ments of Cuba’s socioeconomic modernization would become evident in the yearsto come, in 1949 a radio critic and the media magnate Goar Mestre had no doubtsthat Cuba would have color television.

Contrary to these expectations, Cubans had to wait nine more years to havetelevision in color. But this technological setback did not stop the critics and tele-vision station owners (such as Mestre and Gaspar Pumarejo, founder of UniónRadio-TV) who, with comments such as, “Cuba has always been in the vanguard



of progress and in the area of television it could not be left behind” and “ourequipment is so modern that a simple adaptation would transform it to color tele-vision,” repeatedly repositioned the nation-state as part of the modern world.15

Cuban television would be metonymic for the nation’s modernity.Radio and self-defined television critics were the first group of Cuban citi-

zens to publicly evaluate the medium. To be sure, most of the critics’ reviews werestill dedicated to radio, which in 1950 and for several more years would be theprincipal broadcasting medium throughout Cuba. Furthermore, since Unión Radio-TV began its transmissions with the broadcast of the Cuban baseball series, thecritics were unable to comment on television’s locally produced entertainmentprogramming. Nonetheless, as soon as what was described as “the first program”aired in November 1950—the comedy Los cuatro grandes, which originated as aradio show—the critics paid close attention to Unión Radio-TV (channel 4)’s andlater CMQ-TV (channel 6)’s comedies, dramatic programs, theatre adaptations,variety shows, talent shows, panel shows, and telenovelas, the first entertainmentgenres to be developed in Cuban television.

The critics began to write detailed television reviews that addressed acting,scripts, scenic direction, sets, lighting, scheduling, and technology. Perhaps be-cause the critics held high expectations for the medium in Cuba, they showed nomercy in criticizing the production and artistic value of early shows, even the sta-tions’ “test patterns.” For example, after attending a CMQ-TV “video rehearsal,”the Carteles critic wrote, “during the week of video rehearsal offered by CMQ wenoticed huge technological flaws. The cameras did not always follow the artists’movements and there were times when the apparatus continued in the same angleeven when the artist had stood up from a chair.”16 In other instances the criticsgave lectures on the differences between theatre, radio, film, and television, mak-ing it clear that television, although influenced by theatre, radio, and film, “hasits own personality, it prefers the ‘close-up,’ in other words, the intimate.”17 Somereviews centered on the importance of rehearsing and scheduling and criticizedproducers for stopping at the end of the half hour or the hour even though it wasclear there was no conclusion to the narrative.18 Yet, while the critics were harshin their reviews, they also praised Unión Radio-TV’s and CMQ-TV’s accomplish-ments. Remarks such as “the media professionals’ determination may have beenthe reason why a fair amount of programs could compete with those producedin North America” and “the wonderful program ‘Estudio 15’ assures us of the fu-ture of television in our land” applauded the stations’ technological and artistic suc-cesses.19 Perceiving television as a barometer of the nation’s progress, the criticsdemanded no less than perfection, a perfection that was defined by U.S. televisionstandards but that nonetheless had to be unmistakably Cuban. Through their re-views, the critics created a symbolic map that fused the programs’ conceptualiza-tions, representations, and the behind-the-scenes television environment withCuban nationalism.



The issue of Cubanness was directly and indirectly present in all of the crit-ics’ reviews, and in some cases this discursive representation of cubanidad oper-ated in opposition to possible U.S. televisual cultural influences. In an April 1951article entitled, “Con artistas cubanos, ¿por qué no?” [With Cuban Artists, WhyNot?], the Carteles critic addressed CMQ-TV’s broadcast of Super circo, a U.S.children’s spectacle that, according to the reviewer, could be defined as a Broad-way style variety show. While the critic regarded Super circo as a show of “opti-mum quality,” he understood that this type of variety show could be and shouldbe produced locally. He observes, “But ‘Super circo’ is a video program conceptu-alized in the United States, filmed in the United States, with artists from theUnited States. […] We believe that something similar could be produced in Cubawith Cuban artists.”20 Both the title and the review brought to the forefront theCubanness that was missing from Super circo and that should be part of all broad-casting programming. Similarly, when CMQ-TV initiated its morning schedule inJuly 1951, the Bohemia reviewer complained that channel 6’s morning schedulecopied Unión Radio-TV’s shows which, at the same time, were a copycat versionof NBC’s morning programming.21 In this case the critic questioned the lack oforiginality and the fact that neither Unión Radio-TV’s nor CMQ-TV’s morningprogramming were conceptualized locally.


Figure 3. Front cover, Carteles,January 21, 1951. From theCuban Heritage Collection,

University of Miami Libraries,Coral Gables, Florida.


Cubanidad also played a central role in the reviews of specific programs inwhich the critics noted that the scriptwriters, the actors, the directors, and thetechnicians were all Cubans working together to produce “excellent” dramatic showssuch as La familia Pilón, Gran hotel, Tensión, and Estudio 15. For the critics, thedramatic series represented the best example of Cuban television accomplishmentsin terms of technology (camera shots), sets and acting (described as “superb” basedon their realism), and scripts (authored or adapted by well known radio scriptwrit-ers). Evidently, the construction of excellent television and Cubanness functionedthrough particular standards where a genre (drama) and scripts (originally writtenfor television and in some cases adapted from Cuban, Latin American, Spanish, orU.S. literary or theatre classics) conveyed a high culture discourse. But equallyrelevant is what the critics’ dismissal of variety shows and comedies suggested inrelation to cubanidad, modernity, and television audiences. As the Diario de laMarina critic remarked in June 1951, “we cannot forget that the great majority ofCubans who have a receiver are at least middle class.”22 In the eyes of this critic,neither comedies nor variety shows depicted appropriate elements of cubanidadfor his imagined yet economically privileged, regional (Havana), and maybe evenracially specific (white) Cuban audience.

Fairly soon, the critics realized that their utopian vision of television as amedium that would advance “Cuban education” would be a difficult goal to ac-complish. As well and almost immediately after the incorporation of television inHavana, it became clear that the critics were not only going to pay attention to theacting, the scripts, the scriptwriters, the scenic direction, and the technology, butthat they were also going to monitor the medium regarding its moral content. Thecritics (particularly the Diario de la Marina reviewer Alberto Giró) assumed a newrole—that of moral guardians—and developed the notion of moral television. Theissue of morality brought to the forefront issues of gender, sexuality, race, andclass, all aspects of cubanidad that first the critics and later the nongovernmentalCommission on Radio Ethics wanted to eliminate from the television screen inorder to depict a “civilized” and thus modern Cuban nation.

Televising Morality: The Containment of Racialized Sexuality. In a De-cember 5, 1950, article entitled “Peligrosa perspectiva” [Dangerous Perspective],the Diario de la Marina critic Alberto Giró noted that media professionals neededto pay attention to the type of shows and the cultural representations that werebeing aired on television. As Giró stated, “Without being pessimistic, we have adangerous perspective that future variety shows would include nudity, exaggeratedrumbas, and other types of performances that could lean towards the low and thevulgar.”23 The concern over the possible moral decadence in future programmingwas reaffirmed in the critic’s last words: “It is then necessary that the owners of theCuban video industries try to guide television through a route of high morality andeducation to avoid the intervention of the Commission on Radio and TelevisionEthics.”24 “Peligrosa perspectiva” was not written for the general public but for the



television owners and the Commission on Radio Ethics, the latter to which Giróadded “television,” probably in the belief that the commission would soon moni-tor the new medium.

The ideology of immorality presented in Giró’s article was coded throughideals of Western civility wherein to be modern and civilized the citizen’s bodyneeded to be sexually disciplined and contained.25 Yet, in Giró’s words, the idea ofWestern civility transcended the realm of the exclusively sexual. The black work-ing-class rumba and its gendered sexuality—the male/female erotic dances andthe rumbera-vedettes’s seminude bodies—were not appropriate for the public.While, as Robin Moore notes, “there is no single definition of rumba,” this musi-cal, cultural, and dance expression was associated with “Cuba’s black underclass,their life styles, attitudes, and culture.”26 Considering the racial, class, and sexualelements that defined the rumba in Cuba’s sociocultural imaginary, Giró’s com-ments created, to borrow a phrase from Ana Laura Stoler, “dependent constructsof bourgeois sexuality and racialized sexuality.”27 The Diario de la Marina critic’sunderstanding of immorality (and, as a result, morality) rearticulated the racial-ized, gendered, and classed factors that defined modernity in Cuba.

Michael Hanchard argues that in Latin America “elites and intellectuals hadless difficulty reconciling European modernity’s break with the past in nation-states with no previous national state history. Premodern people enabled thosevery same elites to become modern like their Western models.”28 In the case ofCuba, a nation composed of whites, blacks, and mulatos, and that since the latenineteenth century was represented as a mestiza (racially mixed) “Cuban race”and iconographically depicted and narrated through literature as mulata (i.e., fe-male, racially mixed, and eroticized), the ideologies of Cubanness seemed to act inopposition to ideas of Western modernity.29 However, although the Cuban notionof racial egalitarianism, as Alejandro De la Fuente argues, “operated in ways morecomplex than just a tool to maintain blacks in a subordinate position,” race (non-whiteness), gender, sexuality, and class were intertwined elements that informedCuba’s socioeconomic marginalities and hierarchical structures.30 Either by cultur-ally foregrounding the mulata as a highly visible icon that “contrast[ed] sharplywith [non-white women’s] social invisibility” or by ethnographically recountingwhat was defined as the hypersexual, criminal, and infantilized practices of Cubanblack males, the Cuban mestizaje/mulataje functioned through what JossiannaArroyo calls travestismos culturales [cultural transvestisms].31 For Arroyo, the trav-estismos culturales represent the theorizing/writing strategies of Cuban intellectu-als to appease racial difference in the discourses of a racially mixed nation whileconcomitantly objectifying and sexualizing the black gendered other.32 Conse-quently, the ideology of Cuban homogeneity and equality operated in a discursiveconjunction of heterogeneity and difference allowing intellectuals and elites, asseveral scholars have argued, to reposition themselves as modern-Western people.33

The Cuban intelligentsia’s travestismos culturales and the socially constructeddifferences that were part of Cuba’s culture and society informed the Diario de la



Marina critic’s characterization of rumba and “other types of performances” as pos-sibly leaning towards “the low and the vulgar.” Bearing in mind that even before itsinception, Cuban television was touted as a technology that would represent Cubanmodernity to its citizens, to the United States, and to the world, the national ele-ments that were going to be televised (according to the Diario de la Marina re-viewer) needed to suppress and/or tame its gendered (female), black, and raciallysexualized self. As a symbol of modern Cuba, television had to implement not onlyeducation but also what Stoler terms the “education of desire,” a moral, civilizedorder that was laden with racial, gendered, sexual, and class significations.34

The Diario de la Marina critic’s preoccupation with television morality andeducation became a central component in his television reviews. For instance, onDecember 15, 1950, just ten days after his first cautionary words regarding rumbaand sexuality, Giró declared, “We pleasantly observe the rapid expansion of thevideo in Cuba but we are a little worried, as we have mentioned on other occa-sions, about what could happen when the video competition is established andeach competitor would try to get the bigger number of tele-videntes [tele-viewers]or spectators.”35 For Giró, television’s commercial imperatives and entertain-ment programming represented the major obstacle for his ideal vision of televi-sion. As he observed in late January 1951, when Unión Radio-TV and CMQ-TVbegan their ferocious battle to obtain the Havana audience, “television should beessentially used as a wonderful medium for education and all programs shouldbe guided to that end. Morality should prevail even in shows that focus on mereentertainment.”36

Despite Giró’s moralistic, racially coded, and culturally elitist views, the vari-ety shows, where most black and mulatto musicians, rumberas-vedettes, and mam-boletas [a group composed of female mambo dancers] performed, became themost successful programs in Cuban commercial television’s early years.37 As thefirst television survey indicates, in February 1951 ninety percent of the audiencewatched CMQ-TV’s variety show El gran show de Bacardi.38 This audience pref-erence was once again confirmed with the April 1951 survey, which, to the dismayof the Carteles critic, demonstrated that audiences preferred variety shows overdramas. Similar results were obtained in the April 1952 and August 1953 surveys,which reported that the majority of the top ten rated programs were variety showsand comedies (for example, the by then famous variety show Cabaret Regalias).39

Contrary to the critics’ expectations, the audience seemed to enjoy the rumba, themambo, the erotic dances, and the comedies’ choteo [a Cuban term generally trans-lated as mockery] rather than the high culture programming.

It is not clear why the upper-middle class audiences preferred variety showsand comedies instead of dramas and theatre adaptations. Perhaps audiences tunedin because these shows referred weekly, albeit in sanitized form, to the hetero andhomoerotic pleasures of the Cuban carnival.40 Perhaps audiences favored theseprograms because they served as televisual spectacles that reproduced the nation’sclass, racial, and gendered heterogeneity that comprised the “Cuban race” without



disturbing societal and cultural racial-class hierarchical structures. In other words,these shows represented the “pre-modern” people, the “primitivism,” and the racial-ized sexuality needed by elite Cubans to reassert their own modern-bourgeoissexual “self.”41 Regardless of the audiences’ motivations, their consumption of thistype of programming prompted the proliferation of variety shows and comedies inCuban television. Based on the surveys, audiences seem to have envisioned Cubantelevision as a technology that should entertain them, not educate them.

The audiences’ use of television as an outlet for divertissement coincided withthe television owners’ goals for the medium. However, for the various owners, theaudiences’ pleasurable experiences only signified profits and socioeconomic mod-ernization.42 As Goar Mestre (CMQ-TV owner) indicated in an October 1951 NewYork Times interview, “Latin-American countries, which have moved in transporta-tion from the age of the burro to that of the airplane without using railroads, willsimilarly leap from ‘bad newspapers’ and ‘ill-conducted radio stations’ to the fullestuse of television as an entertainment and advertising medium.”43 Indeed, some ofMestre’s comments can only be taken as a patronizing bad joke to please his U.S.audience; after all, Cuba had railroads before Spain, and Mestre need not catego-rize his own radio network as “ill-conducted”. However, what is important about hisremarks is how commercial imperatives would define the industry in Latin Amer-ica. As a region where modernity had operated through “levels of discontinuity,”television, according to the Cuban media magnate, would develop the local mar-kets and would help to bring the region into the international market economy.44

The commercial success of variety shows and comedies did not alter the Di-ario de la Marina critic’s opinions regarding morally permissible and educationalcontent on television. The issue of education also garnered the attention of Cubanintellectuals who in July 1952, according to Michael B. Salwen’s research, met atthe University of Havana to discuss the importance of educational programming.45

In addition to the critics, the owners, the audiences (via ratings), and the intellec-tuals, a highly influential entity joined the television discussions in 1952—theCommission on Radio Ethics (CRE).

Formed in February 1947, the CRE was a private self-regulatory organizationcomposed of delegates from the Cuban Advertisers Association, the Cuban Asso-ciation of Authors, the Federation of Cuban Radio Broadcasters, and the Cubangovernment’s Ministry of Communication.46 Although the CRE was organized inconversations with the government, and while the delegates instituted a fairly rigidcode to regulate radio entertainment programming, the organization’s primary ob-jective was to self-police the medium as a way to avoid governmental interven-tions.47 To be sure, the CRE did not have the authority to cancel broadcastinglicenses. Nonetheless, the group had the power to impose suspensions and fineson artists and programs.

During television’s first year the CRE remained practically silent. In a Janu-ary 1951 article, the Commission’s president indicated that the organization was inthe process of developing rules specifically designed for television.48 It was not



until June 1952 that the entity began to express its opinion (via newspapers andmagazines) regarding morality in entertainment programming. Whereas the CREdid not publish an official code, the organization censored sexuality (for example,kisses between actors and revealing garments on women) and the performances ofsongs that the CRE had originally banned from radio (many of which were rum-bas and mambos).49

The CRE’s sudden interest in television morality was not coincidental. InMay 1952 (just two months after his military coup) Fulgencio Batista initiatedthe censorship of news and public affairs programming that criticized the govern-ment.50 A year later, Batista’s censorship practices extended to cinema newsreelsproduced in Cuba, all of which had to be approved by the government-run ComisiónRevisora de Películas.51 Thus, the CRE’s 1952 informal restrictions and its May1953 official regulation titled Circular N60 could be viewed as strategic attemptsto avoid government censorship of entertainment programming.

According to Circular N60, media professionals were not devoting enough at-tention to television “ethics.” Therefore, the CRE had to design a set of rules toassure “morality, religion, and good customs” on television.52 As the organizationstated, “Since television is a family oriented spectacle it should be subjected tospecial considerations. […] It is for that reason that we have seen the need to im-plement effective measures to avoid infractions on television programs.”53 TheCRE document never defined the term “ethics.” Despite this lack of explanation,the full brunt of Circular N60 focused on the rumba and mambo dances and morespecifically the female dancers. By calling attention to the camera shots’ exclusionor long shots’ distancing of a performer’s “dances with sensual movements,” of“choreographic presentations,” and of “gestures, movements, or anatomic detailsthat are against decency or bad taste,” the CRE regulations were clearly designedfor the rumberas-vedettes and the mamboletas who, together with singers andbands, dominated the musical performances on variety shows.54

With Circular N60 televisual “indecency and bad taste” became synonymouswith the female body, which through sensual movements, contortions, and dancesteps allegorically personified the mulataje of the nation.55 As Peter Wade con-tends, “[a]ny connection between the body, musical, dance forms, and sexualityare cultural constructions but it is important that these constructions take placenot just on but through the body […].”56 Considering the racialized sexuality asso-ciated with the rumba and mambo musical styles and dances, the drums that con-veyed the sounds of Afro Cuban rhythms, and the racial spectrum of the dancers(mostly whites and mulatas), one could argue that the decree of decency was notan attempt to eliminate the blackness that was part of the “Cuban race” but in-stead it was designed to repress the racial, cultural, gendered, and sexual mulatajethat produced the Cuban race. By way of their televisual performances, the rum-beras-vedettes and the mamboletas symbolically merged and became the iconicmulata, a national figure that in previous decades had embodied the “multifariousanxieties, [the] contradictions and imperfections in the Cuban body politics.”57 In



Circular N60, the female dancer/mulata was transformed into an immoral nationalmark, an emblem of “unproductive eroticism,” which in a period of political uncer-tainty brought by the “mulatto Batista” threatened the broadcasting of a sexuallycontained, bourgeois, and modern national self.58 Hence, while several Cubanfilms of the early 1950s (coproduced with Mexico) depicted Cuba as an Africaninfluenced national culture (through the iconic mulata protagonist) and whereasrumba, rumberas, mambo, and mamboletas were the principal (racially sexualized)attractions in the casino-cabaret shows, commercial television was required torestrain la mulata and el mulataje.59 Television, as a primary symbol of Cuba’smodernity, needed to suppress what had been defined as the nation itself.

Given that all television programs were broadcast live, the self-censorship wasin the hands of the producers and the camera men who, through camera shots, werein charge of creating a distance between the audience and the dancers. Thus, themedium that, according to one critic, preferred the “close-up” and “the intimate,”needed to transform itself and become more similar to theatrical representations.If in theatre the proscenium stage creates a “fourth wall,” a detachment betweenthe audience and the fictional world of the play, in Cuban television the two cam-eras’ long shots had to disconnect the audiences from the spectacle of female-racial-sexual indecency. Technology, as a key sign of modernization, would be theprincipal tool to impose moral civility.

Television owners and producers attempted to follow the CRE’s code asmuch as live television made it possible. Broadcasting live was a major obstacle formedia professionals who could not predict what an actor would say/improvise orphysically do, what censored songs musical groups would play, or what sudden“improper” move a rumbera or a group of mamboletas would enact. Accordingly,live television provided multiple opportunities to transgress the CRE. In 1953 onlytwo of the five commercial stations that were operating on the island used kine-scopes, and, as a result, it was extremely difficult to prove an infraction had oc-curred.60 However, despite the complexities of confirming and/or fighting a CREfine or the burden of dealing with artists’ suspensions, television owners did notprotest the CRE’s regulations. In a time of escalating government censorship, po-litical uncertainty (particularly after the July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro–led Moncadaattack), and economic instability, owners and producers were struggling to keeptheir businesses afloat. The CRE and television’s cultural representations were theleast important issues for television owners at the time.

The CRE’s Circular N60 nonetheless drew criticism from the Bohemia tele-vision reviewer. As the critic wrote, “if their [the CRE members’] opinion wouldprevail some day, the majority of our musical shows and a significant portion ofthe dramatic and humorous programs would disappear. […] Our programmingwould be dominated by tedious panels, classical music, symphony orchestra, andoperas.”61 By refusing the CRE’s television censorship and the production of “highculture” shows, this critic envisioned television as an arena for the representa-tion of the nation’s transculturation. If for Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz



transculturation symbolized the syncretism that characterized Cuban culture, adefinition of Cubanness that rejected European racial-cultural modernity, one couldsay that for the Bohemia reviewer television transculturation signified the welcom-ing of Cuba’s multiple cultural practices and peoples.62 Based on this perspective,entertainment programs would be televisual spaces wherein media professionalswould create diverse representations of the nation. For the Bohemia television criticbroadcasting modernity, then, conveyed the transmission of a series of bodily, ver-bal, and musical performances that challenged Western racial, sexual, moral, andcultural discourses.

The Bohemia critic was not the only voice of dissent regarding television cul-tures. Through letters sent to Bohemia magazine, some Cubans presented differ-ent interpretations of television, audiences, and technology. It should be noted thatnone of the citizens’ correspondence addressed the CRE regulation or the govern-ment censorship practices. Instead, in their letters, audiences criticized televisionprogramming, mentioned the medium’s technological flaws, and questioned whichsegment of the population was conceived as the ideal audience-consumer-citizen.While there were many opinions regarding the direction of the new medium, onecitizen in particular, a nonaudience member, raised an issue that had been largelyignored by the critics, television owners, and audience members. This citizen’svoice demonstrates that the broadcasting of Cuban modernity not only conveyed


Figure 4. Mexican singer andmovie star Pedro Vargasdancing with two mamboletas.Gente, November 23, 1952.From the Cuban HeritageCollection, University of Miami Libraries, Coral Gables Florida.


technological superiority and cultural performances, it also encompassed the tar-geting of particular regions and audiences.

Is Television for All? Television Nonaccess and Regional Modernity. OnDecember 2, 1952, Bohemia published a letter written by Doctor Antonio Sobrino,resident of Pinar del Río, a province located along the island’s western coast. In hisletter Sobrino asked Goar Mestre why he had not installed “the necessary facili-ties” to send a signal from Havana to his province.63 More specifically, Sobrinocould not comprehend why CMQ-TV expanded its transmissions to Camagueyand Santiago (provinces located at the center-east and eastern border, respectively)when Pinar del Río was geographically closer to Havana. According to this citizen,the only reason his province had been ignored was discrimination. As Sobrino wrote,

Let me insist Mr. Mestre that Pinar del Río, the black continent of the colonial periodand the Cinderella of the republic is being discriminated by CMQ probably becauseour region has been negatively depicted due to its monetary poverty. […] Your dis-crimination offends us maybe because we suffer from a complex of abandonmentcaused by private corporations like the one you own.64

Whereas the author praised CMQ-TV’s efforts to establish the first national tele-vision network, he demanded an explanation from Mestre’s regional neglect andended his letter stating that the pinareños [the citizens of Pinar del Río] “want tobe treated as members of the same class of Cubans as those who live in the east ofCamaguey.”

Sobrino’s letter merged region, class, race, history, and television with the na-tion’s geographically fragmented processes of socioeconomic modernization. Pinardel Río was one of Cuba’s poorest provinces due to its tobacco-based economy. Ithad been marginalized by the government and by private corporations that investedfinancial resources in more economically developed regions, many of which weresustained by the sugar industry. Allegorically, the tobacco economy racialized Pinardel Río and its residents and prescribed the province’s alleged “primitivism.” Inother words, contrary to the regions where sugar mills propitiated U.S. and localcapitalistic investments that enhanced the area’s technological advancements,Pinar del Río was untouched by the processes of economic modernization.65

In addition to Pinar del Río’s poverty and private/public “abandonment,” othernational-historically constructed factors defined the province’s Cinderella status.Pinar del Río and its inhabitants had been conceptualized as politically disengagedpeople who had to be “forced” to join the multiple battles of independence againstSpain in the late nineteenth century. Consequently, because of the region’s eco-nomic underdevelopment and the negative stereotypes of the pinareños thatpermeated Cuba’s national-regional imaginary—poor, intellectually slow [bobos-idiots], and politically flaky—Pinar del Río’s population, as Sobrino indicated, wasnot treated in the same way as the Cubans residing in the island’s economicallymodern and politically radical eastern provinces.66



Sobrino’s letter also brings to the forefront important questions about whathe perceived as discrimination and the author’s own racial identity. Pinar del Río(contrary to Santiago or Oriente) was not racially imagined as “black.” This doesnot mean that blacks and mulattos were absent from Pinar del Río but rather thatsince the nineteenth century the numeric majority of the province’s inhabitants(based on census numbers) were whites.67 Given Pinar del Río’s historically con-structed “whiteness,” why did Sobrino characterize the region as the “black conti-nent of the colonial period?” Was Sobrino a black man? Was he attempting toaccuse CMQ-TV of promoting both class and racial discrimination? His letter doesnot provide answers to these questions. Still while class rather than race was thecentral theme of Sobrino’s letter, Goar Mestre decoded both class and race as in-tertwined elements that defined this citizen’s accusation of CMQ-TV’s discrimina-tory practices.

Approximately three weeks later, Goar Mestre replied to Sobrino in a Bohemiaarticle entitled “Mensaje a los pinareños” [Message to the pinareños].68 Followinghis savvy public relations–style campaign in which he answered each citizen’s let-ter that addressed CMQ-TV, Mestre quickly crafted a response to Sobrino’s letter.In the article, Mestre’s rhetoric combined Cuba’s nationalism and its discourse ofracial, social, and cultural egalitarianism with the ideology of the nation’s progressand modernity. Describing Sobrino’s accusation of discrimination as a “calumny”and as a “truthfully evil description that will only damage the accusers,” Mestrerepresented the CMQ circuit (i.e., radio and TV) as an industry whose main ob-jective was to broadcast to all members of the nation equally. “Our mission is toserve the Cuban people, without classifying or distinguishing between provincesor regions, poor or rich, whites or blacks.” Mestre proceeded by highlighting theprogress of Cuban television in comparison to Latin America, England, and France(“Cuban television has distinguished itself by its excellent technical quality”) andby specifying that even European countries and some cities in the United Statesdid not have television stations. Notwithstanding his use of a nationalistic and mod-ernizing rhetoric to underscore CMQ-TV’s efforts to produce excellent televisionfor “all Cubans,” Mestre admitted that it was not financially viable to expand tele-vision to Pinar del Río:

To offer television in Pinar del Río we need to install at least five or six microwavelinks, which would cost more than one million pesos. Frankly Doctor Sobrino, bringup this idea to any business owner or advertiser and you will find that in a period ofeconomic insecurity not everyone is willing to invest one million pesos in a region thatrepresents only 4 percent of the nation’s consumption.69

Mestre’s message was crystal clear: Pinar del Río would not have television in 1953.Besides describing the regional-economic factors that defined the creation

of the first television network in Cuba, the Sobrino-Mestre correspondence ar-ticulates the ideological differences between “being seen” as modern (in terms ofgeographical-economic development) and considering oneself and one’s regionas modern, based on a personal-alternative reinterpretation of modernity. The



pinareños such as Sobrino saw themselves and, consequently, wanted to be treatedas modern Cubans who deserved to be part of Cuba’s television network eventhough those outside the region imagined Pinar del Río as Cuba’s Cinderella. Onthe other hand, while Mestre emphasized that CMQ did not discriminate based onclass, region, or race, it was evident that, at least between 1950 and 1953, broadcasttelevision would be available only to those residents who resided in economicallyprosperous areas. For television owners such as Mestre, broadcasting modernityembodied more than technology and culture—it symbolized the consumption oftelevision by those members of the nation who not only were economically solventbut who also lived in modern cities.

During Cuban television’s early years there were ongoing debates about whattelevision should be in terms of culture, morality, commercialism, and audiences.Nonetheless, television owners and media professionals constantly touted Cubantelevision as the best in Latin America, a medium that was almost “as good” as U.S.television. Comments such as “I feel very proud of the television that Cuba is of-fering,” “Mexican television has not obtained the degree of development that ourshas accomplished,” and “the truth is that, after North America [the United States],ours is the best television in the world,” repositioned television as a symbol of thenation’s modernity.70 Even as Batista’s military coup destroyed efforts to establisha democratic political order and led some citizens to realize that “perhaps Cubawas not so different from other Latin American countries after all,”71 and just asCuba’s dependent economy continued its path toward total collapse, media pro-fessionals emphasized the medium’s technological and artistic qualities. For them,television was an emblem of Cuba’s progress, a representation that asserted thenation’s position as part of the modern world, similar to Europe and, most impor-tantly, to the United States.

Broadcasting Modernity/Staging Modernity. The series of dialogues andcontestations regarding Cuban television that took place between 1949 and 1953reveal the diverse meanings of television for a variety of citizens. For some, tele-vision represented a chance to develop Cuba’s economy and showcase the nation’sadvancements to the United States and the world. For others, the medium was apedagogical-moral tool to create a bourgeois, sexually contained national self. Fora few, television was an opportunity to depict Cuba’s transculturation and the var-ious elements and influences that were part of and defined the Cuban mulataidentity. And, for a number of citizens, television mirrored access (or lack of ac-cess) to economic resources, reflecting Cuba’s fragmented process of socioeco-nomic modernization.

Cuban television expressed, as Raymond Williams argues regarding commu-nication technologies, “the interlock of […] political and commercial intentions.”72

As political/economic interpretations of Latin American television have docu-mented, the technology was utilized to promote mass consumption and to incor-porate various countries in the region into the U.S. and global market economy.



However, in Cuba, television technology stood for more than capitalistic marketimperatives. In various “stages” (temporal phases) television was employed to“stage” (construct-perform) selective aspects of Cuban culture as a way to repre-sent the nation and its people as part of the Western world. Broadcasting moder-nity responded to stages and “stagings” of modernity.

Through the sometimes interconnected and other times disjointed stages andstagings of modernity, the technology played a fundamental role. The incorpora-tion of television in Cuba created a new period in the nation’s history, a momentwhen Cubans (with material, cultural, and/or social capital) reaffirmed their viewof themselves as progressive and as culturally, technologically, and economicallyadvanced people in comparison to the rest of Latin America. Nonetheless, throughthe stagings of modernity, the technology served as a tool that not only repressedparticular cultural performances, peoples, and (after Batista’s coup) voices of po-litical dissent, but that also defined citizens and regions as “modern” based on theownership of television sets and the access to television signals.

In the years after the first phase of Cuban commercial television (1950–1953),new stagings of modernity began to be broadcast. The CRE intensified its racial,sexual, and gendered modernizing project and prohibited “choreographic repre-sentations of cults or beliefs contrary to civilization, good customs, or social order,even if these expressions have a folkloric character.”73 To be sure, black perform-ers (particularly musicians) were part of Cuba’s television, and 1950s popularmusic was highly influenced by Afro Cuban vernacular cultures and African de-rived religious practices.74 Nevertheless, Afro Cuban vernacular practices neededto be “sanitized” of their “barbaric” non-Western elements before being televised.Through this sanitation, the CRE forbade choreographies that reenacted (non-Western) religious rituals.

The CRE’s post-1953 policing included, among other things, a ban on roman-tic kisses, men in drag, and jokes with sexual innuendo. The CRE’s sexual restric-tions responded to Western, colonial, racial, and class views of sexuality as well asthe state of Cuban body politics. As Stoler observes, “Sexual asymmetries and vi-sions convey what is ‘really’ going on elsewhere, at another political epicenter.”75

In a period of corruption, illegal activities, murders, political uncertainty, and he-donism, television became a somewhat regulated space where some members ofthe Cuban “elite” could stage another (albeit also problematic) vision of themselvesand their nation.

As in the first phase of Cuban television, the stagings of modernity were re-hearsed but could not be fully circumscribed. Ironically, Cuba’s technological“backwardness” (broadcasting live) in many instances helped performers to defythe stagings of modernity. For example, by singing a censored song or enacting anunscripted passionate kiss, performers transgressed the CRE rules. It became ateasing game, a recurrent test of power, in which television performers pushed theimposed limits. As well, television reviewers and audiences expressed diverseopinions regarding the medium. An incisive voice among the reviewers was Emma



Pérez who, in her sharp-witted Bohemia columns and in her reviews published inthe magazine Gente, developed radical criticisms that not only excoriated otherreviewers, television owners, and programming, but also the government.76 Still,these various cultural transgressions and dialogues became more complex duringCuban commercial television’s third stage (1957–1958) when censorship wasmandated by law. Whereas there were major changes throughout the last phase ofCuban commercial television (1959–early 1960), particularly in terms of massivecoverage of the newly established regime and the revolutionary government con-fiscation of broadcasting businesses tied to Batista’s rule, the most drastic “revolu-tion” occurred in the mid-1960s when commercial broadcasting officially ceasedto exist.77 Under complete governmental authority, the transformed television sys-tem would stage new interpretations of modernity, modernities still influenced byWestern ideals of “high culture” but that now needed to exorcise any traces asso-ciated with the U.S. broadcasting, ideological, and modernizing imprint. In the1960s, broadcasting Cubanness and modernity would be redefined once again.

Notes

Thanks to Stephen Berrey, Brenda Weber, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpfulsuggestions. Thanks also to Lillian Guerra and Vivian Martínez Tabares for providing keyinformation on Pinar del Río.

1. See Oscar Luis López, La radio en Cuba, 2nd ed. (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas,1998); Yeidy M. Rivero, Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of PuertoRican Television (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Clemencia Rodríguezand Patricia Tellez, La telenovela en Colombia: mucho más que amor y lágrimas (Bo-gotá, Colombia: CINEP, 1989); and Mirta Varela, La televisión criolla: Desde sus ini-cios hasta la llegada del hombre a la Luna, 1951–1969 (Buenos Aires, Argentina:Edhasa, 2005).

2. For an extensive historical analysis of U.S.-Cuba relations before 1959, see Louis A.Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (New York: The EccoPress, 1999).

3. By December 1950, approximately six thousand television sets had entered the Havanaport. In May 1953 U.S. television manufacturers’ numbers indicated that there were“just over one-hundred thousand television sets” in Cuba. Unofficially there were ap-parently many more thanks to smugglers. H. Espinet Borges, “Pantalla Televisora,”Carteles, December 24, 1950; and Alfred R. Zipser, Jr., “TV-Set Smuggling Outlawedin Cuba,” New York Times, May 29, 1953.

4. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, “On Alternative Modernities,” in Alter/Native Moderni-ties, ed. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 16.

5. Ibid., 15–16.6. Charles Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” in Alter/Native Modernities, 153–74.7. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 348.8. Ana López, “‘A Train of Shadows’: Early Cinema and Modernity in Latin America,” in

Through the Kaleidoscope: The Experience of Modernity in Latin America, ed. VivianSchelling (London: Verso, 2000), 149.

9. Ibid., 154.10. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinctions: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).



11. Alberto Giró, “Toscanini inicia una nueva era en la televisión,” Diario de la Marina, No-vember 13, 1949; Alberto Giró, “El éxito de los programas,” Diario de la Marina, No-vember 20, 1949; Alberto Giró, “La opera del ‘Metropolitan,’” Diario de la Marina,November 27, 1949; Alberto Giró, “La televisión y los niños,” Diario de la Marina, Jan-uary 15, 1950; Alberto Giró, “Importancia vital de la televisión,” Diario de la Marina,September 3, 1950; Alberto Giró, “Educación audiovisual,” Diario de la Marina, Sep-tember 29, 1950; H. Espinet Borges, “Pantalla televisora de aquí y de allá,” Carteles,November 5, 1950; and “La NBC ofrecerá la primera ópera por televisión el domingodía 17,” Diario de la Marina, December 12, 1950.

12. Giró, “Educación audiovisual”; and Borges, “Pantalla televisora de aquí y de allá.”13. Alberto Giró, “Goar Mestre traerá a Cuba la televisión en colores En 1950,” Diario de

la Marina, October 13, 1949.14. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 450.15. Alberto Giró, “‘Test Pattern’ en el aire,” Diaro de la Marina, September 13, 1950; and

H. Espinet Borges, “Pantalla Televisora,” Carteles, November 12, 1950.16. H. Espinet Borges, “Oyendo Radio,” Carteles, September 24, 1950.17. H. Espinet Borges, “Oyendo Radio,” Carteles, December 3, 1950; and Alberto Giró,

“Estudio 15,” Diario de la Marina, September 7, 1951.18. Alberto Giró, “No hay derecho,” Diario de la Marina, March 21, 1951.19. “La tensión estaba en el canal,” Bohemia, February 4, 1951; and Alberto Giró, “Estu-

dio 15,” Diario de la Marina, April 6, 1951.20. H. Espinet Borges, “¿Con artistas cubanos, por qué no?” Carteles, April 29, 1951.21. “Yo copio, tu copias, el copia,” Bohemia, July 8, 1951.22. Alberto Giró, “Sobre los programas cómicos,” Diario de la Marina, June 12, 1951.23. Alberto Giró, “Peligrosa perspectiva,” Diario de la Marina, December 5, 1950.24. Ibid.25. See Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Vol. Two, trans.

Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1986); and Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imagi-naries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).

26. In the 1940s the rumba performed in the upper-class casino-cabaret shows went throughvarious transformations to restructure the traditional noncommercial rumba’s sexualmusical and dance expressions. Robin D. Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocuban-ismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940 (Pittsburgh, PA: University ofPittsburgh Press, 1997), 169, 185, 187.

27. Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexualityand the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 97.While Ann Laura Stoler’s reinterpretation of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexual-ity centers on Europe and its colonies, her analysis of bourgeois sexuality and racial-ized sexuality pertains to Cuban modernity.

28. Michael Hanchard, “Black Cinderella? Race and the Public Sphere in Brazil,” PublicCulture 7 (1994): 172.

29. Vera M. Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (Char-lottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993). For an analysis of race and the incorpo-ration of black cultural elements as part of the Cuban nation, see Alejandro De laFuente, A Nation For All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

30. De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 12.31. Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets, 7; Jossianna Arroyo, Travestismos culturales: literatura y

etnografía en Cuba y Brazil (Pittsburgh, PA: Nuevo Siglo, 2003).32. Arroyo, Travestismos culturales, 7.33. Hanchard, “Black Cinderella.” Also see Peter Wade, Music, Race, and Nation: Música

Tropical in Colombia (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 3–7.



34. Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire.35. Alberto Giró, “Auge de la televisión en Cuba,” Diario de la Marina, December 15, 1950.36. Alberto Giró, “Más respeto,” Diario de la Marina, January 26, 1951.37. As several scholars and music critics note, variety shows became important venues for

Afro Cuban musicians and musical styles. See Moore, Nationalizing Blackness; andNed Sublette, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago:Chicago Review Press, 2004).

38. “Survey sobre TV,” Bohemia, February 18, 1951.39. H. Espinet Borges, “Otra vez el ‘survey’ de video,” Carteles, April 1, 1951; “Revela-

ciones de un ‘survey,’” Bohemia, April 6, 1952; and “Los mejores programas de TV,”Carteles, August 9, 1953.

40. For information on carnival’s eroticism, see Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets; and Arroyo,Travestismos culturales.

41. My interpretation of variety shows and audiences has been highly influenced by PeterWade’s theorization of race, sexuality, gender, and music in Colombia. See Wade,Music, Race, and Nation.

42. During Cuban television’s early years, some stations had multiple owners. For in-stance, Gaspar Pumarejo sold Unión Radio-TV to movie producer Manuel Alonso inAugust 1951. One year later, Alonso sold the company to Angel Cambo, president ofRadiotelevisión El Mundo, which, in 1953, also established CMBA-TV, channel 2. Thetwo other stations that began operation in Havana in 1953 were CMBF-TV, channel 7,and TV Caribe S.A., channel 11.

43. “Big TV Strides Seen in Latin America,” New York Times, October 6, 1951.44. Jesús Martín Barbero, Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to

Mediations, trans. Elizabeth Fox and Robert A. White (London: Sage, 1993), 150–51.45. Michael B. Salwen, Radio and Television in Cuba: The Pre-Castro Years (Ames: Iowa

State University Press, 1994), 37.46. Manuel Fernández Paradela, “La Comisión De Etica Radial,” Carteles, April 8, 1947.47. Ibid.48. “Actuación y nuevos objetivos de la ‘Comisión de Etica Radial’ y el comisionado

Dr. Tarajano,” Diario de la Marina, January 7, 1951.49. “Momentos terribles en la vida de un productor,” Bohemia, June 22, 1952. Also see

“Un propósito y dos noticias, Bohemia,” June 26, 1952; and “Planes en cartelera,” Bo-hemia, July 6, 1952.

50. Salwen, Radio and Television in Cuba, 93–107.51. Rodolfo Rodríguez Zaldivar, “La censura previa: prensa, cine, radio y televisión unidos

contra la impopular medida,” Bohemia, May 17, 1953.52. “La TV sobre el tapete,” Bohemia, May 3, 1953.53. Ibid.54. Ibid. Also see “Dos suspensiones,” Bohemia, May 24, 1953.55. While the CRE had suspended male performers because of their use of “inappropri-

ate language and gestures,” none of the regulations and suspensions were related tomen being presented as sensual/sexual objects. See “Dos suspensions.”

56. Wade, Music, Race, and Nation, 23.57. Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets, 11.58. Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berke-

ley: University of California Press, 1991). As Alejandro De la Fuente writes, FulgencioBatista’s non-whiteness was a contested issue for the U.S. government and the Cubanelite. See De la Fuente, A Nation For All, 208, 253.

59. Laura Podalsky, “Guajiras, mulatas y puros cubanos: identidades nacionales en el cinepre-revolucionario,” Archivos de la filmoteca 31 (1999): 156–71.



60. Kinescope is “a film made of a live television broadcast.” Cary O’Dell, “Kinescope,” inEncyclopedia of Television, ed. Horace Newcomb (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Pub-lishers, 2004), 1263–64.

61. “La TV sobre el tapete.”62. Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Caracas, Venezuela: Bib-

lioteca Ayacucho, 1978). As Jossianna Arroyo notes, Ortiz’s theory of transculturationcontains the contradictions of the mestizaje racial-cultural ideology. However, this the-oretical understanding of Cubanness represented an attempt to break with Westernideals of modernity. Arroyo, Travestismos culturales, 254.

63. “La carta de la semana,” Bohemia, December 2, 1952.64. Ibid.65. Here I am making a direct reference to Fernando Ortiz’s Contrapunteo cubano del

tabaco y la azúcar in which the author establishes a distinction between the non-Western and communal elements of the tobacco production and the Western, capitalist,and imperialistic processes that defined the sugar economy. Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano.For an analysis of Contrapunteo, see Arroyo, Travestismos culturales.

66. A special thanks to Lillian Guerra and Vivian Martínez Tabares for their insightfulcomments about Pinar del Río.

67. For an analysis of the population distribution throughout Cuban rural and urban areas,see Dominga González Suárez, “La discriminación racial en el campo cubano,”AfroCuban Anthology Journal (Fall 2004): 1–12.

68. “Mensaje a los pinareños,” Bohemia, December 28, 1952.69. Ibid.70. “TV de allá y de aquí,” Bohemia, May 11, 1952; “Una de las nuestras en Mexico,” Bo-

hemia, September 14, 1952; and “Análisis desde la lejanía,” Bohemia, December 7,1952; “La TV en Venezuela,” Bohemia, May 24, 1953.

71. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 447.72. Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London: Wesleyan

University Press, 1992), 128.73. “Memoria para refrescar la memoria,” Bohemia, April 17, 1955.74. Robin D. Moore, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2006), 198–201.75. Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in

Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 44.76. Because of the limited issues of Gente available, I could not incorporate Emma Pérez’s

reviews during 1952–1953.77. See Mayra Cue Sierra, “1960: El sabotaje a CMQ y la respuesta colectiva,” Cubarte,

December 1, 2005.



Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Television, 1950-1953

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