The Press in Cuba, 1952-1960:
Autocratic and Totalitarian Censorship*

Autocratic Censorship, 1952-1958
Totalitarian Censorship, 1958-1960
Conclusion
Notes

There are two types of censorship: one is aimed at sustaining a government and affects only what might have an impact on the government’s hold on power; the other reaches much further in its aim, to change the way that people think.

The difference in approach between the two stems from the different concepts of authority that serve as their underpinnings. The first, the selective type of censorship, is likely to be found where the government’s self-proclaimed mission is to maintain the established order. Like the autocratic governments that engender it, that kind of censorship impinges on political life, but in other areas it allows some freedom of expression. The second, the all-embracing kind, reflects the totalitarian mentality—the belief among those in power that they have discovered truth. Their governmental mission, therefore, is to make society conform to their dogma, and censorship as imposed by them must pervade all areas of life, not just politics.

The plight of Socrates reflected the lesser of the kinds of censorship. The government that condemned him feared subversion in his teaching of Athenian youth. The Roman emperors used censorship of essentially the same sort; ultimately, death by crucifixion became the penalty for writing or distributing criticism of the emperor. Later on, in the hands of the Catholic church, censorship became progressively more insidious as the goal of the censors became universal acceptance of their dogma. We know, for example, that during the time of Clement Romanus, Saint Peter’s successor, Christians were forbidden to read anything by a gentile because church writings were supposed to suffice to shape the ideal world.

Whether we look far into the past or only to this century’s lessons for proof, we find that positive change cannot occur if thought and expression are subject to control. Individuals lose the capacity for creative independence when the outside world invades their inner preserves. If the media become instruments of a government intent on converting the public to its brand of truth, citizens can gradually lose hold of themselves. The censored press will remind them daily to conform. It will tell them how to think, it will speak for them, and it will make their decisions. In that anti-Cartesian world, because they do not think they exist. The proof is all around them: anyone who thinks or questions reality or marches out of step becomes a nonperson.

The reason for this severity is simple. The strength of thought is such that if it finds a crack in the censor’s walls, it can shake the government’s foundations. Poland offers a recent example. After the workers’ strikes in 1976, dissidents began to publish materials that deviate from the party’s line. Forced to accede to labor demands, the Gierek government agreed to workers’ access to the media. Shortly thereafter, in April 1981, Solidarity’s weekly publication began to appear. Tight press censorship had effectively been smashed, so the government adopted a new law on censorship. But with the relaxation of censorship, the government had lost control of the situation, and only two months later the Jaruzelski government felt compelled to impose martial law and then to declare a state of war.

From 1952 to 1960 Cuba lived through both types of censorship. Under the government of Fulgencio Batista the repression was aimed at shaping opinion to support, or prevent subversion of, authority. When the Castro regime took power, a qualitative change in the censorship occurred: the new government’s goal was to impose a different view of society, and the role of the censors went beyond suppression of dissent to forging an exclusive national way of thought. The censorship of the old autocracy had sought to prevent some Cubans from saying certain things; the new totalitarian censorship sought to force all Cubans to say the same thing.

In the final analysis, it was not Castro’s guerrillas or popular dissatisfaction with an immoral regime that brought Batista down (although there was plenty of that dissatisfaction). It was, in fact, the press that, notwithstanding the punishment it received, gradually undermined the dictatorship by denouncing its illegal claim to power and its abuses at every opportunity. Batista ignored the people’s will and repeatedly, and often brutally, violated his opponents’ civil rights, but his regime was timid or inefficient in its use of censorship and it really never could enforce censorship effectively. On the other hand, Castro followed the advice of the old-lime Cuban Communists in treating the press as a dangerous adversary. Fearing the truth in Napoleon’s maxim that “four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets,” Castro dealt with press criticism of his government’s actions by treating journalists as if they were armies to be defeated. Ultimately, the government seized absolute control over al mass media and other outlets for expression of opinion and culture and placed them all in the service of the Cuban Communist Party.

The following is an overview of the role of the press and censorship m the period from 1952 through 1958 under Batista and in the succeeding two-year period at the outset of the Castro regime. To highlight the Batista years, I have looked particularly to events involving Bohemia, which was the most militant of the antigovernment periodicals. I have traced the beginnings of totalitarian censorship through events surrounding the demise of Diario de la Marina, which was the most vocal and variant critic of increasing communist penetration in Cuba. Because a key in governmental efforts to control the media at the time was Revolución, the official daily, its activities in the process are explored. The report also includes an overview of subsequent legislation adopted under Communist party initiatives. The laws concerned present a good picture of some restrictions that currently apply to the press in Cuba; it is clear that under that set of legal sanctions, the published word can serve no purpose other than progovernment propaganda.

My general guideline in preparing this report was to let the original source materials speak for themselves. They reveal the climate of the historic events described much more eloquently than any commentary a historian could add.

The purpose of my review is simply to illustrate the importance of freedom of expression and access to information, and to show, using the Cuban context, that those freedoms are society's best guaranties against the dogmatism and intransigence that characterize totalitarian regimes.

Autocratic Censorship, 1952-1958

On the morning of March 10, 1952, the Cuban people were informed that a military coup had overthrown the government of Carlos Prío Socarrás, whose term was almost over. Although there was general discontent at the time over the government’s failure to control gangsterism and malfeasance, there was widespread hope that the coming elections would bring improvement. In the twelve years before the coup, three successive Cuban presidents had respected the people’s fundamental civil rights, so there was reason to trust that change might be brought about as long as a climate of freedom existed.

It was the frustration of these hopes that caused the press to react so angrily to the military disruption of the country’s political life. From the outset the press warned Batista of the need to uphold those basic rights. The day after the coup, March 11, Havana’s oldest daily, El Diario de la Marina, carried an editorial pointing out that:

General Fulgencio Batista will do Cuba a great service if, within the difficult framework of a de facto government, he succeeds in preserving in our homeland the glories of its social and political existence, which are its freedoms: freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom for political gatherings, freedom of enterprise and freedom of movement for all citizens.¹

A few days later, the news weekly Bohemia protested more strongly from its editorial page, stating that as a result of the coup Cuba had joined the ranks of those Latin American countries ruled by force:

We used to be proud that Cuba was one of the few nations of Latin America in which democracy was practiced to its fullest. From now on that pride will be replaced by a great discouragement, by a profound anguish. Our homeland too has just become one in an ominous series of Latin American republics where governments remain in place or succeed one another without the people’s participation in the choices for power. Bohemia reasserts its adherence to civil and democratic principles. We believe—and we say this in all frankness and out of a sense of duty and of civic responsibility—that the coup d’etat of March 10 was a grave error which has shattered the hopes of an entire people to achieve excellence within a framework of democratic legality and mutual respect... . We believe that only under the rule of law and within the limits of the Constitution can the people move towards freedom, equality and brotherhood.²

The University of Havana soon joined the critics of the coup, and eventually it and the press were among the most powerful forces in the fight against Batista. The University Council published a manifesto calling for full reinstatement of the Constitution of 1940 and for elections. The clarity of vision for Cuba’s future expressed in the manifesto can be seen in the following excerpt:

If the military coup remains triumphant, that will be the consecration of force and violence as a means of or instrument for the solution of partisan problems, and it will be a bad example for the people and a grave danger for the republic.³

The Cuban congress took a similar stance; the presidents of the Senate and the House of Representatives, along with the heads of the parliamentary committees, issued a document denouncing the military coup in which they held Batista individually responsible for the outcome before the nation and before history.⁴

Well-known writers and intellectuals joined in the wave of denunciations: on March 23 a Bohemia editorial entitled “Everyone’s Responsibility and Duty”⁵ stressed the illegality of the government, and an article in the same issue by Herminio Portell Vilá, “Count and Recount,”⁶ expressed similar views. In the magazine’s next issue Francisco Ichaso’s “The New Cuban Conscience and the Constitution of 1940” called on all Cubans to unite to defend the “sacred legal document which sets down those rights and aspirations which cannot be relinquished without detriment to the Republic,”⁷ and Carlos Hevia's “The Reactionary Coup of March 10” condemned a piece in the Journal of Commerce, of New York, for stating that new prosperity could be expected as a result of Batista’s takeover.⁸ An article by Eduardo Suárez Rivas, “Constitutional Front,” called for the creation of a new party to oppose the military dictatorship,⁹ and a public letter addressed to the United Nations by Roberto Agromonte and Emilio Ochoa, of the Orthodox party, appealed to that body to support opposition to the coup as follows:

This is the appropriate moment for the U.N. to condemn the assault on a people preparing to hold its general elections in accordance with the law, an assault through which a group of armed self-seekers, has stripped the people of their civil rights.¹⁰

  Batista’s government paid no attention to the clamor for restoration of the Constitution of 1940. In April it issued new statutes effecting fundamental changes in former constitutional norms. Even though both texts guaranteed freedom of expression, Batista’s statutes not only allowed for the suspension of that right when warranted by “State security, war or invasion, grave disturbances of public order or other circumstances which deeply disturb the tranquility of the country” but also gave the Council of Ministers the power to suspend freedom of expression with a simple decree whenever it became “necessary to combat terrorism or ‘pistolerism.’“¹¹ This addition was, of course, meant to facilitate suppression of public protests against the dictatorship. As a result of the imposition of these statutes, Cuban students symbolically buried the Constitution. The next day civil rights were once again suspended. But, in spite of these limitations, the press did not halt its attacks against Batista.¹²

Public unrest continued. Early in 1953, during a student demonstration that the police attempted to disperse, a student, Rubén Batista, was mortally wounded. The burial became a public protest against the government. One week later Bohemia published an article entitled “At a Martyr’s Tomb,”¹³ in which the author, student leader Enrique Hurts, denounced the government. Student uprisings continued until April 14, when the University Council, which was controlled by Batista, voted to close the University of Havana. The following month, a renowned politician, Pelayo Cuervo, suggested in an article that the only way for the people to defeat Batista was through force. A short time later, on July 26, the Moncada barracks in the province of Oriente was attacked by forces led by Fidel Castro. The press had the chance to publish the news, but immediately thereafter civil rights were suspended, and Diario de la Marina’s editorial page published this commentary:

As a consequence of Sunday’s tragic events, the government has begun to apply the Law on Public Order, which imposes censorship of the ......... Until now, the government of General Batista had upheld the noble Cuban tradition of freedom of the press. Without denying the gravity of the most recent events, we believe that a reconsideration of the measures adopted relating to press censorship would constitute an important government gesture.... The suspension of rights does not necessarily have to be accomplished by prior censorship. This measure has caused the greatest damage, both nationally and internationally, to the reputation of governments, and more than any other measure, it hurts the work of the press and the sensibilities of journalists, and of the public in general.... Faithful to an unbreakable tradition, La Marina will reiterate its adherence to the principle of freedom of the press and hopes that those ordinances which are enervating that freedom today will be reexamined without delay.¹⁴

Because of these complaints, the government did not enforce press censorship fully, and soon after the attack at Moncada, the papers published photographs of the events, clear evidence of the brutality of the authorities. As a result, on August 7 the government was forced to apply stricter censorship, and it published the names of the censors appointed for Bohemia, Prensa Libre, El Mundo, and Pueblo.

The provisions on freedom of expression and information in the Law of Public Order are particularly interesting because m fact they are very similar to provisions later included in Castro’s penal code, although the punishments presented in the later code were more extreme. The Law on Public Order provided for up to two years’ imprisonment for

those who disseminate, publish or have published or transmit rumors or false or biased information contrary to the national dignity, peace, public order or trust or the stability of the Powers of State, the economy, public finances, or the reputation of the nation or the government... [and for] those who openly or clandestinely spread propaganda aimed at producing, or which could further the achievement of, any of the following ends: ... subversion through violence or destruction of the political, social, economic, or judicial organization of the State, however it may be constituted... injury to the national dignity or to... the powers or organisms of the State, Constitutional law, or the actions or laws of the authorities. . . . For the purposes of this article, propaganda will be understood to mean any and al oral, written or graphic manifestation or expression which is transmitted or published through newspapers, magazines, books, pamphlets, flyers, posters, lampoons, signs posted in public places, papers, writings addressed to a group of people, or radio broadcasting, television, or films or any other means of publicity, as well as oral expression before an assembled group or crowd.

The law also provided for punishment of those who “have in their possession the publicity material indicated.”¹⁵  

After press censorship had been in effect for three months, Bohemia’s editorial page once again denounced the abuse of power and its impact on the nation:

Censorship of the press is something that disturbs the most intimate and noble part of the Cuban conscience. Because of tradition, temperament and loyalty to the belief of our forefathers, freedom for the Cuban is a right without which life is pointless. We have shown this alt throughout our history. It took half a century of fighting—of blood, sweat and tears—to win a political freedom⁴’that is worthless if it is limited by restrictions like those we have just bad imposed on us. Cubans will be patient in the face of misfortune, silent through disgrace, Iong-suffering before adversity... Cubans are willing to give up many things, for no other people possesses such spirit of sacrifice. But what they are not willing to surrender for anything in this world is the right to think aloud without hypocrisy, as Martí wanted it. During three dark months of prior censorship, without a press to inform and guide us, Cuban life has been immersed in ominous sorrow. Beneath the apparent calm, a series of unhealthy rumors have been incubating, and everyone is full of rancor and resentment. Censorship has fostered what it set out to prevent. Even silence has become subversive.¹⁶

On the same day that editorial appeared, the renowned Cuban intellectual Jorge Mañach wrote the following on the subject in an article entitled “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”:

Once again we can write about something other than ball games, foreign politics and culture.... Let’s take advantage of the opportunity, then. They tell me that during this closed season on free speech that we have just been through, a friend of the regime would exclaim with repugnant euphoria to some friends, ‘How peaceful we are!... This is the way to govern!”... What terrible myopia and shameful abdication. This is not governing; it is simply leading and administering without referendum.

Whether they are known or suspected, abuses are certainly what most engender the irritation and resentment of a people. To be unable to judge them publicly or to urge their investigation—to be unable even to unlock the false reasoning of the official press when there is one, to deprive the citizens of breath—is to accumulate psychic dynamite.¹⁷

For the remainder of 1954, there was no end to press accusations against the government relating to the violation of freedom of expression. On May 2 Ernesto Montaner denounced the imprisonment of Luis Conte Agüero for having given an incorrect radio report.¹⁸ Shortly afterward, Max Lesnik published an article entitled, “Return to Guiteras,” in which he paralleled the era of the death of the revolutionary leader in 1933, during Batista’s former dictatorship, with those times.¹⁹ One of Bohemia’s editorials at the end of that year denounced the kidnapping of a commentator and an employee of one of the stations in Santiago de Cuba for having spoken out against Batista. It reads as follows:

We believed that these Fascist methods of repression, which were so often used in other periods too unpleasant to remember, had been abolished forever... . Unfortunately, these “deeds” have been repeated lately with alarming frequency. The authorities, acting in an arbitrary fashion, have brought radio hours to a close, suspended peaceful gatherings, dissolved authorized meetings, and committed other similar outrages...²⁰

In 1955 other important statements were made by the press against Batista. With the passage of the amnesty law midway through the year, a debate between Fidel Castro and the military leader of Oriente Province, who was responsible for the crimes at Moncada, was published. Castro published his article, “You lie, Chaviano,” accusing the leader of distorting the facts to hide the military's responsibility. The article said:

When Batista spoke from the Columbia barracks the day after the events, he said that we, the attackers, had had 33 killed; by the end of the week our dead had risen to more than 80.

In what battles, in what places, in what combat did these young people die? Before Batista spoke, more than 25 prisoners had been killed; after he spoke, 50 more were killed.²¹

As disturbances erupted all over the country and the government continued to use excessive force to combat its opponents, the press had this to say: “[The police] go to cruel extremes, acting with incredible brutality, performing their duties with, we would say, almost a morbid sadism, forgetting the reserve and restraint that the authorities should always show. Nothing more disastrous can happen in a country than the confrontation of its youth with its security forces.²²

The confrontations continued throughout 1956 between different sections of the population, principally the students against the government. The year ended with the landing, in Oriente Province, of Fidel Castro’s expeditionaries. The government’s initial reaction was to suspend civil rights for forty-five days. On May 17 a state of national emergency was declared, and thereafter the press was permitted to publish only the official reports from the government on the situation and activities of the revolutionaries. Two weeks after the landing on December 16, Bohemia protested that it had not been allowed to look into what was happening: “The government and the armed forces have hung a curtain of fire and censorship between the zone of operations and the Cuban people. No journalist has been able to pass through it. ... The Cuban press, which has so wisely and responsibly confronted these unfortunate circumstances, does not deserve this."²³

The initial period of censorship having ended, Bohemia published the following comment in an editorial of March 3, 1957:

Once again—one of the many times since March 10, 1952—the Cuban press has had to suffer under the. yoke of prior censorship.

Every time the regime has trouble, which is almost always the result of its flawed inception and the mistakes that have evidenced and aggravated the flaw, it is mainly the press that pays dearly. Why this determination to have our periodicals shoulder the blame for things which in no way concern them? AII things considered, what is it that the media do but simply reflect a state of things that is not secret to anyone. This is the function of the press in any country that wants to live according to civilized norms.

No periodical that respects itself and its public can disregard its obligation to be truthful. Its pages are like a mirror that passes through everyday reality and gathers it faithfully on its polished surface. It is absurd to blame the mirror simply because it inexorably copies an imperfect reality.

In accordance with its already well-known standards, Bohemia stopped publishing all editorials, criticism and commentaries on current events during the period of censorship. Ibis inhibition signals our protest against that measure, and is also the only response it deserved. Opinions cannot be properly stated when there is no freedom to give an opinion. And if there is no freedom to express an opinion on political matters, then it stands to reason that there can be no freedom to express an opinion on social, economic or cultural matters either. Freedom is indivisible. So, in order not to surrender to fine and absurd distinctions, Bohemia also eliminated its “in Cuba” section, its editorials and all other columns from which al aspects of Cuban life have been independently and impartially examined.

Lifting press censorship is not enough. Constitutional rights must be fully restored. Public freedoms must be respected in letter and in spirit. Politics must be set in motion.²⁴

Lacking access to the Cuban press to explain their position to the people, Castro’s revolutionaries decided to invite Herbert Matthews of the New York Times to Cuba to talk to them. Matthews succeeded in slipping an interview with the rebels through their clandestine network past Cuban censors, and the piece was published in New York. Later, on March 3, 1957 it was published in Havana.²⁵

After being in the Sierra Maestra for a year without the ability to convey their thoughts and objectives to the Cuban people, the rebels established Radio Rebelde, a radio station that transmitted directly from the Sierra. As the guerrilla activities progressed, the number of rebel stations increased until by the end of the insurrection there were thirty-two stations that transmitted three hours of programs originating at the central station in the Sierra. The entire Cuban populace was taken up with these transmissions that had evaded censorship, and the people eagerly awaited the opening of the stations each evening at 7:00. Programming began with these words: “This is Radio Rebelde, the official organ of the Jul9 26th movement and the rebel army, which form a chain of freedom with its affiliated stations . . . from the mountains of Oriente, the free territory of Cuba.”

The government challenged the press over its role in the rebellion. An article by the journalist Agustín Tamargo reflects the mood of the times and the press response:

Those who truly stir up war from their government-subsidized propaganda trenches accuse the Cuban press of inciting to rebellion and promoting disorder.... If the government’s propagandists want to know it once and for all, here is our point of view: Yes, it grieves us that the national economy is being attacked, it grieves us that the sugar cane harvest is being delayed and that the peasant children are left without schools. But what grieves us even more are the people who are being killed and tortured every day. We know that the attacks are an abominable strategy and that the hand that places a firecracker in a movie theatre could be a criminal hand. But we also know it is equally as bad to take a man from his home in the middle of the night on mere suspicion—and because you don’t like his face—and kill him with a bullet through the back of the neck. We know the country is in chaos, that the people can’t leave their homes, and that every minute innocent victims fail in the streets. But we also know that all of this is not a cause, but an effect and that none of it would have occurred if the country were not in the pillory of martyrdom that it is. Violence grieves us, but injustice sickens us.²⁶

One week later radio commentator José Pardo Llada made public a letter addressed to him from the Sierra by Fidel Castro. In the letter Castro stressed the importance of the press in arriving at an accord with the government, the importance of letting the people be informed of the truth before there could be talk of peace. Castro wrote:

Since the Cuban press has the quite legitimate right to be informed about al matters of national interest, and to disclose them faithfully to the people, I write these limes to request publicly that the organs of our electronic and printed press send a delegation of journalists through whom we may express to the people of Cuba what it is in their interest to know about our position in this decisive moment that our homeland is living.... It is time we put an end to the unjustifiable limitation that has been imposed on the Cuban press by not permitting even one of its reporters to visit our camp of operations in fifteen months of fighting... They have spoken about the possibility of a solution, but nothing could work so completely against finding a solution as the confusion that is caused by the absence of direct information.... Our primary condition for peace is that Cuban journalists be allowed to come to the Sierra Maestra. Peace must be preceded by the truth. The press has the right to report it and the people have a right to know it.²⁷

Five days later the government once again suspended civil rights, and on May 17 declared a state of national emergency, which lasted until the fall of Batista’s regime.

Totalitarian Censorship, 1958-1960

During Batista’s dictatorship the government tried to control the press by bribing journalists and media management and, as we have seen, by direct censorship. Without the government “subsidies,” it would have been quite difficult for so many newspapers and radio stations (more than twenty newspapers, more than thirty radio stations, and five television stations in Havana) to survive on revenues from circulation and advertising alone. Still, the number and diversity of the press outlets did operate as a guarantee of freedom of expression and access to information. Today the government’s monopoly of the media has completely eradicated these freedoms; all information received by the people is cast in official terms. The principal organs of the print press are Granma, a morning daily of the Cuban Communist party; Juventud Rebelde, an afternoon daily of the Union of Young Communists; the daily published by the Cuban Federation of Labor; ten provincial newspapers controlled by the provincial delegations of the party; and four weekly magazines—Verde Olivo, an army publication, Bohemia, run by the Central Committee of the party, Mujeres, published by the Federation of Cuban Women, and Con la guardia en alto, run by the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution.

When the Batista dictatorship was overthrown, part of the mass media ceased to exist because enterprises belonging, or closely linked, to government figures were confiscated. When other newspapers began to dissent, Castro’s government launched a propaganda campaign against them to intimidate merchants and industrialists whose advertising had supported the publications. Naturally, the government itself withdrew al official notices that those papers had been publishing. Another government tactic was to incite workers and associations of journalists already controlled by the government to attack the dissenting publications.

The government was fostering a simplistic distinction between revolutionaries and the counterrevolutionaries: any supporter of the government fell into the first class; and anyone who interfered with or came out against government plans fell into the second. In the midst of this ad hoc and arbitrary handling of the press, freedom of expression was under a cloud. To a great extent, the confusion was caused by statements like the following, made by Castro himself in April 1959:

To persecute the Catholic because he is a Catholic, to persecute the Protestant because he is Protestant, to persecute the Mason because he is a Mason, to persecute the Rotarian because he is a Rotarian, to persecute La Marina because it may be a newspaper with a rightist tendency, or to persecute another because it is of a leftist tendency, one because it is radical and of the extreme right and another of the extreme left, 1 cannot conceive of, nor will the Revolution. . . . We are doing what is democratic: respecting all ideas. When one begins by closing a newspaper, no newspaper can feel secure; when one begins to persecute a man for his political ideas, nobody can feel secure.²⁸

In one way or another, by the time that statement was made many independent newspapers had already been threatened, or had been closed, as a result of protests mounted by officials, workers’ unions controlled by the government, or attacks in the official newspaper of the government, Revolución, or of the Communist party, Hoy.

Nevertheless, resistance from the uncontrolled press continued, so a form of censorship was introduced. The authorities had a good deal of influence in the Provincial Association of Journalists of Havana. On December 26, 1959, under that influence, the members of the association resolved to require al periodicals to include, in the form of clarifications or footnotes (“coletillas”), criticisms of editorials or news items that departed from the official line. The newspapers Información and Diario de la Marina went to the Supreme Court to challenge that violation of the law, but their petition was rejected on procedural grounds. One of the magistrates, Miguel Márquez y de la Cerra, issued a private opinion that said: “In my view the measure taken... with respect to the editorial opinions of newspapers constitutes a moral damage. .. because it is or could be a limitation on the free expression of thought.”²⁹ A month later, when the newspaper Avance refused to publish the required clarifications on the grounds that the rule violated freedom of the press, it was taken over violently by a group of employees who were sympathizers of the regime. The police made no attempt to stop the takeover and, in fact, Fidel Castro approved of it. His attacks on the director and two of the principal editors of Avance led them to flee the country.

The authorities closed or confiscated other publications, including Excelsior, basing their actions on alleged links between those papers and the Batista regime. Economic strangulation was also used to control the press; the newspaper El País had to close when its clients, pressured by government officials, withdrew their advertisements. Only four large newspapers were able to survive these arid similar official and quasi-official campaigns: Información, El Crisol, Prensa Libre and Diario de la Marina.

A letter in support of the management of Diario de la Marina, signed by three hundred workers, was scheduled to appear in the paper’s May 11, 1960, issue. On May 10 an armed mob occupied its offices, and the police refused to provide protection. The following day the Diario, then under the control of Communist and pro-Castro elements, held a celebration of the takeover. It was a symbolic burial, at the University of Havana, of a paper that in its 128 years of publication had survived numerous crises in regard to freedom of information. The deputy director of Prensa Libre, Humberto Medrano, dared to publish an editorial that included the following statement:

It is painful to see the burial of freedom of thought in a center of culture. It is like seeing the burial of a code in a court of justice. Because what was buried last night on the Hill [the university] was not a single newspaper. Symbolically, the freedom to think and say what one thinks was ....... . A sequel to that act has been announced in a comment in the newspaper Revolución. The headline of the comment says it all: “Prensa Libre in the footsteps of the Marina”. They do not have to say it. Everyone knows.³⁰

A few days later a group of Communist workers and armed militia broke into the office of Prensa Libre to prevent publication of an editorial criticizing the government. When the director refused to yield to the mob’s demands, he had to seek asylum in the embassy of Panama. Bohemia, the magazine with the largest circulation in Latin America, collapsed under similar circumstances, and its director, who had greatly distinguished himself in the struggle against the Batista dictatorship, had to take refuge in the Venezuelan embassy. The other independent periodicals were brought under government control through use of pressure by pro-Castro workers’ groups, although without much public fanfare.

A similar fate befell the radio and television stations. Station CMQ, the most powerful in the country, was really blameless; the only possible basis for government criticism was that CMQ had maintained its independence. To justify taking the station over, the minister of labor cited an alleged labor dispute. Then, with the goal of “consolidating the revolution and guiding the people,” an entity called the United Front of Free Broadcasting Stations (FIDEL) was created, and it brought the remaining radio and television stations under government control.

In the face of those violations of freedom of expression and information, the inter-American Press Society, which was meeting at Montego Bay, stated on March 19, 1960: “In Cuba, where a year ago there was joy because the press had once again regained freedom after the flight of the dictator Batista, that same press is now facing seizure, confiscation and collectivization.” And a few days later the president of the society stated, referring to the attitude of the Cuban government with respect to the press: “The campaign has also brought about a state of intimidation and possible danger for the personal safety of the editors, who are publicly denounced by government spokesmen as counterrevolutionaries because they express differing opinions that are not to the liking of those who govern today in Cuba.”³¹ The final step in seizing control was to obstruct the circulation of U.S. newspapers. The simple way to accomplish this goal was to freeze their bank accounts. In the end, Cubans had access only to a government-controlled press and publications from communist countries.

The biggest campaigns against freedom of expression were carried out by the newspapers Hoy and Revolución. Early in 1960, as has been stated above, two of the remaining independent newspapers were Diario de la Marina and Prensa Libre. A review of the attacks waged against them by Revolución in the days before the demise of those two papers is very instructive, for it clearly reveals the government’s objective of suppressing freedom of expression.

Revolución set the tone on March 24, 1960 in the following commentary, which repeated the arbitrary, official distinction between what was revolutionary and what was counterrevolutionary, described above, and clearly threatened critics of the government:

The newspapers and their advocates, who have made the Communist ghost the primary focus of their editorials and news reports, are only playing their assigned parts as accomplices to foreign intervention in Cuba.

The struggle going on in Cuba is between the humble, the underprivileged and their exploiters; between thieves and honest men; between patriots and traitors; between those loyal to their country and those who align themselves with the enemy to brutalize and imprison it. Let each man choose; but let each one assume the responsibility for his choice.³²

The following day (March 25) it addressed its attacks directly to Diario de la Marina and Prensa Libre:

The North American monopolies, the international oligarchy, the war criminals, and, in their own underhanded, cowardly way, Prensa Libre and Diario de la Marina... brandish the anti-Communist flag with the villainous purpose of deceiving and confusing world opinion.³³

If Prensa Libre and Diario de la Marina and all the disgrace, misery, exploitation, servility, infamy, ignominy and. shame they represent think that the Cuban people are asleep, or could be put to sleep, they are sadly  mistaken.³⁴

A few days later it charged that the anticommunist sentiments expressed by the two papers under attack and on the radio constituted treason: “We told the people that the sole objective of the anti-Communist campaign of Prensa Libre, Conte Agüero [a radio commentator], La Marina and the North American press was to confuse, divide, isolate and create fifth columns that aid and abet foreign aggression.”³⁵

In spite of such threats and attacks, Diario de la Marina continued to exercise its rights and to express its increasingly unorthodox opinions vis-a-vis the official government ¡me. One need only review the headlines from the issues published on the days just before the paper was closed to understand how far the situation had deteriorated, and why the government felt the need to shut down the paper. On May 1 Diario published an editorial criticizing the submissiveness of cultural expression in the countries behind the Iron Curtain (“The Artist in a Communist State”).³⁶ Since Labor Day was being celebrated on that day, another editorial was pointedly entitled “May 1 is Also Christian.”³⁷ On May 2 the paper published an article entitled “The Truth Is Imprisoned,”³⁸ and the editorial for that day spoke of the “risks of negotiations with Russia.”³⁹ Still another piece from that issue reported: “576 people are currently imprisoned, and the great majority of them are still pending trial.”⁴⁰  On May 5 there was an editorial entitled “Free Work vs. Slave Work: The Backwardness of Socialist Countries,”⁴¹ an article with the heading “The AFL/CIO States the Current Regime Endangers Peace in This Hemisphere,”⁴² and still others, to discredit the system, “The Workers’ Situation in Russia”⁴³ and “What Would Really Happen if the Communist Revolution Succeeds.”⁴⁴ All these issues included anticommunist caricatures and a scorecard in a postscript that recorded the number of clarifications that newspapers were being forced to print. For example, on May 1, the scorecard read: “Diario De La Marina, 6; Información, 5; Prensa Libre, 6; El Crisol, 5; Revolución, La Calle, Hoy, El Mundo and Avance, 0.”⁴⁵ A final report to taunt the government, which appeared on May 8, 1960, was entitled “Communist Aggression upon Sanchez Arango’s Return to Cuba.” The subject, once a Communist Party member, had in later years been a leading anti-Communist and a distinguished participant in the opposition to Batista. The article decried the abuses to which he had been subjected by a mob of Castor's supporters.⁴⁶

At this point, the government lost patience with that limited press freedom and moved to force the closing of Diario De La Marina. On May 11, instigated by government officials, the workers published the following declaration “To the Public Opinion” on the front page:

It is a well-known fact that the director of this newspaper, Jose Ignacio Rivero, has taken a clearly conspiratorial, counter-revolutionary position.

It is Mr. José Ignacio Rivero’s plan to provoke the people and, by doing so, to find a way to make it seem as though the newspaper has been targeted by the Revolution. This plan was master-minded abroad, the proof of which is the award given him by the SIP [Interamerican Press Society], which is hailed as the hero of freedom of the press; the agreement of the Rosa Blanca [a counterrevolutionary organization] with Mr. Rivero’s pronouncements; and a campaign of North American newspapers in which this newspaper’s director is cited as a participant in a plan to form an “underground,” counterrevolutionary movement.

To execute this plan, Mr. Rivero prepared a document for signature by certain employees of El Diario and then changed the wording of the already-signed document to make the employees and journalists of El Diario look like enemies of the Revolution.

It is for this reason that a great number of the workers who do not share Mr. Rivero’s point of view, but are, on the contrary, in agreement with the Revolution, have issued a manifesto defending their own viewpoint.

Yesterday, Mr. Rivero refused to put out El Diario, so we the workers, have decided to take it upon ourselves to print it, without changing its customary status.⁴⁷

With the bold headline “A Day with the People; 128 Years Serving Reaction,” Diario de la Marina came out the next day with these statements on its front page:

For years the employees of El Diario de la Marina and its public have had to endure the insidious press campaigns that use this paper to pit the company against the interests of the nation (128 years at the service of bad objectives), without being able freely to express our point of view and our disgust at those ill-aimed opinions. From the very first we aligned ourselves with the provincial College of Journalists of Havana and the National Federation of Graphic Arts, which agreed to place explanatory “postscripts” on every article or report that goes against the ideals of the Revolution, and hence, those of our homeland. In recent months we have waged an arduous battle to explode the lies of José Ignacio Rivero and company, waylaying any attempt at aggression against Cuban ideals.

El Diario de la Marina had become the mouthpiece of the Rosa Blanca, as it had once been for the Spanish “voluntarios” [voluntary military supporters of Spain during Cuba’s wars for independence] in this era of glorious Revolution, it has represented the worst interests of our nation; it represented the latifundium, the war criminals, the imperialists from abroad who try to bloody our streets; in general, anyone who opposed freedom, social justice, and the absolute and sovereign independence of the Cuban nation.⁴⁸

Satisfied with its success, Revolución reported to its readers on May 12: “As of yesterday, ‘the only sickness that lasted more than 100 years’ along with its officers, which have hurt. Cuba and its heroes and martyrs, has ceased to exist as the voice of our worst interests. It will now be dedicated to noble goals such as our popular culture.⁴⁹

The same issue commenced attacks on Prensa Libre with this commentary: “Prensa Libre’s Treasonous Voice. . . . In times like these, those who take the side of Diario de la Marina take the side of the counter-revolution, aggression and foreign intervention.”⁵⁰ The following issue of Revolución (March 13, 1960) included a long editorial that paved the way for the fail of Prensa Libre:

Prensa Libre in the Footsteps of La Marina.... Every man has the right to choose his own path. In today’s Cuba, there are only two paths: that of the Revolution and that of counterrevolution. The two paths are irreconcilable. On the path of the Revolution there are six million Cubans, the best of our ......... On the path of counterrevolution are the imperialists who have exploited Latin America and Cuba for decades.... The latest events only serve to distinguish that much more between the paths of Revolution and counterrevolution.

Today, one is either with Cuba... or against her.

Whoever defends La Marina denigrates the memory of the martyrs of seventy-one;

Whoever defends La Marina denigrates the memory of Martí;

Whoever defends La Marina defends foreign intervention;

Whoever defends La Marina defends Hitler, Mussolini and Franco;

Whoever defends La Marina defends the counterrevolution.

For quite some time Prensa Libre has been beating the path of El Diario; the path to counteract the Revolution; the path of the SIP’s rewards; the path of singing Yankee praises; the path of anti-Communism.

No one threatens, or harasses, or hounds Prensa Libre. . . . It will determine its own destiny; no one else will.

Anyone who opposes history will be erased from it.... Anyone who opposes our homeland will be destroyed.

The words “democracy,” “free press,” and “independence” ring hollow when uttered from the mouth of the press of the privileged few. There is only one word here: REVOLUTION. For the first time, the people know the true meaning of democracy, freedom, independence, truth and free press—through the Revolution.

During the 57 years of the Republic, the privileged man’s press never told the people the truth.

In the 16 months of the Revolution, all of the truths have been told in Cuba; all the liars, charlatans and false apostles have been unmasked.⁵¹

As described above, Prensa Libre replied defiantly to this challenge, but it ultimately fell in the government’s drive to consolidate its monopoly over “free journalism.” Prensa Libre’s buildings, presses and officers were taken over by Revolución on July 4, 1960, and eleven days later, Revolución’s old shop was given to the newspaper Hoy.

On July 21 came the news that Bohemia, too, had fallen under government control. The item appeared on the front page of Revolución as follows:

This Friday, as usual, Bohemia will take to the streets in a public display of enthusiasm and struggle. Now published under the direction of Enrique Delahoza by the employees of that work center of journalists and artists, Bohemia is initiating with this issue a newly productive stage, in which much more editorial and informative emphasis will be placed on the defense of our national interests, which are irrevocably tied to the Revolution.⁵²

Thus did freedom of information come to an end in Cuba. The school of journalism changed its name and personnel⁵³ as it shifted to a new goal of training for indoctrination; the function of the press in this new era was to be to change the Cuban people’s way of thinking.⁵⁴ Journalism, like ah cultural expressions, was to become an instrument of the Communist party, “an engineer of souls.” In fact, the people were now seeing the results of the attitude that the journalist Agustín Tamargo had ingeniously described months before when Castro accused him of being a reactionary because he did not agree with Castro. In response. Tamargo wrote in Avance: “Commandant Castro: 1 will no longer be ~ journalist, because you don’t want journalists, you want phonograph records.”⁵⁵”

The Platform of the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party of 1975 is something of a summary of the Cuban phenomenon beginning in 1959. The preamble of the platform stated that it would be “the guiding document for al the work of the Party . . . , its principal  ideological instrument and its battle flag,” and that it was going to “serve as a basis for the work of the Central Committee.” Part 101, “Tasks of the Ideological Struggle,” stated:

The Party considers as the principal tasks for the Communist education of our people and internal and external ideological confrontation:

The defense of Marxist-Leninist purity; the struggle against the concepts and theories of the bourgeoisie, imperialism and its servants, pointing to the crisis in which they find themselves; opposition to and confrontation with all manifestations of ideological diversionism through the study of the scientific ideology of the working class and knowledge of the laws of universal development;

Disclosure of the lies in the insidious anti-Soviet campaigns, through clarification of the role of the USSR in the world struggle for social progress and in the creation of more favorable conditions for the struggle of nations for their definitive liberation;

Opposition to the ideas held by the revisionists of the right who deny the class struggle and the leading role of the working class in the Socialist revolution, and proof that they are shameless defenders of the bourgeoisie order;

The consequent combat against the political and ideological positions of the revisionists of the left, as well as dogmatism and sectarianism, identifying the anti-Soviet leftist pseudo revolutionaries as actual servants of imperialism and enemies of humanity.⁵⁶

Of course, in the hands of the state, the press had turned into the best weapon for that “ideological struggle.” In dealing with the mass media, part 105 of the platform states:

The Party shall provide systematic orientation for and attention to the instruments of the mass media and shall promote the enthusiastic and creative participation of al workers who base their opinions on the Communists and on the activity of the labor union movement of journalists and writers, so as to succeed in having the radio, television, written press and films carry out more and more effectively their role in the political, ideological, cultural, technical-scientific and aesthetic education of the population.⁵⁷

As a summary of the First Congress of the Communist Party, Fidel Castro read a “report” in which he said the following about radio and television:

As a vehicle for spreading the ideas of the bourgeois society in the capitalist stage, the radio had the role of an agent selling commercial products. The dramatized serials, with their deforming content, were used indiscriminately, and their mark of vulgarity and poor taste fostered superstition and a low cultural ......... Television, which came after, adopted the formulas that had proved successful in radio. It used what was fashionable and sold more, and in order to make its imitation of the American television model more complete, it included religious conversations, which had had great success in the United States.

With the triumph of the Revolution, the stations involved with the tyranny were seized, and the Independent Front of Free Broadcasters was formed. The nationalization process of the radio and television was completed later, and in May of 1962 the Cuban Radio Broadcasting Institute was created and charged with centralizing these media in order to serve the interests of the Revolution.⁵⁸

The following year, in 1976, Cuba’s socialist Constitution went into effect; chapter iv is “Fundamental Rights, Obligations and Guarantees.” With respect to freedom of information and expression, article 52 states:

Freedom of speech and the press is recognized for citizens in accordance with the goals of Socialist society. The material conditions for their exercise are guaranteed by the fact that the press, the radio, television, movies and other mass media are state or social property and cannot be the object, in any case, of private property, which ensures their use in the exclusive service of the working people and the interest of society.⁵⁹

Because article 5 of the Constitution provides that the party is the “vanguard of the working class and the leading force of society and the state,”⁶⁰ article 52 in effect means that freedom of information and expression can only be used for the “exclusive service” of the Communist party.

Conclusion

On the basis of the foregoing account, one might conclude that censorship of the kind practiced by autocracies is not only tolerable but even defensible in certain circumstances, for autocratic regimes can be relatively sensitive to press reaction and moderate or uninterfering in many aspects of life. If we freeze time and compare that kind of censorship with the other, totalitarian brand, no doubt the first is preferable. The case of Cuba seems to show at least that an autocratic regime can be toppled, but there seems no exit from the grip of a totalitarian rule. The mistake, however, lies in thinking that we can freeze a segment of a process. Seen in history’s dynamics, the autocratic regime cannot be excused, if for no other reason than that it may actually lead to another, more repressive government. Under the autocracy the people become accustomed or inured to force in power, and then, to overthrow it, they seem to justify even worse abuse.

Other countries have extricated themselves from unjust governments without falling under totalitarian rule. To date, El Salvador is an example. Its people have chosen a democratic path in their efforts to free themselves from continued violations of human rights and oligarchies that drained the national wealth. The example offers hope to other countries in Latin America. Cuba was not as lucky, nor was Iran nor Nicaragua, and we must learn from these sad experiences if we want to avoid the same mistakes.

Every person, institution, and government with any influence over a dictatorial regime should use that influence to demand that its rulers respect freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and freedom of information. The other rights that democracies hold so dear should not be forgotten, but only through those guaranties of thought can the dangers of totalitarianism be averted.