Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of Impartiality

Salim Lamrani

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781583674734
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Media & Entertainment Law
• Index: Law

In this concise and detailed work, Salim Lamrani addresses questions of media concentration and corporate bias by examining a perennially controversial topic: Cuba. Lamrani argues that the tiny island nation is forced to contend not only with economic isolation and a U.S. blockade, but with misleading or downright hostile media coverage. He takes as his case study El País, the most widely distributed Spanish daily. El País (a property of Grupo Prisa, the largest Spanish media conglomerate), has editions aimed at Europe, Latin America, and the U.S., making it is a global opinion leader. Lamrani wades through a swamp of reporting and uses the paper as an example of how media conglomerates distort and misrepresent life in Cuba and the activities of its government. By focusing on eight key areas, including human development, internal opposition, and migration, Lamrani shows how the media systematically shapes our understanding of Cuban reality. This book, with a preface by Eduardo Galeano, provides an alternative view, combining a scholar’s eye for complexity with a journalist’s hunger for the facts.

1

The Ideological Shift of El País

LONG CONSIDERED THE NEWSPAPER of reference in Spain and Latin America, the daily El País, reputed to be center-left, has in recent years undergone a spectacular ideological shift. It has adopted an editorial line that is conservative and particularly hostile to leftist Latin American governments in general and Cuba in particular, this to the point of competing with the Miami daily, El Nuevo Herald, a paper that represents the interests of the extreme right of the Cuban exile community.

It should also be noted that El País signed a trade agreement in March 2011 with El Nuevo Herald and is now distributed in Miami as a supplement to the Florida paper. This is an alliance that was concluded with the utmost discretion.¹⁴

Two editorials, written ten years apart, are emblematic of the ideological right turn taken by El País. In 1997, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the death of the guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara and the repatriation of his remains from Bolivia to Cuba, the newspaper published an ecstatic editorial review:

Thirty years after the death of Ernesto Guevara—the most iconic and captivating of Cuban revolutionary guerrillas, the memory of whom has created both nostalgia for lost idealism and a commercial bonanza for those who exploit his image, . . . The revolutionary figure of Che remains a symbol of the steadfast idealist and the man of action. . . .

Che returns: an event that provokes melancholy for faded ideals in those who were young progressives when Guevara, Fidel and Cienfuegos (the young “barbudos”) were struggling. This is useful information for those who did not experience this period of the Cuban revolution and have known the Guevarist mythology only as an abstract evocation of a struggle for a better, more egalitarian and humane world. . . .

In the late 1950s and early ‘60s this was an anti-imperialist and subversive armed movement that ended the dictatorship of Batista and attempted to spread, through guerrilla deployment, egalitarian uprisings throughout Latin America.

Che was 39 years old and his political preoccupation, that of exporting revolution, became a myth. His image, multiplied around the world on hundreds of thousands of posters, became a badge of honor for many young people who saw in this asthmatic doctor the archetype of the heroic guerrilla who struggles for the betterment of humanity.

The third world, a concept that was prevalent at that time, meant, on the one hand, the most brazen denunciation of international imperialism for its exploitation and misery, but on the other, held out the promise of insurgencies that would transform the world.

Such a utopia has virtually ceased to exist. Only a few rebel nuclei remain in the world, four or five guerrilla groups in Latin America, a residue without a future in a world characterized today by the triumph of globalization and a harsh and uncompromising liberalism.¹⁵

However, on October 10, 2007, the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, El País published a particularly scathing editorial in which he was no longer portrayed as a guerrilla, but rather as a “caudillo”:

In fact, his willingness to give his life for his ideas masks a darker purpose: a willingness to simply eradicate those who do not share his beliefs. Ernesto Guevara, Che, the fortieth anniversary of whose death in the Bolivian village of La Higuera is being celebrated, belongs to the grim saga of tragic heroes. These heroes are still present in terrorist movements of all kinds, from nationalist to jihadist, their condition as assassins, concealed in the martyr’s shroud, propagates old prejudices inherited from romanticism.

Their plans and their examples have left nothing more than a trail of failure and death, not only in one place where they have triumphed, Castro’s Cuba, but also in places where they have not achieved victory, from the Congo of Kabila to the Bolivia of Barrientos. This accounting, of course, does not include the many countries in which thousands of young people who wished to follow the example of this reckless myth were engaged in a chimerical adventure, the aim of which is to create the “new man” through the barrel of a gun.

Seduced by a “guerrilla nucleus” strategy, one aimed at creating many Vietnams, the only contribution Guevara and his Latin American policy supporters were able to serve up were new alibis that served to justify the authoritarian tendencies that were germinating on the continent. Faced with Che’s armed challenge, military dictatorships have managed to present themselves as the lesser of two evils, if not as an inexorable necessity in the face of similar military dictatorships, such as that of Castro.

The fact that Che gave his life, and sacrificed the lives of many others, does not make his ideas better, particularly when we take into account the fact that one of the world’s most totalitarian systems served as their incubator.

Given the context from which he emerged, the figure of Ernesto Guevara represents an updated version of Latin American “caudillism.” He was a kind of armed adventurer who came up with new social ideals for the continent that, while not the ideals of colonial liberation, were to be achieved through the same means his predecessors had used. During the four decades that have transpired since his death, the Latin American left and, of course, its European counterpart, have completely rejected his objectives and his fanatical methods.¹⁶

Thus, in the space of a decade, Ernesto Guevara, in the eyes of the newspaper El País, went from being an “undeviating idealist,” a symbol of the “struggle for a better, more egalitarian and humane world,” an “example of the heroic guerrilla fighting for humanity’s sake” and someone offering the “promise of fomenting a movement that would transform the world,” to being a “murderer” who belonged to the “sinister saga of the tragic hero still present in terrorist movements of all kinds,” a “caudillo,” someone committed to “fanatical methods,” a purveyor of “totalitarian ideas,” and someone whose legacy has left a “trail of failure and death.”

When one reads these two editorials, the first question that comes to mind is: What crimes did Che commit during that fateful decade, wherever he might have been, that need be called out in this manner? The ideological shift of the newspaper, in reality, may be explained through the emergence of a new Latin America that has brought to power leftist leaders in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.

The Spanish daily struggles against the accusation that it presents a biased picture of Cuban reality. Instead, it asserts that these “accusations . . . are completely false and reveal only that Havana . . . hopes to see the media behave as mouthpieces subservient to official Cuban discourse and not as witnesses to reality.” El País maintains that it always presents “truthful and nuanced information.”¹⁷ It is now important to evaluate this assertion thematically.

2

Daily Life in Cuba

ACCORDING TO EL PAÍS, “After half a century of revolution, Cuban leaders cannot continue to blame external forces for the political, economic and social failure into which they themselves have precipitated the island.”¹⁸ The reader may be surprised at such a harsh judgment and see it as more worthy of the political opposition to the Havana government that emanates from the White House or the dissident community rather than impartial, fact-based journalism.

It is now appropriate to compare the paper’s assertions to the facts on the ground. Cuba’s economic difficulties are undeniable; anyone who has visited the island quickly realizes that though the extreme misery prevalent throughout the rest of the continent does not exist here, the poverty of the people is nonetheless real.

Contrary to what the Madrid newspaper asserts, however, the Cuban leaders, far from evading personal responsibility, clearly recognize the flaws in how the current system operates. To appreciate this, one needs only to quote President Raúl Castro, who spoke about this problem in December 2010, before the Cuban parliament: “Either we solve our problems or we fail after having for too long skirted the precipice.”¹⁹ Two years later he added: “It is essential to breach the colossal psychological barrier that results in a mentality rooted in the habits and concepts of the past.”²⁰

Regarding the monthly income of Cubans, Raúl Castro has demonstrated considerable insight: “Salaries are still clearly insufficient to meet all needs, and they have virtually ceased to fulfill their role, that of ensuring the socialist principle ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his work.’ This has encouraged a lack of social discipline.”²¹

Nor has Raúl Castro evaded the problem of corruption: “Faced with violations of the Constitution and the rule of established law, there is no alternative other than that of using the public prosecutor’s office and the courts. This, in fact, is something we have already begun to do. We do it in order to demand accountability from offenders, whoever they may be, because all Cubans, without exception, are equal before the law.”²² Aware that corruption does not spare senior officials, he sent a clear message to leaders in all sectors: “We must put an end to lies and deception in the conduct of managers at all levels.”

More solemnly, he relied on two of the Ten Commandments to clarify his remarks: “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not lie.” He also referenced the three ethical and moral principles of the Inca civilization, “Do not lie, do not steal, do not be lazy,” which, he maintained, “should guide the conduct of all leaders of the nation.”²³

In 2005, Fidel Castro himself had denounced corruption in Cuba: “This country can auto-destruct, this revolution can destroy itself. . . . We can destroy it, but if we do it will be our own fault.”²⁴ President Raúl Castro also castigated the lack of critical debate in Cuba by denouncing secrecy, complacency, and mediocrity, and calling for more openness. “Do not fear differences in the assessment of criteria and opinion. . . . Differences will always be preferable to a false unanimity based on simulation and opportunism. The possibility of critical debate is, moreover, a right that should be denied to no one.” Castro denounced the excesses of the “culture of secrecy that [Cubans have] used for more than fifty years” in order to hide errors, failures, and shortcomings. “It is essential that we change the mindset of managers as well as that of all of our compatriots,” he added.²⁵

Raúl Castro made the following remarks to the Cuban media:

Our press has spoken enough of the successes of the Revolution, and we have done the same in our discourses. But we must now go directly to the heart of our problems. . . . I am a fervent advocate for ending the culture of secrecy because this is the “magic curtain” that masks our shortcomings as well as hiding those individuals invested in maintaining the status quo. I remember that certain criticisms, which I supported, appeared in the press a few years ago. . . . Our bureaucracy was immediately set in motion and began to protest, arguing that “these criticisms do not help because they demoralize the workers.” Indeed, which employees will be demoralized? Similarly, at The Triangle, a large state dairy in the province of Camagüey, the milk produced was fed to pigs in the region for a number of weeks simply because the tanker truck used to transport it had broken down. I asked a secretary of the Central Committee to denounce this situation in Granma. Some people came to see me to tell me that this kind of criticism was counterproductive because it demoralized workers, etc, etc. But what they did not know was that I was the source of the criticism.²⁶

On August 1, 2011, during his closing speech before the Seventh National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuba’s parliament, Raúl Castro reiterated his remarks concerning the need for critical and open debate within the society: “All opinions should be analyzed, and when there is no consensus the differences should be brought to the attention of a higher authority allowed to make a decision; moreover, nobody has the authority to prevent this.”²⁷ He called for an end to “the habit of complacency, self-satisfaction, and formalism that we see in the treatment of the national news.” He stated that television and radio should begin to generate written materials and programs that, by their content and style, capture the attention of the public and stimulate debate in order “to prevent media coverage from being boring, improvised, and superficial.”²⁸

Similarly, sectarian excesses have been strongly condemned by Raúl Castro. He denounced on television certain violations of religious freedoms that have occurred due to the intolerance “still rooted in the minds of many leaders at all levels.”²⁹ He spoke of the case of a woman, a Communist Party cadre, whose career had been exemplary but who was nonetheless removed from her position in February 2011 because of her Christian faith. Her salary was reduced by 40 percent, in direct violation of Article 43 of the 1976 Constitution that prohibits any kind of discrimination. The President of the Republic denounced “the harm caused to a Cuban family by attitudes based on an archaic mentality, fueled by deceptiv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword by Eduardo Galeano
• Introduction
• 1. The Ideological Shift of El País
• 2. Daily Life in Cuba
• 3. A Social Failure?
• 4. The Issue of Human Rights
• 5. The Dissidents
• 6. Yoani Sánchez
• 7. The Case of the Five Cuban Political Prisoners
• 8. The Case of Alan Gross
• 9. Cuban Emigration to the United States
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index