History of Censorship in Cuba

Description: The largest island in the Caribbean and the only communist nation in the Western Hemisphere

Significance: State monopolization of all means of mass communication has ensured ideological compliance since Fidel Castro took power in 1959

Censorship has taken a variety of forms throughout Cuba’s complex cultural history. Until the late nineteenth century, Cuban law was mandated by Spanish colonial authorities. Cuba’s war for independence from Spain was spearheaded by efforts to gain full political and civil rights for all Cubans. On October 10, 1868, Cuban rebel leaders issued a manifesto that included demands for freedom of expression. Freedom finally came after the Spanish-American War of 1898. In 1901 the newly independent Cuban Republic drafted a constitution that explicitly gave citizens the right to “express their thoughts freely” without “prior censorship.” This principle served as the basis for the constitution of 1940, which reaffirmed the right of every person “to express his thoughts freely in words, writing, or any other graphic or oral means of expression.”

Despite these constitutional guarantees of free speech, successive dictatorships throughout the first half of the twentieth century gradually eroded civil liberties and fueled civil discontent. Geraldo Machado’s government “reforms” in 1928, for example, restricted the civil rights granted by the constitution of 1901. A military coup led by Fulgencio Batista in 1952 imposed statutes that severely limited freedom of speech. Batista’s censorship practices also included manipulation—newspaper editors were bribed to curtail reports of antigovernment guerrillas. By the time that Fidel Castro’s guerrilla army toppled Batista in 1959, many Cubans had grown weary of foreign intervention and domestic government corruption. Many welcomed Castro, who had publicly declared the revolution’s “absolute and reverent respect” for the 1940 constitution.

Despite these and other emancipatory declarations, however, one of the new revolutionary government’s first steps was to shut down or take over all independent newspapers and magazines. Censorship then became less a matter of legal reform than one of monopolization; the state became the sole owner of all major forms of communication—from television stations to publishing houses to film companies. Many Cuban writers and artists had supported the revolution and had looked forward to a flourishing of creative freedom; however, it soon became evident that art was to serve ideology. Castro’s famous 1961 speech, “Words to the Intellectuals,” set the tone for the new society: “What are the rights of the revolutionary or nonrevolutionary writers and artists? Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, no right.” The socialist constitution of 1976 allowed freedom of expression that was “in keeping with the objectives of socialist society.” The penal code prescribed up to fifteen years in prison for anyone who incited revolts against “the socialist state by means of oral, written or any other kind of propaganda.”

As a result of these laws, many Cuban artists have been harassed, fired, exiled, or imprisoned for expressing views deemed “counterrevolutionary.” Some writers, such as Armando Valladares, Angel Cuadra, and Jorge Valls, managed to smuggle manuscripts out of prison while serving long sentences. Others, such as Heberto Padilla, were forced to make public retractions for writing “enemy propaganda.”

The nationalization of the communications media in Cuba provided the state with its most powerful ideological tool, binding individual expression to the country’s vast political machinery.

In the twenty-first century, the Cuban government has continued to censor books, newspapers, radio, television, film, and music, and has also placed restrictions on internet use. To use anything other than basic email (through a government-provided client) requires a special permit which few people (mostly government officials) are granted; it is also nearly four times more expensive. Freedom House estimates that only 5 percent of Cubans have full internet access, and there is a black-market trade in accounts that have such permissions. Most internet content is not censored, since so few Cubans can get online, but content directly related to Cuban politics, such as the blogs and websites of dissidents, are often blocked. Members of the public were not permitted to buy computers until 2007, and mobile phones were banned until 2008. A Cuban Twitter-like service called ZunZuneo was created in 2010, funded by the US government, which hoped to foment unrest in the country. The service reached over 40,000 Cuban users, but was shut down in 2012 when the government funding ran out, as it was not financially sustainable on its own. In 2014 Cuba's first independent digital newspaper, 14ymedio, was founded; it, and other independent publications, are accessed via an illicit network known as SNET.

Bibliography

Arce, Alberto, Desmond Bulter, and Jack Gillum. "US Secretly Created 'Cuban Twitter' to Stir Unrest." Associated Press. Associated Press, 4 Apr. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

Brown, Jeffrey. "Will Better Relations with the US Mean an Easing of Censorship in Cuba?" PBS NewsHour. NewsHour Productions, 17 June 2015. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

Freedom House. Freedom in the World 2015: Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist. Washington, DC: Author, 2015. Print.

Henken, Ted A., Miriam Celaya, and Dimas Castellanos, eds. Latin America in Focus: Cuba. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2013. Print.

"When Will Cuba Improve Relations with Its Own Journalists?" Reporters Without Borders. Reporters Without Borders, 18 Dec. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

Markowitz, Eric. "Cuba's Internet: Censorship and High Costs Mean Web Access Will Remain Elusive for Most Cubans." International Business Times. IBT Media, 23 Sept. 2015. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.