Cuba Castro’s Propagandla Apparatus and Foreign Policy 1983 [15976670]

same as CIA-RDP84S00897R000200050008-4 with less censored content

An Intelligence Assessment

Key Judgments

Information available as of I November I983 was used in this report

Cuban President Fidel Castro has long considered propaganda to be one of the most potent weapons in his foreign policy arsenal. His use of the few propaganda assets available to him—personal interviews with journalists, radiobroadcasts, and special publicity-seeking operations—during his guerrilla war against Batista contributed in a major way to his victory and was a preview of the methods he would use so successfully after coming to power.

Immediately after assuming power, he set about creating a propaganda empire that today is perhaps the most effective in the hemisphere and has connections worldwide. The empire is directed by a clique made up of Castro and his old guerrilla comrades; this ensures a permanent antipathy toward the United States.

This network consists of a global news agency, international broadcasting facilities, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, front groups, “friendship” institutes, sports and cultural activities, and a wide variety of miscellaneous organizations.

Cuba’s news service has 36 offices around the world, transmits stories in four languages, and publishes a variety of magazines and news periodicals that are disseminated to readers in numerous Western and Third World nations. Cuba’s broadcast facilities include eight transmitters on the island—ranging up to 100 kilowatts—and two transmitters in the USSR. Shortwave broadcasting alone exceeds 400 hours weekly in eight languages to Europe, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. The Cuban Institute for Friendship Among Peoples (ICAP) is designed to organize in foreign countries associations that are responsive to direction from Havana. There are now 113 such associations throughout the world.

The Castro regime constructed a $25 million Palace of Conventions in Havana to host international gatherings designed to focus world opinion on specific issues or to promote Cuban prestige. In addition, Cuban cultural institutions such as the Casa de las Americas have effectively mobilized Latin American intellectuals—many of them prestigious—in support of the Cuban revolution. Cuba’s publishing houses have turned out some 17,000 titles and over 500 million copies of books and pamphlets, a significant amount being propaganda. Cuban books are now distributed in more than 60 countries.

Castro’s propaganda successes are impressive. Despite economic ruin in his country, he has been able to project such a favorable image of Cuba that Third World leaders see it as a model for other developing countries.

Despite relentless meddling abroad, he has been able to convince many influential individuals that he is willing to abide by correct standards of international behavior.

It is clear from Cuban Government statements that propaganda will continue to be a major priority and will expand in certain key areas. Although economic constraints will hamper this effort, we are likely to see new investments made to:

• Improve the availability of Cuban books and magazines abroad.
• Open new bureaus of Cuba’s international news agency and increase the number of subscribers for that news agency’s services;
• Help allies develop their own propaganda outlets for both domestic and international audiences.
• Train foreign journalists to make the most of their skills and opportunities in non-Marxist countries.
• Establish and promote ostensibly independent news-gathering and professional organizations of leftists to provide competition for—and reduce the influence of—Western news agencies, journalists, and radio stations.

In our view, the bitterly anti-US bias of Castro’s propaganda apparatus will not change because it mirrors his own deep-seated antipathy toward the United States. He may, from time to time, have the apparatus temper its invective, but such a muting so far has always proved to be temporary.

He expects the propaganda machine to counter US political moves on a day-to-day basis. In addition, he intends to use it to produce a broad, permanent body of literature that, through its scholarship, eloquence, and sheer volume, will influence current and future generations of Latin Americans. Castro probably expects this growing body of literature to cause problems for the United States long after he himself is out of the picture.

Castro’s propaganda mills have sometimes made mistakes. Radio Havana’s reporting on Peru’s Maoist Sendero Luminoso guerrilla group, for example, has angered the Peruvian Government, and Cuban interpretations of Belize’s history have caused local criticism of Havana’s anti-US and antireligious bias. Despite these occasional lapses, however, the Cuban propaganda machine, enjoying close association with its Soviet counterpart, ample funding, and competent personnel, will remain an important negative factor working against US interests worldwide.

Contents

Historical Perspective: In the Sierra Maestra

Instinct for Publicity

Fidel Castro’s instinct for the value of international propaganda served him spectacularly as early as February 1957, two months after his infiltration of eastern Cuba by sea. His group of 82 insurgents had been reduced through combat and desertions to a hardcore of only 18, and government control of the media left most Cubans with the impression that the insurgency had failed and that Castro was dead. To overcome the censorship barrier and embarrass the Batista administration, Castro sent a messenger to Havana to invite a foreign journalist to meet with him in the Sierra Maestra mountains of eastern Cuba. The journalist picked for the task was Herbert Matthews of The New York Times.

In three articles resulting from his brief encounter with Castro, Matthews gave an almost heroic impression of the Cuban revolutionary, describing him as “the flaming symbol of the opposition to the regime,” and boldly predicted that “from the looks of things, General Batista cannot possibly hope to suppress the Castro revolt”—a judgment made at a time when the insurgent band consisted only of 18 poorly armed, half-starved men on the run. A political bombshell, the Times articles, with their photographic evidence of the historic meeting, gave the lie to Batista’s insistence that Castro was dead, overstated the strength of the insurgent band (thanks to Castro’s deliberate efforts to deceive Matthews), and gave the insurgents vital international exposure.

Castro’s comrade-in-arms, Che Guevara, recalled two years later: “At that time, the presence of a foreign journalist, preferably an American, was more important to us than a military victory.” Within a month of the Matthews interview, the band of 18 had grown to about 80. For his support, Matthews was later decorated by Castro. The intermediaries who had arranged the Matthews trip later set up a similar propaganda exercise with the Columbia Broadcasting System. The resulting television documentary, which included a dramatic interview with Castro atop the highest mountain peak in Cuba, further enhanced the rebels’ romantic image.

Radio Rebelde

The second phase of Castro’s propaganda war against Batista opened a year later on Cuba’s independence day when a rebel radio located at Che Guevara’s headquarters in the Sierra Maestra began nightly broadcasts on shortwave. The use of shortwave, which meant it could not be heard in eastern Cuba itself, suggests it was intended as much for listeners abroad as for those on the island. Castro’s first speech on Radio Rebelde suggests the same; he opened by appealing “to public opinion in Cuba and to the free peoples of Latin America,” and criticized democratic governments, leaders, and parties of the region for their tolerance of the Batista dictatorship.

A popular Venezuelan station began taping the rebel broadcasts and replaying them on mediumwave—clearly audible in eastern Cuba at night—which was, according to the insurgent radio’s engineer, a source of great satisfaction in the rebel camp. Another important Venezuelan broadcaster later did the same on both mediumwave and shortwave and eventually stations in Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, and even Argentina were involved in the retransmissions. By late 1958 Radio Rebelde’s nightly broadcasts could be heard throughout the Caribbean Basin and were clearly audible in Washington.

Thus, Radio Masetti was preceded into the Sierra Maestra by reporter Enrique Meneses, whose reporting on this trip appeared in articles in Paris Match. The French magazine’s greatest international competitor, Look magazine, had already published an interview with Castro in which Fidel—with an eye for his US audience—pledged to hold “a truly honest election” and disclaimed any intention of nationalizing foreign investments.

*1 This paper—based largely on open sources—is an in-depth examination of Castro’s propaganda apparatus, but it is not all inclusive. A number of the apparatus’s lesser elements have been omitted for sake of brevity, and no mention has been made of Havana’s extensive use of foreign aid to enhance the Castro regime’s image.

The major branches of the propaganda mill, however, are discussed in sufficient detail to give the reader an adequate appreciation of the size and sophistication of one of Havana’s most important foreign policy tools.

During this same period in early 1958, Castro hosted a Uruguayan journalist and another New York Times reporter. Foreign journalists were visiting with such frequency that a sign reading “Press Club,” in English and Spanish, was placed on the rude hut where the foreign visitors were received at insurgent headquarters, and Che Guevara jokingly referred to it as “the most exclusive press club in the world.”

Headline Grabbers

In addition to entertaining international journalists during early 1958, the insurgents carried out special paramilitary operations designed both to attract the press and to heap scorn on Batista’s security forces. The insurgents’ urban apparatus, for example, kidnapped world-famous Argentine race car driver Juan Manuel Fangio from a Havana hotel in broad daylight. Fangio—in Cuba for the Gran Premio contest—was released unharmed after the race had started, but gained points for his captors by commenting favorably on the treatment he had received.

A second kidnaping, carried out in late June 1958, involved a busload of about 30 US sailors and marines, who were held until mid-July. The aims were to pressure Batista to halt indiscriminate air bombings of villages in guerrilla territory, to prod the United States into making demands on Batista to rescue its personnel that he could not fulfill and thus to discredit him, and to alert the US public to the savagery with which the Batista forces were pursuing the civil war.

Through his broadcasts, his careful cultivation of foreign journalists, and his propaganda-oriented paramilitary operations, Castro succeeded in internationalizing the conflict. Besides arousing broad international sympathy, his efforts yielded tangible benefits.

His propaganda campaign almost certainly played an important part in the US decision in March 1958 to suspend arms shipments to Cuba. It also elicited important support in arms and money from abroad.

The Structure for Media Management

Castro’s Personal Control

Once in power, Castro began organizing what is today an international media empire unmatched in Latin America. As in other Communist countries, this empire is tightly controlled by the Cuban Communist Party’s Political Bureau, the regime’s highest policymaking body.

This network consists of such organizations as radio stations, a news agency with offices around the globe, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, front groups, “friendship” institutes, professional associations, as well as ad hoc devices, including international meetings, sham tribunals, cultural displays, speaking tours, and literary contests—all of which are dedicated to promoting the Cuban line and denigrating the United States. Some operate overtly as acknowledged organs of the Cuban Government while others are fronts ostensibly free of Cuban influence. The efforts of this vast party-controlled apparatus are carefully synchronized with and supplemented by the personal efforts of Castro and other top Cuban officials, who use their prerogatives of office and their considerable powers of persuasion to sway foreign figures of influence and exploit the non-Cuban.

Topping this media monolith is Castro himself. His concern for propaganda nuances is so great that he sometimes visits editorial offices of the party’s daily newspaper, Granma, late at night to review the next day’s edition or direct the exact placement of articles.

Cuba’s international news agency, Prensa Latina, is used to make statements that Castro wants disseminated abroad as a response to quick-breaking events.

Over the years he has consistently demonstrated a keen personal interest in how news is presented, always trying to gain the maximum political benefit from it. Granma director Jorge Enrique Mendoza—who got his start in propaganda as an announcer on Castro’s clandestine Radio Rebelde—is authorized to contact Castro at any time of the day or night to resolve journalistic problems.

Castro’s chief political officer, Antonio Perez-Herrero, a Political Bureau alternate member who functions as party secretary for ideology, oversees day-to-day operations of the media empire, ensuring that it accurately reflects Castro’s thinking. A guerrilla veteran, he rose quickly in Raul Castro’s Armed Forces Ministry after the revolution to become a vice minister and chief political officer for the entire military establishment.

The Revolutionary Orientation Department.

Perez Herrero exerts control over the media empire through the Revolutionary Orientation Department, an office of the party’s Central Committee charged with establishing ideological guidelines and ensuring that they are followed. The department’s chief, Orlando Fundora Lopez, has served in this position since September 1967 and is directly subordinate to Perez Herrero. According to press reports, it is not unusual for either or both to accompany Castro on trips abroad to ensure that his tight control of the media is not loosened by distance.

Fundora’s department includes Granma, which, in addition to its daily schedule for domestic consumption, publishes three weekly editions—in Spanish, English, and French—for distribution abroad. The department’s Radio, TV, and Documentary Film Section controls domestic broadcasting as well as Radio Havana shortwave and La Voz de Cuba mediumwave for external audiences. Its Press Section supervises the international news agency, Prensa Latina, and its domestic counterpart, Agencia Informativa Nacional. It also has history, publications, and publicity sections as well as several others that have not yet been identified.

The Components of the Apparatus

Prensa Latina. Perhaps the most effective—and, from the US viewpoint, most dangerous—Cuban propaganda weapon is Prensa Latina, which not only disseminates a daily stream of propaganda hostile to the United States, but also serves as a cover for intelligence collection and operations; on occasion it fills a diplomatic function by using branch offices as de facto outposts.

According to the authors of a Cuban history of the agency, the idea for Prensa Latina was born at the time of Operation Truth in mid-January 1959, when Castro, complaining of a conspiracy against him and his revolution by the international news agencies, gathered more than 500 foreign journalists and news photographers, mostly from Latin America, in Havana to try to overcome the bad press that resulted from a wave of executions immediately following his victory over Batista. The high point of Operation Truth occurred on 22 January when Castro met with the assembled army of journalists.

In condemning the Western wire services, he lamented that “we don’t have (our own) international wire services. You Latin American journalists have no other choice but to accept what the (US and European) wire services tell you. The Latin American press ought to have the means that would permit it to know the truth and not be victim to the lie.” He urged the journalists to become involved: “Do you journalists want to help the oppressed? Well, you have a formidable weapon in your hand: continental public opinion. Use it and you will see how you can help to liberate people and save many lives.”

On hand for Castro’s spectacular press conference were Carlos Maria Gutierrez and Jorge Ricardo Masetti, two pro-Castro journalists whose radical bona fides had been established during their visit to Che Guevara’s “press club” in the Sierra Maestra in 1958. Responding to a personal invitation from Che, they had returned to Cuba from Buenos Aires in early January 1959 and had helped Castro prepare for Operation Truth. Following Castro’s plea, they prepared the groundwork for what six months later was to become Prensa Latina

In April 1959, Mexican industrialist Guillermo Castro Ulloa arrived in Havana to conclude the preparations for the agency, later becoming its first president. On 9 June, it was formally inaugurated, and on 16 June—with Masetti as its director general—Prensa Latina began its first transmissions to subscribers abroad.

By the end of the year, Prensa Latina had, in addition to its service in Spanish for Latin America, a transmission in English for Egypt’s Middle East News Agency and Yugoslavia’s Tanyug news agency. Its Spanish transmissions were also directed to Czechoslovakia for CTK and to Poland for PAP. A year after its creation, Prensa Latina had branch offices in Washington, New York, London, Paris, Geneva, and Prague, as well as in all countries of Latin America except Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. By the end of 1972, it boasted two national and 12 international radio circuits and an average daily transmission total of 2,500 news dispatches. In 1975, it began a Quechua Indian language news service for Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

Today, Prensa Latina transmits in four languages—Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French—on shortwave to all parts of the world (its news in Spanish is on the air 18 hours a day) and provides additional transmissions in undetermined languages on satellite facilities. It has 36 branch offices in major cities of the world from Tokyo and Luanda to Moscow and Buenos Aires. It boasts a special services department that offers a variety of journalistic support materials, including: photographic packages of events or personalities; compilations of basic data for background presentations; recorded interviews with leading political, cultural, and sports figures; political or economic commentaries on a single country or an entire region by experienced observers; and feature articles on virtually any subject that a newspaper or magazine would be interested in publishing. These made-to-order services can be provided in Spanish, French, or English.

Prensa Latina also publishes its own magazines and news periodicals. Its monthly 64-page Prisma Latinoamericano, with a format designed to compete with Time, has a Spanish edition sold in Spain and nine countries of Latin America, and a Portuguese edition for Portugal, Brazil, and five African countries. Prisma’s news items and illustrations invariably have an anti-US slant intended to condition its readers to view the United States as the source of all the world’s ills. Its half- and full-page advertisements for products of major Spanish and Portuguese manufacturers lend it respectability. Begun in May 1975 (Portuguese edition in 1981), Prisma is staffed by some of Prensa Latina’s most professional and effective writers. An English-language version of Prisma first appeared in September 1982. Printed in Prague through agreement with CTK, it is avowedly aiming for distribution in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, South Yemen, Tanzania, Nigeria, Libya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

A companion to Prisma is Cuba Internacional, a large-format, 72-page monthly in Spanish that relies on illustrations and feature articles, many of which are devoted to presenting an optimistic picture of life in Cuba or lauding the exploits of Cuban aid missions abroad and Cuban sports teams in international competition. Like Prisma, it is consistently anti-United States. The April 1983 issue, for example, carried a six-page article entitled “Strategy of Terror,” which purports to be the confession of an Argentine intelligence officer who allegedly took part in a US-sponsored plot to subvert Nicaragua. Cuba Internacional is distributed in Spain, Portugal, Angola, and nine countries of Latin America. It also has a Russian-language edition for the USSR.

In addition, Prensa Latina publishes PEL, or Panorama Economico Latinoamericano, a 16-page, fortnightly publication in Spanish that provides articles on “the principal international economic problems… with special attention to themes related to Asia, Africa, and Latin America.” The Prensa Latina office in Prague, Czechoslovakia, publishes Latin American Roundup (Sintesis Latinoamericana), a twice-weekly wrap-up of events in Latin America in both English and Spanish editions. Also in English and Spanish editions is Direct From Cuba, a fortnightly, 30-page Prensa Latina product that aims “to place at the reach of progressive publications all over the globe the most important, permanent, and current information from our network of correspondents in Cuba, Latin America, and other parts of the world.”

Prensa Latina and the Soviet Novosti news agency office in Havana jointly publish Integracion Economica Socialista, a monthly, 12-page collection of articles on the economic activities of the countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CEMA); it is basically a public relations vehicle for CEMA.

Prensa Latina facilities are not used exclusively for journalistic purposes. When Havana closed its embassy in Caracas in 1980 and withdrew its diplomatic personnel from Venezuela, for example, the Prensa Latina office there assumed diplomatic functions.

International Broadcasting. Before Castro came to power, Cuba had no international shortwave broadcasting service. Today the Castro regime has Radio Havana, an official government entity that, according to regular observations, broadcasts over 400 hours per week on shortwave in eight languages to the countries of Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Americas. From a single low-powered transmitter inaugurated in 1961, Radio Havana has grown into one of the leaders of the Third World in the field of international broadcasting. It now has at least eight transmitters in Cuba ranging up to 100 kilowatts in power, and also uses two transmitters in the USSR. (The use of Radio Moscow’s transmitters to beam Cuban broadcasts to Europe, the Mediterranean, and Africa complements Soviet use of two Cuban shortwave transmitters for Radio Moscow transmissions to Latin America.) No other government in Latin America has a comparable international broadcasting service. (See figure 2 at back of book.)

Radio Havana’s service on shortwave is supplemented by La Voz de Cuba, on mediumwave, which broadcasts approximately 38 hours per week for Spanish-speaking listeners in the United States and in the countries bordering the Caribbean. A parallel service in English—The Voice of Cuba—and retransmissions of Radio Moscow’s English service for North America were broadcast by some of Cuba’s strongest mediumwave transmitters, including at least one of 150 kilowatts, until late 1981 when both were taken off the air; their removal, in our judgment, was intended to deny Washington the opportunity to use retaliation as grounds for justifying the initiation of US broadcasts to Cuba on mediumwave over the proposed Radio Marti.

The Castro regime has a long history of involvement in subversive broadcasting efforts. Castro’s victory over Batista was less than a month old before Cuban commercial broadcasting stations began beaming programs abroad calling openly for revolution in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. As Castro’s sponsorship of guerrilla warfare in other countries grew in 1959 to 1963, clandestine insurgent radio stations proliferated. Their links to Cuba were virtually impossible to prove, but circumstantial evidence frequently indicated Cuban involvement. For example, one short-lived clandestine shortwave station—Radio Rebelde-de Nicaragua—carried little else but slanted news provided by Prensa Latina. On other occasions, Cuban complicity was obvious. In one such incident, for example, one of Radio Havana’s shortwave transmitters was temporarily taken out of service, and on its frequency there appeared a “clandestine” radio that displayed technical characteristics we believe were unique to the Radio Havana transmitter. The station’s pretense—that it was broadcasting from the Dominican Republic—was belied by its inability to provide timely news of fast-breaking events taking place there. When the radio ceased its transmissions, Radio Havana resumed its broadcasts on the same frequency.

More recently, Cuba has been linked to broadcasters in Costa Rica and, until recently, Grenada, as well as to clandestine radios associated with Salvadoran insurgents. Radio Noticias del Continente, a shortwave radio that broadcast openly from San Jose until closed by the Costa Rican Government in early 1981, regularly attacked the Governments of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Guatemala, and El Salvador—at the time, all standard targets of Cuban propaganda.

On the air for over a year, Radio Noticias was eventually found to be a propaganda outlet of the Montoneros, an Argentine terrorist group that [CENSORED] had much of its general staff headquartered in Cuba. Radio Noticias’ closure evoked a bitter attack from Radio Havana, which suggests that the Castro regime had placed a high value on its operation.

[CENSORED] the Cuban association with Radio Free Grenada was open. Cuban communications technicians arrived in Grenada in May 1979, only two months after Maurice Bishop seized power, and, according to press reports, in June 1980 the two countries arranged for Cuban assistance in the repair and upgrading of Radio Free Grenada. Cuba provided a 75-kilowatt mediumwave transmitter—more powerful by 50 percent than the strongest commercial mediumwave broadcasting station in the United States—and Cuban technicians installed it along with a 400-foot transmitting tower and ancillary equipment. Havana provided scholarships for training Grenadian students who were to maintain and operate the new equipment, which was inaugurated on 13 March 1982, the third anniversary of Bishop’s takeover.

Presumably to support Radio Free Grenada’s newscasts, Havana inaugurated Prensa Latina press transmissions in English to the eastern Caribbean. According to a press release from the Cuban Embassy in St. Georges, the Cuban Radio-Television Institute also provided Radio Free Grenada with programming in the fields of culture, sports, the sciences, and music. Grenadian information Ministry representatives succeeded in getting journalists in other Caribbean countries to publish articles supplied by Radio Free Grenada—a clear indication, in our judgment, that the station’s broadcasts were expected to have an impact abroad. The extent of Cuban support for Radio Free Grenada suggested a high degree of confidence in Havana that the station would function as a Cuban propaganda surrogate in the eastern Caribbean.

Bouterse’s revolution in Suriname also attracted Havana’s attention. [CENSORED] two members of the Cuban Ambassador’s staff in Paramaribo were serving as advisers. [CENSORED] a Cuban adviser was serving in the National Information Service itself.

Havana apparently had hoped to make its influence in Suriname permanent. Cuba funded a small team of Surinamers sent to the island last year to study journalism. We believe the students received instruction on ways to politicize the media. Following the events in Grenada in October, however, Bouterse recalled all Surinamers studying in Cuba and expelled all Cubans—except for a small diplomatic team—from Suriname. Havana subsequently withdrew all its personnel, and this presumably terminated Cuba’s direct role in Suriname’s media. Nevertheless, the Suriname experience fits the pattern of Cuban behavior in working quickly to try to exploit propaganda resources in other countries whenever political conditions permit.

Cuba’s interest in clandestine broadcasting stations is currently evident in its collaboration with the Salvadoran insurgents. According to an analysis by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which regularly monitors Havana and the insurgent radios, “Havana regularly provides a forum for the rebels’ three clandestine radio stations by replaying the radios’ political commentaries, military communiques, and news bulletins.” Cuban foreknowledge of these radios’ operations over the past two years has been proved on three occasions: the Cuban media gave advance publicity for the guerrillas’ Radio Venceremos before it began broadcasting in January 1981, for Radio Farabundo Marti before it came on the air in January 1982, and for Radio Guazapa before it started broadcasts on 21 February 1983. Last February, Radio Havana admitted openly that Radio Venceremos maintains a representative in Havana.

In light of the high value the Castro regime has always placed on insurgent broadcasting and considering the material support it has provided the Salvadoran rebels for years, it seems safe to assume that Cuba’s guerrilla warfare training schools have been used to teach Salvadorans to operate and maintain clandestine radios and that Cuban party schools have provided instruction on the techniques of propaganda.

ICAP

The Cuban Institute for Friendship Among Peoples (ICAP) was established on 30 December 1960 in the midst of a major Cuban campaign to mobilize popular sentiment in Latin America and Europe against the anticipated counterrevolutionary invasion from the United States. The new organization, according to the law creating it, was founded “to stimulate and facilitate the visit to Cuba of the representatives of the popular and progressive sectors of all the countries of the world that show interest in learning first hand the economic and social changes and the works carried out by the Cuban revolution” and to assist the groups—such as the United States’ own Fair Play for Cuba Committee—that had been formed in other countries to publicly demonstrate support for the Castro regime.

One of ICAP’s first tasks was to organize foreigners in Cuba into associations based on country of origin, such as the Union of Peruvians in Cuba, the Cuban-Spanish Friendship Society, the Cuban-Venezuelan Institute of Revolutionary Solidarity, the Cuban-Brazilian Friendship Committee, and the Association of Guatemalans Residing in Cuba. This provided Cuban intelligence services with a registry of aliens who might prove useful in intelligence collection efforts and operations in their homelands, and served as a structure for mobilizing foreign nationals in demonstrations against the policies of their own governments. Every Latin American diplomatic mission in Havana knew it could face an ICAP-sponsored parade of its own nationals marching and shouting outside the embassy walls if frictions developed with Cuba’s revolutionary government.

Subsequently, ICAP, establishing contacts with intellectuals abroad, arranged for them to form local “friendship” associations responsive to directives from Havana. Colombian author Leon de Greif, for example, organized the Colombian-Cuban Friendship Association in Bogota and was its first president, while Culture Ministry official Robin Ravales “Dobru,” touted as the “national poet of Suriname,” heads the Suriname-Cuba Friendship Association in Paramaribo. There are now 113 such associations throughout the world, according to ICAP President Rene Rodriguez Cruz.

In a statement last year, he described them as being made up of writers, artists, journalists, civil rights workers, student and labor leaders, politicians of various ideological stripes, men and women in the religious life, and others. They “are those who are charged with refuting in their respective countries the distorted version that North American imperialism presents of our social work and our internationalist assistance to other peoples.” Rodriguez Cruz boasted that through these associations “we are related to the broadest social, political, cultural, and mass sectors in every part of the globe.”

ICAP’s goal, he said, is “to establish a mechanism of communications between the various social strata of a given country, a mechanism that is quick and flexible, without formality or protocol.” ICAP, then, is highly opportunistic, eagerly welcoming propaganda support from all sources, even those that might be ideologically incompatible. In his interview, Rodriguez Cruz admitted openly that ICAP-sponsored friendship associations carry out their propaganda activities according to prearranged work plans coordinated with Havana and depend on Havana for material support. He stressed the “fluid and systematic interchange” that Cuban officials had with the leadership of these associations.

He also confirmed Havana’s links with—and catalytic role in—the West European peace movement by saying that: “we have directed the (friendship) associations abroad to . . . establish broad links with the whole movement that is promoting actions in defense of peace. And we can say, without fear of error, that many of them are carrying out precisely those instructions.” He bragged that “when a great peace movement began in West Germany, the first banner that waved, carried by the demonstrators, had the initials of ICAP printed on it.” Cuba thus acknowledges that in effect the 113 friendship associations abroad are (b)(3) directed from Havana and act on its instructions.

In addition to aligning themselves with broadly based political organizations such as the peace and antinuclear-weapons movements, the friendship associations distribute Cuban-supplied propaganda, publish their own pro-Cuban literature, serve as unofficial spokesmen for the government in Havana, defend Cuban policy in the local press, and carry out marches and other demonstrations to focus local attention on issues that Havana wants to exploit. Even when these activities involve very few people and have no measurable impact locally, they are duly reported throughout the hemisphere by Radio Havana, Prensa Latina, and Cuban newspapers and magazines, and thus promote an exaggerated impression of substantial popular sentiment in favor of Cuban policy and against US interests.

Bringing foreign groups to Cuba for propaganda exploitation is another part of ICAP’s job. The Nordic Brigade made up mostly of young Scandinavians, the Venceremos Brigade from the United States, the Antonio Maceo Brigade of young Cuban exiles—most of whom live in the United States—and the Jose Marti Brigade of West Europeans all make regular pilgrimages to Cuba to engage in “constructive work”—usually symbolic cane cutting or manual labor in the field of construction—and be rewarded with a guided tour of the island. The groups from the United States are usually portrayed by the Cuban media as typical of the idealistic youth who have rejected the anti-Castro political judgments of Washington; in reality, according to accounts by some of these young visitors, Cuban authorities are wary of the drug problem these people sometimes bring with them to Cuba and considerable effort is made to isolate the members of the brigades to keep them from “contaminating” the Cuban population.

The Casa de las Americas

Judged from their own writings and statements, Latin America’s intellectuals—including many who had been persecuted by dictatorial regimes in their own countries—took vicarious satisfaction from Batista’s downfall and constituted a continentwide supply of literary and artistic talent waiting to be tapped on the revolution’s behalf. To help harness the considerable propaganda potential of this influential segment of Latin American society, Castro founded the Casa de las Americas in April 1959, less than four months after he assumed power.

The Casa quickly established itself as an influential literary institution. For its first 12 years, it sponsored annual Latin American theater festivals and in 1965 began publishing a theatrical journal called Conjunto. In September 1959 it organized the “Festival Comprension Cuba” for Latin American writers and used the occasion to publish five books. That same month, it established its own Jose Antonio Echeverria Library, which specializes in Latin American studies, and held a series of conferences on the “American Policy of the Revolution” attended by prominent cultural and political figures.

In meetings where Cuba does not control the invitations, such as those of international organizations, Havana adapts by abusing its position as host to neutralize potentially uncooperative delegations. One troublesome delegation to the Nonaligned Movement Summit in 1979, for example, was assigned housing so remote from the Palace as to hamper seriously its liaison with other delegations according to diplomats in Havana at that time.

Because to the Cubans these meetings have political rationale, cost apparently is a secondary consideration. In 1979, for example, Cuba sent one of its passenger-cargo ships, the XX Aniversario, to St. Vincent, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, Montserrat, Grenada, and Guyana to bring 211 artists, performers, and intellectuals to Cuba for the Third Caribbean Festival of the Creative Arts (CARIFESTA 79), according to press reports. The Cuban national airline also made charter flights to Venezuela, The Bahamas, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, and Mexico on similar missions. In all, 29 countries and island political entities, by Havana’s count, participated in CARIFESTA 79, and over a quarter of a million people attended its 724 performances in Havana alone. The Cuban press claims it had over 500 journalists, photographers, and technicians covering the festivities.

Until the Cubans sponsored the event, CARIFESTA had been an apolitical cultural affair, sponsored every three years by various Caribbean governments. Havana, however, used it to organize a “Symposium on Caribbean Cultural Identity” and issue a declaration denouncing various facets of imperialism. Although some 2,100 artists, performers, and intellectuals took part in CARIFESTA 79, only 21—four Cubans and 17 visitors—actively participated in the symposium, and all appear to have been carefully picked to ensure the anti-US bias of the declaration.

Another meeting to enlist the support of intellectuals on behalf of Cuban policy was the “Meeting of Intellectuals for the Sovereignty of the Peoples of ‘Our America,’” held in Havana from 4 through 7 September 1981 under the sponsorship of the Casa de las Americas. According to Havana’s own description of the event, some 300 delegates from Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Europe “denounced the deforming cultural penetration—of which the great American fatherland is a victim—by the imperialist government of the United States, which is the creator, manipulator, and financier of various sophisticated means of interference that reduce and aim to destroy the sovereignty of the majority of our countries.”

Havana used the meeting to organize the “Standing Committee of Intellectuals for the Sovereignty of the Peoples of ‘Our America,’” a front group that, in our opinion, was founded to perpetuate the impression that the region’s leading thinkers are solidly united against the United States. The group is chaired by the president of Cuba’s Casa de las Americas and meets periodically to issue denunciations of US policy.

Jawboning

Officials of the Castro regime make effective use of the personal attention they grant to visiting individuals and small, specialized groups of people—industrialists, legislators, media luminaries, religious leaders, academicians, government or party officials—whose rank or position makes them useful to Cuban interests. This special attention, in our estimation, is often designed to complement propaganda campaigns and generate favorable press coverage.

Castro, for example, has on many occasions met with US and other foreign personages to explain Cuban positions and policies in a way that he expects will influence his visitors’ views. He is a consummate actor who, especially when dealing with visitors on an individual basis, can put on a remarkably convincing display of candor and idealism that rarely fails to make a deep impression on his guests. With favored visitors who may be particularly useful to him, he engages in special activities such as hunting or spearfishing intended to create a sense of familiarity that he hopes will pay dividends. On several occasions, Castro has done special favors—releasing specific prisoners from Cuban jails, for example—to establish good will with influential people.

Such visits with Castro and other high-ranking Cuban officials frequently yield good press coverage. Several of the 17 Costa Rican legislators who spent a week in Cuba in mid-January this year—a visit highlighted by an interview with Castro—made comments favorable to Cuba upon their return home, and thereby gave Radio Havana ammunition for its broadcasts promoting the Cuban position on Central America and on the resumption of normal relations between Havana and San Jose. The visit and the favorable media attention it precipitated put the Monge administration on the defensive and cast Castro in the role of a responsible chief of state reluctant to offend his neighbors. A Spanish news agency, for example, reported that, in discussing frictions between Costa Rica and Nicaragua with the legislators, Castro “asked to be excused from interceding with the Sandinista government” on Costa Rica’s behalf because “he cannot interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries.”

The Castro regime has been using this intimate type of person-to-person propaganda freely in its efforts to generate pressure on Washington regarding Central America. At the same time that a Cuban campaign for negotiations on El Salvador was getting under way, Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, a member of the party’s ruling Political Bureau and Castro’s chief foreign policy adviser, headed a team of foreign policy officials who played host to a group of US academicians and journalists in April 1982 to create an impression that Cuba was willing to contribute to and abide by a negotiated political solution in Central America. Havana had, in our opinion, no intention of abandoning the insurgents in El Salvador, but recognized the need to mobilize world opinion and channel it in such a way to prevent a perceived drift of the United States toward intervention not only in El Salvador but in Nicaragua and, perhaps, Cuba as well. Subsequently, articles by the visiting journalists appeared in a number of US newspapers reflecting the Cubans’ propaganda line. One such article, by two respected academicians, argued strongly for accepting a Cuban call for a Havana-Washington dialogue.

More recently, Havana has been trying to improve formal relations with Colombia. Castro invited former President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, head of Colombia’s Liberal Party, to Cuba and spent several days vacationing with him in mid-January. In giving the ex-President his personal attention, judging from subsequent Colombian press accounts, Castro assured himself of access to influential figures in Colombian politics.

Castro’s desire to maintain excellent relations with the government of Socialist Prime Minister Olof Palme in Sweden, according to diplomats in Havana, is one of the reasons why the Cuban President has developed such a warm personal relationship with the Swedish Ambassador in Havana, Anders Sandstrom. Not long after they first met in 1980, Castro’s yacht came upon Sandstrom as he was scuba diving in waters south of Cuba and the Swedish envoy was invited aboard. Castro and Sandstrom went diving together and afterwards spent 17 hours together discussing a variety of subjects. They subsequently went scuba diving and spearfishing on several occasions; Sandstrom is now the envy of the Havana diplomatic community as one of the few ambassadors who has direct access to Castro.

Miscellaneous Propaganda Organs

The Castro regime has a variety of other propaganda agencies and vehicles. One is the Executive Secretariat of the African, Asian, and Latin American Peoples Solidarity Organization (AALAPSO), founded at the Tricontinental Conference in early 1966. Although it purports to be an independent international organization, its staffing and activities over the years leave no doubt that the Secretariat is actually an agency of the Cuban Government used as an outlet for propaganda aimed at strengthening Cuba’s links to revolutionary movements abroad and perpetuating the Che Guevara guerrilla cult.

Every other month, AALAPSO publishes for worldwide distribution a book-length magazine—with editions in English, French, and Spanish—containing articles by representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the South-West Africa People’s Organization, the African National Congress, the Frente Polisario, and other revolutionary organizations and Communist parties. The AALAPSO is headquartered in Havana and is headed by Cuban Communist Party Central Committee member Melba Hernandez, a heroine of the Cuban revolution. In addition to the magazine, the AALAPSO sponsors “solidarity” meetings in Cuban factories and ministries, issues statements to the press, sends representatives to international meetings of an anti-US nature, and entertains foreign radicals when they visit Havana. It also prints and distributes colorful posters that glorify armed struggle and attack the United States.

A similar propaganda agency is the Continental Organization of Latin American Students (OCLAE). OCLAE operates out of Havana and publishes a monthly magazine with articles supporting revolution and discrediting the United States. Much of OCLAE’s propaganda focuses on promoting independence for Puerto Rico. Like AALAPSO, OCLAE had its origin in the Cuban effort in the mid-1960s to organize international support for the Guevara operation in Bolivia. With the death of Guevara and the failure of his expedition in 1967, however, both agencies lost their international character and became little more than Cuban propaganda mills, which is their current status.

On 31 March 1959, within three months of assuming power, Castro established the Imprenta Nacional de Cuba, a publishing house created to spearhead the new government’s propaganda efforts in the field of literature. The organization, according to the Cuban media, has since grown into a major industry consisting of a number of large publishing houses that have turned out some 17,000 titles and over 500 million copies of various kinds of books and pamphlets over the past 24 years.

The giants of the industry are the Juan Marinello Polygraphic Combine in Guantanamo, which opened with equipment from East Germany in 1977, and a similar plant in Palma Soriano, which began operations in early 1983. The former has a capacity to produce 20 million books per year while the latter has a capacity for 30 million. These expanded capabilities now so exceed Cuban needs that Havana is soliciting printing business from abroad. While much of the output of these plants consists of textbooks, technical manuals, and other materials for domestic consumption, a significant amount is propaganda, much of it intended for consumption abroad; by Havana’s own claim, Cuban books are now distributed in more than 60 countries. Some are the traditional works by Marx, Lenin, and other ideologues, and some are by such typically anti-US Latin American writers as Argentina’s Gregorio Selser, Uruguay’s Eduardo Galeano, and Guatemala’s Guillermo Toriello and Manuel Galich.

Cuban books are distributed through direct sales from the Cuban Book Institute in Havana; cultural agreements with other governments, universities, or cultural institutions; printing arrangements with foreign publishers; and in various other ways. In late 1982 and early 1983, for example, the ICAP arranged for its Venezuelan-Cuban Friendship Institute to hold Cuban book exhibitions in Caracas, Maracaibo, and San Cristobal. Some 600 titles were available and, according to the Cuban press, the exhibits were attended by well over 120,000 visitors.

The Castro regime also uses other organizations and publications to carry its propaganda message. Some are ostensibly independent but, judging from their activities and political bias, are under Havana’s strong influence if not outright covert control. The Latin America Federation of Journalists (FELAP), for example, was formed as a result of vigorous Cuban lobbying with leftist journalists of the region to counter the influence of the independent Interamerican Press Association. FELAP, which has close links to such Soviet front groups as the Prague-based International Organization of Journalists and the World Peace Council, is used by Havana to focus international attention on abuses of freedom of the press by rightist governments of the hemisphere as well as to attack the United States.

Another front group is the Managua-based Anti-Imperialist Tribunal of Our America (TANA). Founded on 23 September 1981 as the Anti-Imperialist Tribunal of Central America and the Caribbean (TACC), the organization did not have overt links to Cuba until mid-1982 when a local chapter was established in Havana. Havana’s influence, however, is clear. TANA’s president is Guatemalan Guillermo Toriello, who has had close ties to the Castro regime for more than two decades, and its executive secretary is Venezuelan Freddy Balzan, who for years worked in Cuba’s Prensa Latina office in Caracas. TANA publishes the monthly magazine Soberania devoted to “denouncing imperialism and its crimes” and “identifying the agents of the CIA” in the region. The magazine’s editorial board includes Philip Agee, a US citizen noted for his efforts to expose CIA employees, as well as several Cubans and a claque of leftist writers and cultural figures.

Havana has close ties to—and reportedly helps to finance—the Mexico City-based monthly Cuadernos del Tercer Mundo, a stridently anti-US magazine that never deviates from the Cuban policy line. Its English-language edition was short lived, but it continues to publish in Spanish (printed in Mexico City and Lima) and Portuguese (printed in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro) with distribution in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Havana has long had close contact with leftist Mexican journalist Mario Menendez Rodriguez and [CENSORED] supports Menendez’s magazine Por Esto. Although the magazine claims to be an independent weekly, its links to Havana are readily apparent from its generous Cuban advertising and its list of Cuban-associated staff personnel and “collaborators.”

We believe that Havana views Costa Rica as another important propaganda center. Besides supporting the Montoneros radio station eventually closed down by the government, Havana apparently played a key role in the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), a leftist organization based in San Jose.

Conclusions

Fidel Castro’s skillful use of the few propaganda assets available to him during his guerrilla war against Batista, in our opinion, contributed in a major way to his victory and was an augury of the methods he would use so successfully after coming to power.

[CENSORED] It is clear from the statements of Antonio Perez Herrero and other top spokesmen for the Castro regime that a major effort will continue to be made to expand the propaganda apparatus in certain key areas. Although economic reality will hamper this effort, important investments are likely to be made to:

• Improve the availability of Cuban books and magazines abroad.
• Open new Prensa Latina bureaus and increase the number of subscribers to Prensa Latina services.
• Help allies develop their own propaganda outlets for both domestic and international audiences.
• Train foreign journalists so as to utilize their skills and opportunities on behalf of Cuba in non-Marxist countries.
• Establish and promote ostensibly independent news gathering and professional organizations of leftists to provide competition for—and reduce the influence of—Western news agencies, radio stations, and journalists.

Havana probably has placed high priority, for example, on helping Nicaragua organize an international shortwave broadcasting service and on promoting such groups as Salpress—the news agency of the Salvadoran insurgents—and similar organizations formed to publicize the activities of insurgents and serve as propaganda vehicles for leftist exiles. Salpress, according to Havana Radio, was formed in Mexico City in December 1980, just before the start of the January 1981 insurgent offensive, and now boasts branch offices in six other countries, five correspondents serving with guerrilla groups in El Salvador, and membership in the Nonaligned Movement’s news agency organization. It presumably has already received considerable Cuban assistance and guidance.

In addition, we expect Cuba will try to use its membership in the Latin American Features News Agency (ALASEI)—formed just this year—to ensure that the agency’s output has a radical left, anti-US slant. ALASEI, which is based in Mexico City, is a joint effort by 12 countries of the region to form a news agency, which many of them feel will focus greater attention on the area than have US and European agencies. According to Prensa Latina’s ranking commentator, ALASEI “will enable the region to confront with its own mechanisms the systematic deformation and disinformation of Latin American reality that exists today,” a clear signal that Havana expects ALASEI to counter, if not displace, UPI, AP, AFP, Reuter, and other Western agencies in Latin America.

Some of Havana’s future ventures in propaganda are certain to be joint efforts with other Communist countries, which will ease some of the economic burden on Havana. This is in keeping with a resolution approved at the last Party congress stating that “In view of the breadth and complexity of the ideological struggle, it is ever more important to coordinate our information activities with those of the Communist parties of the other sister socialist republics.” The Cubans will look to the International Organization of Journalists and other Soviet front groups for support and may succeed in getting some Latin American governments to contribute to agencies and publications that have an anti-US bias.

Castro may have the propaganda apparatus temper its invective toward the United States from time to time for tactical reasons—this sometimes happens while he assesses the intentions toward Cuba of incoming administrations in Washington—but such a muting has always proved to be temporary. He invariably (b)(3) finds an excuse to revert to normal animosity. Castro depends on Prensa Latina, Radio Havana, ICAP, and the various newspapers and news magazines of his propaganda machine to counter US political moves on a day-to-day basis. It is clear, however, that he is also intent on using other elements of the machine—the Casa de las Americas and his other publishing houses, for example—to create a broad, permanent body of literature that, through its scholarship, eloquence, and sheer volume, will influence current and future generations of Latin Americans and peoples of the Caribbean. The aim of this long-term propaganda effort is to establish a record of an irremediably flawed United States. Castro probably expects this growing body of literature to cause problems for the United States long after he himself is out of the political picture.

Castro’s propaganda empire, however, does make mistakes. Radio Havana’s slanted coverage of the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla group, for example, has created frictions between Cuba and Peru. Two slanted Cuban books published this year have provoked anti-Cuban reaction in some circles in Belize over Havana’s blatant attempt to propagandize the population and muster anti-US and antireligious sentiment there. One ostensibly independent foreign magazine that enjoys Cuban funding incurred Havana’s wrath when it carelessly published some material from a Salvadoran guerrilla leader that reflected poorly on Cuba’s revolutionary commitment. Influential visitors attending international meetings in Havana—for example, some chiefs of state at the Nonaligned Movement’s Summit in 1979—have been alienated by the Castro regime’s heavyhanded efforts to use them as window dressing for Cuba’s pro-Soviet foreign policy activities.

The huge investment Castro has made in his empire of radio stations, news agencies, publishing houses, and other publicity vehicles attests to the high regard he has for propaganda as a political weapon. We believe it also explains his great concern over the prospects for US broadcasts to Cuba. He understands clearly that propaganda is a two-edged sword. The Cuban propaganda machine, enjoying close association with its Soviet counterpart, ample funding, and competent personnel, will remain an important negative factor working against US interests throughout the world.

Methodology of Cuban Ideological Penetration

The following description of how Cuba carries out ideological penetration consists of six stages:

Budgeting and Execution: In the final stage, a budget is prepared and, after approval or modification by Fidel, funds are dispersed to the various offices charged with implementing the plan. The Political Bureau then reviews the plan and its accomplishments.

Decision and Initiation: Fidel or Raul Castro decides on a particular target country or region and calls for an ideological penetration plan.

High-Level Planning: Fidel, Raul, Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, and—depending on the target—either Manuel Piñeiro of the party’s America Department or Jesus Montane of the party’s General Department of Foreign Relations meet to ratify the decision, designate either Piñeiro or Montane as overall coordinator of the plan, and task the coordinator with collecting all information available on the target.

Intelligence Gathering: The plan coordinator then meets with:

(a) Interior Minister Ramiro Valdes, who gets an area analysis of the target from his chief of intelligence and a list of the target country’s nationals living in Cuba from his counterintelligence chief.

(b) Foreign Minister Isidoro Malmierca, who tasks the Cuban Embassy in the target for a country analysis. The embassy analysis focuses on the country’s intellectual community, classifying key people according to political leanings; provides a study of all cultural areas, especially music and theater; provides a separate study on the universities; lists the best actors, musicians, and other performers; and analyzes local cultural tastes to identify which Cuban cultural figures would be well received.

(c) Culture Minister Armando Hart, who provides a list of Cuban cultural figures who could play a role in the penetration plan.

(d) Orlando Fundora, chief of the party’s Revolutionary Orientation Department, who provides information obtained through Prensa Latina and other organizations and publications under his department’s control.

Collation and Approval: Upon receiving the contributions from these key individuals, the coordinator collates the reporting into a general ideological penetration plan which he submits to the Political Bureau for approval. A member of the Political Bureau is then named to supervise all subsequent activity; this frequently is Armando Hart because cultural activity plays such a major role.

Drafting the Specific Plan: The designated Political Bureau member and the coordinator then oversee the drafting of a specific penetration plan—a task that can take as much as six months—that includes specific names, dates, itineraries, and costs. Various party and government offices are directly involved:

(a) The Culture Ministry sends a representative to the target country to identify contacts there and find out what cultural events have been scheduled in which Cuban performers or intellectuals can take part. The Ministry also begins inviting intellectuals and performers from the target country to participate in various activities in Cuba.

(b) The party’s America Department pursues its own direct contacts with the target country’s intellectuals.

(c) The Foreign Ministry focuses on identifying political contacts in the target country that Havana can use to gain support for—or reduce opposition to—Cuban cultural initiatives. The Ministry also develops specific plans for offering economic assistance to the country.

(d) The Revolutionary Orientation Department begins preparing articles on the target country’s culture for publication in Cuban outlets and develops media contacts who can arrange for the placement of articles on Cuban performers and intellectuals who will be visiting the country.

The Revolutionary Orientation Department (DOR)

[CENSORED] all Cuban propaganda is directed and controlled by the DOR. The DOR is responsible for formulating annual “theme plans” for the Cuban media. Additional plans are made up on an ad hoc basis, presumably to meet changing conditions. In past years, “theme plans” have consistently included the following:

• Emphasis on the values of socialism, traditionally a first-priority theme.
• Denigration of US foreign policy. The amount of stress placed on this theme fluctuates depending on the state of Cuban-US relations.
• Glorification of the institution of “Poder Popular,” Cuba’s system of local, provincial, and national governmental administration.
• Stress on alleged religious freedom in Cuba.
• Praise for Soviet efforts to maintain world peace.
• Defense of Soviet policies at all levels.

When unforeseen international events occur for which no Cuban policy exists, the DOR awaits the official Soviet reaction in TASS and then follows TASS’s lead. Should Prensa Latina ever take a stance that is later contradicted by TASS, the Cuban news agency has standing instructions to reverse itself and fall in line with TASS.

The heads of news agencies of Communist countries meet in Moscow or another Communist capital at least once a year to discuss common policy and problems, and to be brought up to date on new communications equipment and techniques. Similar meetings are held by the various Communist Party ideology secretaries and other party functionaries to coordinate their policies.

Jawboning: Castro’s Personal Touch

Former President of Colombia Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, according to press reports, spent 10 days in Cuba in January 1983 on a trip arranged by Colombia’s Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. During his visit, Lopez Michelsen and his wife and son went on a two-day cruise around the island with President Castro followed by a tour of the interior that Castro himself had planned for them.

Subsequently, in an interview for a Bogota newspaper, Lopez Michelsen gave a favorable impression of Cuba, made light of Cuban links to Colombian guerrillas and drug traffickers, and indicated he was flattered by receiving treatment that normally was reserved for incumbent chiefs of state. Upon his return to Colombia, he met with President Belisario Betancur to discuss the trip.

Training Foreign Journalists

In 1976, according to press reports, the head of Cuba’s professional organization for newsmen, Ernesto Vera, announced the founding by the Cuban Journalists Union (UPEC) of a journalists’ “improvement school” that would accept newsmen from all of Latin America. By 1982 candidates from Africa were also being accepted, and in mid-1983 a group of 11 Angolans who had been attending a yearlong course graduated and returned home. Their course, according to a Luanda newspaper, “emphasized political training and journalistic techniques… The problems entailed in the realm of the ideological struggle between decadent capitalism and ascending socialism in this important field were also examined.”

The Cuban Communist Party‘s Nico Lopez National Cadre School also has a variety of courses including two entitled “Political Training for Journalists” and “Political Training for Propagandists.” The July 1981 graduating class, according to the Cuban press, included 69 foreign graduates from 17 countries of Africa and Latin America. Press reports also indicate that one of the measures Havana took to gain influence in Grenada and Suriname after the two countries’ respective “revolutions” was to bring teams of local journalists to Cuba for training. The courses were offered either at the UPEC school or the party’s Nico Lopez school.