Cultural Bosses of the Cuban Regime Discover the ‘Podcast’
His podcast will be “anti-fascist, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, Latin Americanist, Caribbean and Lezamian,” announces Abel Prieto.
By Yunior Garcia Aguilera (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – Casa de las Americas has decided to join Cuba’s podcast fever. On its social media profiles, the institution’s president, Abel Prieto, announced that they will begin publishing a biweekly program, with an “anti-fascist, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, Latin Americanist, Caribbean and Lezamian” character. What the former Minister of Culture did not explain is how they plan to fit all of that together without the stew exploding in the listeners’ stomachs.
For decades, the Cuban regime maintained a monopoly over information. The arrival of the internet—although late—began to crack its control over the narrative. Aware of their defeat in what they call the “communication battle,” strategists of the Communist Party launched an offensive: anonymous profiles and the so-called ciberclarias were not enough. It was necessary to manufacture revolutionary content creators, pro-Castr, influencers, hammer-and-sickle YouTubers, and tropical communist podcasters.
The hand-picked president himself took part with From the Presidency. With effort—credit where due—Miguel Diaz-Canel managed to read the teleprompter without looking like a primitive version of artificial intelligence, kept his cue cards out of the camera’s frame, and practiced phrases by biting a pencil to disguise his poor diction.
He is not a millennial dictator. He would never take a selfie at the UN, as El Salvador’s Bukele did. Diaz-Canel is an old-school bureaucrat, even if his wife Liz Cuesta has initiated him into the arts of Botox. On his podcast he promised a July “without blackouts,” a basic family basket “with better prospects,” and “greater stability” in the water supply. Reality shows that just as paper can withstand anything, so too the microphone can endure any lie spat into it.
It is no surprise that Prieto’s podcast claims to be Lezamian. Cynicism and hypocrisy are organic features of the Soviet-inherited model. The young people recruited by Casa de las Américas may only be using Lezama as a way to boast of difficult readings, forgetting that his Paradiso was dismissed as “incomprehensible” and “elitist,” “alien to revolutionary morality,” and “useless art for the people.” The man whom El Caimán Barbudo once called an “extravagant bourgeois” now inspires the podcast of the cultural commissars.
The titles and formats of the Communist Party communicators always aim to break, weed, or scratch. The TV program Con Filo promises to “tear apart the seams of media manipulation.” Arleen Rodriguez Derivet hosts Chapeando bajito (“Weeding Low”), though rather than mowing the lawn she seems intent on uprooting dissent. Prieto, for his part, intends to use the Lezamian rasguño en la piedra (“scratch on the stone”), though it’s not clear whether that rocky mass refers to the site where Fidel Castro’s ashes were placed.
The official menu is broad, but the flavor is uniform: requiems to the institution, political analyses from a single viewpoint, and news summaries filtered through multiple ideological sieves. On YouTube, iVoox, or Spreaker, the results are poor. From the Presidency rarely surpasses a few hundred views, except in temporary peaks. The same happens with Chapeando. They depend more on the state machinery than on a loyal community.
On the other side, critical podcasts have built solid and participatory audiences. In public metrics—followers, plays, community—the independents are ahead. The state-run ones have the machinery, but they cannot retain audiences. The critical ones, despite censorship and the need for Cuban listeners to use VPNs, build active communities.
Prieto’s announcement barely managed 12 comments on Facebook, half of them negative. A Cuban intellectual who writes from Madrid under the pseudonym Fermín Gabor predicts that the podcast will be more like “a rock hurled at the scratch.” At least, the production of memes is guaranteed.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted by Havana Times.