A coletilla (Spanish word meaning: "tagline", in English), is the term used in the English language to describe the political disclaimers published in Cuban newspapers, in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. [1] The coletillas began in early 1959 at the behest of government controlled print unions. These unions would demand from their managers that their respective newspapers be published with taglines such as: "This article has been published out of respect for press freedom. However, the workers of this newspaper warn that this information neither follows the truth nor complies, even at minimum, with the most elementary journalism standards". After the government seizure of Cuban newspapers in 1960, coletillas were no longer applied. [2]
During the Cuban Revolution, major Cuban magazines like Bohemia, and Diario de la Marina, were prohibited by the Batista regime from reporting on state torture. Because of state censors, many Cuban people read the newspaper Revolucion, and listened to the radio station Radio Rebelde. Both outlets were operated by Cuban rebels, and thus were free from state censorship. In the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the magazine Lunes de Revolucion was established, as a literary review, complementary to the older newspaper Revolucion. Lunes de Revolucion became the most widely read literary review in Latin America. [3] [4]
In the wake of the Huber Matos affair, a scandal in which military commander Huber Matos resigned over communist influence in the government, the main Cuban newspapers Prensa Libre, El Avance, and Diario de la Marina, published stories critical of Huber Matos. Despite this response, Castro still lamented that there was a media conspiracy against his government. Soon after, printers unions dominated by Popular Socialist Party members, began a campaign of harassment against newspaper managers. [5]
By the end of 1959, coletillas began appearing in various Cuban publications at the behest of the printers union. The appearance of coletillas began appearing in the wake of the Huber Matos affair. [4]
On January 19, 1960, Castro officially declared his approval for clarifications added by the workers. This was declared after workers at Informacion refused to publish foreign reports, and demanded the right to put in their own commentary. [6] Soon after, the writer Mario Llerena wrote an article for Prensa Libre, where he compared the political consolidation in Cuba, to the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. The article received a lengthy coletilla, which Llerena then responded to in another article, criticizing the anonymous quality of coletillas. [4]
On May 11, 1960, the publishers of Diario de la Marina, the Rivero family, refused to publish a coletilla in the latest issue of the newspaper. The next day, the National Federation of Graphic Workers seized the newspaper. The Rivero family challenged the seizure in court. On May 27, 1960, the seizure was defended by the court, because it was apparently conducted in "the national interest". A protest was also conducted in which a coffin was marched from the newspaper office to the University of Havana. The Rivero family emigrated from Cuba shortly after this court ruling. [7]
By the end of 1960, Avance, El Pais, and Bohemia, were seized by the printers union, and put under government control. TV, and radio stations, were also put under government control. [8]
While private media declined, government sponsored media remained. This media was allowed a sort of pluralism of opinion, as long as the opinion was ultimately loyal to the government. This status quo was reaffirmed in Fidel Castro's speech: "Words to the Intellectuals", in June 1960. By 1965, pluralism of opinion was reduced during a press restructuring and La Granma became the main newspaper of the country. [9]
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was a Cuban military officer and politician who was the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and military dictator of the country from 1952 until his overthrow in the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
The Cuban Revolution was the military and political overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship, which had reigned as the government of Cuba between 1952 and 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, which saw Batista topple the nascent Cuban democracy and consolidate power. Among those opposing the coup was Fidel Castro, then a novice attorney who attempted to contest the coup through Cuba's judiciary. Once these efforts proved fruitless, Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl led an armed attack on the Cuban military's Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953.
Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán was a Cuban revolutionary. One of the major figures of the Cuban Revolution, he was considered second only to Fidel Castro among the revolutionary leadership.
Manuel Urrutia Lleó was a liberal Cuban lawyer and politician. He campaigned against the Gerardo Machado government and the dictatorial second presidency of Fulgencio Batista during the 1950s, before serving as president in the revolutionary government of 1959. Urrutia resigned his position after only seven months, owing to a series of disputes with revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, and emigrated to the United States shortly afterward.
Manuel Francisco Artime Buesa, M.D. was a Cuban-American who at one time was a member of the rebel army of Fidel Castro but later was the political leader of Brigade 2506 land forces in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961.
Carlos Franqui was a Cuban writer, poet, journalist, art critic, and political activist. After the Fulgencio Batista coup in 1952, he became involved with the 26th of July Movement which was headed by Fidel Castro. Upon the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, he was placed in charge of the rebellion's newspaper Revolución, which became an official government publication. When he came to have political differences with the regime, he left Cuba with his family. In 1968 he broke with the Cuban government when he signed a letter condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He became a vocal critic of the Castro government, writing frequently until his death on April 16, 2010.
Huber Matos Benítez was a Cuban military leader, political dissident, activist, and writer. He opposed the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista from its inception in 1952 and fought alongside Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and other members of the 26th of July Movement to overthrow it. Following the success of the Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, he criticized the regime's shift in favor of Marxist principles and ties to the Popular Socialist Party (PSP). Convicted of treason and sedition by the revolutionary government, he spent 20 years in prison (1959–1979) before being released in 1979. He then divided his time between Miami, Florida, and Costa Rica while continuing to protest the policies of the Cuban government.
Heberto Juan Padilla was a Cuban poet put to the center of the so-called Padilla affair when he was imprisoned for criticizing the Cuban government. He was born in Puerta de Golpe, Pinar del Río, Cuba. His first book of poetry, Las rosas audaces, was published in 1949. Although Padilla initially supported the revolution led by Fidel Castro, by the late 1960s he began to criticize it openly and in 1971 he was imprisoned by the Cuban government.
Granma is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. It was formed in 1965 by the merger of two previous papers, Revolución and Hoy ("Today"). Publication of the newspaper began in February 1966. Its name comes from the yacht Granma that carried Fidel Castro and 81 other rebels to Cuba's shores in 1956, launching the Cuban Revolution. The newspaper has been a way for the Cuban Communist Party to communicate their ideology to the world, especially regarding the United States. Marta Rojas worked for the paper since its founding.
José Ignacio Rivero y Hernández was a Cuban exile and journalist. He is the grandson of Don Nicolas Rivero, who in 1895 became the director of Diario de la Marina, then the most popular newspaper in Cuba, and the son of Pepin Rivero, who took over the newspaper upon the death of Don Nicolas in 1919. After the newspaper's public battle with Fidel Castro, Rivero was exiled from Cuba.
Diario de la Marina was a newspaper published in Cuba, founded by Don Araujo de Lira in 1839. Diario de la Marina was Cuba’s longest-running newspaper. Its roots went back to 1813 with El Lucero de la Habana and the Noticioso Mercantil whose 1832 merger established El Noticioso y Lucero de la Habana, which was renamed Diario de la Marina in 1844. In 1895, Don Nicolás Rivero took over as the 13th director of the publication and transformed it into the widest-circulated newspaper in Cuba. Though a conservative publication, its pages gave voice to a wide range of opinions, including those of avowed communists. It gave a platform to essayist Jorge Mañach and many other distinguished Cuban intellectuals.
The Popular Socialist Party was a communist party in Cuba. It was founded in 1925 as the Cuban Communist Party by José Miguel Pérez, Carlos Baliño, Alfonso Bernal del Riesgo, and Julio Antonio Mella. The party later merged with the Revolutionary Union to form the Communist Revolutionary Union on 13 August 1939. The party was renamed Popular Socialist Party on 22 January 1944, but with the Auténticos' victory in the 1944 elections, the party went into decline.
General elections were held in Cuba on 3 November 1958. The three major presidential candidates were Carlos Márquez Sterling of the Partido del Pueblo Libre, Ramón Grau of the Partido Auténtico and Andrés Rivero Agüero of the Coalición Progresista Nacional. There was also a minor party candidate on the ballot, Alberto Salas Amaro for Partido Union Cubana, who received 1% of the vote. Voter turnout was estimated at 50% of eligible voters. Although Andrés Rivero Agüero won the presidential election with 70% of the vote, he and all other elected officials were unable to take office due to the Cuban Revolution. Anselmo Alliegro y Milá briefly became the next president on 1 January 1959, before being replaced by the Chief Justice Carlos Manuel Piedra the following day, who in turn was replaced by Manuel Urrutia Lleó a day later.
Prensa Libre was a newspaper published by Sergio Carbó in Havana, Cuba, from 1941 to 1960.
The consolidation of the Cuban Revolution is a period in Cuban history typically defined as starting in the aftermath of the revolution in 1959 and ending in 1962, after the total political consolidation of Fidel Castro as the maximum leader of Cuba. The period encompasses early domestic reforms, human rights violations, and the ousting of various political groups. This period of political consolidation climaxed with the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, which then cooled much of the international contestation that arose alongside Castro's bolstering of power.
The Huber Matos affair was a political scandal in Cuba when on October 20, 1959, army commander Huber Matos resigned and accused Fidel Castro of "burying the revolution". Fifteen of Matos' officers resigned with him. Immediately after the resignation, Castro critiqued Matos and accused him of disloyalty, then sent Camilo Cienfuegos to arrest Matos and his accompanying officers. Matos and the officers were taken to Havana and imprisoned in La Cabaña. Cuban communists later claimed Matos was helping plan a counter-revolution organized by the American Central Intelligence Agency and other Castro opponents, an operation that became the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
The P.M. affair was a political scandal that occurred in Cuba in 1961. After a brief period of artistic optimism beginning in 1959, where exiled artists returned to Cuba, the banning of the film P.M. triggered a slow wave of emigration of Cuban filmmakers, who grew more frustrated with growing censorship in Cuba. The banning of the film P.M. was not a lone act of censorship which caused pessimism among filmmakers, instead, the censorship of P.M. was viewed to exemplify a growing atmosphere of artistic overwatch.
The slogan "revolution first, elections later" was coined by Fidel Castro in a speech given on April 9, 1959. The speech famously announced the postponement of the elections promised by Fidel Castro, which were scheduled to occur after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. The announcement was the beginning of an electoral delay that culminated in the solidification of Fidel Castro's rule over Cuba. On May Day, 1960, Fidel Castro would outright condemn elections as corrupt, and cancel all future elections.
Don José Ignacio "Pepín" Rivero y Alonso was a Cuban journalist and the 14th director of Diario de la Marina, which was the oldest and most popular newspaper in Cuba. He is considered to be "one of the most subtle writers of his time and one of the best writers of Spanish-American journalism in the 20th century". The journalist Gerardo Gallegos wrote upon his death that Rivero was "the most hated and, at the same time, the most beloved Cuban of his time." He took over management of Diario de la Marina from his father, the 1st Count of Rivero, Nicolás Rivero y Muñiz. He also inherited from his father the unofficial title of Decano de la Presna. His directorship of Diario de la Marina ran from 1919 until his death in 1944. His older brother, Nicolás Rivero y Alonso, became the 2nd Count of Rivero, and was the first Cuban Ambassador to the Holy See in 1935. Rivero was the first Cuban to earn the Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 1941.