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C u b a 22. LEGISLATIVE BILLS THAT WOULD AFFECT THE PRESS Up to 1985 the Cuban economy depended in large part on commercial
relations with the Communist countries of the Soviet bloc. This
disappearance of the Eastern European bloc and dismantling of the
Soviet Union not only hurt the already ailing Cuban economy but
politically presented a challenge to the ideological basis of the
revolutionary regime. As a response to this economic and political crisis, the government
decreed a series of emergency measures under the name of Special
Period for War in Times of Peace ? which in effect resulted in increased
economic austerity and a sharp cutback in supplies to the people. The shortage of materials has been the pretext for the government
reducing publications by 58%, or 78% less copies. In the case of
Granma, with the country?s largest daily circulation of 710,000
copies, the daily press run was cut by 41.2% and it stopped publishing
on Mondays, reducing its overall output by 51%. For the second biggest paper, Juventud Rebelde, the
reduction has been even more drastic ? 87%. National television broadcasts were cut back by 34.9%, while
at the provincial stations the reduction in on-air time has been
around 33%. With the recognition by the government that the country?s present
economic conditions have raised a debate in the ideological area
at what is regarded as a critical time in the life of the Cuban
Revolution, the press has been called on to play an increasingly
pro-government role. As part of this policy, the Communist Party and other militant
organizations such as the Union of Young Communists and the Cuban
Workers Central are engaging in increased supervision of the various
news media, according to Carlos Aldana, then head of the Communist
Party of Cuba Central Committee?s Department of Revolutionary Orientation,
at the closing session of the 5th Congress of the Cuban Journalists
Union in October 1986. He said that ?it is inconceivable that in
the content of Juventud Rebelde there should be no mention of the
National Bureau of the Communist Youth or that it is downplayed,
and that the content of Trabajadores does not give due prominence
to the Directorate, Bureau and National Secretariat of our Workers
Central.? The conditions under which the Cuban press has to work so long
as the current crisis in the country continues were raised by the
same party official in a speech he gave marking Press Day in March
1992. He said, ?We are at a truly decisive moment in time, when
only a person who is totally revolutionary may be the director of
a television program.? In that same speech, Aldana put a lid on the process of opening
up in the Cuban press under way since 1986 ? when the government
had called on the press to contribute to an improvement in governance
by being critical, But just how little such criticism was allowed became clear
from the document approved at the 9th Plenary of the Communist Party?s
Central Committee. It said, ?In criticizing, one must carefully
differentiate between what gives comfort to the enemy and what recognizes
the importance of the work of those in the front line of the revolution,
whose faults have nothing to do with criteria that are hostile to
our ideology or our politics.? The Special Period put in reverse
many measures that would have led to an opening up of the press. Almost immediately following this speech in 1992, Aldana was
replaced as the Communist Party?s ideologue by José Ramón Balaguer,
who headed a restructuring of the leadership of the Journalists
Union in a bid for greater control over information. A decision not to allow any such modification of the line of
control of information or of journalists and the media disseminating
it was spelled out explicitly in the report to the 5th Plenary of
the Community Party of Cuba?s Central Committee on March 23, 1996.
The document reiterated that any attempt to criticize or simply
analyze what was happening in Cuba would be regarded as an act of
war against the country. No changes are envisioned in either the short or long term
in the government?s information policy so long as the current political
situation continues.
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