Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950-1960 (console-Ing Pass [Paperback]

The birth and development of commercial television in Cuba in the 1950s occurred alongside political and social turmoil. In this period of dramatic swings encompassing democracy, a coup, a dictatorship, and a revolution, television functioned as a beacon and promoter of Cuba’s identity as a modern nation. InBroadcasting Modernity, television historian Yeidy M. Rivero shows how television owners, regulatory entities, critics, and the state produced Cuban modernity for television. The Cuban television industry enabled different institutions to convey the nation's progress, democracy, economic abundance, high culture, education, morality, and decency. After nationalizing Cuban television, the state used it to advance Fidel Castro's project of creating a modern socialist country. As Cuba changed, television changed with it. Rivero not only demonstrates television's importance to Cuban cultural identity formation, she explains how the medium functions in society during times of radical political and social transformation.

In this major contribution to Latin American media studies, Yeidy M. Rivero shows how commercial Cuban television, which only existed from 1950-1960, was instrumental in the creation and representation of Cuba's identity as a modern and Western nation-state.

Yeidy M. Rivero is Associate Professor of Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan. She is the author ofTuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television, also published by Duke University Press.

"Yeidy M. Rivero delivers a riveting account of the complex struggles over the introduction of television as both a symbol and site of Cuban modernization during the 1950s. Set against the backdrop of hemispheric politics and Cold War struggle, television proved to be a linchpin of political and cultural transformation throughout the island nation and ultimately across lö