The new status means more money and resources, in addition to brand-new printing machines
14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 13 April 2024 — The purpose is to “market the image of Cuba,” and the means are furnished by the Communist Party. Protected and paid for by the highest authority of the country, the Propaganda and Events business unit, with its main factory in Granma province, doesn’t disguise its objective: to supply the entire Cuban East with banners, flags, slogans and portraits of leaders.
Although it is still attached to the Central Committee, the eastern section of the former Propaganda Department has just been converted into a company. The new status means more money and resources, suggests La Demajagua, the provincial digital newspaper, which showcased the business in an elaborate report. Before the cameras, the brand-new company took out the artillery: modern printers from the Japanese multinational Roland, electric saws to create “awards and diplomas” for the leaders, giant posters, shirts, fence panels and dozens of “symbols.”
In the video published by the newspaper there was also a collection of “stamps” with the faces of Fidel and Raúl Castro
In the video published by the newspaper next to the report, there was also a collection of “stamps” – similar to those sold in Cuban churches – with the faces of Fidel and Raúl Castro, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Che Guevara, Vilma Espín and Camilo Cienfuegos.
The workers aren’t complaining. “We get a good salary. There are months that I earn 6,000, 7,000 pesos, depending on the content of the work. I like the craft,” says the company’s carpenter, who says “the equipment is modern, which makes the job easier. Now we are waiting for an assembler, because the workmanship must be very good quality,” he adds.
The designers play with one motif in their designs: the Cuban flag. They make sure that the symbol “waves” at events, on shirts and “along the roads.” They use the image with abandon, and despite the Government’s tension over the “improper use” of the banner, which has cost years in prison to activists Aniette González and the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, they make sure that the work is “proper.”
The company states that it provides services not only to the local governments of the eastern area but also to natural persons “who contract with us.” However, it does not clarify what type of customers – national or international – buy, for personal use, the revolutionary fanfare produced by the entity.
The workers aren’t complaining. “We get a good salary. There are months that I earn 6,000, 7,000 pesos, depending on the content of the work”
A moment of pure effervescence, they say, is when an event is approaching. “The work is constant,” of course, because in a country like Cuba there are more than enough historical dates, such as the imminent May 1. The Workers’ Parade is a prosperous time for Propaganda and Events, which must hire more employees “because companies demand many items in order to ensure the colors of their workers.”
In cash or by card, the company is open to any method of payment. They feel, their managers say, “a high responsibility” and consider themselves “makers of history.” They themselves have a place in the parade; they pronounce harangues using microphones that they have installed and fly banners that are printed in their workshop. Propaganda and Events marches with such a favorable wind that the authorities, not knowing what more they can do to honor the entity, will even dedicate the parade itself to it.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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