Media Saturation / Rebeca Monzo

Mayonnaise and ketchup that made it through the "blockade"

On my planet more than fifteen days ago the media was bombarding you at all hours and at every moment with The Five Heros, The Criminal Blockade, and the battle-hardened and invincible people who are our athletes. From all this this, of course, the most refreshing thing is to spend time watching the Pan American games, but pushing the mute button on the television, because ladies and gentlemen, to listen to our sportscasters, is like reading the newspaper Granma, holding your breath.

In every moment, still on the sports news, they obligatorily introduce the same old topics, or make reference to them. In truth, nobody can stand it, We could say that the indoctrination is “up until the soup“*, if it wasn’t that this tasty dish disappeared a long time ago from our tables. Our sportscasters are better known as political commissioners. That entails a visible lack of seriousness and professionalism: they are simply intolerable.

With each change of program, they introduce the subject of the great triumph of Cuba in the United Nations. What they don’t clarify is that certainly no country agrees with imposing a commercial embargo against another, simply they manipulate it as if those 186 countries that voted in favor of the lifting of the blockade, were in agreement with our domestic politics.

Likewise, all of the mutilated news that they offer us is, moreover, manipulated, leaving an information limbo for all who follow it and don’t have access to other media. They stress the cultural embargo that the U.S. imposes on us and I ask myself, then how is that La Colmenita, Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Los Van Van, La Aragón and other artists and groups of the island, constantly visit that country.

Nevertheless, why don’t so many Cuban musicians of a high caliber come over from there, musicians who moreover are very well-known here in spite of the censorship,who not only are denied entry, but they also prohibit the popularization of their music on our radio and television, depriving us during more than a half century of following them and enjoying them publicly and freely, without being forced to obtain their recordings clandestinely. We are truly, more than saturated from so much media propaganda.

Translated by: BW

* Translator’s note: “Up until the soup” means that something is seen everywhere.

October 27 2011