Since Cuban radio and television became the patrimony of the people at the service of that same people sixty years ago, its stations and channels have disseminated the cultural values of which our nation is proud, without disregarding the most diverse and genuine expressions of universal culture.This is a task of paramount importance in these times of intense technological and media avalanche, when so frequently and insistently certain messages and cultural patterns that reach many compatriots, are totally foreign to us, and in the worst case, they seek to undermine national identity and even reverse the course of our history.
Facing creatively and successfully this attempt of cultural colonization strongly require a radio and television programming in which the most autochthonous and refined of Cuban nationality and what is truly legitimate from other latitudes prevail. This is the greatest challenge that artists, technicians, journalists and directors of these media face today in their respective performances.
The men and women who carry out the most dissimilar tasks at the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, commemorated on December 14, the Day of the Cultural Worker, with the satisfaction of contributing to the cultural growth of our people, and under the commitment to be more capable and accurate every day in the fulfillment of such an essential mission. It is fair to recognize that despite contemporary technological adversities, the most frequent approach to culture for millions of Cubans is carried out through radio and television.
That is why everything that is transmitted through our television channels and radio frequencies must be focused on making our people one of the most cultivated in the world, as the eternal Commander in Chief Fidel Castro longed for. Preventing banality, superficiality, mediocrity, simplism and mimicry in our media is currently an unavoidable pressure, when beyond our shores the media power of transnational communication enterprises is determined to undermine the most legitimate heritage culture of the peoples, while within our borders some populists still bet on easy success, equating Cuban identity with vulgarity.
AI is harmful nonsense that contradicts the true cultural greatness that covers us from the roots to the star and from tradition to modernity. Ours is an admirable culture that has never established divergences between what is called popular and what is called cult, because everything has been mixed by its own right in the creative torrent of several generations of Cuban men and women, to whose work of yesterday, today and always we are given to venerate with so justified pride.
This is the culture that urgently needs to be created, disseminated and defended in these media, and the raison d’être of those who, in the exercise of the most diverse activities, occupations and responsibilities, dedicate their talent, their will, their effort, their entire lives to Cuban radio. and television, which must continue to be faithful carriers of the cultural heritage that distinguishes us as a nation and as a people, for the safeguarding of our identity, our integrity and our freedom.
(By Rosa Blanca Pérez Traduction by Gilda Gil)
