Three Peasants Fight for Freedom: Radio and the United States’ Cultural Cold War in Latin America

Authors

  • Yeidy M. Rivero University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Department of Film, Television, and Media

Keywords:

Cuban exiles, Miami, USIA, propaganda, 1960s, Latin America, radio

Abstract

This article examines the 1961–1962 adaptation of the highly successful 1940s Cuban radio series Los tres Villalobos and the sociopolitical and industrial circumstances that shaped this radio product. Produced by the Miami-based company America’s Production Inc. for the United States Information Agency and authored by the scriptwriter of the original series, the 1960s version explored the evils of communism and introduced the economic, political, and social benefits of John F. Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress” plan for Latin America. The article argues that through radio programs such as Los tres Villalobos, America’s Production Inc. and its Cuban media professionals initiated a series of “ventriloquist” acts that voiced the political and socioeconomic objectives of the Kennedy administration and represented some of the political rhetoric emerging from Cuban exile groups in Miami.

Author Biography

Yeidy M. Rivero, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Department of Film, Television, and Media

Yeidy M. Rivero is Professor and Chair of the Department of Film, Television, and Professor in American Culture. Her research centers on television history, media and globalization, and race and ethnic representations in media. She is the author of Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television (Duke University Press, 2005), Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950-1960 (Duke University Press, 2015), and co-editor (with Arlene Dávila) of Contemporary Latino Media: Production, Circulation, Politics (New York University Press, 2015). Her new book project, tentatively titled The Original Miami Sound Machine: Cuban Exiles, the Cold War, and the Emergence of Miami as a Media Capital, examines propaganda-oriented entertainment radio and commercial radio programming produced in Miami  during the 1960s.

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Published

2020-01-01

Issue

Vol. 14 (2020)

Section

Articles

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