Reporting the Cuban Revolution: How Castro Manipulated American Journalists

Abstract

In January 1957 Fidel Castro's small band of rebels was in an obscure struggle for survival in the mountains of Cuba's Oriente Province, but by the spring of 1958 his name and bearded face had appeared in Look, Life, and on newspaper front pages across the United States. Leonard Ray Teel's succinct account explains how the Cuban revolutionary won the confidence of thirteen reporters from the United States to build a premeditated public image in newspaper, newsmagazine, radio, and television outlets that formed a significant part of, arguably, the most influential media market in the world. Teel's thesis relies on Castro's selection of the thirteen trusted reporters, each receiving an official gold medallion inscribed with the phrase “to our American friend with gratitude” (p. 4). This ceremony took place at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., on April 1, 1959, only three months after Fidel, his brother Raul Castro, and Che Guevara led their victorious rebel army into Havana after ousting the former U.S. ally Fulgencio Batista.