Propaganda battle escalates in Cuba

Posted on Sun, Jun. 11, 2006

Propaganda battle escalates in Cuba
The U.S. outpost put up messages on a billboard, but Castro has blocked
them with a sea of flags.
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post

HAVANA - At night, when all Havana seems to be out for an evening
stroll, the austere office building that serves as an outpost of U.S.
diplomats turns into a billboard.

Letters scroll slowly across the facade, casting a bright red glow.
Clumps of restless teenagers plunk their bottles of Havana Club rum on
the sidewalk and stare up, their mouths agape. Couples unlace hands and
gawk.

Some nights they read the insights of comedian George Burns translated
into Spanish: "How sad that all the people who would know how to run
this country are driving taxis or cutting hair." Other times, questions
are posed: "In a free country you don't need permission to leave the
country. Is Cuba a free country?"

On a typical evening, the sign gets only a small audience - the few who
venture within a block or two of its glowing letters. More people might
have seen the messages, but President Fidel Castro countered the U.S.
move with one of his own.

In the latest installment of a long-running propaganda war, Castro's
government planted a field of 148 flags on tall poles in front of the
U.S. building, which holds the offices of the U.S. Interests Section, a
diplomatic post one notch below an embassy.

The flags block the view of the billboard from its intended audience:
the heavy traffic along a seaside highway in central Havana. The flags
loom over an outdoor amphitheater already freighted with symbolism: Its
name is Anti-Imperialism Park.

Trumping the United States by obscuring its sign delighted some neighbors.

"That Fidel, he's smart - very smart," said Luis Garcia, a retiree who
lives nearby.

Others barely noticed.

"I don't have time to read signs," said Osman Gonzalez, a state-employed
busboy who has a clear view of the Interests Section building from his
ground-level apartment. "You've got one kid screaming. You've got to get
dinner on the table. Who can bother with this stuff?"

U.S. diplomats acknowledge that the flags have limited their audience,
even posting a message that read: "Who fears the billboard? Why block
it?" But even if only a few people see the billboard and talk about its
messages, something has been accomplished, Eric Watnik, a spokesman for
the State Department, said in a telephone interview from Washington.

"Castro gets angered by the truth, yet they call their revolution a
revolution of ideas. So, we're battling with ideas," Watnik said. "The
people of Cuba aren't able to enjoy freedom of expression - we're
bringing them positive messages from the free world."

The saga of the U.S. sign, which debuted on Martin Luther King Day with
snippets of the civil-rights leader's "I Have a Dream" speech, is not
without precedent.

Two years ago, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana riled Castro's
government by putting up a Christmas display with a lighted Santa Claus,
a snowman, and a huge "75" - a reference to the number of dissidents
jailed in a crackdown the year before. In turn, Castro put up billboards
with swastikas and images of U.S. abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

But the scale of the latest face-off dwarfs past propaganda clashes. The
U.S. billboard has five-foot-tall letters, displayed on electronic
screens inside the building's windows, and scrolls messages for hours at
a time. The Cuban counteroffensive is massive, with each huge black flag
featuring a white star commemorating what Castro's government calls
victims of nearly a century and a half of uprisings against outside
forces, dating to battles against Spanish colonialists.

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