Radio Havana Cuba ( es, Radio Habana Cuba, RHC) is the official government-run

international broadcasting International broadcasting, in a limited extent, began during World War I, when German and British stations broadcast press communiqués using Morse code. With the severing of Germany's undersea cables, the wireless telegraph station in Nauen was t ...

station of

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

. It can be heard in many parts of the world including the United States on

shortwave Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (100 to 10 me ...

frequencies. Radio Havana, along with Radio Rebelde, Cubavision Television and other Cuban radio and television broadcasts to North, Central and South America via free-to-air programming from the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite over the Atlantic Ocean and via

Internet streaming Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

Early history (1960s–1980s)

Although RHC was officially inaugurated in May 1961, the idea of an international

n radio station was born in the

Sierra Maestra The Sierra Maestra is a mountain range that runs westward across the south of the old Oriente Province in southeast Cuba, rising abruptly from the coast. The range falls mainly within the Santiago de Cuba and in Granma Provinces. Some view it a ...

mountains during the final stage of the fight against

Fulgencio Batista Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (; ; born Rubén Zaldívar, January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as its U.S.-backed military dictator ...

. After the creation of

Radio Rebelde Radio Rebelde (English: Rebel Radio) is a Cuban Spanish-language radio station. It broadcasts 24 hours a day with a varied program of national and international music hits of the moment, news reports and live sport events. The station was set up ...

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara Ernesto Che Guevara (; 14 June 1928The date of birth recorded on /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ernesto_Guevara_Acta_de_Nacimiento.jpg his birth certificatewas 14 June 1928, although one tertiary source, (Julia Constenla, quoted ...

in February 1958, the leadership of the guerrilla movement began to analyze the possibility of creating a radio station after achieving final victory. This station would be able to communicate news about the

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...

to countries around the world. The station unofficially began broadcasting during the

Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called ''Invasión de Playa Girón'' or ''Batalla de Playa Girón'' after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles, covertly fina ...

in order to spread news of the attack, and the Cuban defence against it, internationally. The existence of the as-of-yet unnamed station was announced by

Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...

in a speech the next day on 17 April 1961, celebrating the invasion's defeat, with Castro announcing that Cuba had already in operation a short wave radio station, able to carry the truth about Cuba beyond its borders. The station was officially launched a few days later on 1 May 1961, with its name proclaimed as Radio Havana Cuba, during a mass rally at

Plaza de la Revolución Plaza de la Revolución (), "Revolution Square", is a municipality (or borough) and a square in Havana, Cuba. The municipality, one of the 15 forming the city, stretches from the square down to the sea at the Malecón and includes the Vedado d ...

in Havana held to celebrate Cuba's victory over the US-sponsored invasion attempt. During the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

, RHC relayed

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...

broadcasts from

North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...

and

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

, and the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, as well as its original programming. The North Vietnamese programming from the

Voice of Vietnam The Voice of Vietnam or VOV (also Radio the Voice of Vietnam, Vietnamese: ''Đài Tiếng nói Việt Nam'') is the Vietnamese national radio broadcaster. Directly controlled by the government of Vietnam, it is tasked with propagating the pol ...

was received by teleprinter and read by Radio Havana Cuba announcers. In the 1960s, Radio Havana Cuba broadcast ''

Radio Free Dixie Radio Free Dixie was a radio program broadcast from Cuba by American Civil Rights Leader Robert F. Williams in the early 1960s that advocated for racial equality. It called on black Americans to rise up against what Williams saw as an inherently ra ...

'' aimed at

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

s struggling against segregation and

Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

in the southern

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. At times in the 1980s, in order to protest the Reagan administration's Cuba

policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an organ ...

and its instigation of the anti-

Castro Castro is a Romance language word that originally derived from Latin ''castrum'', a pre-Roman military camp or fortification (cf: Greek: ''kastron''; Proto-Celtic:''*Kassrik;'' br, kaer, *kastro). The English-language equivalent is '' chester''. ...

Radio Martí Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

program from the

Voice of America Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is the state-owned news network and international radio broadcaster of the United States of America. It is the largest and oldest U.S.-funded international broadcaster. VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content ...

, Radio Havana Cuba broadcast briefly on

mediumwave Medium wave (MW) is the part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytime ...

frequencies at a greatly boosted power allowing the station to be heard on American AM radios and overwhelming local American AM stations broadcasting on that

frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...

, including clear channel station

WHO Who or WHO may refer to: * Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun * Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism * World Health Organization Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book ''Horton Hear ...

Des Moines, Iowa Des Moines () is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, ...

on 1040

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that on ...

. RHC no longer transmits on medium wave, even though Radio Martí still transmits from the

on 1180 kHz.

Current broadcasting

Located on Havana's Avenida Infanta, the offices of Radio Havana Cuba share a facility with two other renowned national stations that have contributed greatly to the history of Cuban radio broadcasting: Radio Progreso and CMBF, Radio Musical Nacional. Currently, RHC broadcasts in nine languages:

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, French,

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...

, Guarani, Creole and

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

, 24 hours a day, with a varied programming that includes news, music and features. RHC's English-language broadcasts are heavily centered on the United States and feature news items that uniformly adversely reflect upon the U.S. government and the current administration, especially its foreign policies. In 2004, RHC and related mediumwave transmitters, such as

, broadcast speeches by Venezuelan President

Hugo Chávez Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republ ...

as well as Castro. RHC was off the air temporarily in late August 2004 due to damage caused by

Hurricane Charley Hurricane Charley was the first of four separate hurricanes to impact or strike Florida during 2004, along with Hurricane Frances, Frances, Hurricane Ivan, Ivan and Hurricane Jeanne, Jeanne, as well as one of the strongest hurricanes ever to ...

. The English-language service of the station broadcasts an hour-long program which is repeated throughout the day at different times and frequencies (AM and international shortwave as well as FM in Havana). The program consists of a mix of news, commentary, history, music (both traditional and contemporary Cuban music) as well as a series of rotating special programs including the ''Mailbag Show'' (in which listener mail is read over the air), ''Music with a Message'' (normally featuring an internationally-known musician whose music touches on social justice themes), ''World of Stamps'', the sports program with Eduardo Gonzalez, and ''DXers Unlimited'', a program on the technical aspects of

amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...

and shortwave listening from announcer Arnie Coro (

Ham radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...

call sign CO2KK). The current lead announcers are Ed Newman and Lena Valverde. Arts and Culture segments are normally by Gerwin Jones, a Canadian journalist. Most of the commentary viewpoint segments are by Juan Jacomino. The shortwave

numbers station A numbers station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries. Most identified stations use speech synthesis to vocal ...

nicknamed "Atencion", or HM01, by independent shortwave listeners has been linked to RHC radio transmissions equipment. In numbers station transmissions, a series of random numbers are read out over the air in multiple languages, or in digital modes or morse code. These audible transmission of numbers are believed to be one-time encrypted messages to espionage agents residing in the targeted country.

Numbers station A numbers station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries. Most identified stations use speech synthesis to vocal ...

monitors have noted that on occasion RHC interval signals have been heard at the beginning or end of intelligence-related transmissions. The United States Government convicted the

Cuban Five The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five, are five Cuban intelligence officers (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González) who were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miam ...

with evidence that was intercepted and decoded from HM01.

Interval signal

The station's

interval signal An interval signal, or tuning signal, is a characteristic sound or musical phrase used in international broadcasting, numbers stations, and by some domestic broadcasters, played before commencement or during breaks in transmission, but most comm ...

is ''La Marcha del 26 de Julio'' (The 26th of July March), written by

Agustín Díaz Cartaya Agustín is a Spanish given name and sometimes a surname. It is related to Augustín. People with the name include: Given name * Agustín (footballer), Spanish footballer * Agustín Calleri (born 1976), Argentine tennis player * Agustín Cár ...

. Sometime during the interval, Thelma Rodriguez gives out the radio identifier details in the Spanish and English languages. "This is/You're listening to Radio Habana Cuba, broadcasting from Cuba, free territory in Americas" (Spanish: ''"Este es/Estás escuchando Radio Habana Cuba, transmitiendo desde Cuba, territorio libre en America"'').

References

External links

Radio Habana Cuba online

Radio Habana Cuba - English Service
podcast of RHC's daily English-language programming
Audio of interval signalRadyo Dinleme Sitesi
{{Authority control International broadcasters Radio stations in Cuba Radio stations established in 1961 State media