By Pedro Rioseco* / Contributor to Prensa Latina Radio is the most universal means of communication.

Fidel Castro Ruz and Ernesto “Che” Guevara understood this very well when they created Radio Rebelde in the Sierra Maestra in 1958 and inaugurated, on May 1, 1961, 65 years ago, the first Cuban shortwave radio station: Radio Havana Cuba.

The leadership of the Revolution understood the need, once victory was achieved, to create a radio station with sufficient reach to broadcast the truth about the Cuban revolutionary process to all countries of the world in the face of disinformation campaigns and harassment from the United States.

In January 1959, following the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista’s tyranny, US news agencies launched a fierce smear campaign against Cuba, distorting reality, spreading disinformation, and striving to isolate the Revolution from its Latin American and Caribbean context.

For this reason, Operation Truth was carried out in mid-1959, and more than 300 progressive journalists from around the world agreed to propose to Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro the need to create an international news agency and a radio station with international reach.

Thus, from the hands of Fidel and Che, the Latin American News Agency Prensa Latina was born on June 16, 1959, and on February 24, 1961, with the provisional name “Cuban Experimental Shortwave,” the station that would later be called Radio Havana Cuba (RHC) went on the air with a small transmitter and its first programs in Spanish for Central America.

On April 16, 1961, the station’s signal was broadcast worldwide, transmitting the words of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro at the farewell ceremony for the victims of the bombings that preceded the mercenary invasion at Playa Girón, an occasion on which he proclaimed the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution.

By broadcasting the victory celebration at Playa Girón, held in Revolution Square on May 1, 1961, the shortwave station Radio Havana Cuba (RHC) was officially inaugurated.

It was born out of the Cuban Revolution’s need to break the information blockade, disseminate its popular achievements, and support progressive....