Radio Havana 1972

My grandmother's antique Crosley AM/SW radio

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In the 1960s, one of my grandmothers gave me a beautiful 1940s Crosley table radio. Soon I discovered that the third knob switched from the AM band to a shortwave band. Then I learned that by stringing a long wire antenna across my bedroom, I could receive shortwave radio broadcasts from all over the world — especially at night, when the signals bounce off the ionosphere. From my childhood home in northeast Ohio, I could often receive English-language broadcasts from Radio Havana in Cuba and sometimes Radio Moscow in the Soviet Union. These communist propaganda broadcasts were an interesting counterpoint to Walter Cronkite's nightly news on television in the USA.

Around 1970 I purchased a used three-inch-reel tape recorder. Using its microphone, I recorded a few shortwave broadcasts in April 1972. Later I copied these reels onto cassette tapes. In 2023, I used a digital recorder to copy the cassettes. Then I applied some noise reduction filters and converted the recordings to MP3 files. Although this convoluted recording chain is low fidelity, the broadcasts are legible, and you can listen to them here.

The first recording is a news program, "The Voice of Vietnam." It's a communist view of the Vietnam War that celebrates the downing of U.S. aircraft and defeats of U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers. What's particularly interesting is the details of these engagements. The announcer names specific aircraft types and infantry units. A war historian could compare these accounts with military records to verify if they are accurate, exaggerated, or false.

The second recording is a program called "Post Office Box 7026." Correspondents from anywhere in the world could send letters to that address, and Radio Havana would choose which ones to answer on the air. In my recording, diverse questions come from listeners in Sweden, California, and Missouri. No matter how innocuous the questions, the two announcers (one male, one female) provide detailed answers — and invariably follow with a communist lesson.

For example, the Swedish listener asks about Cuba's natural environment and which languages are spoken there. The male announcer begins, "I'm not a naturalist, but..." and proceeds to deliver an encyclopedic summary. Then he critiques capitalist pollution of the environment. After the female announcer answers the language question, her male partner notes that people from all over the world who speak different languages visit Cuba to learn from its revolution.

When a listener from Concord, California asks why Radio Havana says it's broadcasting from "Cuba, free territory of America," the announcers deliver a lecture on the false freedom of capitalism and true freedom of communism. From these broadcasts, I learned at a young age how propaganda can spin facts in different ways.

Midway through "Post Office Box 7026" (at 11 minutes 45 seconds) comes a truly awful rock song, "All My Brothers, All My Sisters." The lyrics are difficult to understand as the radio signal fades in and out, but they obviously intend to inspire young people to glorious revolution.

After the song, which is about four minutes long, "Post Office Box 7026" resumes with two questions from a listener in Missouri: How many AM/FM radio stations are in Cuba, and does Radio Havana broadcast to the USA in medium wave? The answers are brief because the program is running out of time. It concludes by reciting Radio Havana's shortwave broadcast frequencies (11,832kHz in the 25-meter band and 9,680kHz in the 31-meter band).

After two minutes of more Vietnam-related news, Radio Havana signs off the air with Cuba's national anthem,"El Himno de Bayamo." (To me, it resembles France's anthem, "La Marseillaise.") I hope you enjoy these rare and historical shortwave radio recordings.