Exiled Counterpoint: Cuban Exile Reception, Media Activism, Conservatism, and the National Educational Television Network

Abstract:This article focuses on a Cuban exile activist organization, the Truth About Cuba Committee (TACC), and their campaign against the television documentary Three Faces of Cuba (1959). The TACC, an anti-communist group, and their fellow Cuban exiles regarded the documentary as Red propaganda. This article argues that the TACC used their analysis of the documentary as a means to compel US authorities like Edgar Hoover to act as a regulatory body and intervene in its broadcasting as part of a broader agenda to curtail positive portrayals of the Revolution in the US. The TACC provided a critical and close analysis of Three Faces of Cuba that drew from post–War World II research on mass persuasion by US military intelligence and research institutions. This work makes a further case that the TACC formed interpretative strategies that were cultivated through the exilic experience, shared by many in the émigré community and expressing their Cuban conservatism.