Castro hated them and banned them: Why TV commercials are making a comeback in Cuba

Once derided by Fidel Castro as a capitalist “plague” promoting banal consumerism, commercials will return to Cuban television after the island’s communist government passed a new law allowing advertising for the first time in several decades.

State television will be able to sell up to three minutes of commercials per hour of transmission, but only between shows because ad breaks won’t be allowed. Advertising, sponsorship and donations will also be permitted on print, online and radio outlets, according to a Social Communication law approved last year by the National Assembly but made official only last month with its publication in the country’s Official Gazette.

It is unclear why publishing the new law took so long. Cuban state television won´t be airing commercials immediately because the Institute of Information and Social Communication must still approve advertising plans presented by each media outlet and decide on ad placement fees.

The return of TV ads comes as the government has authorized the creation of some small capitalist enterprises to try to save its languishing centrally planned economy. The flashy ads will also return when most Cubans are dealing with shortages of essential goods and high food prices, potentially adding to the discontent with the government.

The decision, Cuba observers say, was almost unthinkable just a few years ago, and it exposes how rapidly the country is changing despite the current government’s mantra that it seeks to be a continuation of Castro’s rule.

As part of his crusade against private property, Castro confiscated ad agencies and dismantled the advertising departments at big American companies his government nationalized after he took power in 1959. Many former creative staff turned to journalism or were tapped by the government to produce propaganda.

The images of Castro, guerrilla fighter Ernesto “Che” Guevara and messages like “Homeland or Death” took up the street billboards that once advertised many popular American products. Jingles and commercials were replaced with relentless communist propaganda, content about the latest public health campaign or promos for other government programs.

For some foreign observers, Cuba became a curiosity, an idyllic place without the annoying barrage of ads typical in capitalist societies. For Cubans, however, it underscored the Communist Party’s total control of the media and a fundamental economic reality: in a country with no competition and little to sell, there was no need for ads.

Castro made clear in speeches how much he disliked them.

“Our mass media educate; they do not poison or alienate. The values of rotten consumer societies are not worshiped or exalted,” he said in a 2003 speech boasting that Cuban media did not have commercials.

While the new law states that advertising would “safeguard socialist values,” many Cuba observers wonder what will happen when, instead of a propaganda message urging Cubans to behave “like Che,” they start watching ads for food and goods most can’t afford.

“Advertising is one of the centerpieces of capitalism. For the Cuban government to agree to allow advertising is a giant step that opens the doors to other themes of capitalism,” said Mario Garcia, a renowned Cuban American graphic artist who has designed several newspapers worldwide, including el Nuevo Herald. “Once you allow people to advertise their products, the government propaganda does not have a monopoly on influencing. So, this is a major development.”

The Communist Party says yes to advertising

The new Social Communication law was several years in the making, partly resulting from media managers and journalists lobbying the Communist Party to allow them to sell ads to add a revenue stream to the languishing state media system.

Since the law was first passed last year, some state radio stations and online media outlets like Cubadebate have been experimenting with “advertorials” — ads in the style of an editorial or journalism article — promotion banners and jingles paid by private enterprises, but restrictions on television have remained until now.

The return of advertising to Cuba has been gradual.

Despite advertising’s bad reputation, government agencies discreetly produced magazine ads promoting Cuban exports and tourism in the 1980s, but these were not meant to be consumed locally. For a brief period in the 1990s, coinciding with economic reforms, Cuban authorities allowed more visible advertising of global sports brands like Adidas on sports games and billboards. That push faded, but the advertising of local brands, Cuban estate enterprises, and the island as a tourist destination continued in magazines and other media, not television. The only exception was a channel available only in Cuban hotels, Cubavision Internacional, and satellite packages for foreign audiences.

Private businesses embrace advertising, too

Small private businesses, first allowed under the cover of “self-employment” in the 1990s and legally as private companies since 2021, have also embraced advertising. They have produced videos and other advertising material first distributed in what came to be known as the “paquete,” a weekly package of programming bought and sold on thumb drives, and later on social media as the government expanded internet access to mobile phones.

The existence of private advertising agencies is still prohibited, but many media professionals, designers and other creative staff who have licenses to provide services like graphic design or photography end up doing advertising. The University of Havana included advertising fundamentals in its Bachelor in Social Communication program in the 1990s, and other institutions followed suit.

Some private businesses offering web design, software programming and other communications-related services also end up working as creative agencies without the name, said Oniel Castellanos, founder of Auge, a private business in Havana that offers design and other corporate services to private companies.

As private businesses have grown and been authorized to hire up to 100 employees, some have built in-house departments for marketing, advertising and communications, he added.

The Communist Party, whose Ideological Department oversees state media, included several caveats in the new law to ensure that advertising on television and other government-controlled outlets conforms to the Party’s principles. The law restricts what can be shown or said in an ad, how much time or space can be bought for promotion purposes and who gets to produce the content.

Still, some Cubans believe allowing commercials when the country is going through a severe economic crisis might backfire.

“There is no money, no merchandise. What is the point? To raise money?” said a woman in Camaguey, in central Cuba, who asked not to be named. “The advertisement awakens desires..... How are they going to calm those snakes here?”