The influence of broadcast media on the history, politics and culture of Latin America over the past century has been profound. Yet until recently, the topic has received relatively scant attention from scholars. Yeidy Rivero's Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950–1960, amply demonstrates why media history matters to students of twentieth-century Latin America. As the title implies, Broadcasting Modernity links the history of early television with larger trajectories and discourses of Cuban modernity and related topics like nationalism, democracy, race and revolution. Along with her earlier study of Puerto Rican television, Rivero has significantly amplified what we know about broadcast media in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Broadcasting Modernity examines television's first decade in Cuba, from its inception through to the early 1960s. This work is significant to the history of Latin American mass media generally, given the island's regional prominence in broadcast media prior to the Cuban revolution, and television's key role in the consolidation of the revolutionary regime in the post-1959 era. Cuba was one of the first Latin American countries to have television; by the mid-1950s, according to Rivero, Cubans owned more television sets than any other country in the region. The early and rapid expansion of television in Cuba was due in large part to its proximity to – and neo-colonial relations with – the United States. Broadcasting Modernity points out that television was an important part of US policy in post-war/Cold War Latin America and that Cuba was to be the first link in an anti-communist Pan-American television network. Such plans intersected with those of Cuban television magnate Goar Mestre, who sought to create a Spanish-American television network in cooperation with that other giant of Latin American television, Emilio Azcárraga, founder of Mexico's Televisa. All of this was derailed by the Cuban revolution, which in turn created a new image of ‘modernity’ for Cuba and Cuban broadcasting.

The Cuban revolutionary state thus inherited an especially well-developed television infrastructure, one that became a valuable instrument for diffusing revolutionary imagery, projects and values. The book's final two chapters, which write television into the history of the initial phases of the Cuban revolution, are a particularly valuable contribution to the field. In keeping with the mixed profile of Cuba's economy during the first year or so after Batista's fall, commercial television and the revolutionary state co-existed, before nationalisation was finally completed during 1960. During these early months, despite the mixed profile, the Cuban revolution permeated all aspects of television programming, including dramas and telenovelas that cast the revolution in melodramatic terms and in which ‘the character Fidel and the “real” Fidel merged’. I found myself wanting to know more about almost everything in these chapters; hopefully Rivero's book and increased access to Cuban archives will inspire and allow further research into the subject of mass media in revolutionary Cuba.

Rivero's first book engaged with race and nation in Puerto Rican television, and these themes figure prominently in her study of Cuban television as well. Discussions of how, where and under what conditions Afro-Cuban culture and bodies should be broadcast echoed conflicting and contradictory discourses of race and nationalism in twentieth-century Cuba. Prior to 1959, Cuban broadcasting sought to distinguish itself from – and ward off domination by – the behemoth to the north. Yet elites and regulators were ambivalent towards distinctly ‘Cuban’ cultural expressions like the rumba, associated with Afro-Cuban culture and equated with ‘immorality’ and ‘vulgarity’, which were subject to restrictions and censorship in Cuban broadcast legislation. Many of these restrictions dated to the radio era, but television's visuality created a new series of moral concerns, namely the spectre of audiences seeing Afro-Cuban bodies (particularly the body of the mulata) dressing and moving in ways considered ‘indecent’. The relative invisibility of black bodies changed somewhat after 1959, when many of the prior bans were lifted and ‘Afro-Cubanness suddenly had a place on the television screen’ (p. 138). While racism did not disappear, neither in Cuban society nor on Cuban television, this new visibility of Afro-Cubans and valuing of Afro-Cuban culture served to dramatically demonstrate that things had changed in revolutionary Cuba.

Broadcasting Modernity is a history of television, and as a historian of radio I don't want to fall into the reviewer's cliché of criticising an author for not writing the book I would have written. But, one cannot help but note that radio is everywhere and yet almost nowhere in this book, and that the author's apparent blind spot in this regard results in some lost opportunities to deepen the analysis and ultimately strengthen her thesis about television and modernity. Rivero does note that radio provided models for early television programmes and regulations, but a brief mention that early television had trouble competing with radio's higher salaries reminds us that radio remained relevant and popular well into the television age, shaping television's trajectory in important ways. What did distinguish television from radio was liveness combined with visuality, something that could have been explored more in this history. Rivero relates, for example, that the first government-owned television station created after 1959 was named Tele-Rebelde. While there is an earlier brief discussion of Radio Rebelde, the main broadcasting outlet of the 26 de Marzo Revolutionary Movement, the author does not note the obvious provenance of the new television station's name, nor the fact that the seizure of state power meant gaining access to television as well as radio airwaves, allowing and calling for a transition from audio to audiovisual messaging. Where radio provided the voice of the Sierra Maestra during the insurrectionary phase, television gave a face to the fatigues-clad, cigar-smoking barbudos who now controlled the state, allowing the myth to become an icon. Despite these small quibbles, however, Broadcasting Modernity is an important, well-written and researched book, highly recommended reading for Cuba and media scholars alike.