Courtesy of emiana

To me, Cuba has always been shrouded in mystery and yet is full of romanticism. Its music and culture combined with its history of being a semi-closed state both during the Cold War and more recently have made it into one of the more exotic locations to try to catch on the airwaves.





Some interesting facts about the country in this regard:

It was one of the first countries to have radio and television in the Americas.

There was media censorship in place before the Cuban Revolution, under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

During the early years of the revolution there remained a number of media outlets that opposed Fidel Castro's new regime, until the Cuban Broadcasting Institute was firmly established.

There are three radios for every ten Cuban citizens.

Computer ownership was outlawed until 2007 and Internet access is still amongst the most expensive in the world, adjusted for the median monthly wage.

In its ideological battle against Cuba, the United States have employed a number of shortwave radio stations broadcasting towards the Caribbean island. One of the more famous was Radio Swan , which was set up by the CIA to promote an uprising against the Castro regime and used during the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion to assist with the landings of the US troops by transmitting coded messages. These days, the most prominent US government-funded clandestine station targeting Cuba is the Miami-based Radio Martí , which is primarily staffed by Cuban immigrants. From listening to it with my limited comprehension of Spanish I understood that they use correspondents in Cuba who have American mobile phones that can make calls outside the country (which were obviously smuggled in). Some programs are very propaganda-driven, brutally exposing the deficiencies of the current Cuban economic system, while a few others, such as Avanza Cuba (Cuba Forward) are more positive in their tone and explore Cuba's potential. Below is my short recording of one of the station's evening broadcasts:

The above snippet contains a segment on Pope Francis's birthday dinner with the homeless and a brief description of the US immigration system.

Cuban Numbers Stations

numbers station is a shortwave station that transmits a sequence of encrypted messages, usually in the form numbers read out by an automated voice. During the Cold War, such stations were very active on both sides of the Iron Curtain and it is hypothesised that they were used to send ciphered instructions to spies. Cuba operates a network of these stations, and they have previously been implicated in Cuban anti-US espionage cases. In 2001, Los Cinco (the Cuban Five) were tried and convicted of spying for Cuba in the United States. It is alleged that the group had received and decoded messages that had been broadcast from Cuban numbers stations.





By complete chance, I stumbled across one such station that is actually very interesting. The numbers, spoken in Spanish, are followed up by shrieking modem-like tones (for those who remember the dial-up days of the Internet).





It turns out that this transmission was in the so-called Hybrid Mode and the shrieking tones are in fact computer files being sent in Redundant File Digital Transfer mode called DIGTRX. This mode allows the recipient to connect their shortwave receiver's headphone jack to the mic input their PC's sound card and decode the files as they are being sent across the airwaves. The inventor of this mode came across the station - nicknamed HM01 - by accident, and decoded the files with his own software but couldn't read them: as one might expect, they were encrypted. Below is my recording of HM01, which I caught straight after RHC finished its Spanish broadcast:

It might come across as amusing to find spies employing this somewhat dated way of obtaining information in our digital age. It does, however, offer one huge advantage: the recipient leaves no trace of ever having received the message!

The Cuban Five

The Cuban Five, mentioned above, are a group of Cuban intelligence officers who resided in the United States and were convicted of espionage by a US court. The Cuban media have regular features on their continued detention in the United States and there are major events staged throughout the year that are dedicated to calls for their release. One such event was The Concert for The Five that took place on September 12, 2013 in La Habana. Radio Rebelde , Cuba's arguably most popular national radio station founded by none other than Che Guevara , was airing it live and Radio Habana Cuba joined in by rebroadcasting Rebelde's coverage internationally. I was fortunate to catch a part of this broadcast and record it: