ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the decolonizing moment in the Caribbean (1957–1965) through radio, posing the question of the role of radio in the social, economic, and political transformations that unfolded in the region. Cuba’s dramatic revolution reverberated in Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, giving rise to the noisy “radio wars”, the sounded conflicts between revolutionary and autocratic governments. Meanwhile the British West Indies’ transition to independence (1962 onwards) also animated new political affiliations centered on race, empire or nation. The chapter inserts radio into histories of decolonization that have for too long relied solely on textual evidence. I argue that programming both engaged ideas of decoloniality and resisted change by clinging to existing networks and connections to US capitalist infrastructures. The chapter draws on a recording of a radio interview with the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén in April 1959, listening for its engagement with and against radio’s colonial and racist foundations.
