“Fidel Didn’t Give Speeches, He Led Political Training Courses”

By Frank Martinez Rivero on April 19, 2026

At the closing of the 5th International Patria Colloquium, the director of The People’s Forum, Manolo de los Santos, delivered the keynote address “The Word Made Revolution: Fidel and Communication,” which turned into a true lesson in history, politics, and communication strategy. Before an attentive audience, the intellectual began by taking us back to Fidel, because what the Comandante built was not just a method of leadership, but an entire architecture where millions of people could participate and see.

The difference today—explained Manolo—is that this architecture is not limited to being part of the Revolution’s organization or listening to the radio, but also encompasses digital platforms and new work dynamics. However, the logic remains the same: when communication ceases to be a mere broadcast and becomes a project appropriated by the collective; when people do not merely repeat a message but make it their own; and when individual voices are not diluted but merge into a single common voice—then the collective that Fidel understood so well emerges.

Manolo then recalled the words of President Miguel Díaz-Canel, when he spoke of how Fidel elevated the dreams of the humble people of this country. That, he said, is the essence of amplifying a political message: ensuring that millions of people not only dream, but also make the political discourse their own.

And with that, the myth that there would be a revolution in the world was laid to rest. But Fidel’s response to each situation reveals much about how he understood political communication: not only as a strategy or tactic of struggle, but also as a necessity for survival.

The Interview with Matthews and the Birth of Radio Rebelde

One of the first actions taken by the July 26 Movement, in February 1957, was to invite Herbert Matthews, an American journalist, to make an almost clandestine trip to the Sierra Maestra. The main mission: to interview that young, bearded revolutionary leader. The articles that began to appear on February 24 demonstrated not only that Fidel was alive, but that in the Sierra Maestra there was a movement of young rebels willing to give their lives to transform the reality of the entire Cuban people.

But Fidel didn’t stop at just giving interviews. In February 1958, he established Radio Rebelde. Manolo asked for respect for the station’s team, because it has an incredible history. For those unfamiliar with it, he explained that they broadcast using equipment mounted on mules that crossed the mountains; they sought out generators with scarce gasoline; their signal was extremely weak, and their programming quite primitive.

They lacked technical standards and the marvelous capabilities of today. Nevertheless, Radio Rebelde became the most powerful weapon in the political arsenal of the popular struggle. The reason? Because it didn’t simply broadcast propaganda in the simplest sense. They provided accurate news on the progress of the armed struggle; they spoke of the atrocities of the Batista dictatorship, of the conditions of the struggle in the cities, and—something unheard of for its time—they named the peasants murdered by the dictatorship, putting a face to the repression.

They reported on guerrilla casualties and explained in concrete terms why the fight was being waged in the Sierra Maestra: agrarian reform, education, health care, the need to put an end to a cruel regime.

Manolo then referred to the Commander’s long speeches. We all know that Fidel spoke at great length: there are thousands of speeches, some 15 minutes long, others 4, 5, or 6 hours.

To many foreign observers, this seemed strange, and some even went so far as to say it was somewhat pathological. But what we really need to understand—Manolo clarified—is Fidel’s true objective: he wasn’t delivering monologues; he was leading political training sessions. He didn’t rely on his personal authority, but rather sought to collectivize the process of governing the Cuban people.

The speaker described the typical structure of his speeches: Fidel would begin with the topic of the immediate moment—the inauguration of a school, the anniversary of July 26—but from there he would connect to broader, universal historical causes; he would speak of the balance of power in the world. He might go on to detail how many cows, how many pigs, how many schools, and how many computers were going to be built.

But most importantly: throughout his speech, he always acknowledged the problems. He moved from acknowledging the problems to explaining their causes and proposing solutions. He asked the crowd many questions; not rhetorical questions, but questions that left people asking themselves for hours, days, months, and years.

And something the foreign press found incredible: Fidel told jokes in his speeches. He wasn’t a rhetorical orator in the classical sense. He was a teacher, an educator. He taught an entire people to think systematically about their own challenges. He never spoke to the people as if they were children who needed to be told the message; he spoke to them as adults who need to understand and participate in the why and how of the country’s decisions.

Political communication cannot be just quick content

For Manolo, Fidel’s lessons are clear and also countercultural. Political communication cannot be reduced to quick content. In our digital ecosystem, the most effective communication is not the kind that captures attention in the moment, but the kind that builds a collective capacity to understand current problems.

This involves reclaiming spaces for explanation, information, and, above all, political debate. We need threads that connect ideas, videos that develop arguments, and printed educational materials that help people think. It is not about abandoning short-form formats, but about articulating deeper processes.

A movement that communicates solely to react or go viral may be very fast for a moment, but it also fades just as quickly. A movement that communicates for political education and builds collective criteria is the one that endures over time.

The speaker confessed something curious: he spent days searching for an image of Fidel from August 4 and couldn’t find one with good resolution, so he had to resort to artificial intelligence.

But from there he jumped to a crucial moment: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc in 1991. For Manolo, what’s interesting is to consider how the Cuban Revolution survived at that moment, how it survived the Special Period. And although there were multiple political and economic factors, Fidel never downplayed the suffering of the Cuban people. He explained in great detail what the Soviet collapse meant.

Manolo said he looked for videos of Fidel speaking during those days and, systematically, at every opportunity, the Comandante posed this question in various ways: Would Cubans accept certain sacrifices to preserve their independence, or would they be ready to surrender? Is Cuba willing to return to neo colonial slavery under the United States? Slavery or freedom.

That is not just the question of the last six decades; it is the question of 500 years of the Cuban people. And most Cubans, as protagonists of their own history, had already been shaped by the teacher Fidel, but also because they experienced firsthand what U.S. imperialism has been and is.

Then came the famous UN episode. In 2000, Fidel arrived to deliver his final speech at the United Nations, and they told all the members: “You have five minutes to speak.” But Fidel had not come to speak on behalf of Cuba; he had come to speak on behalf of the exploited, the oppressed, the forgotten of the entire planet. So he took his handkerchief and covered the timer.

That gesture—Manolo explained—was the essence of the Cuban Revolution. Fidel was a defiant yet deeply serious leader. He wasn’t mocking protocol: he rejected the premise that humanity’s problems could be addressed in five minutes. The issues Fidel came to raise were the crimes of colonization, the need for reparations from the Global North to the South, and the ecological crisis, which no one wanted to talk about at that time.

“Political communication is political performance,” he emphasized, “it is setting the stage, not in a superficial sense of empty spectacle, but as a performative capacity to generate gestures.” Manolo gave a contemporary example: he was on a street corner in New York and suddenly felt a Cuban president on his shoulder who dared to be on that corner against all the rules, all the budgets, and all the resources.

That action, like Fidel’s handkerchief, was a communicative device that transformed what could have been a simple speech into the most courageous, powerful, and viral image. Today the logic is clear: the actions that achieve the greatest impact are not those that best explain an idea, but those that embody a clear gesture that can be signed, shared, and given away.

Manolo described the Special Period not only as an economic crisis, but as a political, ideological, and above all, cultural crisis. The collapse of the socialist bloc generated a sense of triumphalism among the world’s elites, and for Cuba, that ideological environment was very threatening—as much or more so than the economic collapse.

Fidel’s response was to launch the Battle of Ideas: a comprehensive effort to renew the ideological foundations of the Revolution, which involved not just mobilizing momentum, but also education, new cultural institutions, video clubs, debate centers, and spaces where young people could access computers.

And when the world was moving in the opposite direction, Fidel—rebellious as ever—launched a public campaign to assert that socialism in the 1990s was more urgent than ever, and that capitalism, due to its systemic and cyclical crisis, could never meet the needs of humanity.

Fidel did not present socialism as a magic solution, but as an ongoing project of collective self-improvement.

Five Lessons from Fidel for Today’s Communicators

Manolo de los Santos summarized the Commander’s communication practice into five lessons:

First lesson: Trust is not manufactured; it is earned through constant honesty with the people. Fidel’s speeches, his detailed explanations, and his willingness to acknowledge mistakes were the mechanisms through which he built trust. In an era of “fake news,” the movement that always tells the truth, no matter the cost, is the one that endures.

Second lesson: communication must be a collective process. It doesn’t work if only the president or a leader speaks. Everyone must speak, without robotic repetitions. That makes political analysis everyone’s vision. Social media rewards simplicity and emotion, but building power requires slow, steady, and painstaking work.

Third lesson: communication is about where we stand and with whom. Fidel with the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, Fidel with the peoples of the world, Fidel in Vietnam under the bombs. It is the identification of the political project with the cause of all peoples.

Fourth lesson: crises are the best times to speak out. We must not abandon communication or be cautious. Fidel spoke more during the Special Period than at any other time.

Fifth lesson: communication must be grounded in deeds, not words. Anyone can send a tweet, but few—the revolutionaries—produce political deeds. Medical missions and solidarity campaigns are communicative political acts. The Colloquium itself is a political act, not a communication event.

Communication and political action are one and the same

Manolo concluded with a profound reflection: communication is not a separate dimension or something that comes after political action; it is the same as political action. It is not about constructing false realities, but about mobilizing what already exists—what the people aspire to and dream of. A profound lesson in this 21st-century era is that power lies not only in who dominates the narrative, but in who manages to articulate real, affective, and human networks in real time.

That is why the concept of The People’s Forum is so important: it is not about digital gatherings, but about creating a concrete, physical space where communicators and political activists converge in a single, real process. It is no longer like it was years ago, when we said, “You are a communicator and I am an activist.” No. We are communicators and political activists with a common goal: to create popular power to defeat the empire and build the future we want.

Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English