Radio Rebelde

Radio Rebelde (English: Rebel Radio) is a Cuban Spanish-language radio station. It broadcasts 24 hours a day with a varied program of national and international music hits of the moment, news reports and live sport events. The station was set up in 1958 by Che Guevara (  ) in the Sierra Maestra region of eastern Cuba, and was designed to broadcast the aims of the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro. Transmitting on short-wave, Radio Rebelde also broadcast the latest combat news, music and spoken literature to the people of Cuba during the Cuban Revolution. Today Radio Rebelde has forty-four transmitters on the FM dial covering 98 percent of the island of Cuba, plus a shortwave signal on the 60-meter band at 5.025 MHz, and several AM transmitters on various frequencies, most commonly 540, 550, 560, 600, 610, 620, 670, 710, and 770.

The radio broadcasts were initiated in February 1958 by the rebel army's media wing, under Guevara's supervision. Guevara had reportedly been impressed by the power of radio after experiencing first hand the role of a CIA clandestine radio station, La Voz de la Liberación, in ousting the government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. An electric generator and the first radio equipment had arrived in Pata de la Mesa, Guevara's command post, where the rebels were to set up the clandestine station and get it on the air.

Early broadcast efforts were conducted by Luis Orlando Rodríguez, who later became Minister for the Interior. The first broadcast began with the announcement: "Aquí Radio Rebelde, the voice of the Sierra Maestra, transmitting for all Cuba on the 20-meter band at 5 and 9 pm daily... I'm station director Capt. Luis Orlando Rodríguez."