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Private company

Televisión Serrana

Television station in Granma Province, Cuba

Televisión Serrana (TVS), is a community-based television and video collective operating in Sierra Maestra in Cuba. TVS was founded by Daniel Diez Castillo in 1993 and is located in the small town of San Pablo de Yao, in the Buey Arriba territory. This small community inhabits 32,000 people and most are coffee growers and/or producers.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

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Televisión Serrana (TVS), is a community-based television and video collective operating in Sierra Maestra in Cuba. TVS was founded by Daniel Diez Castillo in 1993 and is located in the small town of San Pablo de Yao, in the Buey Arriba territory. This small community inhabits 32,000 people and most are coffee growers and/or producers. The focus of TVS is to acknowledge and give voice to the farmers in the mountain ranges. TVS is preserving the culture of this small community and “connecting them to the broader cultural life of Cuba2

The story

The project of TV Serrana began in 1993 by Daniel Diez Castillo. Castillo was a television producer in Havana, Cuba from The Cuban National Broadcasting Channel (ICRT). When Castillo left Havana, Cuba was in the “Periodo Especial” or Special Period. This was the economic crisis that followed after the fall of the Soviet Union. Castillo went east towards the region of the Sierra Maestra. The Sierra Maestra is known for its amazing mountains and the men who came across it. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and many other rebels organized themselves to fight against Fulgencio Batista. Due to the mountainous terrain, the Sierra Maestra became isolated from other parts of Cuba. Before Castillo came along, the rest of Cuba portrayed Sierra Maestra as the "producers of staples; nothing was said about their dreams, their conflicts, their culture"

. Daniel Diez Castillo then wanted to film the real Sierra Maestra, his goal was to “make a collective form of cinema, to produce movies and documentaries narrating the history and identity of people living that area, to create a form of partaken communication far from the capital”

. TV Serrana was first funded by UNESCO, but after time they were able to self-fund its own programs.

From Wikipedia’s article on Televisión Serrana, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Products and brands

The program aims to promote self-sustaining activities, TV Serrana provides programs and opportunities to the people living within the villages. A majority of the training workshops were given through El Centro de Estudios para la Comunicación Comunitaria (CECC), created in 1996. TV Serrana along with the help of supporting institutions provides training and services through seminars that help locals with communication and community building skills through the use of media. These programs offer lessons to villagers "willing to use video in their communities as a tool for participatory development and democratic communication". Other services accessible through TVS is the ability to transfer and copy video-cassettes from and to Beta and S-VHS which allow people within the communities to share their stories.

From Wikipedia’s article on Televisión Serrana, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Sources

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