From Demolatry to Demophila: New Media and the Remaking of Cuban Populism

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on “the People” and the Popular in Networked Media Cultures

Abstract

If there is a revolution that claims to be made in the name of the people, that is the Cuban Revolution. The construction of a pure and heroic ‘people’, threatened by an external enemy, has become one of the main strategies of discursive legitimation on the island. However, this discursive cult of the people, or demolatry, has not been accompanied by a functional love for popular emancipation, or demophilia. This paper will examine the role of the Internet and ICT in opening new spaces for popular participation in Cuba, which have weakened the Cuban government's ability to perpetuate old populist discourses through the institutional media.

Since 2008, Raul Castro’s Cuba has undertaken a period of economic, social and institutional changes, aimed at ensuring the hegemonic survival of the Revolution in a post-Fidel era. However, today this renewal is being played out in a complex communicational scenario, characterized by the erosion of traditional media’s legitimization and the consolidation of the Internet and new media. In this new scenario, Cuban bloggers and social media users are increasingly reframing debates inwards and pleading for an end to the home-made embargo on freedom of speech.

These new social actors are still operating in a highly polarized context, in which old antagonisms often overshadow public deliberation. However, as Internet access has increased over the last few years, the range of voices has also multiplied. In recent years, there has been a gradual transition from blogs representing the opposite poles of the political spectrum towards a more pluralist range of actors at the edges of the revolutionary consensus. For instance, a wide range of bloggers are increasingly trying to set the institutional media agenda through the coordination of simultaneous posts on specific popular concerns. This scenario has contributed to the creation of non-institutionalized zones of debate between citizens, urging a return to the popular essence of the Revolution, that is, to effective popular participation in decision-making.

This paper will explore the discursive transition from a rusty demolatry to new people-centered discourses through a series of interviews with revolutionary yet critical Cuban bloggers and journalists.

Author

• Sara Garcia Garcia Santamaria, The University of Sheffield