Cuba, race and nation in the 20th century: A discourse analysis of press editorials

Abstract

This article presents a discourse analysis of 'race' and 'otherness' in press editorials published in Cuban newspapers during specific periods of the twentieth century. It analyses the discursive strategies used by newspapers to construct and legitimise their idea of national identity, especially with reference to argumentation and the representation of social agents. The corpus used for this study consists of editorials from Diario de la Marina for the first half of the century (1902, 1912, 1939-40) and the national edition of Granma for the revolutionary periods (1975-76, 1998-99). The article also examines how discursive strategies, and the idea of national identity they construct, changed over the course of the century. Finally, it will review the extent to which the conclusions of this analysis intersect with those from other studies in the fields of history or literature.