Between established and outsiders? Pro-government narratives and social constructions around dissent in Cuba

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to describe narratives of the Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez that reproduce authoritarian contents about relations between the State and civil society, applying three strategies of political domination: 1) construction of outsider citizens, 2) conceptual manipulation of politics and 3) hindering the apparition of social groups –dissidents– as subjects of rights. For its realization, 16 pronouncements were selected between the years 2021 and 2022, and a qualitative methodology based on the use of thematic and narrative content analysis methods was applied. The application of this method was managed through the ATLAS.ti 22 Software. The results obtained complement other studies on strategies of domination and repression in Cuba, and show the type of discursive battle carried out by the ruling elites to reproduce forms of internalization of meanings and values conducive to the proliferation of other dynamics and structures of autocratization.