“We All Make the Nation”: Trajectory and Narrative Disputes on Being an Emigrant in Cuba

The article studies the development of the image of Cuban emigrants through the narratives of the State and the government of Cuba from 1959 to the present. Analyzing the official documents and recent declarations by the Cuban government in the digital platforms Twitter and Facebook, we studied how these discourses have gone through a transformation from the consolidation of emigrants as an opposing party in the Cuban collective imaginary into the adoption, more recently, of an integration policy of the diaspora with the nation by the government of the island. We argue that, as of the 90’s, the official rhetoric that defined the Cuban emigrant figurehead as opposed to the nation, starts to display reconciliation strategies, perceptible through discursive changes in official channels in Twitter and Facebook. Cuban expats figurehead go from the status of difference towards an integration with the nation, even though the reconciliation proposed by the Cuban State clarifies ideological conditions that define the type of expats considered suitable for it.