This Issue

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.9.2.0175
• Pages: 175-177
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017
• Author: Stephen Wilkinson

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EDITORIAL

THIS ISSUE

Stephen Wilkinson

Five articles comprise this issue that encompass a range of disciplines from law,

political science through architecture and town planning to the study of

literature.

In the first article, Yoan Karell Acosta González, of the Center for Hemispheric

and United States Studies (CEHSEU) at University of Havana, discusses the way

that the US media has reported on the change in US policy towards Cuba. In

‘The US–Cuba Policy Shift as Viewed by The New York Times: A Critical

Analysis from the Island’, he uses Critical Discourse Analysis on a corpus of 190

articles published by The New York Times (NYT) on Cuba, in the crucial period

between 17 December 2014 (17D) and 28 December 2015, that is, over the first

year after the beginning of the new US Cuba policy. In an attempt to help under-

stand the complex relations between Cuba and the US, the article analyses ideo-

logical trends and the way some controversial issues are discussed by the

newspaper and finds a definitely flawed impression. Acosta concludes that the

newspaper displays a definite tendency towards the predominant set of beliefs

that characterises the US elite groups’ ideology and extensively promotes the

new policy as a tactic to induce political change. With regard to the Cuban

economy, the image conveyed in the discourse is that of a failed economy result-

ing from the wrongdoing of the Cuban government and its ideology, while the

importance of the impact of the economic, financial and commercial blockade

imposed on the island over half a century is minimised. On the other hand, the

positive impact of US Executive’s regulatory changes is discursively magnified.

The delicate issue of the nationalisations carried out by Cuba in the wake of the

Revolution is distorted, because the Cuban view is not voiced and the island is

blamed for the US owners’ failure to be properly compensated. Thus, he con-

cludes, the newspaper misrepresents objective reality and oversimplifies complex

phenomena, a serious finding given that the NYT is such an influential and

highly regarded publication of record.