Mapping Cold War Cuba-Germanies Conceptual Frameworks through Castro Speech Data Base (1975-1990)

This research project aimed to examine the conceptual frameworks entwined among Cuba, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from 1975 to 1990. It built upon the New Cold War History studies, an approach that has promoted new interpretations after the collapse of the Soviet Union, replacing the Washington-Moscow opposition with a more inclusive and global perspective. From this point of view, this research relied on the idea that Cold War History should decentralize its traditional Eurocentrism, reestablishing the geopolitical importance that other regions like Latin America had on the map of power relations during the second half of the twentieth century. In this vein, Fidel Castro's speeches have been viewed as an essential source of Cuban official discourses regarding both Germanies, serving as an example of Cuban foreign policy that considers not only socialist systems but also capitalist ones.

Although Fidel Castro's declaration of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution led to Cuba's early integration into the Socialist Bloc (Castro 1961), diplomatic collaborations between the German Democratic Republic and Havana reached a high point after Erich Honecker's visit to the island in 1974. Consequently, a new stage in Cuba-GDR relations began (Dieter Kröber and Meyer 1974), controlled by the Solidarity Committee and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). On the other hand, after more than a decade of the Hallstein Doctrine, the FRG reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1975. Hence, the time period ranging from 1975 to 1990 was a suitable period for studying the system of relations among Cuba and both Germanies since it comprised the most active stage of their bonds during the Cold War.

The main purpose of this project was to create datasets on Cuban-Germanies semantic networks focusing on the ideas mobilized in Fidel Castro's Speech Data Base from the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. It also included providing data visualizations of the main themes underscored by Castro concerning German culture, politics, and economy, in order to unveil the imaginaries that revolved around Germany from the official perspective of the Caribbean island. As the following pages will demonstrate, the datasets created through this research, along with their graphical representations, show the main trends encouraged by Germany in these speeches in a broad sense, ultimately outlining how the European culture and the divided country were perceived in the Cuban official discourse at that time.

Furthermore, this project illustrates the variations experienced by these discourses across the period, functioning as a "window" into the fluctuating Cuban foreign policy, which was far from being stable and homogeneous. The "inconsistencies" in Castro's speeches regarding both German countries can be partially explained by historical events, such as the peak and decay of Cuba-GDR labor collaborations, the failure to comply with trade agreements before and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, together with the abrupt end of Cuba-GDR exchanges following the German Reunification. Nevertheless, this "distant reading" of Castro's speeches has also uncovered the complexities of Cuba-FRG relations, the unexpected allegorical and symbolic role played by German history in Castro's claims about the United States of America, as well as the abundance of cultural stereotypes and scientific misinformation that capitalize on the concepts surrounding German culture.