Written press and the construction of social imaginaries around the student movement in Pinar del Río, Cuba (1956-1958)

Abstract

The current article aims to analyze the relationship between the student movement and the written press of the city of Pinar del Río during the period 1956-1958. A critical analysis of the discourse on the news and opinion articles published in the weekly newspapers Vocero Occidental and Heraldo Pinareño was carried out, with the intention of determining how these contributed to the construction of social imaginaries that sought to dismantle the student movement, by criminalizing the protest actions and their leaders. It can be affirmed that this press, of bourgeois affiliation, provided services, voluntary or not, to the facto regime of Fulgencio Batista, since, as a result of the imposed censorship, it hid the government repression, decidedly disapproved of the insurrectional alternative and tried to promote the more combative social sectors, among them the student body, in search of an already impossible peaceful solution to the national crisis.