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233 and I knew I was going to defend my cause
234 and I didn’t want them to say later you betrayed us
235 you told us one thing and it was another,
236 because by that point
237 because of experience I had had I knew that this was my path.
238 And I knew that I was going to face many battles...
239 but I faced them and today you see me here
240 calm.The use of the struggle/military metaphor in the text is very signif-
icant because it is a very common and accepted metaphor in Cuban
public discourses and words dealing with struggle and eventual tri-
umph in the face of adversity are the bread-and-butter of discourses
of revolutionary ideology and identity (see Figures 1-4). I believe that
the speaker’s use of this metaphor is reflective of her fluency in Cuban
revolutionary ideology and the rules of revolutionary discourse and
confirms her self-identification as a “good revolutionary.”
“Defend” and the Military/Struggle Metaphor in Cuban
Political Discourse
In Cuba the streets and highways are lined with billboards much as in
the United States, but the messages presented on them are radically
different. Billboards in Cuba are used to present social and political
messages rather than commercial advertisements. I present the images
below, taken by tourists visiting Cuba, as an illustration of how the
verb “defend” and the military/struggle metaphor are utilized in con-
temporary Cuban political discourse.
The following text, taken from General Raul Castro Ruz’s April 4,
2010 key address to the closing session of the Ninth Congress of the
Young Communist League in Havana, provides another example of
the pervasiveness of the struggle/war metaphor and the verb
“defend” in Cuban discourse.