Enunciados da política cubana: da simbologia do poder à possibilidade de uma religião da política

Abstract

This thesis aimed to present attributes and researchs demonstrating that the State/Communist Party of Cuba has a monopoly of the means of reproduction of the representations, as well as to analyze the representations through the statements, the narratives and the mobilized symbolic devices. Based on the results of these objectives, the study also sought to heuristically examine the abovementioned Cuban dynamics from the perspective of the Religion of Politics (Civil Religion and Political Religion). After the analyses, we verified the hypothesis of the abovementioned centralization, as well as the statements used in order to organize a collectivity around the Cuban "invented tradition". Within the analyzed statements, the exaltation of Martí and the construction of a discourse in which the acts of the past and of the present in Cuba are inserted within a narrative that puts all the facts as continuities of the “Revolution”. The "Revolution" is one of the most used "statements”, it is seen as a historical purpose and associated with Fidel, within the construction of a personalism around him, which operates in the merger between him, the "Revolution" and Martí. Regarding the construction of the "images", the image of Raúl Castro is related to the fact that he was a demanding and disciplined ex-combatant in the entire process of the Revolution, attributes highlighted as vital for a leader who should be able to unite the revolutionary tradition to the required changes and updates. The aforementioned analyses, in addition to the researches on the relation between State and Religion in Cuba, were used in the heuristic reflection on the possibility of a Religion of Politics (Civil Religion and Political Religion). Such concepts of Civil Religion and Political Religion are distinct according to the way they occurred in political experiments in which they were applied, the relation between authority and freedom, the relation between individual and State and the relation between State and religion. Also based on these criteria, and taking into account that such concepts are valid only under a specific interpretation of secularization and of a functionalist perspective, it is possible to say that the Cuban experience is close to a Political Religion. This is because the Cuban case is characterized by having a political authority that identifies with a specific political movement, organizes a system of specific political value that does not allow confrontations, extrapolates the public space, centralizes the means of reproduction of representations and, in the process, tries to determine the "historical truth", without triggering any religious device.