I began paying specific attention to the trajectory of emotions in speeches commemorating the anniversary of the July 26 attack on the Moncada barracks as a way of exploring emotional dispositions in fiction and non-fiction .
“Aniversario” by Karla Suárez, is the reason I began looking at speeches commemorating the Moncada's assault. “Aniversario” occurs specifically on July 26, 1993. It is easy to know that because the short story mentions the speech by Fidel Castro Ruz marking the 40th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada Barracks. Hence, its name. See Novísimas
Given that this event gives name to the revolutionary organization led by Fidel Castro that in 1959 got credit for overthrowing the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, the commemorations discourses speak about the pivotal positioning of the event of the Revolution in the present revolutionary state of each particular year. The first graph was coded in python using matplotlib, the second one is simply done with excel and reflects raw counts.
Here is a wonderful oral history project by Antonio de la Cova on this event: Cuban Oral History
As you can see, if evaluated in terms of proportion to total words, courage tends to predominate in Moncada's discourses, but there are two instances in which it is surpassed by happiness and joy. In 1990 and again in 1999 it is exceeded by fear, and in 2000, interestingly, stops being mentioned altogether and disappears from the arena of political discourse. We must specify that speeches in 1994 and 1997 were given by Raúl Castro. See more
I thought "Aniversario" offered an opportunity to evaluate political discourses vis. á vis. narrative discourse, so I explored the distribution of emotional lexicons used in both cases. And later paid specific attention to the trajectory of happiness and joy in Moncada anniversary’s discourses over time. I paid attention to happiness and joy because it is an emotional lexicon that populates the short story "Aniversario". It is also a prevalent emotional lexicon in all speeches given by Fidel Castro.
