Cuban games: the island, nowadays, on first-person news reports

Abstract

First-person reports about the decline of the Cuban Revolution executed, in recent years, the movement from the narrative of the great journey to the small account, grounded in personal truths. This article examines two of those narratives: one by North-American Patrick Symmes (2011), Cuban for thirty days, and the Brazilian one by Airton Ortiz (2010), Havana. These reports have their persuasive force in the intensely subjective experience, in which the reporter inflicts to his own body to testify with authority as would the Cubans. From the analysis of these texts and based on some Carlo Ginzburg’s (1989) theoretical considerations, in the article “Ekphrasis and quotation”, about the literary potential on historiography, this paper discusses the effect of truth in the journalistic testimony, its relationship with autopsia and evidence, as a stylistic effect. This work also aims at reflecting on this type of journalism, considering the specificities of his testimony – when compared to that of disasters – and its ethical tensions.