“Cub of the Empire” vs. “Cub of Fidel”: Insults in Latin-American politics

Abstract

The exchange of insults between Presidents and/or Heads of State seems to have become a global discursive practice, celebrated by some and rejected by others depending on the evaluation system used. We are faced with dialogues involving the ideological work carried out by offensive words which aim to legitimate or delegitimate regional leaders and their projects, and strengthen cultural identities. Although in certain contexts insult is accepted as part of normal interaction, in confrontational political dialogue it may affect diplomatic relations and, in the long term, weaken and/or interrupt democratic dialogue. In this paper, I present a study on the verbal conflict between Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, and Vicente Fox, president of México, immediately after the celebration of the IV Summit of the Americas in 2005 I aim to, on the one hand, examine how the parties involved evaluated offensive words (as insulting or not) and, on the other hand, describe and interpret the form democratic dialogue takes through the press. The central category here is evaluation because it is the principal motivation for change in politics and in interaction, and it allows us to know whether the words have an offensive value or not in specific circumstances. By applying general principles of conversational analysis, sequences of macro-exchanges are studied as they emerge from the press. The study reveals the complexity of political insults owing to the fact that there are ideological, moral and cultural issues that cannot be ignored.