Branding Latin America: Strategies, Aims, Resistance 1498568270, 9781498568272

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Branding Latin America

Branding Latin America Strategies, Aims, Resistance Edited by Dunja Fehimović and Rebecca Ogden Foreword by Melissa Aronczyk

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2018 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-6827-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-6828-9 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Foreword ix Melissa Aronczyk Introduction: Context and Contestation Dunja Fehimović and Rebecca Ogden 1  P  romotion before Nation Branding: Chile at the World Exhibitions Andrea Paz Cerda Pereira 2  T  he Counter-Narratives of Nation Branding: The Case of Peru Félix Lossio Chávez

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3  L  iving the Brand: Authenticity and Affective Capital in Contemporary Cuban Tourism Rebecca Ogden

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4  C  overt Nation Branding and the Neoliberal Subject: The Case of “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” Paula Gómez Carrillo

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5  R  esisting the Brand, Resisting the Platform? Digital Genres and The Contestation of Corporate Powers in Belén Gache’s Radikal Karaoke 117 Claire Taylor

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6  P  rotests, News, and Nation Branding: The Role of Foreign Journalists in Constructing and Projecting the Image of Brazil during the June 2013 Demonstrations César Jiménez-Martínez

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7  I nternational Love? “Latino” Music Videos, the Latin Brand of Universality, and Pitbull Andrew Ginger

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8  T  he Paradoxes of the “Cuban Brand”: Authenticity, Resistance, and Heroic Victimhood in Cuban Film Dunja Fehimović

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9  B  randing, Sense, and Their Threats Brett Levinson

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Epilogue 213 Dunja Fehimović and Rebecca Ogden Index 221 About the Contributors

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Acknowledgments

This book has its origins in a conference entitled “Branding Latin America,” which took place at the University of Cambridge in April 2015, with the support of the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), the Society of Latin American Studies (SLAS), and the University of Cambridge, School of Arts and Humanities.

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Foreword Melissa Aronczyk

The studies in this book show how material and symbolic relations across Latin America have conformed to, and in some cases resisted, the precepts of branding. Dunja Fehimović and Rebecca Ogden have put together a compelling set of studies that is timely on many fronts. Their collaborators discuss the cultural and political underpinnings of collective narratives and the varied responses of Latin American residents. They examine the conditions under which domestic and foreign institutions produce media that shape perceptions of national image and reputation, and the attempts of institutions to manifest sources of global capital attraction aligned with these perceptions. In the background, and central to the complexities faced by both modern Latin American institutions and the researchers here, are the economic and political crises in these regions starting in the 1970s and the “shock doctrines” that followed. In the last four decades, Latin American governments and their citizens have sought ways to reckon with the market-led reform initiatives imposed upon them. National “branding”—the use of strategic tools, techniques, and expertise to create and communicate how national values and interests are attuned to footloose global capital—normalized and further embedded political-economic aftershocks. If, here and elsewhere in the world, branding is the language of neoliberalism, it is not surprising that its effects are visible in sharp relief in the Latin American context. Fehimović and Ogden are concerned with the ways that national identities in Latin America are “deliberately (re)defined according to the principle of competition and strategically (re)oriented towards the market.” This concern is reflected in their contributors’s chapters, who show how this redefinition takes place, whether historicized via world exhibitions (chapter 1), woven into film and music videos (chapters 2, 5, 7, 8), written into—or out of— tourism guidebooks (chapter 3), contained in the conventions of journalism ix

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(chapter 6) or implanted into public displays of patriotism or values (chapters 4 and 9). As the editors explain, these are not only accounts of the cultural life of neoliberal nostrums; they are also windows onto the contemporary categories of identity, citizenship, and governance, and as such lead us onto wider analytical terrain. The contributors to this book are sensitive to the pitfalls of applying the vernacular and practice of branding as a proxy for the pillars of the modern social imaginary. Nevertheless, growing professional and personal tendencies to characterize a wide range of activities as branding—that is, the ways that self-conceptions, discursive practices, and models of sociability can all be labeled branding—deserve scrutiny in their own right. Though these chapters identify problems specific to the country under investigation, they also point to global properties of branding that make it both powerful and pervasive, reflecting an overall moral confrontation. The key to understanding the expansion of branding as a neoliberal genre is its flexibility. This is not surprising, as scholars have already noted the experimental, open-ended and plastic features of neoliberalization itself. Branding evokes a determinate set of possibilities for the constitution of identity. It can present an identity as a historical inevitability, perhaps aligned with nation building and economic development; or it can offer a narrative of national identity as a radical break with, and alternative to, dominant and/or foreignimposed stereotypes. The strength of this book is that it does not foreclose on one or another mode of identity making. Instead, each chapter draws on empirical cases to offer evidence for the flexible uses to which branding is put. Moreover, the contributions to this collection recognize that both harmonious, all-in narratives of unity across “stakeholders,” and articulations of deviation from the mean, can be forms of symbolic violence in and of themselves. In the discipline of branding, neither parody nor affect constitute reliable countermeasures to the ultimate objective, which is to align national narratives and myths to the vagaries of the free market. This is partly a problem of the platforms upon which brands and their discontents circulate. Brands are fundamentally media objects, and even the most determined forms of resistance to them typically assume their shape to meet them on common ground. At the outset this diminishes the effectiveness of resistant modes. Both narrative and counternarrative deploy the same strategies and appeal to audiences in the same ways, posing a challenge to “users” to distinguish between them. As some of the authors in this collection point out, this has important consequences for our conception of authenticity. It is not always clear whether the aim of branding identity is to make visible motives of political power or to highlight measures taken to counteract dominant forces. This has the unfortunate effect of diminishing a shared sense of legitimacy around national identifications and affiliations.



Foreword xi

Another important contribution of this volume is to highlight the role of communication as a constitutive force in the repertoire of collective action. Branding campaigns are not merely a patina on the “realer” forces of material and institutional change; they are reality-producing agents in their own right. Contributors to this volume demonstrate the power of promotional narratives to influence, and even stand in for, policymaking, state diplomacy, and governance. Of course, contemporary media platforms also play a role here, promoting values of transparency and participation through communication even as they limit what is meant by these terms. One reason we have turned to brands as forms of expression and identity is that they are understood as a disciplining force in dramatically undisciplined contexts of contemporary media and politics. Branding, for places and people as for products, is meant to create a coherent, unified, and simplistic narrative that positions its objects in space and time. Branding is nothing less than the management of affect and agency, rooted in business-based strategies meant to integrate culture and economy. That the techniques of branding have exceeded their origins in business to represent national self-understanding typifies attempts to order and control unruly populations. Indeed, each chapter in this volume is concerned with the ways that branding is an imposition on its national object. Some take a production of culture approach, revealing the instrumentality of branding as well as its alignment with familiar patterns of imperialist and colonial control. Andrea Paz Cerda Pereira (chapter 1) demonstrates the use of branding to reconcile the Chilean people’s aspirations to modernity and democracy with its autocratic and militarized past, emulating earlier forms of international cultural display in World Expos. Rebecca Ogden (chapter 3) exposes stark contrasts in the Cuban government’s treatment of tourists versus Cuban nationals, codified in the country’s Auténtica Cuba promotional campaigns as well as its tourist infrastructure. Dunja Fehimović (chapter 8) shows us another side of the political power of identity discourse, describing how Cuban leaders used the notion of authenticity in a state-sanctioned “Battle of Ideas” to inspire domestic political commitment. Taken side by side, these two chapters on Cuba expose the knife’s edge between branding and authenticity: calls to tourists to visit the country’s “authentic” territory “before it changes” amidst political, technological, and economic reforms sit uneasily alongside calls to residents to maintain their loyalty to the “authentic” values of the prior political regime. Others attend to loci of cultural and political resistance to nation branding, revealing the extent to which brand strategy is as much about suppressing narratives as it is about creating them. Félix Lossio Chávez (chapter 2) focuses on artists’s efforts in Peru to counteract, through parody and appropriation, a branding campaign designed to distract from exploitative and unequal political practices, offering in the process an alternative conception of Peruvian values.

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In chapter 4, Paula Gómez Carrillo examines the failure to brand Colombia, where ongoing violence, political upheaval, and drug trafficking upend the idea of control through marketing. The limits of branding are made clear via the chapter’s description of consultants’s halfhearted attempts to incite Colombian residents to promote the proper spelling of their country’s name (“It’s Colombia, Not Columbia”) or post positive accounts of the country on social media (#LoMejordeColombia) as a distraction from the country’s far less positive visibility in world political and media circuits. Claire Taylor (chapter 5) takes us through the Argentinian artist Belén Gache’s digital video installation, a critique of branding and corporate communication that also underscores the political-economic struggles of Latin American countries. These cases underline both the potential and the limitations of branding and its alternatives in the articulation of national identity. A third approach taken in this book to deal with branding as an imposition is to identify the complicity of cultural industries in the process of national identification and meaning making. César Jiménez-Martínez (chapter 6) considers the function of foreign journalists and their news organizations in perpetuating an image of Brazil mired in protest. Drawing on interviews with journalists and news editors, Jiménez-Martínez explores how industrial norms and news conventions participate in branding elements of national identity. In chapter 7, Andrew Ginger shows how the music industry balances national flavors with so-called universal appeal, ensuring that Latin artists and their local habits or allegiances do not exceed the formulas for success dictated by global labels and assumptions. Brett Levinson (chapter 9) indicates how the fashion industry attempts to capture Colombian heritage, playing on local labor value and transnational commodity production. While the set of circumstances that gave rise to the phenomenon of nation branding has been relatively well established, it is important to acknowledge another contemporary context into which this book can be inserted. This is the rearticulation of nationalism as a driving force in the modern era. It is not that nationalism has “returned” as a feature of international politics—as several observers have noted, it never went away—but that it currently occupies a far more central place in our everyday cultural consciousness. In the current zeitgeist, nationalism appears in one of two ways. It is either treated as epithet, characterized as symptom and effect of nativism, racism, and chauvinism. Or it is characterized as a manifestation of power from below, a popular, civil society response to an elite-driven, top-down cosmopolitan project. Both accounts fail to recognize the persistence of nationalism as a form of organization and an expression of solidarities and protections. One reason nationalism has seemed to come back so strongly as a force for change today lies in the common fallacy, repeated over at least the last four



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decades, that processes of globalization would render obsolete national borders and boundaries. This is historically inaccurate as well as conceptually problematic. World events have shown that nationalism and globalism do not only coexist but are mutually reinforcing categories. Processes of regional integration, expanded trade, and global migration take place alongside resolutely national allegiances and commitments. Meanwhile, the world system organization of nation-states remains the most politically legitimate infrastructure of our time. It seems analytically more effective, following the sociologist Craig Calhoun, to understand nationalism as a discourse: a way of thinking and talking and acting in the world that structures our social imaginary and our social institutions. This means recognizing that the “type” of nationalism that allows for expressions of rights and rationales for collective solidarity lies along the same spectrum as its chauvinistic and antagonistic versions. Even as we perceive, through its various manifestations, the possibilities and limitations of nationalism, we may still understand its importance in structuring selfunderstanding and belonging in the modern world. For these reasons, Branding Latin America offers a timely and highly relevant intervention into these debates. While few would hold up national branding as the ultimate arbiter of nationalism in the contemporary moment, the chapters in this volume give us valuable tools with which to think through its consequences. —New York, September 2017

Introduction

Context and Contestation Dunja Fehimović and Rebecca Ogden

The words of the newly-inaugurated US President, Donald Trump, echoing ominously through the world—“America first. America first”—have also reverberated across the World Wide Web, returning a series of responses that offer a satirical testament to the urgency of branding for survival in our contemporary world. The first such response, produced by popular Dutch television show Zondag met Lubach, kow-towed, tongue in cheek, to Trump’s statement, adding “but please, can we just say, Netherlands second?” In a format that quickly went viral, the video combined a montage of the Netherlands’s attractions, great and small, serious and sarcastic, with a Trump-like voiceover poking fun at the country’s idiosyncrasies (Zondag Met Lubach 2017). Whilst many have used these videos as a way of critiquing the shortcomings of their home nations, the rhetoric of promotion and trade—“it’s yuge,” “you’re gonna love it,” “we have the best . . .”—is telling. With a former property tycoon as the leader of what is still considered the world’s most powerful country, we are witnessing the intensification of a longer process that has seen the free-market logic of competition filter into all spheres, not least the political. As these viral videos humorously show, Trump’s declaration of intent to prioritize his country is likely to force governments all over the world to raise their game, polishing their pitches in order to highlight their own advantages and define their specificities—in other words, to brand and successfully sell their countries. Selling here may indicate a number of outcomes, from reaching a favorable trade agreement to attracting investment, but in each case the process of promotion and persuasion via competitive definition and distinction is key. It is precisely this process that the present volume critically examines; Branding Latin America sets out not only to analyze the expansion of the strategies, aims, and manifestations of branding 1

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Introduction

beyond the “traditional” spheres of private companies and their products, but also to highlight the problems, conflicts, and resistances that this expansion has generated. The present urgency of promotion, persuasion, and competitive distinction becomes particularly clear when we consider Latin America. After all, the threat—or promise—to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it was one of the touchstones of President Trump’s campaign, and inaugurated a newly open hostility towards the image and interests of the USA’s southern neighbor. However, the threat of the wall—itself arguably “the most indelible aspect of Trump’s political branding” (Bierman and Bennett 2017)—has since undergone a transformation, as concrete plans for its construction have consistently failed to materialize. In other words, it has become clear that the rhetoric around the wall has achieved as much, if not more, than a literal barrier could. Spreading fear amongst potential future immigrants and existing immigrant communities in the United States, and legitimizing divisive and even racist and xenophobic discourses, the wall has already made its impact in the public imagination. Moreover, as a symbol, it embodies an apparently unapologetic, narrow prioritization of the national that is key to Trump’s populist appeal at home and central to an open disregard for diplomacy abroad. Flying in the face of the spoken and unspoken rules of twenty-firstcentury international relations, Trump’s championing of the wall has provoked a very public displeasure, reflected for example in Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto’s decision to cancel a state trip and official meeting with the White House shortly after the US President’s inauguration. As the controversy around the wall highlights, Latin America currently occupies a set of particularly complex positions in the global imagination, political order, and economic system. This situation makes it a privileged locus for the analysis and debate of the recent expansion and development of branding, which can be understood as an attempt to intervene in this situation, and reconfigure those positions. For all the isolationist public rhetoric on one side, and gestures of resistance on the other, a refusal to engage beyond national borders for the duration of President Trump’s administration is an unlikely, if not impossible, scenario for all involved. Simply put, globalization and neoliberalism have come too far, and the fate of the world’s nations—and particularly those of Latin America with its neighbor to the north—is too intertwined. Whilst they may be born out of frustrations with this same context, the diplomatic faux-pas of Trump’s reactionary, neo-populist politics do not fundamentally change the reality of international economic interdependence; indeed, they complicate it further by intensifying and highlighting its essential inequalities. The fraught prospect of communicating, negotiating, and trading with an ill-disposed and still-powerful USA in this period makes clearer than



Context and Contestation 3

ever the strategic importance of branding, which highlights distinctive identities and advantages in order to pursue primarily economic goals in a competitive and fundamentally unequal marketplace. For example, Chile’s “official” response video to Trump’s statement, titled “America First, Chile Second” (Nano 2017), addresses the president directly, stating “We made this video because it seems that you think that all Latin American countries are the same,” before going on to highlight humorously its advantages over its neighbors, particularly Mexico. For all its critical self-awareness (the voiceover boasts dubiously that “Chile is for sale: our water, forests, copper—SOLD!”), this video makes clear the decisive role of target audiences and markets in brands and branding; that is, it shows how more powerful players (here, the US) can dictate the terms of debate, pitting certain competitors against each other to win the spoils of international collaboration, investment, and trade. The chapters in this book explore how a variety of private and public actors shape personal, cultural, regional, and national narratives to fit this neoliberal logic of competition, whilst also investigating the emergence of manipulations of and resistances to branding that often resonate with the critical tone of many Latin American video responses to the “America First” sentiment. But can such competitive rhetoric be described as branding? This volume argues that it can, and that the critical examination of brands and branding has not kept up with the morphing manifestations of the concept or the spread and development of the practice. A brand is a distinctly pragmatic creature, systematically designed in response to a view of the world as a market, and strategically circulated with specific, concrete, and competitive goals in mind. Whilst branding as a practice has therefore been the traditional remit of marketing, business, and public relations professionals, the notion of the brand itself carries a certain slipperiness and pervasiveness, combining ideas of marketability with those of distinctiveness. This distinctive identity typically finds expression in textual and visual forms—a narrative, name, and logo—which, through circulation, become overdetermined with a variety of meanings that far surpass the characteristics of any literal product. The term ‘brand identity’ reflects this, suggesting that the way a company or corporation presents itself to its market(s) should convey its broader characteristic goals, priorities, and values. As dear as the ideals that make up this brand identity may be to executives and workers alike, however, they must always be designed in function of sustainability at least, and maximum profitability at best. And no matter how elevated these ideals, they must inevitably come back down to pragmatics; that is, they must feed back into the products, services, and ideas which generate the income that allows the company to exist in the first place. One potential definition of a brand, then, might be an identity deliberately (re)defined according to the principle of competition and strategically

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(re)oriented toward the market. It is this broader, but more fundamental, definition that resonates with many of the images and narratives explored in this volume and that distinguishes these explorations from the prevalent literature on branding. If the aforementioned videos offered a comical take on the contemporary urgency of competitiveness, the contributions in Branding Latin America shed further light on the spread and globalization of this neoliberal logic, which has caused the expansion of the concept of the brand and the practice of branding beyond the private sector to new entities, particularly nation-states. Whilst the common notion of identity, together with the symbolic overdetermination of visual, performative, and textual forms, lays the foundations for such an expansion, the brand is always ultimately subjected to the profit principle. Its constitutive configuration according to a vision of society as a market directed by economic competition above all else foreshadows some of the risks and problems that are analyzed in the chapters that follow. It is certainly true that all nation-states, and not least those in Latin America, will have to reconsider their economic strategies and international reputations in the light of the apparently isolationist tendency of an administration that has promised to bring jobs and manufacturing back onto US soil. Just as the stance of Trump’s administration has resulted in new economic dynamics within Latin America, such as Mexico’s new trade deals with Brazil and Argentina (Webber 2017), so states and businesses around the world will have to find a way to (re)brand themselves—that is, to define their unique identities in terms that will favorably renegotiate their economic and political positions in this new climate. It is by no means a coincidence that these two factors—economics and politics—are extremely hard to separate in this scenario; a thoroughly globalized economy makes international relations decisive in any country’s economic prospects and introduces a new set of constraints, dictated by multinational corporations and foreign investors, on domestic policy. Conversely, economic performance and possibilities for trade, travel, investment, and collaboration are equally critical in shaping political relationships between countries. This is just another facet of a longer, broader process that carries the label of neoliberalism. Characteristic of this is a pervasive market logic that has long been eroding and reconfiguring divides between economics, politics, international relations, cultures, and identities. Branding Latin America contributes to existing debates around the effects of this logic—the effects of neoliberalism and globalization—by foregrounding a specific, under-examined set of practices and concepts that bring out the ambivalent, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory relationships between the local, national, and global; the individual and collective; the public and private; and the economic, political, and cultural.



Context and Contestation 5

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRANDING As a strategic activity primarily aimed at increasing economic competitiveness, the story of branding is difficult to separate from the story of capitalism, and the account of the spread of branding to public, political, and personal spheres is inextricable from the account of neoliberalism and its globalization. As authors such as Alejandro Colás argue, one of the central paradoxes of neoliberalism is the fact that it “privileges the private, economic power of markets over the public, political authority of states” by implementing “the state-led, multilateral re-regulation of markets in favor of dominant classes” (2005, 70). This is precisely “what makes neoliberalism ‘neo’” (Metcalf 2017), distinguishing it from the laissez-faire attitude of classical liberalism, which advocated the separation of state and economy. In principle, the state under neoliberalism must be reconfigured to support the free market in the most unobtrusive way, providing “a fixed, neutral, universal legal framework within which market forces operate spontaneously” (Metcalf 2017), and effectively receding into near-invisibility. However, in practice, neoliberal policies such as import liberalization, privatization of services, financial deregulation, and the liberalization of capital flows in and out of countries have necessitated the intervention of a reconfigured state into every sphere of society. Whilst the nation-state may have found its traditional functions restricted and transformed by the rise of transnational, non-state actors, it has also found a new importance as director, regulator, and gatekeeper of market forces. The forms of interdependence and regulation implemented under neoliberalism and associated with the intensification of globalization have therefore not erased local, national, and regional groups, identities, and interests. Instead, they have reconfigured them according to the power and logic of an expanding global marketplace, and subjected them to the principles of economic competitiveness. According to such principles, groups are converted into stakeholders, nation-states become corporations, interests become strategic objectives, and identities become brands. The contributions in this volume shed light on the beneficiaries and casualties of these transformations, resisting the naturalization of neoliberalism as an inevitable and anonymous process by paying attention to particular contexts and actors that illuminate some of the specific mechanisms and consequences of a pervasive market logic. Undoubtedly a product of such a logic, and shaped by the spread of neoliberalism, branding nevertheless has its own origins, characteristics, and aims, and the paragraphs that follow will attempt to account for these by offering a brief history of the concept of the brand and the practice of branding. In doing so, they will offer a backdrop and framework within which to understand the critical interventions of our contributors.

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Introduction

Tracing the origin story of branding necessitates an etymology of the terms term itself. To brand, as key scholar, Andy Pike notes, “is literally to label, burn or mark . . . to place indelibly in the memory or stigmatize” (2009, 623). The permanence and violence of literal branding described here recall the physical, psychological, historical scars of the slave trade, in which the brand’s mark of ownership on skin concentrated within itself the dehumanizing exchange that reduced the slave to a set of use and exchange values. Just as the painful violence of such branding foreshadowed some of the epistemological and symbolic damage that accompanies the brand’s instrumentalization of identity, other early iterations of brands allowed producers to articulate provenance and distinguish their products by a visual shorthand (Blackett 2003, 14), laying the foundations for contemporary branding practices. Indeed, as far back as the ancient world, symbols—rather than initials or names—have been used to visually denote a product’s provenance, marking identity and quality. Adrian Room (1998) and Angela Tregear (2003) point out that basic branding was already widespread in pre-Roman livestock and pottery, and that later, during the medieval period, it functioned to prove ownership and create differentiated, recognizable identities for competing goods and services. In the nineteenth century, corporate logos became the key interface between the producer and consumer, promoting previously generic products such as soap and cereal as singular and attractive (McClintock 1995). It is no coincidence that this shift occurred during an “Age of Empire” that saw an intensification of “socio-economic and political interdependence and interpenetration” (Colás 2005, 73), increasing competition over national markets that forced companies to articulate their distinctiveness ever more persuasively. Historically, then, brands emerged as signifiers of identification and assurance as soon as the geographical separation of producers and consumers meant that face-to-face contact, with its associated guarantee of provenance and quality, was no longer possible (Holt 2006, 299), and they gained importance as competition within and across markets intensified. The twentieth century saw a specific shift in the significance of branding in political, cultural, and social life (Aronczyk 2013, 23), accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s by responses to widespread economic recession and stagnation in the West and extensive debt crises in the “Third World.” These responses, led by Thatcher and Reagan’s “New Right” on one hand, and international financial institutions’s enforced structural adjustment programs (SAPs) on the other, laid the foundations for what we now know as neoliberalism, and facilitated the intensified international socio-economic and political interconnections of globalization. These developments ushered in “a new elite of opinion formers and practitioners” (Colás 2005, 76) who not only created the Washington Consensus that defined the (neoliberal) terms of many “Third



Context and Contestation 7

World” countries’s access to international loans, but also spread, throughout all spheres, a new consensus based on a free market logic of competitiveness. Alongside the consequent broader move toward entrepreneurial forms of governance, the synonymity of branding with competitiveness and strategy resulted in the adoption of brands and branding by a far wider series of institutions and actors in the 1970s (Aronczyk and Powers 2010, 1). At around this same time, several highly-publicized mergers and buyouts began to change the corporate landscape, underscoring new regimes of value. While at the beginning of the twentieth century a company’s value could be quantified in its tangible assets, including material resources and real sales figures, by the second half of the twentieth century it became clear that other measures of corporate value, including reputation and future potential, had to be calculated and articulated for success in the globalized economy (Aronczyk 2013, 23). These intangible assets could be considered part of the corporation’s future value rather than a reflection of its current bottom line. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, had an estimated stock market worth of $136 billion in mid-2002, in a reflection of its potential for future growth, although the actual net asset value of the business was only $10.5 billion (Blackett 2003, 14). Likewise, a company’s value increasingly lay in “speculative units of exchange” (Aronczyk and Powers 2010, 5). Abrupt financial crises at major companies (including, at the extreme end of the scale, during the Argentine depression or década perdida—lost decade) revealed plainly that previous performance could not guarantee future profitability. Instead, as reputation started to be built on positive characteristics such as philanthropic outreach, emotional appeal, and loyalty between a company and its customers, employees, and stakeholders, value was increasingly concentrated not in a business’s literal, tangible assets, but within its brand—the symbolic embodiment of its distinctive identity and competitive advantage. The strategic mobilization of brand awareness and global competitiveness became all the more important in the context of accelerating globalization, as flows of capital, people, and goods between nations exploded, trade links multiplied, and new technologies such as the internet dramatically altered the scope, variety, and availability of information. The spread of neoliberalism as a hegemonic form of governance, the rise of international Non-Governmental Organizations and multilateral organizations, the increasing number and scale of multinational corporations, and the subsequent apparent decline of nationstates’s clout all indicated the realization of Francis Fukuyama’s End of History and the Last Man (1992): that the world had indeed reached an inevitable and final post-ideological order. Whether out of a desire to correct the erosion of traditional forms of national legitimacy and cohesion, or to shore up the interests and authority of political and socio-economic elites in securing and

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Introduction

directing free market exchange, governments around the world increasingly engaged marketing and Public Relations experts. Leading the charge in identifying answers to the question of the future of the nation-state in a globalized economic system was a group of marketing consultants spearheaded by Simon Anholt, a British practitioner widely credited with establishing the nationbranding industry in the 1990s. In addition to acting as advisor to the governments of countries around the world, including Chile, Anholt has pioneered various ways to assess the perception of nations, such as the Nation Brands Index (NBI) and more recently, the Good Country Index. Like the bearers of Washington’s neoliberal “good news”—the opinion leaders and practitioners whose consensus has continued to shape many nation-states’s social, political, and economic fates—these largely UK-based consultants, their ideas, and associated metrics still hold sway in the industry (Aronczyk 2013, 32). This industry, it should also be noted, is often most active in those same countries that implemented neoliberal reforms and restructuring programs during the 1970s and 1980s. Such proponents of branding justify its necessity by suggesting that a nation’s image already exists “out there,” sustained by clichés and stereotypes; in failing to actively mold it, a country effectively agrees to pay the price for the negative associations, indifference, or ignorance of others (Dinnie 2015, 166). Indeed, despite the attendant homogenization of markets, Keith Dinnie argues, globalization has resulted in a heightened sense of national identity for many (2015, 8), and so should be harnessed to articulate competitive value. More critical analyses, such as that of Colás (2005), indicate one of the reasons behind this apparent resurgence of the national: the nation-state and its associated elites stand to benefit from their new roles as gatekeepers, regulators, and facilitators of global flows of goods and capital. The instrumentalization of discourses of national and cultural identity to reconfigure nation-state as nation-brand, one of the central phenomena examined in Branding Latin America, not only helps to direct these flows in the face of stiff competition but also publicly legitimizes the nation-state’s authority and control over them. By spreading images and narratives that inspire a sense of shared identity and collective pride, nation-branding campaigns refashion Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community” ([1987] 2006) in line with neoliberal principles, reconfiguring citizenship, identity, and the public sphere in the process. On both domestic and international fronts, then, nation branding supports the spread of neoliberalism, perpetuates the principles of free-market competition, and shores up the legitimacy of select gatekeepers and beneficiaries, whilst feeding the impression of a spontaneous “resurgence of the national.” Whether seen as an effect of the strategic initiatives outlined above, or as part of a broader tendencies that reassert the importance of the individual, local, and territorial in the face of uneven global flows of power and capital



Context and Contestation 9

(to which we cannot do full justice here), the return of the nation as a “container of distinct identities and loyalties, as a project for sovereignty and self-determination” (Aronczyk 2013, 9) has in tandem engendered specific approaches in the corporate world, highlighting again the blurring of the political and the private via the contemporary ubiquity of neoliberal logics of competition. As Aronczyk argues, there is now a mutual formation of nation and brand (2013, 40). Just as the logic of branding applies corporate, competitive practices to the articulation of national identity, corporate forces have coopted the discursive frameworks of nationhood and national identity in order to inspire loyalty in their customers and staff. To cite a recent case, major Mexican convenience store chain Oxxo has commissioned a promotional campaign which features slogans such as México, creo en tí (“Mexico, I believe in you”) and Doy lo mejor de mi para mi México (“I give Mexico the best of me”) (see figure 0.1). These are not examples of government propaganda, as they might appear at first glance, but rather of the appropriation and thus reassertion of the nation as a source of symbolic and economic value. The mutual influence described here should not be confused with a straightforward transference of techniques and tactics from the world of advertising

Figure 0.1.  Oxxo’s México, creo en tí campaign Source: Courtesy of author.

10

Introduction

to the management of national image, as Aronczyk warns (2013). Indeed, as branding has expanded and branding consultants and practices multiplied, there has been an increase in critical examinations of the applicability of its traditional approaches and techniques. Central to these critiques is the refuted idea that a nation can be marketed in the same way as any consumer product. Instead, Dinnie urges the practitioners and MBA students who are the target audience of his work to understand that creative and editorial decisions concerning the nation brand should not begin with the brainstorming of logos and slogans; rather, the country’s culture should be considered the source, belonging not to any brand manager but to the “entire citizenry” (Dinnie 2015, 5). Some, like Anholt, have dismissed the idea of nation branding as “excessively ambitious, entirely unproven and ultimately irresponsible” (2008, 2)—a surprising change of heart for the so-called “father of nation branding.” While he concedes that a country’s reputation is as essential to its prosperity as a company’s brand image is to its success, he insists that branding is not something that can be “done” to a nation. Alternatively, Anholt has since encouraged the pursuit of “competitive identity,” molded on a combination of aspiration and self-awareness, which is the sum of symbolic actions that serve to advance a nation’s standing, “the synthesis of brand management with public diplomacy and with trade, investment, tourism and export promotion” (2007, 4). Anholt’s reference to public diplomacy, a communicative practice traditionally implemented by states to inform and influence foreign, usually non-state actors, raises the question of the differences between branding and other ways of thinking about strategic persuasion and distinction. Perhaps the most relevant alternative concept in this regard is Joseph Nye’s “soft power” (1990), which describes the ability to get what one wants by cooption rather than by coercion, and which—in its predominant application to nation-states—relies greatly on the governmental policy of public diplomacy. On the most basic level, then, we might see branding as a particular set of practices that can be used to increase or maintain soft power, particularly but not only in reference to nation-states. Indeed, both the emergence of the concept of soft power and the spread of branding to new spheres share the same, post-Cold War context characterized by economic interdependence; the rise of private, non-state actors; and the development of communications and transportation technologies. According to Nye, in this context, the “carrots” and “sticks” of traditional hard power become less feasible and effective, forcing countries to find new ways to “set the political agenda and determine the framework of debate,” shaping others’s preferences and interests to align with their own (1990, 166). Not quite influence, which can also be achieved through threats and force, and more than persuasion, soft power is thus the



Context and Contestation 11

ability to attract others (Nye 2004, 6), and in this sense it resonates with many of the goals of branding. Despite these similarities, however, there is a determining difference in emphasis between soft power and branding. Where the former belongs to the fields of politics and international relations, the latter maintains, despite expansion into other spheres, its origins in economics, business, and marketing. This is more than a question of discipline. The interdependence that uncovered soft power as an important asset for the solution of transnational problems and the pursuit of national goals also places at its heart the impulse to bring diverse actors together, creating consensus and commonality in values, interests, and objectives. That is not to say that it is necessarily altruistic; after all, “co-optive” (Nye 1990, 166) implies the prioritization of the self and the proper. However, it does set soft power apart from the brand—an identity that distinguishes the self as not just attractive but more attractive than others, and from branding—a strategic practice inescapably driven by the reality of limited resources and the demands of competition. It is no coincidence that soft power was initially developed as a framework to help the USA understand and face a new challenge to its hegemony: not the rising power of another country, but rather the “diffusion of power” across and beyond states (Nye 1990, 162). Whilst Nye’s more recent work on the concept (2004) considers its relevance to other countries and regions, and interestingly, to non-state actors, soft power remains rooted in a position of relative privilege, and its key assets—culture, political values, foreign policies, and institutions—are all dependent on some degree of hard power to be truly effective. For example, culture is of limited attractive use if a country lacks the industry and distribution infrastructure necessary to reach target audiences. Similarly, the existence of strong domestic institutions and the influence over international or multilateral ones that might shape the global agenda are clearly inextricable from historic and contemporary economic and military might. Thus, soft power and branding are also distinguished by the strength of their relative starting positions and the subsequent way in which they relate to others: while soft power co-opts, branding competes. Over two decades after Nye developed his concept of soft power, the “diffusion of power” between states and beyond them to transnational corporations and other non-state actors has continued and intensified. However, this has not resulted in an even playing field; as Nye himself recognized, diffusion reflects an interdependence that “does not mean harmony [. . . but] unevenly balanced mutual dependence” (Nye 1990, 158). The configuration of this balance may be nuanced by soft power, but it is also largely determined by hard power, both past and present. Given this uneven balance, branding is no longer seen as a tendency but increasingly as a necessity for those whose disadvantageous or

12

Introduction

threatened position forces them to think in terms of competition rather than cooption. As a result, branding is spreading to encompass new objects, including nation-states, institutions, communities, and even individuals, and expanding to include new features and tools, such as the social media campaign. Whilst the development of technology has helped branding, it has also complicated the construction of coherent, consistent, and attractive brands by making a messy multiplicity of images, narratives, and voices instantly accessible around the world. These mixed messages tip the balance of power again, often reinforcing or reconfiguring historic and contemporary imbalances. When this occurs, branding becomes justified once again by the urgent need to redress ignorance, indifference, and misinformation, facilitating competition on an overcrowded and uneven playing field. As we will see, it is Latin America’s relative (historical, structural) disadvantage on this playing field that makes it an illuminating lens through which to examine the solutions and strategies that branding offers, the problems it perpetuates, and the resistances it generates. LATIN AMERICA: UNEVEN PLAYING FIELDS AND SPECTACULAR VISIBILITY The emergence in Latin America of what we have been referring to as efforts to circulate strategic images and narratives of the collective—the emergence of branding, in other words—has its roots in colonization and the birth of global capitalism, and has been shaped by growing globalization, the rise of the society of the spectacle (Debord 1983), and postmodernity more broadly. Branding may thus be seen as a new attempt to intervene in a wider system that is already weighted in others’s favor. The origins of this uneven playing field can be traced back to the encounter between Europe and the “New World,” where Latin America’s key role in the production of modernity and the ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment coincided with a series of political, economic, demographic, and ideological interventions whose consequences have outlasted the formal end of colonialism. As Peruvian scholar Aníbal Quijano explains, the “constitutive, founding element of the relations of domination” imposed by conquest was the idea of race, a biological structure that determined a “natural situation of inferiority” and justified subjugation. At the same time, conquest also forged a new kind of control of labor, its resources, and products that articulated all previous forms “around and upon the basis of capital and the world market,” creating “world capitalism” (Quijano 2000, 533–534). These two aspects were inextricable in the establishment of a new system that placed Europe at the center of a world market and assigned not only particular forms of labor and production but also certain “geocultural



Context and Contestation 13

identities” to other regions and populations (Quijano 2000, 540). The idea that the structures, identities, and inequalities that originated in the colonial project continue to shape Latin America’s development and position in the global system, as well as, indeed, that system itself, may be summed up by Quijano’s term, “coloniality of power.” Although the injustices and oppression of colonialism fomented the emergence of concrete forms of intellectual and political nationalism in the Americas almost a century before they emerged in Europe (Quijano 1993, 143), these very same circumstances also rigged the outcome of such efforts, condemning them to frustration. Just as the region started to “define itself as a new social and cultural possibility,” its development was stalled by the restrictions imposed by its colonial centers, and the displacement of economic power towards England. From the eighteenth century onwards, Latin America experienced the cognitive dissonance of a modernity lived intellectually but not materially, a situation that contributed to the internalization of a view of the region as “a latecomer to, and almost passive victim of, ‘modernization’” (Quijano 1993, 144). This discourse of insufficiency and/or incompleteness in relation to a Western (European and, later, North American) model or ideal has been a constant in debates about Latin America, repeatedly reinterpreted, reinforced, or rejected by artists and thinkers—from José Enrique Rodó’s Ariel ([1900] 2010), a manifesto that figured Shakespeare’s character as the ethereal embodiment of Latin America’s alternative modernity, to Octavio Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad ([1950] 1972), which explored the historical and psychological foundations of Mexico’s apparent exclusion from modernity, to name but two classic examples. The latter tendency, both evidenced and named by Paz, to view Latin American history as a series of (frustrated) attempts to achieve modernity ([1986] 1998, 119) took a different turn in the 1980s, when debates around postmodernity gave rise to new theorizations of the region’s alternative, incomplete, peripheral, hybrid modernities. Perhaps best known amongst these interventions is Néstor García Canclini’s suggestion that Latin America be viewed in terms of its culturas híbridas (hybrid cultures), multiple, coexisting temporalities, discourses, and values, and complex internal and international relationships (1995). Similarly, for Nelly Richard, the postmodern perspective made it possible to see Latin America not as insufficient or incomplete but rather as the product of multiple pasts and heterogeneous cultures (1993). While these reframings of Latin American histories, cultures, and identities deconstructed the notion of deficiency with respect to a Western ideal and asserted regional and national distinctiveness, the political and economic contexts in which these debates took place continued to testify to the coloniality of power, as global capitalism appeared to undermine divisions and differences

14

Introduction

to recreate the world as market whilst also reinforcing historical structural and symbolic inequalities. From the early decades of the twentieth century until the 1980s, the region’s economies had been characterized by attempts to build domestic industries and services, particularly in basic goods, banking, and infrastructure, in an effort to eliminate dependence and achieve development at the same time. However, the limited success of such projects was brought to a halt by the 1980s, when the foreign debt acquired to finance costly import substitution industrialization (ISI) programs finally and decisively outgrew earning power, most notably in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Amidst a global recession, the region was faced with soaring interest rates and hyperinflation which led to rising unemployment, falling wages, and stagnant growth. The depth of the crisis combined with pressure from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the US government to impose neoliberal reform as the only and natural solution to the region’s profound problems. Whilst local elites were motivated by the desire to preserve existing socio-economic hierarchies, the general population was often brought on board by the urgency of the inflation problem, which helped to conceal transitions to neoliberalism as targeted, temporary solutions to a specific situation (Saad-Filho 2004, 225). In several countries, these transitions to neoliberalism coincided with and were complicated by political transitions from dictatorship. Argentina returned to constitutional rule in 1983 following a euphemistically-termed “National Reorganization Process” (1976–1983), characterized by assassinations, disappearances, and human rights violations, as well as economic reforms that liberalized imports and foreign borrowing, damaging domestic industry and increasing socioeconomic inequalities in the country. Presidents Raúl Alfonsín (1983–1989), Carlos Menem (1998–1999), and Fernando de la Rúa (1999–2001) struggled against the inflation crisis that had triggered the end of ISI under dictatorship with increasingly drastic budget cuts and privatizations. Renegotiations with the IMF allowed Argentina to keep borrowing, but the country repeatedly failed to meet the terms of the programs. These difficulties culminated in the depression of 1998–2002, arguably the worst since independence, when unemployment, spending cuts, tax increases, and a freeze on bank accounts sparked widescale rioting. For many, the desaparecidos (disappeared) of the dictatorship had become the excluidos (excluded) of a cruel neoliberal system, and political transition masked a continuity of marginalization and oppression. In Chile, this overlap between oppressive authoritarian politics and neoliberal economics was clearer still, with General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) overseeing the implementation of a “shock therapy” characterized by privatization and trade liberalization. This contributed to a so-called economic “miracle” that lasted until the 1982 crisis, but also jeopardized national industry, increased unemployment, and deepened inequality. As the paradoxical slogan, Continuidad y cambio



Context and Contestation 15

(continuity and change) indicated, democratization in Chile—led by President Patricio Aylwin (1990–1994)—was combined with a project that pursued growth over and above any redistributive measures, maintaining the neoliberal orientation established under dictatorship. Both in Chile and beyond, neoliberal reforms were led by the so-called “Chicago Boys”—a group of primarily Chilean economists who had trained at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger before returning to take up influential positions in governments across the region during the 1970s and 1980s. The result of economic crisis, soaring foreign debts, and the dominance of domestic technocrats and international financial institutions combined with democratization processes to make this a period of heightened visibility and intense scrutiny for the region. As the century came to a close, political transitions and economic reforms shaped by the Washington Consensus and the Chicago Boys sought to put Latin American countries such as Chile “back on the map,” declaring them open for business and claiming—in new, neoliberal terms—their belonging to a civilized, democratic world figured as an open market. But whilst these badges of progress—democracy and free trade—were traditionally paired in European and North American history, in Latin America, political liberalism had typically been associated not with economic liberalism, but rather with state interventionism and social redistribution. In this context, it is largely thanks to the limitations that neoliberal reforms have imposed on the region and on the quality of its democracies that this form of governance—and mark of modernity—has been sustained in Latin America (Weyland 2004). Paradoxically, the political and economic systems that have sought to align the region with development, modernity, and progress have also worked to limit choice, minimize dissent, and weaken public debate—the very values championed by advocates of democracy and the free market. As Kurt Weyland has argued, neoliberalism has had a “double-sided” impact on the region (2004: 137). Firstly, the interdependence created by neoliberal reforms has subjected the region to heightened external political and economic pressures to maintain democratic rule. This was particularly evident in the Peru of 1992, where US protests and the need to reestablish good relations with the IMF quickly convinced President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) to reverse his autogolpe (self-coup) and restore congress. At the same time, neoliberal reforms have weakened internal threats to democracy by securing local elites. Weyland explains that calls for extensive social reforms and redistribution from citizens, left-wing parties, and trade unions historically had the effect of alarming political and economic elites in the region, leading them to seek the intervention of the military to restore or reinforce the status quo, thereby effectively disrupting democracy. However, thanks to a dominant

16

Introduction

international business sector and neoliberal measures such as privatization, market de-regulation, and trade liberalization, these former threats have been dramatically diminished. With the region’s “economic, social, and political elites [. . .] much more secure nowadays” (Weyland 2004, 142), military intervention has become both unnecessary and undesirable, and (formal) democracy has thus been maintained. Secondly, Weyland shows how neoliberalism has also—and by the same token—constrained and weakened the quality of democracy, both externally, by limiting the range of social and economic policies realistically available to nation-states, and internally, by weakening the size and strength of civil and political institutions. We thus arrive at a situation in which longstanding inequalities are heightened but political participation and public debate is limited. Although democracy has facilitated open expression, the wane of left-wing associations and the rise of transnational political and business elites has hampered the emergence of plural discourses, perspectives, and projects. This has taken on particular importance in post-dictatorship contexts, which have been marked by struggles over how to record, remember, and redress a repressive past. Whilst popular and cultural contestations of official narratives of transition (see Masiello 2001, Richard 2004, or Fornazzari 2013, for example) have been further fueled by widening social inequalities under neoliberalism, governments have been keen to project a new, confident image to the world and unite their countries behind “new” economic and political projects. In this environment, the promises and procedures of branding appear particularly appealing and practicable, such that the turn of the century has seen the Chicago Boys brand of libertarian economics increasingly supplemented, if not replaced, by a new set of discourses, practices, and technocrats. On the one hand, nation-states are keen to emerge from the shadows cast on their reputations by economic crises and authoritarian regimes; in the globalized age of digital technologies, twenty-four-hour media, and dependence on international markets, Latin America needs a new, spectacular face for the world. As in the past, when national symbols and World Exhibition displays sought to stake the nation-state’s position in a world system, this new face needs to elicit both identification (“they are like us—as good as us”) and also recognition of difference (“they have something different and valuable”) from more powerful Others. On the other hand, this pursuit of strategic, spectacular visibility is also directed internally, at citizens themselves, constructing an appealing image and coherent narrative that places branding within a longer history of collective self-imagining. However, whereas the performative creation and assertion of collective identity associated with independence processes in Latin America was directed towards political and cultural sovereignty, more recent attempts



Context and Contestation 17

to encourage identification with particular images and narratives of the collective only further imbricate that collective in the unequal power dynamics of global capitalism. More specifically, these images and stories attempt to ensure that all sectors share the same vision and work together to meet the approved strategic goals. In this process, the private sector, the public sector, and civil society are all reconfigured as stakeholders in an entity (the city, region, or nation) that is itself redefined as a sort of business—a business that, of course, has an inevitable final goal: profit. Ultimately, then, they aim to cultivate compliance with a neoliberal development agenda. Any sense of identity that is created or performed in the process must serve this agenda, whether more or less directly. By creating an appealing and strategic identity—a brand—local economic and political elites may be able to raise the funds, make the deals, and engage the partners necessary to achieve a certain kind of development, perhaps edging closer to being included within the list of the world’s “developed nations.” But this potential recognition and development come at a price, either literally through international debt, or metaphorically through social inequality and unrest. The present functioning of this system in Latin America comes into sharper view when we consider the example of Brazil’s recent hosting of the World Cup (2014) and the Olympic Games (2016). The bidding process for such global cultural events is extensive and elaborate, not least because of the promise of increased tourism, investment, employment, and international visibility that accompanies both the events themselves as well as their lengthy preparation periods. Perhaps most importantly, these mega-events are designed to provide a lasting impact that furthers their hosts’s long-term, strategic objectives. As is clear from the benefits mentioned above, many of these goals are ultimately economic in nature, but they also aim to propagate positive images, which in Brazil’s case related to the dominant narrative of the country as an emerging economy—one of the BRICS stars (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Crucially, in order to be successful in their bids, hosts must have a well-defined set of objectives, and a clear vision of the intended legacy of the event in question, “with all of the relevant organizations, authorities and stakeholders working together as one united team” (Olympic Games Candidature Process). Combining sport, cultural events, social initiatives, infrastructural development, international PR, and extensive investment, both the World Cup and Olympic Games exemplify the highly conspicuous imbrication of culture, identity, economics, and international relations in today’s world. Moreover, these events are highly political. As the debates and protests that took place in the build-up to Brazil’s World Cup demonstrate, consensus amongst such a broad range of “stakeholders” is elusive, and the selection, prioritization, and enactment of collective goals a contested terrain. The visibility

18

Introduction

brought by such events also places under critical scrutiny existing and aspirational images and narratives of the collective—whether that be city, region, or (and especially) nation—revealing them to be selective, fragile constructs. Maite Conde and Tariq Jazeel (2013) point out that whilst the protests that erupted in São Paulo in June 2013 may have been triggered by the very local and apparently minor issue of the increased cost of public transport, they responded to deep-rooted national problems of corruption, police brutality, and poor public services. This accumulated discontent was catalyzed by the “dress rehearsal” for the World Cup: the Confederations Cup. However, the event was not just a catalyst; rather, the conspicuous and copious spending of taxes to prepare for both the Confederations Cup and the World Cup and increase Brazil’s international profile brought into focus the unevenness of the country’s recent development. In this way, the hypervisible time and space of Brazil’s streets and stadiums leading up to and during these international events became the staging ground for debates about citizenship, governance, and collective goals and priorities. They demonstrated, in dramatic and even spectacular ways, the discrepancies between the image of Brazil that the events were intended to propagate, and the various conflicting visions of local actors. Furthermore, through their actions in this period, citizens constructed new collective identities and political cultures, breaking with the models of protest and party affiliation familiar from the 1970s and 1980s (Conde and Jazeel 2013). The repeated displacement of marginal urban communities, the investment in disproportionately-sized stadiums, and the construction of extensive retail spaces (whose profits would be siphoned off to international corporations) in preparation for these high-profile events, occurred alongside internationally visible, nationwide protests to highlight “the strange collision of neoliberalism and democratization” that has characterized Brazilian developmentalism since the 1990s (Conde and Jazeel 2013, 440). It is a combination that has seen social and economic inequality rise at alarming rates, whilst also leading to developments such as the 2001 enshrinement into the Constitution of the “right to the city,” which attempts to ensure that urban development caters to citizens’s needs before lining the pockets of national elites and transnational corporations. Although this particular pledge is unique in the world, the combined circumstances of neoliberalization and democratization apply to much of Latin America over the last thirty years. The often uneven, troubled, and incomplete nature of democratization processes across the region has turned efforts to stage collective development, identity, and distinctiveness to both domestic and foreign audiences into sites of contestation and conflict. Whilst democratization created the possibility of dissent and fragmentation of national narratives, particularly concerning past traumas, the negotiation of these issues in the public sphere has revealed a reluctance to interrogate rela-



Context and Contestation 19

tionships between current governments and previous regimes and to hold to account those responsible for the crimes of dictatorship. Continuing attempts to impose singular stories have also been motivated by the desire to rebuild an international reputation of political and economic stability and leave the past definitively behind. These circumstances have combined with the effects of neoliberal policies on social inequality to produce an uneven playing field increasingly shaped by deliberate, primarily but not exclusively state-led efforts to promote strategic, positive images and narratives that might suture the wounds of the recent past whilst helping particular cities, regions, or nationstates to compete in the global marketplace. At the same time, the proliferation of new media in the same period has meant that the very visibility deliberately sought for the purposes of neoliberal development can also be its undoing, perpetuating stereotypes, circulating stories of corruption, disaster, and war, and creating new sources of stigma, most notably in relation to the “war on drugs” in Colombia and Mexico. Importantly, these media are more open than ever before, resulting in a multiplication of images and fragmentation of narratives. One of the most spectacular examples of this was the Sandinistas’s commandeering of Nicaraguan television in the wake of their overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1979. Later, in 1994, armed Zapatista guerrillas seized control of several towns in the Mexican state of Chiapas and broadcast their demands to overthrow Mexican president and North American Free Trade Agreement author Carlos Salinas over the internet to a stunned global audience, citing the treaty’s threat of inequality and denouncing historic abuses at the hands of the government. These two telling examples of the interweaving of politics and media demonstrate the importance of creating and controlling new narratives and images for new or alternative political projects. Of course, the proliferation of news sources and content channels through the internet in more recent years has proven the most decisive development in this sense, “democratizing” information to some degree, whilst also reconfiguring existing inequalities along new technological lines. Similarly, rather than straightforwardly uniting citizens in a common project and integrating them as equal actors in a developed, globalized world, the official and unofficial work of branding carried out by government officials, economists, businessmen, consultants, and other individuals in Latin America over the last two decades has often played into longstanding inequalities. By circulating specific, strategic images of their cities, regions, and countries, the state and its partners in the private sector repeat and reshape patterns of marginalization present in the nation-building projects of the nineteenth century. Moreover, in their bids to intensify and direct global flows of goods, people, and capital, these initiatives create and amplify internal socio-spatial divisions of labor and competitive relations (Pike 2009). Such inequality can also

20

Introduction

be mapped onto a global level, as many Latin American governments have continued to “sell” their countries as sources of raw materials, whilst others have attempted to redefine their economies in terms of the service industry, promoting visions of their countries as sources of cheap, skilled labor. In this process, the divisions of labor carved out by the extractivism and forced mass migrations characteristic of the colonial period are reproduced and reconfigured for a new era. These aforementioned divisions do not concern only physical labor, but also affective work and symbolic capital. The “New World” has not lost its colonial associations with discovery, novelty, exoticism, and emotion. These notions are renewed most conspicuously through tourism campaigns— “Mexico: the place you thought you knew,” “Colombia is passion,” “Discover Nicaragua . . . Experience Nicaragua”—but also, perhaps more surprisingly, in other spheres; a tango-dancing couple is the seemingly unlikely image chosen to illustrate a national investment brochure entitled “Embrace your Passion, Invest in Argentina,” for example (Dinnie 2015, 73). Aptly, Marta Savigliano (1995) uses precisely the example of Argentine tango in order to explain the notion of exotic capital, expanding existing historical accounts by suggesting that flows of exotic capital between Latin America and the imperial West have represented a parallel to global capitalism. Exotic capital forms a raw export through which the peripheral Third World is represented to the rest of the world, constituting a source of symbolic wealth that can be produced, distributed, consumed, and traded; this political economy of passion, according to Savigliano, is “a trackable trafficking in emotions and affects” (1995, 1–2). Notwithstanding the violence entailed by this consumption and its intimate association with colonialism (Sheller 2003), contemporary forms of consumption have seen brands and branding direct and capture these flows of symbolic wealth in very deliberate ways and for particular strategic purposes. As we have seen, it is both possible and illuminating to place branding within a longer Latin American history of struggles for independence, recognition, and development, as well as a bigger picture of shifting but unequal power dynamics between colonial centers and colonized peripheries, between developed and underdeveloped countries, between the First and the Third Worlds, between the West and and its Others. In particular, we could trace a line of continuity between certain contemporary uses of branding and the formation and consolidation of the nation-state through practices and signifiers (anthems, currency, flags) that facilitated the development of an internal imagined community (Anderson [1987] 2006) and allowed fellow nation-states to recognize an equivalent if not equal member of the world of nations (Billig 1995). Whilst these projects may have been primarily political, the creation of internal coherence and international visibility would undoubtedly have con-



Context and Contestation 21

tributed to new nation-states’s trade capacities, economies, and international standing. Given such connections between branding and Latin America’s history, we might ask: what is different now? What differentiates branding from the kinds of collective performance, image, and narrative associated with the colonial, republican, and modern periods? The contributions in this book seek to answer these questions by combining theoretical frameworks drawn from a variety of disciplines with close, context-sensitive analyses to offer, for the first time, a sustained critical perspective on the strategies, aims, and consequences of branding. BRANDING LATIN AMERICA: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE The markers, images, and narratives of identity associated with the formation of the nation-state aimed to create internal coherence and foster international recognizability within a world of nations. Citing these key goals and effects, commentators and practitioners such as Wally Olins (1989) have figured branding as a natural and almost inevitable development of modern history. According to this logic, the country brand logo is the new flag or coat of arms, the catchy slogan is a new national anthem that serves to identify and unite the collective, and “brand values” are the Romantic Volksgeist of our times. Whilst it may be true that twenty-first century city, region, and nation brands often share similar goals to the nation-building exercises of previous centuries, there is one decisive difference: fostering national unity and international visibility now have the ultimate aim of economic competitiveness in an ever-more intricately interconnected global marketplace. Reconfiguring state and citizenry as stakeholders, branding seeks recognition from a world of corporations as much as from a world of nations, and in so doing, it amplifies existing geopolitical inequalities. By affirming the continued validity of the ‘local’ (however that may be conceived) as an influential repository of meaning and value, contemporary branding practices appear to resist the flattening of differences associated with globalization and neoliberalism. Such an (admittedly reframed) assertion of difference seems to corroborate the trajectory that leads from nation-formation to nation-branding, but by shoring up the exchange value of the local, it is also complicit in the erosion of that very difference. Branding thus adds new economic, political, and cultural layers to historically-shaped inequalities, cementing the unbalanced power dynamics already present in the nineteenth century’s world of nations. Indeed, as our first contributor shows in “Promotion Before Nation Branding: Chile at the Universal Exhibitions,” the global inequalities through which nation-states were forged and into which they emerged feed into the global

22

Introduction

competition that shapes brands and creates the perceived need for branding today. Of the twenty-three International Expos in which Chile participated between 1851 and 2010, Andrea Paz Cerda Pereira considers five from across several centuries, revealing the ways in which the images, narratives, and techniques used by Chile at early universal exhibitions can be seen as precursors of the marketization of national imaginaries evident in Chile’s branding-influenced participation in 2010. Through a review of these different exhibitions, our first chapter traces key characteristics of Chile’s representation over time, paying particular attention to the narratives associated with the assembling of each national display and the technological devices used by the state administration to stage, communicate, and exhibit Chile to the world. Taking a comparative approach to the longue durée of Chile’s international image, Cerda Pereira’s contribution highlights the persistence of the notion of Chile as an eternal “work in progress,” a teleological narrative of development dictated by a system of classification that underpins both the Universal Exhibition project and the phenomenon of nation branding. The discourses that subsume branding into a longer history of nation building and so frame it as a benevolent intervention tend to make invisible the inequalities and injustices that branding perpetuates and even exacerbates. As this volume aims to show, then, we need a more nuanced view that considers context and continuity in order to place brands and branding within a critical global history. One of the apparent differences between nation-building projects and branding campaigns is that whereas the former involved the invention and management of a coherent collective and identity by a country’s political, economic, and intellectual elites, the latter supposedly depart from and rely on a starting consensus between a variety of “stakeholders.” However, not only is such harmony notoriously elusive among parties with such different interests, but it also paints a false picture of the equality of each stakeholder. Given the neoliberal logic that underpins branding, the private sector becomes a crucial ally whilst civil society is quickly reified as a quasi-Romantic repository of unique “essence” or “authentic” culture that could constitute a competitive edge. It is hardly surprising then that the majority of existing scholarship on branding generalizes at best and glosses over at worst the messy variety of voices that prevent society at large from functioning as a single, coherent, consistent ally to the neoliberal project. The complex relationship of individuals and communities to brands and branding is simplified, and resistance is reconfigured as an unfortunate instance of the imperfect application of techniques and principles. However, as our second contributor, Félix Lossio Chávez notes, nationbranding campaigns in Latin America have not been passively received, but rather actively challenged and contested. In “The Counter-narratives of



Context and Contestation 23

Nation Branding: The Case of Peru,” he looks in detail at the resistance to Peru’s 2011 nation-branding campaign enacted by local artists and designers, who disseminated video parodies and visual reconfigurations of the original logos and slogans publicly on social networks. Lossio-Chávez uses discourse and visual analysis alongside interviews with creators to analyze the social significance of these nation brand counter-campaigns. Through the promotion of “alternative stories” (Julier 2011) far from the official branding campaign’s purposes, they shed light on social and political tensions such as economic inequality, racism, the overexploitation of natural resources, and state repression. The chapter shows how these images disrupt and disturb the idyllic-exotic depiction of the nation oriented toward the touristic gaze in the global market, rooting the idealistic nation brand in more problematic situations. By fighting the hegemonic construction of the nation based on neoliberal discourses and executed through branding techniques, these artists and designers question the state’s (apparently) legitimate monopoly over branding. As they encourage public awareness of the dissociation between brand and reality, these resistant actors engage in a sort of symbolic battle with the nation-brand’s other “stakeholders.” Rather than being simply destructive, Lossio-Chávez argues that such interventions play a potentially productive role: they expand the horizon in which the nation is narrated and turn nationbranding efforts into opportunities for much-needed public debate. This second contribution demonstrates that only a detailed examination of specific cases, informed by a thorough understanding of context, can yield a nuanced account of how branding acts on and is acted out in reality. By contrast, existing literature often elaborates goal-oriented, generalized accounts of how public and private sectors may interact to create and benefit from branding campaigns. However, such practical accounts and the similarly pragmatic approaches they describe leave untouched or at least under-examined two of the most important characteristics of successful brands: authenticity and affect. Implicit in the work of authors such as Dinnie (2015) is the notion of the brand as an almost effortless encapsulation of preexisting, authentic “essence” to be found in landscapes, people, and culture. By ensuring identification, this authenticity allows the brand to successfully interpellate domestic audiences, and by expressing distinctiveness, it appeals to international markets. In both cases, perceived authenticity is the prerequisite for an affective connection between brand and audience that is in turn the condition of the brand’s effectiveness. As our third chapter suggests, in no context is this more true than in tourism, and in no country does it apply more than contemporary Cuba. Indeed, the recent frenzy around seeing the “real” Cuba “before it changes” testifies to a fascination heightened by recent political, economic, and social shifts. Our third contributor, Rebecca Ogden,

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Introduction

therefore departs from the island’s most recent, and highly successful tourism campaign—Auténtica Cuba—in order to explore the possibilities and problems created by branding’s reliance on authenticity and affect. “Living the Brand: Authenticity and Affective Capital in Contemporary Cuban Tourism” shows that perceived authenticity constitutes one of Cuba’s most important USPs (Unique Selling Propositions), distinguishing it from competitors who have been rendered “inauthentic” through overexposure— not only in terms of their visibility in the tourist marketplace, but also in the extent of their immersion in homogenizing global flows of goods and technologies. Ogden reveals how, in contrast to such destinations, Cuba’s most recent tourism campaign plays into the perception of the island as a space of authentic human interaction and affective connection, offering immediacy and intimacy in a hypermediated world. Using unposed scenes of everyday Cuban life, Auténtica Cuba constructs cultural authenticity and trades on affective capital as markers of competitive difference. In this touristic vision, encounters with ordinary Cubans become the gateway to an authentic, affective experience, and the state has responded to this demand by opening up possibilities for interaction between foreigners and tourists. But, as Ogden argues, the continued restrictions to such contact testify to a much more complicated, conflicted dynamic between “brandees” and brand audiences than normally allowed by both practitioners and theorists. If authenticity and affective capital—key to Cuba’s tourism brand—are generated and circulated through contact between tourists and locals, a paradox is created: in order for the brand to succeed, the creators of that brand (here, the state) must relinquish some control over its implementation. As Ogden demonstrates in relation to Cuba’s particular political and economic context, this presents a dilemma that testifies to branding’s fundamentally relational nature. In other words, a brand is not simply an expression of how the “brandee” wants to be seen, but also a concession to the desires, demands, and expectations of its audience. As such, it is molded by a series of complex, affectively-charged relationships at individual and collective, local and global levels. In their star role in the Auténtica Cuba campaign, the Cuban population is cast as the object, subject, and means by which the national tourism brand is mobilized. Whilst the images, narratives, and values that make up such a brand may have been formulated, refined, and combined by key stakeholders on the basis of perceived pre-existing qualities, the projection of that brand and the pressure of expectation to uphold it must nevertheless be recognized as a new kind of disciplinary measure. Indeed, the very fact that the brand in such cases claims to express and champion local values, cultures, and identities serves to increase its efficacy as a device by which to mold and direct the behavior of citizens and thereby further the agendas of the brand’s more pow-



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erful stakeholders—the state and the private sector. As Paula Gómez Carrillo shows in “Covert Nation Branding and the Neoliberal Subject: The Case of ‘It’s Colombia, NOT, Columbia,’” the engagement of the population with a brand through campaigns that claim to come from the “grassroots” is one of the key recent developments in branding. Our fourth chapter analyzes a social media campaign created to correct the common misspelling of Colombia and increase national visibility as an example of this expansion of nation branding to new, covert strategies that effectively perpetuate and intensify the neoliberal project, which fundamentally aims to expand the logic of the market to other realms. Despite being manufactured by two private companies in conjunction with the official nation brand of Colombia, the “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” campaign (ICNC) was positioned as a social movement steered by Colombian citizens. Gómez Carillo therefore uses this case to focus on an implied but underexamined category within both practices and studies of nation branding: the citizen. More specifically, by examining citizens’s own perceptions of their role within the campaign, this contribution sheds light on covert nation branding as a focalized and intense practice of the phenomenon—an improved neoliberal technique used by governments to shape common sense by directly targeting citizens from below. Deploying a theoretical framework inflected by Foucault’s analysis of governmentality and drawing on studies of nation branding that reflect on this concept (Browning 2013; Dzenovska 2005; Varga 2013; Volcic and Andrejevic 2011), Gómez Carillo highlights the fact that the citizen who participates in and supports covert nationbranding initiatives such as ICNC does not operate spontaneously, but rather in response to a complex network of power relations. Within this web, nation branding and its covert extensions work to reconfigure the subject according to a disciplinary logic that seeks to produce the forms of self-mastery, selfregulation, and self-control (Rose 1996) deemed necessary to govern a nation made up of citizens responsible for its future (Aronczyk 2013, 40). Notwithstanding its sophistication, which allows it to seduce the subject while leaving him or her to assume different roles, to creatively participate, and to promote him or herself, covert nation branding only endorses one kind of subjectivity: the neoliberal one. By revealing the imbrication of nation branding with practices of self-branding, Gómez Carillo argues that the expansion and covert operation of branding practices serve to naturalize a neoliberal rationality, weakening much-needed critical debates about the social, political, and economic problems faced by citizens. The ICNC campaign is a striking example of the operation of covert branding practices through social media and digital technologies. As Gómez Carillo explains, the campaign encourages citizens to tweet examples of misspellings

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Introduction

and take selfies connected by the official hashtag in order to capture allegiances and enlist them in the service of the nation-branding project. It is evident from this case study that the internet is an important frontier and facilitator of contemporary nation branding. However, the digital sphere may also function as a key space of resistance, according to our fifth contributor, Claire Taylor. Indeed, “Resisting the Brand, Resisting the Platform? Digital Genres and The Contestation of Corporate Powers in Belén Gache’s Radikal Karaoke” provides an analysis of an online project that engages in a process of what we might call “resistant branding,” in which digital technologies are employed to contest the corporate powers so often associated with those technologies, and the dynamics of late capitalism. The work under analysis is Argentine author Belén Gache’s Radikal Karaoke (2011), an online piece combining text, still and moving images, sound files, and user-activated effects. The chapter argues that Gache’s recycling of platitudes, slogans, and commonplaces encourages us to critique the practices of corporate branding, as the “paradigmatic embodiment of the logic of informational capitalism” (Arvidsson 2006, 13). The various key figures in this work—the zombie that represents the consumer in thrall to commodity fetishism, the slave that embodies alienated labour, the faceless representatives of corporate power with which the game opens—are all, in some sense, emptied out—of content, of historicity, of subjectivity, and of agency. Our own insertion into this line of alienated figures forces us to consider how we, too, may be robbed of our agency by the workings of late capitalism. Through its use of mock trademark symbols, remixing of phrases, mobilization of images of alienation, and, ultimately, imbrication of the user in the work, Radikal Karaoke provides a critique of the status of the individual under late capitalism and corporatism, and works to denaturalize the hegemonic discourses of corporate capital. As has become increasingly clear, branding involves an ongoing struggle over economic, political, cultural, exotic, and affective capital between multiple actors, from the individual to the collective, and from both inside and outside. Moreover, this is clearly a struggle that takes place on uneven ground: a terrain shaped by the past (preconceptions, stereotypes, and history) and the present (existing systems, networks, and political economies). For the governments of countries such as Chile, Peru, Colombia, or Mexico, the tools associated with practices of nation branding, public diplomacy, or soft power have, since the late twentieth century, offered a relatively cheap way of allegedly projecting a positive image of their country for mostly economic, but also political and cultural goals. Several authors have rightly observed that these practices attempt to craft a relatively homogenous version of national identity, thus flattening out diversity and minimizing potential conflict (Kaneva 2011; Aronczyk 2013). However, as our sixth contributor points



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out, in an age of “new visibility” (Thompson 2005), no party can completely control the messages, images and narratives that circulate through the media. Despite branding experts’ insistence that the efficacy and consistency of a national image rests on the combined and correlatory efforts of many actors, it is also granted that the nation brand “owner” does not have control of how it is received externally (Anholt 2008, 3). Furthermore, and beyond the reception of the brand in the global space, actors may also interfere with attempts to create specific national images and narratives as they reshape them for their international audiences. As such, César Jiménez-Martínez warns, nation branding does not take place in a vacuum and should be seen as only one of several narratives or images attempting to gain visibility in the media space. Focusing on the tensions surrounding the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Jiménez-Martínez’s chapter, titled “Protests, News and Nation Branding: The Role of Foreign Journalists in Constructing and Projecting the Image of Brazil during the June 2013 Demonstrations,” empirically examines some of the beliefs, perceptions, and practices surrounding the struggles behind the crafting of the image of a country for foreign audiences. Drawing on twenty interviews conducted with foreign correspondents and freelance journalists who covered the June 2013 protests in Brazil, this chapter argues, firstly, that the attempts to promote the image of a nation abroad are far from being consensual and monolithic, but are rather characterized by a series of struggles among and within organizations, institutions, and individuals. Secondly, it proposes that the political economy and practices of media organizations play a key role in determining the kind of images or narratives that receive more attention, as well as the timing in which this occurs. Finally, it points to a spectacularization of visual politics due to the role played by images—in their most literal sense—in giving more mediated visibility to the demonstrations and, at the same time, in contributing to the emptying out of the protests of the purposes that originally drove them. Jiménez-Martínez’s analysis of what he names the “struggle” for the national image in the context of international visibility and consumption draws our attention to the ways in which branding can result from external imaginings and impositions, as well as from international economic and cultural exchanges or collaborations. Examples from the context of so-called ‘World Music’ include the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon—a term used to describe the visibility of Cuba and international popularization of its culture following the release of the eponymous son album (Cooder 1997) and music documentary (Wenders 1999). The sequels, tours, recordings, and spin-off albums generated by Buena Vista Social Club speak to the unprecedented visibility that artists of Hispanic descent have achieved in the West in recent years, drawing from and contributing to the establishment of a broader

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“Latin” brand—a strategic (and often stereotypical) identity that has been used to market not only music but also other cultural products such as cinema and television. In successfully selling themselves and their work, these “Latin” musicians have fulfilled one of the recurrent aspirations within Hispanic cultures of the modern period: to be once more considered significant by others, especially in powerful countries. The mainstream artist who most exemplifies this assertion of international relevance is Pitbull, whose “Mr. Worldwide” brand and persona is the focus of Andrew Ginger’s contribution: “International Love? ‘Latino’ Music Videos, the Latin Brand of Universality, and Pitbull.” It is easy to show that many recent depictions of Latin artists—and most obviously the Pitbull character—both draw on established stereotypes of “Latins” and flauntingly reinforce gender stereotypes. Equally, a video such as “International Love” can be viewed as a provocation: the Latin male employs the very stereotyping that brands him as the basis of apocalyptic world success, as a “brand.” In its broad outlines, Ginger argues, the brand is a reinvention of long-term strategic aspirations in Spanish-speaking cultures, whose primary concern was to alter the balance of power back in their own favor. Thus, in his music video “International Love,” Pitbull, a Hispanic artist, towers over the world. The relevant trends, from Vasconcelos to Rodó, might be summarized as follows: (a) to claim that cultural specifics attributed to Latins are what give them universal importance; (b) to reject, in so doing, any equation between the identification of cultural specifics and the notion that these are confined to a context of place and time; (c) in some instances (for example, Vasconcelos) to link the Latin’s sexualized body to this universality. Wittingly or otherwise, and saving the obvious differences, Pitbull’s “International Love” echoes the amorous Universópolis of Vasconcelos. To borrow Alejandro López-Mejías’s description of modernismo (2009), then, all this can be seen as an inverted conquest: what was subjected returns to take over. Pitbull’s Mr. Worldwide brand makes evident that cultural forms, as much as the concerted campaigns designed by marketing experts and typically associated with the phenomenon of nation branding, are significant in our attempt to explain the narratives and images that sell places, cultures, and even individuals. Cultural forms with international reach and aesthetic appeal, such as cinema and music, function by balancing creative expression and commercial imperatives. As such, they can both reinforce existing perceptions and contribute strategic representations that (re)brand more than just the artist and their work. A brand can therefore be formed not only through but also, and perhaps more often, quite apart from official promotional campaigns. It is this alternative reading of a brand that is explored by Dunja Fehimović, whose



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chapter “The Paradoxes of the ‘Cuban Brand’: Authenticity, Resistance, and Heroic Victimhood in Cuban Film” explores how two recent Cuban films have perpetuated the key characteristics of an unofficial Cuban brand. Despite a political context that makes it impossible to adopt branding discourses or practices in any overt way, a Cuban brand—forged by external representations, market imperatives, and internal political shifts—has emerged through the images of and narratives about the island that started to circulate in the early 1990s. The new geopolitical context triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc saw official discourse reconfigure the Cuban imagined community along cultural and identitarian rather than strictly political lines, as the country renegotiated its position in the world and reinserted itself into global flows of capital. Artists were among the first to be encouraged to sell their work abroad for hard currency, while filmmakers were forced to turn outward in search of foreign co-producers by the wane of the national film institute. This new reliance on international partners and markets reshaped a previously politicized, thoroughly national cinema according to neoliberal demands and foreign expectations. Fehimović argues that the effects of this situation are evident in two recent films: Habana Blues (dir. Benito Zambrano, 2005) and La película de Ana (dir. Daniel Díaz Torres, 2012)—international co-productions that embody, in narrative and production, the coexistence of compromise and resistance. Both films tell stories of creative Cubans who must decide on the terms of their personal and professional relationships with foreigners, reflecting Cuba’s uncomfortable accommodation with(in) a global neoliberal order. In analyzing these films, Fehimović’s chapter shows that from these political, cultural, and market imperatives a paradoxical Cuban “brand” has emerged, defining the island in terms of authenticity and selling its culture on the basis of a local refusal to “sell out.” Speaking to Cuban experiences of hardship and resilience whilst also advancing national economic agendas that rely on cultural exports and tourism, this “brand” raises a question of urgent broader relevance. If the Cuban brand derives its coherence and competitiveness—its very success—from a central paradox that allows it to assimilate resistance into its very core, it forces us to ask: what forms can resistance take in the face of an overwhelming neoliberal logic that threatens to swallow our protests whole, only to sell them back to us? While the majority of this volume’s chapters deal with the way in which individual Latin American states, through both public and private initiatives, strive to “brand” the nation via the advancement of positive images and signifiers, the final chapter by Brett Levinson attempts to tackle the possibility that this academic scrutiny of branding on the part of Latin American literary and cultural studies—a scrutiny that is not at all reducible to this

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Introduction

book—rather than exposing the neoliberal impetus of the Latin American nation, stands in complete complicity with this enterprise. The campaigns cited in this book target the domestic public in the interest of a neoliberal consensus, that is, the production of the populace’s general conviction that, through the market, the nation is moving in the proper direction, that is, toward a more perfect democracy. Similar, or even the same maneuvers take aim at an international audience in the name of tourism and investment. The idea pitched, implicitly or explicitly, is that globalization, multinational enterprises, and democracy pertain to a single movement. The signs of branding translate the injustices of neoliberalism, in which a pluralist multitude enters into an unforced and non-violent accord by virtue of a free market, and which is the cradle of knowledge no less than wealth, into global democracy: a democracy whose signature is consensual agreement rather than brutal imposition or aggressive dissensus. Levinson’s chapter, “Branding, Sense, and Their Threats,” argues that critique buttresses the neoliberalism it would undermine. Latin Americanism or Latin American Studies are no less grounded in branding processes than is the state itself. Or stated differently: academic knowledge, and knowledge in general, perform the influence and power of capitalism as much as advertising does. As Levinson’s self-reflexive examination of the field of Latin American Studies suggests, and as this volume as a whole proposes, the study of branding need not be limited to the study of literal, concrete brands and branding campaigns. Instead, the brand—an identity deliberately (re)defined according to the principle of competition and strategically (re)oriented towards the market—can function as a lens through which to reexamine notions such as identity, citizenship, and governance, and branding can become a point of entry for the analysis of contemporary developments spanning politics, economics, and culture. Rather than venturing premature conclusions in a new field, then, the epilogue proposes a series of questions and suggestions for further investigation. It indicates how awareness of branding discourses and practices may offer a new perspective on existing objects of study, including phenomena such as the Latin American literary “Boom” of the 1960s and early 1970s or the global popularity and spread of Brazilian telenovelas (soap operas), as well as sparking new studies in diverse fields such as anthropology, history, and geography. It asks how practices of branding and discourses of competitive identity may continue to influence Latin America in the future, shaping both internal dynamics and international perceptions. Finally, the epilogue offers a reflection on how the free-market logic of the brand and its attendant practices may shape the fate of Latin American Studies itself, as higher education and the academy become increasingly subject to neoliberal forms of management and evaluation.



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Julier, Guy. 2011. “Design Activism Meets Place-Branding: Reconfiguring Urban Representation and Everyday Practice.” In Brands and Branding Geographies, edited by Andy Pike, 221–38. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar. Kaneva, Nadia. 2011. “Nation Branding: Toward an Agenda for Critical Research.” International Journal of Communication Systems 5 (0): 25. López-Mejías, Alejandro. 2009. The Inverted Conquest: The Myth of Modernity and the Onset of Transatlantic Modernism. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Masiello, Francine. 2001. The Art of Transition: Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press. McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge. Metcalf, Stephen. 2017. “Neoliberalism: The Idea That Swallowed the World.” The Guardian, August 18. http://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliber alism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world. Nano. 2017. “America First, Chile Second.” Youtube. March 21. https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=PD8Cz2nRoPY. Nye, Joseph S. 1990. “Soft Power.” Foreign Policy, no. 80: 153–171. ———. 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: PublicAffairs. Olins, Wally. 1989. Corporate Identity. London: Thames and Hudson. Olympic Games Candidature Process. N.d. https://www.olympic.org/all-about-the -candidature-process. Paz, Octavio. [1950] 1972. El laberinto de la soledad. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica. ———. [1986] 1998. Tiempo numbado. Barcelona: Seix Barral Pike, Andy. 2009. “Geographies of Brands and Branding.” Progress in Human Geography 33 (5): 619–645. Quijano, Aníbal. 1993. “Modernity, Identity, and Utopia in Latin America.” Boundary 2 20 (3). Duke University Press: 140–155. ———. 2000. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from South 1 (3). Durham: Duke University Press: 533–580. Richard, Nelly. 1993. “Cultural Peripheries: Latin America and Postmodernist DeCentering.” Boundary 2 20 (3): 156–161. ———. 2004. Cultural Residues: Chile in Transition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rodó, José Enrique. [1900] 2010. Ariel. Austin: University of Texas Press. Room, Adrian. 1998. “History of Branding.” In Brands: The New Wealth Creators, edited by Susannah Hart and John Murphy, 13–23. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rose, Nikolas. 1996. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. London: Sage. Saad-Filho, Alfredo. 2004. “The Political Economy of Neoliberalism in Latin America.” In Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, edited by Alfredo Saad-Filho and Deborah Johnston, 222–268. London: Pluto.



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Savigliano, Marta. 1995. Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. Boulder; Oxford: Westview Press. Sheller, Mimi. 2003. Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. New York: Routledge. Smith, Peter H. 2005. Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative Perspective. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thompson, John B. 2005. “The New Visibility.” Theory, Culture & Society 22 (6): 31–51. Tregear, Angela. 2003. “From Stilton to Vimto: Using Food History to Re-think Typical Products in Rural Development.” Sociologia Ruralis. 43 (2): 91–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467–9523.00233/full. Varga, Somogy. 2013. “The Politics of Nation Branding: Collective Identity and Public Sphere in the Neoliberal State.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 39 (8): 825–845. Volcic, Zala, and Mark Andrejevic. 2011. “Nation Branding in the Era of Commercial Nationalism.” International Journal of Communication Systems 5 (0): 21. Webber, Jude. 2017. “Mexico Eyes Duty-Free Corn Deals to Counter Trump.” March 26. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/850a886c-108c-11e7-b030–7689 54394623. Wenders, Wim. 1999. Buena Vista Social Club. Film. Germany, USA, UK, France, Cuba: Roadmovies FilmProduktion. Weyland, Kurt. 2004. “Neoliberalism and Democracy in Latin America: A Mixed Record.” Latin American Politics and Society 46 (1): 135–157. Zondag Met Lubach. 2017. “The Netherlands Welcomes Trump in His Own Words.” Youtube. January 23 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELD2AwFN9Nc.

Chapter One

Promotion before Nation Branding Chile at the World Exhibitions Andrea Paz Cerda Pereira

World exhibitions have worked as miniature representations of the world. Through them, over time, nations have presented themselves as they want to be seen. To compare different moments of the history of World Exhibitions and examine a nation’s representation in them is like looking at family photos and seeing how one person has changed over time. The main difference is that the world’s exhibits and attendees do not seem to age, but appear refreshed and more vivid as years go by. For several decades, nation branding has been a promising strategy embraced by governments around the world to improve their countries’s international reputations. This chapter considers whether nation branding has substantially changed nations’s positions in the world classification system. To answer this question, I will look into how Chile has been promoted in the past, and how it is currently promoted, analyzing whether these efforts have made any difference to how the nation is narrated. According to the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), Chile participated in twenty-three different kinds of international exhibition between 1851 and 2010. This chapter will briefly consider five of them, taking three big jumps between centuries to highlight the differences between the late nineteenth century (Santiago 1875 and Paris 1889), the late twentieth century (Osaka 1970 and Seville 1992) and the early twenty-first century (Shanghai 2010). These cases were chosen because the Chilean government sponsored them all and produced them in cooperation with the private sector to improve Chile’s international reputation. Despite the different circumstances and status that Chile may have had at different times, all of these participations involved important investments to gain visibility and improve Chile’s placement in both world markets and the international classification system. As Melissa Aronczyk notes, during the nineteenth century, national displays at world fairs sowed the seeds of nation branding, drawing massive 35

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crowds to witness and experience the nation as a collection of unfamiliar goods and peoples among many similar units in a system of international classification (2013, 4). She reminds us that branding, as a worldwide national phenomenon and cultural management practice used by state administrations, only emerged in the twentieth century after the Second World War, when national culture and territory gradually came to be considered marketable and monetizable entities that needed to be managed and reoriented by the expertise of corporate brand strategy (Aronczyk 2013, 3). As this chapter will argue, the relative position of Chile in the international classification system did not undergo major transformations in the twentieth century. While the representational forms, technology, and strategies used have changed over time, Chile has continued to be portrayed as a nation “in development”—an unfinished project requiring further growth and maturation in order to be taken seriously. I argue, therefore, that branding is not innovative, since the aspirations behind promotional strategies are still the same: to improve Chile’s reputation beyond its enduring image as a “work in progress,” still associated with its developmental categorization. All in all, World Expos and nation branding have a common history: one that reproduces a pre-existing international classification of central and peripheral nations and more or less developed countries.

SANTIAGO 1875: CHILE FOLLOWS THE TREND Federico Errázuriz’s liberal government inaugurated the first International Exhibition of Santiago de Chile on September 16, 1875. These were times of prosperity, as an economic boom had bolstered deep faith in Chile’s national progress. As Carmen Hernández notes (2006), after the opening of new oceanic routes between 1830 and 1880, Chilean exports to California and Europe were favored and new resources injected into the domestic economy, allowing the old colonial and creole elite to reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs, befitting the times of the new republic. This elite hoped for more than mere political independence, aspiring instead for cultural change that would favor administrative autonomy, open up posts previously restricted to Spaniards born in Europe, and give them an extra degree of power in the new nation’s decision-making processes, planning, and design.1 Thus, the elite’s reinvention not only required a new cultural project but also the construction of a new infrastructure to represent it: a republic with a modern seal. The Chilean state inaugurated parks,2 museums and the International Exhibition of Santiago. As the president of the expo board, Rafael Larraín declared in his inaugural speech, the aforementioned international event



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was intended to provide modernizing lessons for Chileans. Errázuriz similarly stressed the government’s belief that to better know modernity, Chile had to compare its progress with that of other countries and thereafter reinforce a path of cooperation with them.3 In Tony Bennett’s words, “detailed studies of nineteenth century expositions thus consistently highlight the ideological economy of their organising principles, transforming displays of machinery and industrial processes, of finished products and objets d’art, into the material signifiers of progress as a collective national achievement with capital as the great coordinator” (1995, 67). The Chilean International Exhibition of 1875 was no exception; as the president himself emphasized, the expo played a role in assimilating the civilizing project as well as in consolidating Chile’s national narrative (“Prospecto” 1875).4 The program made clear that Chile’s international exhibition was intended to provide new sources for developing the country’s agricultural and manufacturing interests and to contribute to improving Chilean commercial relations with American and European nations and markets. The 1875 exhibition that intended to make national progress visible to both national and international audiences therefore developed a narrative that presented the country as a brand new project, evolving into modern times with the collaboration of others. Moreover, it displayed Chile’s products in four different sections, ranging from “primitive matters” to “machinery,” followed by “manufacturing and industry,” and finally “the arts” (International Exhibition 1874, 10). The exhibition adhered to a global trend of modernization and represented a way to invent traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger [1983] 2013) that would sustain a national memory synchronized with homogenous universal times.5 As Benedict Anderson ([1983] 2006) points out, modern nations were forging an idea of “meanwhile” that helped eighteenth-century societies imagine temporal coincidence—and the idea of temporal homogeneity—with others, measured by clock and calendar. Along these lines, novels and newspapers provided the technical means for “representing” the national community (Anderson [1983] 2006, 24–25). Chile’s participation shows that world exhibits also formed part of this phenomenon, building an image in which they included progress in their attempts to become more modern. Another outcome was that Santiago joined a global tendency of capital cities flaunting their progress at international exhibitions, imitating those considered more advanced: Chile has not hesitated to imitate the example of London, Paris and Vienna in their last exhibitions. In turn, it has invited every country and, with them, all men of good will, lovers of progress and benefactors of mankind, to attend the tournament of arts and industry and exhibit the history of work. . . . We expect to see and obtain a useful advantage from what the geniality of man has recently

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invented, discovered and modified: how raw materials have been turned into better things. The International Exhibition of Chile in 1875 is not intended to satisfy childlike curiosity, but to take advantage of the improvements made by industry and the arts—in a word, to learn from other’s efforts to achieve modern civilisation. (Prospecto 1875)6

In other words, the exhibition mirrored a past that was only just being invented and projected it as one of progress to move into the future. To do so, Chile positioned itself as following the modern ideal, represented as a new nation with an open future in which it could cement its own modernity. Chilean authorities therefore organized an international event in the capital, hoping to make the country part of the modern history of world fairs at the time. To promote Chile and face the future, Santiago had to follow the trend. PARIS 1889: PROGRESS, BUT NOT YET WORLD CLASS For the Paris 1889 exhibition, José Manuel Balmaceda’s Chilean government sent a collection of objects to be housed in a specially commissioned national pavilion. It was no coincidence that French architect Henri Picq was to design it in an art nouveau style, thus making Chile part of this worldwide aesthetic. To reflect the country and mark a national stylistic distinction, it also incorporated architectural features typical of the country’s Central Valley, such as native wood beams and pillars. Through this project, Chile transformed its collection of minerals and natural resources into a modern aesthetic reflecting possibilities for refinement as well as potential for progress. Ana María Amadori and Patricio Basáes have noted that the development expectations of the Chilean government justified the high organizational and economic costs entailed by the project (1989, 35),7 mostly given that participation involved not only the pavilion’s manufacture in Paris but also its shipping to Chile from Europe after the expo ended. The pavilion was material proof of Chile’s involvement in this World Exhibition and therefore was set up at a permanent venue on its return to Chile. It currently houses the Museum of Modern Art for Children and bears a commemorative plaque marking Chile’s participation in the 1889 Paris Expo. In short, the Chilean pavilion forged a path within a progressive international modern aesthetic, representing itself as a material project as per the modern ideal. Such was the case with the nineteenth-century exhibits of Argentina and Brazil, where, in Jens Andermann’s words, Everyday items such as blankets from Córdoba and native wild plants suddenly took on new meanings at the exhibition—an epiphany of “seeing anew” that



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provoked a “revelation.” This was the result of endowing objects of everyday consumption with the look of a commodity, displaying them alongside other objects from adjacent regions and abroad to convert them into evidence of national development. (2009, 356)

Indeed, showcasing national development was the main intention. Five sections represented the different realms of Chile’s economic, cultural, and governmental activities; in order, these were: agriculture; mining and industry; the fine arts (then called the beaux arts); education (then called “instruction”); and a final statistical section. According to Amadori and Basáes, the first section included samples of soil and water taken from different areas to inform Europe about the “potencialidades naturales” (natural potentials) of Chile (1989, 40). The second showed a vast collection of stones and minerals. The industrial section was not as prominent as organizers had hoped, mainly because industrialists at the time were skeptical about appearing next to countries with more developed technologies and so refrained from taking part since they believed it would reveal their backwardness. Finally, the arts section brought together the most important national collection of paintings ever, with local artists delighted with the idea of showing in Paris. As Amadori and Basáes recount, the purpose of selecting objects from different sectors was to show the “nivel exacto” (exact level) of Chile’s progress (1989, 38). Each section indicated the kind of resources available at every stage of the chain and together they narrated the progress being made. It was deemed necessary to show Chile’s natural potential, mostly as a resource that could transform nature into a marker of progress and into cultural evidence of advancement. Along that same line, paintings and art were an expression of how extensively the modern aesthetic had influenced Chilean culture. Promoting the nation at this point implied that Chilean representatives had to live up to the notion of progress when creating the exhibit. Showing “the exact level of progress” meant that Chile’s representation had to be adequate for the category the nation was expected to occupy in the chain of progress. The collections arrived in Paris in good condition but, once the display was assembled, the artists were not as enthusiastic as they had been in Santiago: their pieces were not placed in the international section of the Fine Arts Palace but in the national pavilion. Pedro Lira, a prominent local painter at the time, wrote a letter to the Revista de Bellas Artes in December 1889 in which he fiercely condemned the disdain shown by French organizers for Chilean fine arts, which, in his view, had been marginalized: Considering that national artists have contributed to Chile’s honor in the old world, it only seems fair to draw attention to the rather ungallant manner in which they have been treated by the organizational committee. Despite requesting to be

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moved to the international section of the Fine Arts Palace and have the French government intervene in favor of Chilean art, Chilean paintings had to be mounted in our own pavilion, with lights facing each other, filling them with reflections and putting them at disproportionate heights above the mineralogy shelves. (1889, 65)8

Lira longed to see Chile and its arts become modern and advanced; placing Chile alongside European fine arts meant recognizing they had learnt about modern taste.9 With the creation of a single pavilion, the Chilean state endorsed the expo’s spatial organization and lived up to the notion that nations standing side-by-side were ranked and valued according to their growth from uncivilized to civilized nations, according to a progressive ideal of a modern and better future for all. In the end, despite Lira’s resistance to the labelling of national art as a work in progress, Chilean paintings had to be displayed sideby-side with natural objects. By 1889, the Chileans involved in the display, such as Lira and the industrialists, had to promote the nation and its produce as living up to its category rather than surpassing its boundaries. To promote Chile, the country had to be portrayed as “in progress” but not yet world class: the world classification system was not to be challenged. OSAKA 1970: COLD WAR MAPS IN POST-WAR JAPAN The Osaka Expo ran from March 15 to September 13, 1970 in a post-war context defined by Cold War politics and local unrest.10 Eduardo Frei-Montalva—Chile’s president between 1964 and 1970—and his government were responsible for how Chile was represented at the Osaka Expo. As the Chilean ambassador to Japan, Augusto Marambio wrote in his memoirs, Chile’s participation in the World Expo was intended to confirm the nation’s faith in progress and celebrate Japan’s miraculous post-war achievements (1992, 43–46). Japan was a “miracle” worth considering. Marambio recalls: The smoke in the sky was no longer that of burning cities and villages after bombardment, but now indicated the presence of thousands and thousands of industries dedicated to producing goods and the end of destruction and death. After two decades, Japan experienced an impressive transformation, so amazing that the expression “the Japanese Miracle” was coined. I have come to witness that “miracle.” I have come to see its fruits. I have come to witness its daily renovation. (1992, 79)11

According to Angus Lockyer, spectacles such as the Osaka Expo worked as catalysts for reconstructing and rebooting domestic economies after a warlike shock (2007, 575–556), moving towards post-war humanistic ideals



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where disillusionment at the destructive use of technological advances demanded worldwide political and economic consent for a new growth model. It is no coincidence that the World Expo’s motto that year was “Progress and Harmony for Humankind,” and that Chile’s participation was designed to nurture bilateral bonds. Indeed, Chilean authorities did not merely adhere to the expo’s motto but also hoped to project Chile’s own development while cementing the then fashionable “nationalization of progress.” This phrase referred to the nationalization of private and foreign-owned assets—such as large sections of the mining industry—by Chilean governments since the 1950s. Authorities believed that Chile’s development had to be carried out by a state in control of its national assets but at peace with foreign investors. Thus, transforming private and foreign-owned corporations into public assets was believed to be an assertion of “national sovereignty,” in which underdeveloped and peripheral countries such as Chile could gain economic and therefore political control and move beyond dependency.12 At the time of the expo, Frei’s government had initiated what was known as a “negotiated nationalization” in the hope of avoiding conflict with international investors by compensating international corporations that had been forced to sell up. For Frei, national development was impossible without foreign capital. As the ambassador wrote in his memoirs, showcasing Chile in Osaka meant promoting its presence in the world market and making it accessible to others, particularly in the Pacific. This explains the decision to put a Moai13 at the pavilion’s entrance, stressing the Chilean-Polynesian connection and setting the scene for a sculpture of a wall-mounted map (see figure 1.1). Marta Colvin’s artwork redrew the world map to the right side of the globe in order to emphasize Chile and Japan’s proximity rather than their distance.14 What was by then often referred to as the West (mostly Europe, also identified as the old-civilized world versus the emerging, new world of the Americas), stood east, effectively repositioning Chile on the world political map.15 Moreover, the Chile Pavilion promoted its exhibition as “ensanchando los horizontes” (widening horizons), according to the Chilean slogan (Marambio 1992, 45), thereby subverting the common representation of the Americas’ relationship with Asia as opposite sides of a two-dimensional map, and picturing a new world order in which Latin America was no longer marginalized. The pavilion itself was modest, but circular, epitomizing the “widening of horizons” idea. Inside, a small exhibit brought together typical Chilean goods such as wine, minerals, and pictures of Chilean landscapes, reflecting its human and physical geography. The natural collections in particular were a core feature, displayed like the paintings at the Paris Expo in 1889 and

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Figure 1.1.  Osaka Mural, 1970. Marta Colvin (1907–1995) Stone and copper. Osaka Museum, Japan.

Source: Marta Colvin Fund, Library and Documentation Center of the National Museum of Fine Arts.

showcasing Chile’s development potential and modern improvements. They showed not only the natural possibilities for investment but also the aesthetic developmental policies brought to an industrializing Chile. The photographs inside the pavilion were part of a project called “El Rostro de Chile” (The Face of Chile, 1958) by Antonio Quintana, Roberto Montanón, and Domingo Ulloa. The project followed in the steps of another modern art project, Museum of Modern Art director Edward Steichen’s “The Family of Man” (1955), which brought together 503 pictures by 273 photographers portraying human life and its cycles in sixty-eight different countries (Turner 2012). The Chilean version included images of Chilean people, landscapes, industries, and produce and was the first photographic collection to project a national identity and the first to tour the world. Both “Family of Man” and “El Rostro de Chile” were state-sponsored public relations initiatives that hoped to build up the nation’s reputation abroad. Both were strategies of national cultural diplomacy at the time. The Chilean collection travelled to Mexico, France, Sweden, the USSR, Spain, and Hungary in 1966, Italy and the US in 1967, before arriving in Japan in 1969 (Gamboa 2007, 117). It also intended to forge a position for Chile within the humanistic aesthetic, highlighting the universality of the human experience while simultaneously projecting Chile as following a modern trajectory. In other words, the Osaka Expo in 1970 was also a platform for communicating national and international intentions during the Cold



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War, charged with discourses pushing for social reforms and international cooperation. Despite being at different stages of modernization, the world’s nations—including Chile—showed their commitment to progressing in harmony towards the same humanist ideals. In the 1960s, several innovative political reforms had underscored the Chilean authorities’s commitment to moving beyond underdevelopment. The then-president, Eduardo Frei-Montalva launched a political campaign whose slogan was Revolución en Libertad (Revolution in Freedom), which hoped to contest the post-war politics that equated revolution with communism and communism with a lack of freedom. Under his leadership, an important agricultural reform was passed, aimed at restructuring Chilean agricultural production and modifying the system of latifundios (large estates), which had concentrated land ownership in the hands of the few since colonial times. The goal of these reforms was to lay the foundations for the Chilean market’s internationalization. The Montevideo Treaty was also signed, leading to the Latin American Free Trade Association and a regional common market perspective. The Osaka Expo thus came at the end of a decade of aspirations of internationalization. The pavilion designed by Chilean architects Federico Guevara, Gonzalo Asenjo, and Isaac Eskenazi also reflected the expectation that Chile would emerge from its peripheral position: Chile’s circular pavilion aimed to show the nation within a cultural economy of new vistas, horizons, and commercial partners. Windows faced in every direction, while the world map at the very entrance made a clear statement about hopes for a new geopolitical position from which to trade with and relate to the West and others. Represented through the pavilion, Chile hoped to improve the nation’s position and compete in the world market. Three years after the Osaka Expo, a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet overthrew Allende’s government in Chile, elected by the end of 1970. Both Allende and the opportunity to build an institutional—and Chilean—path to socialism died on September 11, 1973. Plans for the “progress and harmony of humankind” (as the Osaka Expo motto had hoped) were thwarted in Chile. After the coup, the postcards and images of Chile that circulated mostly reflected repression, state terrorism, and calls from solidarity movements to boycott the Chilean dictatorship.16 Beyond Chile’s borders, Chilean exiles and movements in different countries reported human rights violations and an authoritarian regime (Aguirre and Chamorro, 2009) while, in Chile, the images that were released were censored, freedom of expression was constantly threatened, and journalists were placed under surveillance (Baltra 1988; Leiva 2008; Errázuriz and Leiva 2012). In the 1980s, social movements and the international community forced Pinochet to hold a referendum to decide whether he should remain in power. The

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dictator lost and democracy was restored in March 1990. Due to the economic restructuring that followed, the term “Chilean Miracle” was coined, invoking the “Japanese Miracle” that had followed World War II. However, as Heidi Tinsman reminds us, the expansion of international trade had long been seen as crucial to national development by a range of political leaders, from socialists to oligarchs and passionate Keynesians to corporate businessmen. The economic miracle for which Chile’s military regime became famous in the 1980s was therefore a product long in the making (Tinsman 2014, 27). That is to say, post-war politics had just as much of an effect on Chilean political and economic reforms as Pinochet’s actions. Chile’s pavilion in Osaka imagined a post-war world committed to modernity, progress, and humankind, and promoted the country as part of a world economy that aspired to move from the periphery toward the center. However, as history later showed, this version of progress—with nationalization at its core—did not go far, coming to a sudden halt with the military coup of 1973. The Chile Pavilion in Osaka in 1970 was a venue for cultural diplomacy that was very much aligned with a post-war narrative that aspired to change trade terms for peripheral countries and their dependent economies. However, despite Chile challenging its position in this world classification system, its most pervasive promotional feature was still development: Chile was still behind and promotion continued to be about exhibiting a Chile that followed world trends and imitated a cultural aesthetic that would make the country look more modern. SEVILLE 1992: THE HEAT OF AN ICEBERG WITHIN TRANSITIONAL POLITICS After Osaka 1970, there were no other World Expos until Seville 1992.17 In the meantime, Chile experienced a dictatorship (1973–1989) that, apart from state terrorism atrocities, implemented a set of neoliberal economic measures to revamp the economy and liberalize trade, with Patricio Aylwin afterward becoming the first democratically elected president in 1989.18 The decision to participate in Seville 1992 was made in 1983, during Pinochet’s rule. Aylwin’s government confirmed Chile’s participation and appointed Fernando Léniz to represent Chile. Léniz had been Pinochet’s first Minister of the Economy but, in the 1980s, he was one of the most enthusiastic right-wing advocates for political consensus and Pinochet’s removal from power. As soon as democracy was re-established, Léniz formed the Chilean delegation with the mission of spreading the news that Chile was ready to do business with the world again. As Léniz himself declared, Chile was eager to



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present the image of a united country, not one of a politically divided nation characterized by social unrest (BCN 2009a). Hence, more than creating a sense of national cohesion through the equivalent of internal nation branding, the expo was an opportunity to brand Chile internationally as a trustworthy nation that had reached a political consensus regarding its economic policies. Chile was politically stable under the leadership of an administration that had preserved the economic structural adjustments implemented during the dictatorship and had transitioned them through to democracy. Chile’s exhibit was meant to carry this pro-investment, pro-commerce gospel to the world. As in previous expos, Chile’s pavilion in Seville promoted a country willing and able to trade, although the domestic political arena disapproved. Adhering to global modernity was not as straightforward as before, since it also meant adhering to a world political economy that, for many, entailed the privatization and internationalization of the Chilean economy. Likewise, the idea of a transition towards democracy that kept authoritarian neoliberal reforms in place was not met with the same approval by Chilean society as it was by the political elite. By presenting such a consensus as generalized,19 Chile’s pavilion became the focus of heated debate and dissent. In fact, it was not the promotion of Chile as modern that generated the most conflict but rather the marketing used to represent the nation. Two different teams were created: the architects building the pavilion, and the interior designers. Both presented different projects with markedly different narratives. As José Cruz, one of the architects in charge told me, the building itself was intended to present a critical view of modernity—one that showed that Chile had its own way of understanding progress (personal communication, 2011). Importantly, because 1992 represented 500 years since the Spaniards’s arrival in the Americas, the display intended to acknowledge Chile’s colonial past and therefore its European cultural heritage, while also testifying to the fact that it was a nation that practiced its own Southern Cone modernity (El Pabellón de Chile 1992, 36–37). However, the inside did not reflect the architects’ concept, nor did it work along the lines of creating a distinct Chilean claim to modernity. As the architect noted, the display was mostly oriented towards showing Chilean produce and putting on a spectacle that would appeal to a wide audience (personal communication, 2011). In order to impress, an iceberg was transported and displayed in a specially designed showcase, despite the fact that Seville was experiencing temperatures of over 40ºC (104°F). Shipping this required sophisticated technical arrangements and generous funding. One of the men responsible for the display, Eugenio García, stated that seduction was the main strategy nations had to communicate with one another; any successful enterprise depended on the ‘additional intelligence’ included in the offer (El Pabellón de Chile 1992,

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43)—that is, value created upon distinction.20 This idea met with intense opposition and the iceberg rapidly turned out to be the most controversial piece at the Expo. As Macarena Gómez-Barris argues, it advertised Chile’s capacity to transport perishables to Europe during the off-season, signaling to the global elite that the country’s neoliberal economic model would continue without so much as a ripple in its political transition (2009, 3), and announcing Chile as maintaining the reforms made in authoritarian times. According to Javier Pinedo (1996), the debate surrounding the iceberg was not so much about what was chosen to represent Chile abroad but about whether Chile should continue on the path of privatization and neoliberal reform in its quest for development at home. The options available to Chile at the time were mostly described as two-fold and, although both were akin to neoliberal policies, one of them continued a liberal and monetarist tradition that aimed for socioeconomic equilibrium (aided by the market’s regulatory power), while the other reformulated a left-wing project for social justice (aided by state policies that would subsidize and regulate social services’s private provision). Still, what was really at stake was not just a question of internal governance but also of Chile’s broader relationship with other countries and the transnational order. For Pinedo (1996, 110–113), one faction of Chilean politics was concerned with how to face “the end of history” announced by Francis Fukuyama (1992) and position Chile amongst the “winners” that followed the path of capitalism. Another faction, however, ridiculed the idea of there being no other developmental possibilities than those instituted by monetarist reformers around the world. Adapting to the latter position, Tomás Moulian (1997) and Nelly Richard (2004) questioned how Chile was represented with a critical interpretation of the iceberg, the pavilion, and Chile’s portrayal in Seville. Moulian argued that the iceberg was a sculpture that whitewashed the Chilean dictatorship, representing a “new sanitised Chile that had been purified after a long journey across the sea, where there was no trace of blood, of the disappeared. There was not even a shadow of Pinochet. It was as if Chile had just been born” (1997, 35). The iceberg was, in short, a symbol of the so-called “Chilean Miracle” after militarized reconstruction and represented a very convenient version of recent Chile that aimed to forget the many lives taken by the regime in order to follow a neoliberal path to national development. For Richard, however, the display represented the methods employed by the new democratic regime to manage culture. In her view, the pavilion evoked a brighter version of Chile, showing a country “without precedent” (2004, 117). This idea of Chile as novelty—a country with no recent past— left no doubt about the dual historical break between transitional Chile and



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its utopian-revolutionary Latin Americanism in the 1960s and the military dictatorship’s traumatic past. As Richard understands it, Chile aimed to distinguish itself from its Latin American neighbors, who marked the continent as a place of permanent disorder and conflict. Promoting the nation thus implied the need to forget “the Chilean path to socialism” for good and start anew, with revolution, socialism, and the past no longer fitting into the modern project. Moreover, in Richard’s view, having “no precedent” suggested oblivion and the erasure of a series of traumatic historical episodes in the quest to produce a local socialist utopia. According to Renan ([1871] 1990) and Anderson’s ([1983] 2006) ideas about nation building, national imagination always entails oblivion and national narratives show communities by selecting, editing, and creating fiction. In its pavilion, Chile thus showed an edited version of itself. All in all, the new democratic regime was exhibited by synthesizing political controversies into an iceberg, while marketing Chile as available for international consumers; visitors toured the Chile Pavilion as if it were a supermarket. This availability of objects opened Chile up to comparisons, without questioning the authoritarian restructuring of democracy and displaying the nation as commencing anew as if it were a new product and the expo its launching ceremony. Chile’s promotion, epitomized through the iceberg, only showed the brighter side of its recent national history, with much of it left unseen below the surface. Moreover, Chile’s promotion using spectacular branding techniques was perceived by many as a way to sell a fictitious, artificial image that did no justice to its recent history and betrayed the memory of its victims. Chile’s image in Seville was designed to whitewash its reputation and spread the news about the end of conflict, even though such conflict still existed. The creators of the Chile Pavilion often used marketing terms to explain the exhibit’s aim of reaching a larger audience, seducing foreign investors, selling Chile abroad, and communicating to the world the idea that Chile was politically stable. The country no longer used a progressive narrative to represent the nation, nor was it merely trying to adhere to a universal motto fashionable at the time. The expo was seen as an opportunity to present a communicational strategy to manage Chile’s image abroad and facilitate Chile’s liberalization and international trade. All things considered, Seville 1992 marked the beginning of nation branding, although publicly it was referred to as marketing, reflecting not only an aesthetic turnaround (which included a Chile logo and corporate graphic identity) but also a political one, visibly neoliberal.

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SHANGHAI 2010: AUDIENCES, CONSUMERS, AND MARKETS In December 2009, before the Shanghai Expo, Chileans elected their first right-wing government since the return to democracy in 1989. This meant planning for the expo began during Michelle Bachelet’s presidency (in 2007) but ended under the newly elected president, Sebastián Piñera, in 2010. Unexpectedly, in February 2010, just one month before the new president took office, a massive earthquake shook Chile, threatening the country’s participation in the expo. Producers feared that such spending in times of crisis would be perceived as misguided, but the expo project continued and the pavilion was officially opened on May 1, 2010. As the commissioner told me (personal communication, 2011), national representation in Shanghai was not the enterprise of any specific administration or political grouping, but a proyecto de estado (state project) that involved the nation as a whole. In other words, Chile’s presence in Shanghai was a state enterprise with no specific political color. For Michelle Bachelet, the Shanghai World Expo was an opportunity to promote Chilean trade and international exchange with China and consequently safeguard Chilean domestic governance, sustained by international economic cooperation in open markets. China had proved itself by occupying important positions in world economic indexes and forecasts and, as Bachelet herself explained, “that’s why our country’s presence [in Shanghai] may also be a good way to strengthen our bilateral economic relations and create new business, as well as to strengthen Chile’s position as a gateway for Chinese investors coming to Latin America” (BCN 2009b).21 Since the dictatorship, the Chilean state and its subsequent governments have been investing in Asia and forging commercial bonds with the Pacific, so participation at Shanghai was necessary to position Chile and reinforce commercial ties. However, as one of the pavilion’s architects, Juan Pedro Sabbagh, told me, the actual position assigned to Chile within the expo entailed a lot of work, since Chile and its neighbors (that is, Latin America) were not prominent but “marginal” figures on the World Expo stage (personal communication, 2011). Sabbagh’s team thus faced the challenge of making the country stand out. Chile had initially opted for a rented pavilion that the architects hoped to customize, but they soon realized that expo norms did not allow for modifications to façades. A new pavilion was purchased that allowed them to alter it freely. This building attempted to embody the exhibit’s core concept of La Ciudad de las Relaciones (The City of Relationships). The pavilion used natural resources such as metal and wood to represent the Chilean economy



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and its mining and forestry sectors. Arauco, a Chilean forestry company, provided the wood for its construction in exchange for publicity. Although Chile no longer exhibited mineral collections in cabinets, it continued with the nineteenth century practice of integrating natural resources into the pavilion. The Shanghai 2010 building’s façade and interior followed not only the architect’s ideas of representation but also a narrative and branding concept. Likewise, the exhibits did not involve collections of artefacts but rather creative installations that told a story, recreating, at a micro and national level, the Shanghai Expo’s motto of “Better Cities for a Better Life.” “The City of Relationships” story expressed the need to revalorize human relations, whilst simultaneously conveying the idea that Chileans cared about establishing a relationship with China and its expo visitors. One of the exhibit’s goals was to show the country’s people, rather than just objects. The participation of the Chilean hosts was therefore crucial to the narrative. For the commissioner, the main aim was for visitors to leave the pavilion with a memorable personal experience of Chile and its people (personal communication, 2011). Following a branding rationale addressing the consumer’s affective realm, one of the organizers who worked on the interior exhibit recounted the pavilion administration’s choice of appointing an “art director” with vast experience in films and scenography to create una experiencia dramática (a dramatic experience) that would convey to visitors emociones (emotions), sensaciones (sensations), and some of the drama of a living city (personal communication, 2010). In addition to “experiencing the concept,” Chilean organizers also aimed to give Chinese visitors the chance to get a taste of distant lands without leaving their own country. At the entrance, Chilean hosts stamped visitors’s expo passports with the Chile Pavilion’s logo. Likewise, on exiting, a bistro offered Chilean food and drinks, while a shop gave consumers the chance to purchase souvenirs, building on the branding strategy. Visitors’s purchases were placed in bags bearing the Chile Pavilion’s logo, which sketched the globe in multiple blue lines with one standing out in red. As the graphic designer responsible for this logo explained, the red line evoked the connection between Chile and China (personal communication, 2010). Thus, the bag made the commercial relationship with a client on the other side of the world tangible, while its fabric and the fact that it was reusable prolonged its lifespan. It also helped circulate Chile’s brand and logo. All this formed part of a strategy to integrate Chile’s name into Chinese consumerism. As the head manager of the Chilean exhibit told me, the team’s leading motivation was to have Chile penetrar el mercado chino (penetrate the Chinese market) (personal communication, 2010).

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Chile’s display ended with a world map (see figure 1.2) that offered a new world vision, removing Europe and zooming in on Asia and the Americas to highlight China on the right and Chile on the left—a graphic strategy that evoked the logo created for the occasion and recalled the sculptural map created for Osaka. However, this time, the intention of remapping the world was carefully managed in accordance with the aesthetic of the pavilion’s brand identity. Everything on display was part of the same corporate message designed to promote Chile abroad; as with any respectable brand, guidelines for the graphic identity governed every element. In summary, the 2010 pavilion was designed to contest Chile’s assigned position at the expo whilst renewing national commitment to global commerce and international relations, with specific reference to China and the 2010 promise of rising world powers.22 Branding logic was used much more overtly than previously: the idea of seducing the Chinese market, encouraging expo visitors’ consumerism, and conquering Chinese hearts amounted to an orchestrated nation-branding campaign. Marketing rationale was already in use in 1992, although it was not yet a coordinated branding strategy but rather a series of fragmented communications. Architects and interior designers worked separately on their own ideas, small boxes were displayed on supermarket-like shelves, and the iceberg, housed in a huge cage, astounded visitors in what was hoped to be an unfor-

Figure 1.2.  World map at Chile Pavilion, Shanghai 2010. Source: Courtesy of author.



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gettable experience, whitewashing Chile’s image and superficially covering up any unpleasant memories. Before that, marketing rationale had not been used and only cultural diplomacy and public relations had been deployed to improve Chile’s cultural and economic reputation. However, I argue that Chile’s representation in the earlier universal exhibitions can be seen as a precursor for the marketing of national imaginaries, evident in its brandinfluenced participation in 2010, where consumers gradually gained more importance than international relations and trade. Over more than 100 years, the main changes to Chile’s pavilions and exhibitions involved methods to turn a promotional event into a communicational strategy and then a branding campaign with a corporate identity to live up to. Despite adjustments to promotional methods, the goals of Chile’s promotion in the international arena do not seem to have varied significantly. By 2010, nation branding was not changing but merely reproducing and performing the country’s enduring status of “work in progress.” Altogether, up to 2010, these constructions and their displays, with their differences and similarities, tell the story of how nation branding has altered how Chile is represented, but not the broader narrative the nation uses to promote itself, while also replicating an international classification system that seems to gain new energy through branding.

CONCLUSIONS The pavilions were all designed to place Chile on the global economic and political map of the time. As official documents showed, national displays were seen as future investments that would aid Chilean visibility and promote international trade, portraying Chile as progressive. Chile’s involvement in these World Expos followed the themes celebrated by each international venue, heading towards an international, jointly desired future. In the nineteenth century, the future—as narrated by the Chilean exhibits—was characterized by aspirations of industrialization; in order to progress, Chile had to learn from more advanced nations. At the Santiago 1875 Expo, Chilean authorities invited international guests to teach them about industrializing techniques at home, while, at Paris 1889, they hoped to show the world how Chile had assimilated the modern aesthetics of the time. Chile’s reputation could only improve if it followed the standards set by a modern idealized other, believed to be European in origin: a Chilean pavilion in an art nouveau style had to be designed by a French architect to make Chile appear to be transitioning authentically towards modernity. To promote Chile, the state needed to subscribe to the cultural episteme and discourse that united all nations on one path to progress, despite their different stages of development.

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A century later, the narrative for promoting Chile had not changed: nations had to cooperate to progress harmoniously, with development and moving away from the periphery a condition of modernity. At Osaka 1970, the Chile Expo represented the hope that the country would be boosted by economic cooperation and peaceful international relations. At the end of the century, though, progress was to be achieved by restructuring domestic economic policies and adjusting them to global flows of capital, forgetting about history and instead creating a narrative that could be sold. Promotion aimed to improve Chile’s image, but mostly intended to allow consumers to experience Chile during their expo visit, so that they would fall in love and continue buying into it. Branding had arrived to change the methods and the media, if not the promotional ends. Over time, the objects and displays used by Chile also changed. For example, there was a transition from cabinets and collections to the designing of pavilions, converting them into a commodity themselves with their own promotional architecture. During the nineteenth century, natural resources such as stone, minerals, or wood were exhibited as raw materials to be used and transformed by any industrial enterprise. In the twentieth century, the pavilion was not only expected to exhibit industrial products and works of art but also to combine everything into a single concept that would rephrase the expo’s motto, nationalize adscription to its universal claim, and make Chile look like a brand—a coherent, marketable whole. The national identity expressed through the pavilion started moving towards the creation of a structure and message in line with Chile’s branded identity. As Penelope Harvey has noted, what motivated nations to come together in an expo such as Seville in 1992 was the desire to promote images that expressed the relationship between their particular nation-state and Western European capitalism (1996, 67). In 2010, it became crucial that the whole pavilion’s creative project followed the concept, unifying buildings and exhibits, narrative and visuals, national expression and universal ideals. Nevertheless, despite material and technological developments and the world’s changing political context, Chile continued to be represented as a “work in progress.” In every World Expo, Chile was portrayed as a nation on its way to modernity, hoping to move from a marginal to a more central position. Time and time again, Chile performed as “a nation yet to be,” as if progress were a permanent condition of its own promotion and nation brand. In the case of Chile, then, branding has not changed substantially: Chile is still portrayed as a developing country and as a nation aligned with world progress. Still, the technology used to convey national narratives has changed and been assembled to create a much more administered, coordinated image that feeds a communicational strategy and guiding concept. Branding has



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made a difference in how exhibits are used, now that they are more fully integrated into a communication strategy. However, promotion by the Chilean state since 1875 has not necessarily or significantly improved Chile’s reputation. Ultimately, what the World Expos have in common with branding is the reproduction of a world classification system that continues to reiterate the deferment of the future for countries such as Chile, in which progress, modernity, and development are always yet to come. NOTES 1.  For more details on the transformation of colonial administrative units into nations, see the chapter on “Creole Pioneers” in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities ([1983] 2006). 2.  On the opening up of public spaces after 1875 in Santiago de Chile, see Fernando Pérez and José Rosas (2011). 3. For then-president, Errázuriz, the exhibition was a way to learn about modernity, as nations would not only share modern achievements but also how they achieved them. Taking part meant learning, with one goal in mind: becoming part of the modern civilized world. See his full speech in “Prospecto,” 1875. 4.  According to the president’s speech, the creation of a modern society and consolidation of a nationality went hand-in-hand with the country’s progress. 5. See Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (in Illuminations, 1999) and Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities ([1983] 2006) for more details on the concept’s definition, as well as Partha Chatterjee’s Nations in Heterogeneous Times (2008) for a later, postcolonial critique. 6.  All translations author’s own. Chile no ha vacilado en imitar el ejemplo de Londres, París i Viena en sus últimas exposiciones. A su turno, pues, ha convidado a todos los países i con ellos a todos los hombres de buena voluntad, amantes del progreso i bienhechores de la humanidad, a concurrir al torneo de las artes i de la industria, a lidiar en la batalla del trabajo; allí, en esc campamento, esperamos ver i obtener un útil provecho, todo cuanto el jenio del hombre ha inventado, descubierto i modificado, desde la materia prima hasta aquélla que ha llegado al máximum de su perfeccionamiento. La Exposición internacional de Chile en 1875, no está destinada, pues, a satisfacer una curiosidad pueril sino a aprovecharnos de todas las mejoras que ha realizado la industria, a conocer las nuevas fases que atraviesa el arte, en una palabra, a investigar cual es el camino donde se dirijen los esfuerzos de la civilización moderna. 7.  Amadori and Basáes (1989) mention a budget of 15,000 francs in 1888 that included the building’s design and construction. 8.  Y ya que los artistas nacionales han contribuido al honor de Chile en el viejo mundo, justo nos parece llamar la atención á la manera poquísimo galante con que fueron tratados por la comisión organizadora. A pesar de haber mediado una solicitud con este objeto, no se dio paso alguno para pedir al Gobierno francés un local a propósito en la sección internacional del palacio de bellas artes. Por este motivo

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hubo que colocar las pinturas chilenas en el propio pabellón, con luces encontradas por todas partes que las llenaban de reflejos y á una altura desproporcionada, sobre los estantes de la mineralogía.   9.  See de la Maza (2013). 10.  1970 was a time of intense political and social unrest in Chile. On September 4, the socialist Salvador Allende was elected with just 36 percent of the vote, with two other candidates following close behind: the right-wing Jorge Alessandri with 35 percent and the Christian Democrat candidate, Radomiro Tomic, with 28 percent. Since there was no clear majority, Congress had to ratify the winner, choosing Allende on October 24, despite a campaign against him by the CIA and the US government under Nixon’s “international fight against communism.” The resulting turbulent socio-political context was often used to justify the authoritarian strategies used to achieve peace, freedom and progress. 11.  El humo en el cielo Japonés ya no era el de los incendios de las ciudades bombardeadas; señalaba ahora la presencia de miles y miles de industrias destinadas a la producción de bienes y ya no más a la destrucción y a la muerte. En el término de dos décadas se había operado en Japón una asombrosa transformación. Tan sorprendente que para representarla se había acuñado la expresión de “el milagro japonés.” Llegaba yo a la tierra del milagro. Iba a ver sus frutos. Iba a ver su diaria renovación. 12.  Taking Raul Prebisch’s theory of the peripheral modernity of Latin American nations, a group of intellectuals (including Fernando Cardoso, Andre Gunder Frank, Enzo Faletto, and others) based at the ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America at the UN) developed a theory during the 1970s and 1980s known as “dependence theory” or “development theory,” which aimed to explain the world economy and discuss the difficulties faced by “peripheral” countries such as those in Latin America. Inspired by Max Weber’s theories of rationalization, dependence theory broadly argued that the state should have control over the market. It was very influential in promoting industrialization for import substitutions and was known as a Latin American version of Keynesianism. 13.  Carved stone figure from Easter Island (annexed to Chile in 1888). 14. East and West are historical and ideological constructs that are still widely used to distinguish between “advanced” European nations and the rest. Nations in the Americas that gained independence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, thus native authors often include their nations in the West’s history when narrating history. Most of them also feel excluded from postcolonial terminology and twentieth century political trends, which mainly involve nations from Africa and Asia that gained independence in the twentieth century. 15.  See Tinsman (2014) for a detailed study on grapes, boycotts, the Chilean solidarity movement in the US, and consumption of Chilean fruit during the Cold War. 16. The Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) makes a distinction between World Expos and other international specialized expos. Nowadays, World Expos take place every five years and last for six months, while international specialized expos take place in between and only last for three months. The latter are also much more



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specific, for example, the Yeosu Expo in 2012 addressed “The Living Ocean and Coast” and, in 2017, the Astana Expo will address the theme of “Future Energy.” According to this, it can be claimed that no World Expo took place during those years. However, many international specialized expos did take place. These were Budapest, 1971; Spokane, 1974; Okinawa, 1975; Plovdiv, 1981; Knoxville, 1982; New Orleans, 1984; Tsukuba, 1985; Plovdiv, 1985; Vancouver, 1986; Brisbane, 1988; Plovdiv, 1991; and Genoa, 1992. Chile did not participate in any of these. In the 1990s, Chile also participated in Lisbon 1998, which was another international expo with the theme “The Oceans, Heritage for the Future,” where Portugal, like Spain, celebrated pre-colonial voyages of discovery, commemorating 500 years since Vasco da Gama’s travels to India. 18. The Constitution currently in force is the one signed in the 1980s, during the dictatorship, although amendments have been made to it since the transition to democracy. In 2015, President Michelle Bachelet announced the start of a new Constitution-making process that is still working on a new text. 19.  The Constitution created during the dictatorship (1980) was maintained during the transition and into democracy. In this text, Pinochet prevented any chance of substantial future political change. Consequently, democracy in Chile since the nineties has often been described as merely formal (as opposed to substantial), under tutelage, transitional, incomplete, and protected (Moulian 1997; Richard 2004; Garretón 2007). All these describe a political regime also known as the “democracy of consensus” although, in Chile, the consensus of transitional democracy and the word consensus itself echo a broader political economic context beyond Chilean borders. The Washington Consensus, a term coined in 1989, installed the economic policies that the region’s governments had to accept in exchange for credit and aid that indebted the region, reducing the state’s decision-making capacities and that of their democracies (see Fazio 2003). 20.  Pienso que los productos cada vez van a ser más indistinguibles de su comunicación y que la seducción será la principal herramienta con que van a contar los países para hablar los unos con los otros. Hoy día toda empresa exitosa se basa en la inteligencia que le agrega a sus ofertas. Pero no se trata de una inteligencia tecnológica, sino de la capacidad de poder interpretar un mercado descifrando tendencias. (I think it will become harder and harder to distinguish products from their communication, and seduction will become the main tool that countries use to communicate with each other. Nowadays, the success of any company is based on the intelligence they add to their offerings. But it’s not a technological intelligence, but rather the capacity to interpret the market by making sense of trends) (Eugenio García in El pabellón de Chile 1992, 43). 21.  Es por eso que es importante la presencia de nuestro país, en esta expo Shanghái, que puede convertirse en un momento también importante para el fortalecimiento de la relación económica bilateral, para la creación de nuevos negocios, así como para el fortalecimiento de Chile como plataforma de entrada de los inversionistas chinos hacia la América Latina. 22.  In August 2010, China became the second fastest-growing world economy. See Teather 2010.

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WORKS CITED Aguirre, Estela, and Sonia Chamorro. 2009. Memoria Gráfica del Exilio Chileno 1973–1989. Santiago de Chile: Ocho Libros. Amadori, Ana Maria, and Patricio Basáes. 1989. 1889–1989 El Pabellón Chileno en la Exposición Universal de París. Santiago: Universidad de Chile. Andermann, Jens. 2009. “Tournaments of Value: Argentina and Brazil in the Age of Exhibitions.” Journal of Material Culture, no. 14: 333. Anderson, Benedict. [1983] 2006. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso. Aronczyk, Melissa. 2013. Branding the Nation. The Global Business of National Identity. New York: Oxford University Press. Baltra, Lidia. 1988. Atentados a la Libertad de Información en Chile 1973–1987. Santiago de Chile: Ceneca. BCN Chile. 2009a. Shanghai 2010: Fernando Léniz y la Histórica Participación Chilena en la Expo Sevilla 92. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=907sgCPc5HU. ———. 2009b. Presidenta Bachelet inaugura el Pabellón Chileno para Expo Shanghai 2010. Observatorio Asia Pacífico. http://observatorio.bcn.cl/asiapacifico/noticias/expo-shanghai-2010-bachelet. Benjamin, Walter. 1999. Illuminations. London: Pimlico. Bennett, Tony. 1995. The Birth of the Museum. History, Theory, Politics. London and New York: Routledge. Chatterjee, Partha. 2008. La Nación en Tiempo Heterogéneo y otros Estudios Subalternos. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. de la Maza, Josefina. 2013. “De Géneros y Obras Maestras: La Fundación de Santiago (1888) de Pedro Lira.” Caiana. Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura Visual del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte (CAIA) 3: 1–14. El Pabellón de Chile. Huracanes y Maravillas en una Exposición Universal. 1992. Santiago de Chile: Ograma. Errázuriz, Luis Hernán, and Gonzalo Leiva. 2012. El Golpe Estético. Dictadura Militar en Chile 1973–1989. Santiago de Chile: Ocho Libros. Fazio, Hugo (2003) ¿Quiénes gobiernan América Latina? Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones. Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin. Gamboa, Marly. 2007. “Contextualización Histórica y Artística de la Obra Fotográfica de Antonio Quintana Contreras.” Thesis, Art History, Santiago: Universidad de Chile. http://www.tesis.uchile.cl/tesis/uchile/2007/gamboa_m/sources/ gamboa_m.pdf. Garretón, Manuel Antonio. 2007. Del Postpinochetismo a la Sociedad Democrática. Globalización y Política en el Bicentenario. Santiago de Chile: Debate. Gómez-Barris, Macarena. 2009. Where Memory Dwells. Culture and State Violence in Chile. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. Harvey, Penelope. 1996. Hybrids of Modernity. Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition. New York: Routledge.



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Hernández, Carmen. 2006. “Chile a fines del siglo XIX: Exposiciones, museos y la construcción del arte nacional.” In Galerías del Progreso. Museos, exposiciones y cultura visual en América Latina, edited by Jens Andermann and Beatriz González Stephan, 261–94. Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterno Editora. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. [1983] 2013. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo: Cambridge University Press. International Exhibition to be Held at Santiago, Chili, in 1875. 1874. Washington, Gov’t. print off. Americana. https://archive.org/details/internationalexh00sant. Leiva, Gonzalo. 2008. Multitudes en sombras. AFI, Asociacón de Fotográfos Independientes. Santiago de Chile: Ocho Libros. Lira, Pedro. 1889. “El Salón de 1889.” Revista de Bellas Artes. Year 1 (3): 65–71. Digital Catalogue Facultad Filosofía y Humanidades. Universidad Alberto Hurtado. http://documentosartechile.cl/tema/exposicion-internacional-de-1875/ Lockyer, Angus. 2007. “The Logic of Spectacle C. 1970.” Art History 30 (4): 571–89. Marambio, Augusto. 1992. Hacia el Alma de Cipango. Una Aproximación al Ser Japonés. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria. “Marta Colvin (1907–1955).” N.d. Museo de Bellas Artes, Digital Collections. Artistas Visuales Chilenos. http://www.artistasvisualeschilenos.cl/658/w3-article-40344.html. Moulian, Tomás. [1997] 1998. Chile actual: Anatomía de un Mito. LOM Ediciones. Pérez, Fernando, and José Rosas. 2011. “Portraying and Planning a City.” In Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, edited by Jordana Dym and Karl Offen. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Pinedo, Javier. 1996. “Una Metáfora de País: La Discusión en Torno a la Presencia de Chile en el Pabellón de Sevilla 1992.” In Ensayismo y Modernidad en América Latina, edited by Carlos Ossandón, 87–113. Santiago de Chile: Arcis—LOM Ediciones. “Prospecto.” 1875. El Correo de la Exposición, 16 September, 1875. Digital Catalogue Facultad Filosofía y Humanidades. Universidad Alberto Hurtado. http:// documentosartechile.cl/tema/exposicion-internacional-de-1875/. Renan, Ernest. [1871] 1990. “What is a Nation?” In Nation and Narration, edited by Homi K. Bhabha, 8–22. Oxford and New York: Routledge. Richard, Nelly. 2004. Cultural Residues. Chile in Transition. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Teather, David. 2010. “China Overtakes Japan as World’s Second Largest Economy.” The Guardian, August 16. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/ aug/16/china-overtakes-japan-second-largest-economy. Tinsman, Heidi. 2014. Buying into the Regime. Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Turner, Fred. 2012. “The Family of Man and the Politics of Attention in Cold War America.” Public Culture 24 (1): 55–84. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363– 1443556.

Chapter Two

The Counter-Narratives of Nation Branding The Case of Peru Félix Lossio Chávez

Nation branding is a set of discourses, procedures and devices developed by national governments in alliance with global branding consultancies since the end of the twentieth century. Through these practices, these actors have renewed national narratives that involve identity models for citizens, pursuing the establishment of a distinctive and coherent reputation in order to become attractive and competitive in the global market, particularly in relation to tourism, investment, and exports. In short, nation branding involves the careful design, under neoliberal premises and imperatives, of a national identity to be shared locally and globally. Peru and its neighbors in Latin America have not been excluded from this development, and since the first years of the twenty-first century, governments of countries such as Colombia (“Colombia is Passion,” 2006, “The Answer is Colombia,” 2011), Chile (“Chile Always Surprising” 2006), Ecuador (“Ecuador Loves Life,” 2010), Cuba (“Auténtica Cuba,” 2011), Paraguay (Brand Country Paraguay, 2017), among many others, have promoted nationbranding strategies. In these cases, to paint a very general picture, the national narratives promise sensorial experiences through the central presence of areas such as gastronomy, music, nature or the “authenticity” or “passion” of the region. The suggested depictions have activated both massive support and resistance from civil society (Lossio 2017). In the Peruvian case study, the nation brand narrative has been celebrated by hundreds of thousands of citizens, who constantly share the proposed national referents, or embrace the brand’s visual merchandising in their clothes, cars, or houses, arguably legitimating the official narrative suggested by the nation brand designers. In addition, small and medium-sized businesses have sought permission from the institution in charge of this strategy to be considered “brand ambassadors” or “brand licensees,” with the aim of using the 59

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nation brand logo in their products, and the expectation of improving their reputation through association with the nation brand. In a sense, Brand Peru triggered a renovated wave of national identity and pride. Nevertheless, and simultaneously, the suggested narrative has also been strongly challenged by both everyday people and opinion leaders, as well as by local artists who, since the release of the campaign, have constantly produced designs, posters, and engravings mocking the official logo and its content. Evidencing the historical and current fissures of a fragmented nation, these artists have produced alternative narrations in the form of design activism that have resonated with many citizens, who share them publicly and criticize the official brand narrative. In the light of this post-branding social dynamics, the aim of this chapter is to answer the following: what is the social meaning of the nation-branding counter-narratives campaigns? What do these disputes reveal about societies such as those of Peru and elsewhere in Latin America where similar reactions have been witnessed? How do these reactions contribute to the understanding of the field of nation branding itself? To address these questions, and through the use of visual discourse analysis I will examine three images created by Peruvian artists and graphic designers. The images were chosen for three reasons: first, they deliberately intend to mock, disturb or transform the nation-branding logos; second, they were profusely shared through the social networks, and hence were and still are available to the public, allowing anyone to view and share them; third, I carried out interviews with their creators, making it possible to include their own perspective as a primary source, which adds a further layer to my analysis. NATION BRANDING IN PERU: NARRATIVES AND COUNTER-NARRATIVES Nation branding produces a renewed narrative of the nation. It suggests a vision for the country, a set of values and collective goals with which governments pursue the creation of a differentiated brand identity. In this endeavor, actors such as advertisers, marketing experts and brand consultants lead the decision making, terms such as competitive identity, brand coherence and brand equity or target-markets dominate the language, and quantitative tools such as country-brand or country-reputation world rankings become the privileged measures used to evaluate the nation’s performance. As Melissa Aronczyk notes, “the knowledge identified as vital to maintain the nation now comes not from national governments, not from historical or social legacies, and not from civic sources of leadership, but from branding and marketing experts,”



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whose expertise “apparently give[s] them the license to determine what values, attitudes, behaviors and beliefs are superior to others” (2013, 5). Nation branding is much more than advertising campaigns in the form of slogans and logos; it is a political device that plays a crucial role in the current production of the nation, in the construction of citizenship models and in the promotion of a particular sense of belonging. Over the course of the last ten years, which can be defined as the formative period of this field, basic guidelines have been developed in the form of handbooks and manuals, mainly by chief leaders in the subject such as Wally Ollins (2002), Simon Anholt (2007), Keith Dinnie (2008), and Robert Govers and Frank Go (2009), among others. In these handbooks, implemented by consultancies, governments, and different stakeholders, the most commonly identified guidelines to follow are consistency, coherence, distinction, uniqueness, and validation by public opinion. In the consideration that each case is different and demands particular planning, it can be argued that the place branding common imperatives usually suggest that there must be a consistent line between the official brand identity, its visual representation, the actions developed by the different stakeholders and the way in which citizens incorporate and reproduce the suggested nation brand. At the same time, these place branding manuals underline the relevance to highlight the good news—the aspects that make the country different, unique and attractive to the world. These are then fundamental considerations in any place branding endeavor. Nonetheless, as sometimes recognized by the same authors aforementioned, these considerations become much more challenging in a process involving such a dynamic and complex entity as the nation. In fact, as with the different nation-building processes carried out since the mid-eighteenth century, the attempt at creating consistency, consensus and public validation by its architects—whether they be political leaders, dictators, presidents, or in this case, branding consultants—is most often thwarted by internal contradictions, social fractures or political disagreements. This is, I argue, particularly problematic in Latin America, a region characterized by economic inequality, cultural diversity, and a colonial past that continues to structure vertical social relationships, fueling constant political conflicts. In regards to this case study, and in concordance to the definition suggested initially, the nation-branding project is led by PromPerú, a governmental institution under the Ministry of Commerce, Tourism and Investment that is in charge of promoting the country nationally and globally. The campaign was launched in 2011, in a context characterized by three processes. The first has to do with the post-conflict period in the aftermath of the systematic crisis experienced between 1980 and the early 2000s. High rates of inflation, a weak-

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ened currency, and scarcity of basic everyday products characterized Alan García’s first government (1985–1990). In addition, the country experienced an internal armed conflict that, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, caused the death and disappearance of almost 70,000 people, the majority of whom were rural indigenous Quechua-speaking peasants (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación 2004). During the 1990s, Peru went on to endure a political dictatorship under the regime of Alberto Fujimori (1990–2001). Elected democratically, in 1992 Fujimori shut down Congress using military force, subsequently giving himself unaccountable roles and authority. Extensive corruption, appropriation of the media and national institutions to satisfy Fujimori’s personal agenda and persecution of opposition parties, unions, and civil associations followed. By the early 2000s, with terrorist actions diminishing considerably along with the stabilization of the economy and the return of a democratic government in 2001, public debate focused on how to make sense of the recent traumatic past, and the discussion of “battles over memory” acquired a central position. The second process that characterized this period involves the continuity of the neoliberal economic model based upon which Peru has implemented its public policies for the last twenty-five years. In macro-economic terms, this period has meant steady economic growth and stability, with the country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growing between 2002 and 2015 at an average rate of 5.9 percent. As a result, the size and consumption capacity of the middle classes increased and poverty levels fell from 54.3 percent of the total population in 2001 to 23.9 percent in 2013, with rates of extreme poverty reduced from 24.1 percent in 2001 to 4.7 percent in 2013 (Mendoza and García 2006, The World Bank 2016). In addition, these decades saw the revitalization of economic sectors such as construction, mining, exports, and tourism, the latter coming to be deliberately promoted and developed as a crucial economic field. The third process involves a socio-cultural phenomenon. Over the last fifteen years, national cultural referents mainly linked to the popular classes have begun to gain more presence in the public sphere. Specifically, local gastronomy has gained prominence at the center of national identity, as have—albeit to a lesser extent—music, literature, sports, fashion, and film. As David Wood (2005) has shown in relation to literature, football, and crafts, the eruption of the “popular” in Peruvian identity and national culture can be dated to around the turn of the twenty-first century. Despite the unresolved “imprecision” of the national, it is also true that cultural diversity in Peru is more present within the concept of the national, and the multiracial and multicultural character of Peru is finally finding full expression and greater acknowledge at the national level (Wood 2005, 25). This has occurred as part of an ongoing process in which the popular classes have penetrated the



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hegemonic classes’s activities; making it possible to gain a space within the national culture (Wood 2005, 251).1 At the same time, these years saw an extensive government effort to encourage citizens to “consume local” through branding campaigns such as Cómprale al Perú (“Buy Peru,” 2004), El Perú está de moda (“Peru is in Fashion,” 2007), and El Perú es Super (“Peru is Super,” 2008). These campaigns aimed to show that there was something interesting called “Peru” which deserved more attention, reversing the tendency to assume imported products as superior. Amidst this context, in 2008, the Country Brand Project was created. Its aim was to contest the clichés and stereotypes about Peru in global media and public opinion, such as poverty, instability, natural disasters (a major earthquake had occurred in 2007), and bad news in general. As exposed in 2013 by PromPerú in an internal presentation aimed at explaining the context and arguments to develop this kind of project, the global stereotypes about the country “did not reflect the reality of Peru” (PromPerú 2013, Slide 11, all translations author’s own), which was characterized during those years by a growing economy, the reduction of poverty, political stability, a renewed legal framework attractive to foreign investment, and the international recognition of Peruvian innovation in gastronomy, film, and literature. Therefore, “all of these needed to be communicated through a strategy, as is being done in other countries” (PromPerú 2013, Slide 30). Given this context, it was urgent to improve the national image hence compete in the region in a stronger form, and to do so it was fundamental to develop a nation brand strategy. Influenced by Simon Anholt, whose Nation Brand Hexagon appears in PromPerú’s presentations, the Country Brand Project designed their aims and methods. Two goals were identified, which related to the domestic and international spheres, respectively: first, to strengthen national self-esteem, and second, to generate differentiation with respect to the rest of the world. According to PromPerú, this would create a competitive advantage, since it would condense a clear agreement about how Peruvians wish to represent themselves to the world (PromPerú 2013, slide 42). From this, under the direction of private advertising company Young and Rubicam Perú and the international marketing consultant Future Brand, between 2011 and 2015 PromPerú sponsored six short videos, several local and international advertisements, and a number of major international events—an unprecedented nation-branding strategy from any Peruvian government.2 Visually, the Brand Perú logo selected consists of the word “Perú” in white letters displayed on a red background (the two-official national colors), with a “P” that resembles three symbols: pre-Inca designs such as those found in Moray, Cusco, or the Nazca lines; a fingerprint, and an “@” symbol. The objective of the logo was to produce a signifier that linked Peru’s ancient

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cultures to its current insertion in the digital world, all part of the Peruvian unique identity. In other words, it was to connect identity, tradition, and modernity (figure 2.1). In addition to the logo, the campaign produced three main videos during its first two years. For the internal dissemination, advertising company Young and Rubicam Perú came up with the idea of “Peru, Nebraska” (2011) and “Loreto, Italia” (2012)—two clips released via YouTube with massive resonance amongst the public. For the external campaign, private company McCann Erikson Perú proposed the idea for Recordarás Perú, which was released in July 2012, also via YouTube. The clip was translated into five languages—German, English, Portuguese, French, and Chinese—in strict accordance with the defined targeted markets which were pre-selected in terms of the potential attraction that Peru may produce in these countries as a key place to visit or invest in. As I have analyzed elsewhere (Lossio 2014), the videos reveal that food, music, natural landscapes, and traditional festivities and rituals appear to be, in this order, the pillars of national identity, all of them figured by Peruvian representatives from different social and cultural backgrounds, mostly young successful celebrities and entrepreneurs, or what I define as “celentrepreneurs.” These elements, offered by the celentrepreneurs, consolidate the ultimate Peruvian promise: through its beautiful natural landscapes and authentic people, the country provides exotic experiences and endless adventures. The nation is depicted as a space of sensorial enjoyment and multicultural vitality. This is the identity reference for the Peruvian people and the promise for the foreign audience, the tourist and the investor.3 Nonetheless, alongside the extensive celebration and acceptance by sections of the public, critiques in the form of debates on social networks, and visual contestations in the form of artworks, comics and graphic design pieces,

Figure 2.1.  Brand Perú logo. Source: Marca Perú.



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began to appear shortly after. The premise that motivated artists to engage in this unofficial nation brand counter-campaign was, as they told me explicitly, the awareness that nation branding is not just an innocent commercial strategy but a form of promoting and producing national identity and belonging based upon neoliberal imperatives, which they considered problematic in a country mired in unresolved social tensions. For instance, one of the designers interviewed told me that “[Brand Peru] is a project about the nation and Peru has renounced being a country in order to become a brand. It is very dangerous to leave this challenge [the production of a nation] to advertisers” (personal communication, graphic designer, August 1, 4, 2014). As a result of this perspective, images aiming to contest and undermine the branding narrative started to appear on social media, originally on the same designers’s Facebook pages. One such image, created by graphic designer Markus Ronjam in 2012, transposes the “P” from the logo to the shape of a mining excavation. The national signifier is now rooted in a poor rural town. The image thus depicts one of the main social conflicts in contemporary Peru: although mining is the principal economic activity of the country, gaining more economic revenues than ever before, the areas where these activities are carried out remain within the lowest economic and social indexes and, in addition, some of them are involved in deep social conflicts surrounding the extractive industries. In Ronjam’s cartoon, the “P” represents neither Peruvian ancient history nor the country’s insertion into digital culture, as officially intended, but rather the exploitation of local natural resources by private companies and the reinforcement of economic inequality in terms of class, region, and space (figure 2.2). Moreover, this image and the situation it represents can

Figure 2.2.  Brand Peru by graphic designer Markus Ronjam.

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be linked to a longer history of resource exploitation and wealth creation for the metropolis during the colonial period, particularly in the Andean region of Peru during Spanish rule.4 By evoking these associations, this image aims to historicize long-term, persistent inequalities of the country, as well as those of several other postcolonial economies dependent upon natural resources. In the image shown in figure 2.3, cartoonist Jesús Cossio suggests that covering street walls with the nation-branding campaign’s proposed foundations of national identity, such as food and Machu Picchu, constitutes a deliberate attempt to hide poverty and social segregation, in this case represented by rural migrants from the Andes now homeless in the city. In other words, nation branding privileges the objects to be commoditized—which, adding to the irony, come mainly from the Andean culture—but does not care about the subjects; paradoxically, it is the creators of the consumable objects who are almost rendered invisible. Cossio’s image supports a second reading: the subjects depicted, by their physical presence in the streets, prevent Brand Peru’s efforts to create an impeccable and clean representation of the nation, since its operators will not be able to perfectly paste the nation brand banner over the country’s everyday reality. The woman and the child pictured in the image become living symptoms of pervasive socio-economic ills that disturb the branding endeavor. In Esther Peeren’s words, the homeless, the unemployed, and migrants are “living ghosts” or “figures of return” produced by liberaldemocrat capitalism. They are “physically present and visible, yet remain

Figure 2.3.  Brand Peru by cartoonist Jesús Cossio



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unseen” (Peeren 2014, 33), but paradoxically operate according to their own “spectral agency” (Peeren 2014, 16), manifesting, through their invisibility, a problematic situation. The final example (figure 2.4) is an image created by Álvaro Portales in reference to the violent state repression inflicted on the inhabitants of Bagua, in the Peruvian Amazon, who protested against mining exploitation in 2009. As a result of this intervention, thirty-three citizens died, among them police officers and indigenous protesters, making this just the most recent of a series of tragic events relating to the social conflicts around extractive industries. In Portales’s representation, the center of the branding logo becomes a bullet wound, piercing and drawing blood from the citizen’s back.

Figure 2.4.  Brand Peru series by graphic designer Álvaro Portales. Source: Alvaro Portales (2012).

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The word “Peru” is literally physically branded onto his body: the Peruvian citizen embodies the word Peru, but dramatically in the form of bullets shot by the State itself. READING CONTESTATIONS OF NATION BRANDING: POSTCOLONIAL TENSIONS As consumption studies focusing on “market literacy” (Lury 2011), co-creation of brands (Arvidsson 2005), or “reflexive consumption” and “aesthetic reflexivity” (Lash and Urry 1994) have shown, contemporary consumers, socialized through the market and the use of marketing techniques, must not be seen as passive recipients of messages, with no capacity of reflection or questioning. On the contrary, consumers—to a greater or lesser extent—take a critical, reflexive distance from the object being offered and understand the relationship they are establishing with the brand. This critical-reflexive distance is extensively illustrated in Naomi Klein’s classic No Logo which draws special attention to the reactions led by “culture jammers” against global brands’s cultural colonization, in the form of anti-advertisement campaigns who, as in this chapter’s case study, redefine the original brand meanings (Klein 2005, 294). Considering then that consumption is one of the underlying logics of nation branding, to contest it not just as citizens in the political realm, but also as reflexive consumers through the appropriation and re-signification of brands and their logos is a natural response. In other words, if it is agreed that the centrality of consumption and the market has suggested a new form to build the nation, or in words of Magdalena Kania-Lundholm, that “citizenship becomes increasingly reformulated in terms of consumer practices, and nations become part of the global market through citizens and their role as consumers” (2016, 126), by the same token its contestation occurs from the basis of the consumer’s literacy, either by avoiding the consumption of related nation brand merchandising or, as here explored, by “jamming” them publicly. The examples discussed in this chapter shows that these market literate Peruvian designers understand the political implications of branding. They aim to disrupt a narrative produced in this case not by transnational companies (the focus of Klein’s culture jammers), but by the state itself in alliance with the “Transnational Promotional Class,” to use Aronczyk’s terms (2013). More significantly, the designs examined reveal the latent political dimension of the field, which nation-branding operators consistently attempt to conceal. They create a visual anchor to reality and, in so doing, participate in the nar-



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ration of the nation, fighting against what I call the state’s intention to acquire the legitimate monopoly over branding. To begin with, and in relation to the branding guidelines described earlier, these examples of visual activism contest the coherent, consistent and consensual nation brand, hardly possible in post-conflict, postcolonial societies such as those in Latin America. By recreating the nation brand and evidencing public issues such as unfair mining exploitation, inequality, racism, violence, or state repression they introduce a problematic dimension into the nation brand. In addition, these images create an awareness in their audience of the dissociation between the official-exhibited Brand Peru and the unofficial-hidden, but still present Peru. In Brand Peru, the audience is invited to board a passionate, joyful, folkloric, multicultural journey. However, this promise belies its dark side: its failures, tensions, and hierarchies. The problem with the market-oriented narrative seems to be that official images create a distance from the historical, postcolonial and post-conflict Peru. The political purpose of these images, therefore, is precisely to re-historicize this idealistic nation brand, to disrupt and disturb the idyllic national depiction. In Baudrillard’s terms (1994), it can be argued that the images presented unpack the nation brands’s depictions by revealing the official campaign to be a “simulacrum”: a copy without the original, an image of something that does not exist, or exists only in more complex ways. In fighting against this simulacrum, these artists show new actors in the picture; they include the rest, the abject, the internally-excluded from the system: the poor rural woman living in the city, the indigenous political activist, the mining worker in rural towns, etc. That is, those individuals included but not represented. They are those actors that the system excludes from its official classifications and representations but who make the economy possible to fully operate. Or, referencing Žižek, those actors that the system includes in its folkloric or consumable form (food, heritage) but excludes in its “real” one (violence, poverty) (Žižek 2005, 234). As one of the designers explained to me: Brand Peru shows the “cholo,” the Andean guy (serrano) with his chullo hat, “oh, our people!” . . . What happened when Humala [the former Peruvian president] won [the elections], what was everyone saying on social media? “Indios, you fucked everything up, the Marine Navy Seals should come and exterminate you all.” . . . Then, when they are in the showcase, “oh yes, how beautiful!,” but when it is about a discussion in this other sense, “No way, shitty serrano!”5 (personal communication, graphic designer, August 1, 4, 2014).

In order to confront this, the visual artists decided to “complete” the official depictions of the nation in order to re-narrate what, in their view, Peru

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really is. For the graphic designers, the monopoly of branding in the construction of the nation is a dangerous authorization, creating a form of legitimizing a narrative that answers the demands of the market through techniques and concepts from an exclusive and biased locus of enunciation. It is precisely the branding discourse of the nation, the narrative (not) constructed about the nation in Brand Peru which is the primary focus of critique. For me, the best way to generate debate was to intervene the logo, rather than changing it. The first thing I thought was, well I thought from the perspective of the advertisers themselves; “you say this logo represents us and represents a lot of things, right?” Well, then we will start looking for more aspects that you haven’t shown as part of the country, in this case the critique addresses our failures, our mistakes (personal communication, graphic designer, September 3, 10, 2014).6

I could add at least a hundred further images to the ones examined here, not only created by artists or graphic designers but also by the general public, spray-painted in the streets or disseminated online. I could also include an enormous amount of discussions held on online networks such as Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook, criticizing, mocking, and generally debating the suggested branded narratives (Lossio 2014). This leads us to a final reflection for which I need to refer to the conceptual pillars of this subject: nation and brands. In the works of Ernst Renan (1990), Benedict Anderson (2006), Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (2015), and Michael Billig (1995), modern nations can be understood as imagined communities created through the sharing of cultural artefacts in a homogenous time and space (Anderson 2006); based partly upon traditions that far from their claim of natural origins were (re)invented in the pursuit of cohesion (Hobsbawm and Ranger 2015), validated not only during explicit moments of national defining moments (i.e., regional separatism attempts or external conflicts), but in a daily plebiscite (Renan 1990) through everyday, familiar objects and practices of “forgotten reminding” (Billig 1995, 38). In short, the nation emerges as a social construct produced by the conditions of a specific time and space, shaped through discursive and material, formal and informal mechanisms and put into practice—performed and validated—through daily, conscious and unconscious routines. In regard to the conceptualization of brands, the key aspect to highlight is that within their commercial purposes, brands also have a significant social role. This is what Guy Debord and the situationists in the 1960s, Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams in the 1970s, David Harvey and Fredric Jameson in the 1980s and 1990s or, more recently Celia Lury or Liz Moor, among other scholars, have stated: advertising and branding are privileged vehicles for un-



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derstanding social relations, feelings of belonging, and forms of governance under the logic of capitalism. Hence, brands are no longer considered the visual final result of a marketing strategy but a central asset of contemporary capitalism that, within their commercial purposes, have a significant role in producing and managing realities in the form of lifestyles, subjects (consumers), or collectives. In the words of Adam Arvidsson, “brands have evolved from semiotic to biopolitical instruments” (2011, 310). Nations and brands, put briefly, are social constructions emerging from and directed to the public, and hence are also terrains of dispute. And nation branding, almost a logical consequence of our times, can be understood as a recent form of nation building. Nevertheless, willingly or not, this is a field filled with stereotyped representations offered to the global market It is very hard to represent diversity whilst also pursuing consistency. As Aronczyk argues, Branding’s work is to erase the prominence of those attributes which might compromise the legitimacy of the nation-state in a market democracy. These attributes are called “hygiene factors” in the business: obstacles such as “Investment red tape,” “poor infrastructure” and “corruption.” . . . Branding appears as a benign form of national consciousness, because elements that are not benign are not permissible within a nation branding framework (2013, 79).

This “benign form of national consciousness” becomes, however, more problematic in contexts such as this case study, which are mired with historical social tensions but with the simultaneous current expectancy to satisfy the global demand of competitive, uniqueness and distinction. How, in short, to understand the design of a place from the branding perspective and the expectancy of investors’ eyes, in a postcolonial nation? To answer this, it is imperative to connect the ideas developed so far in light of postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha (1990), Partha Chatterjee (1993), and Edward Said (2003). Summarized very briefly, these authors affirm that the modern construction of the nation in the case of postcolonial societies does not necessarily occur in a homogeneous time and space, as claimed by Anderson, but rather in a heterogeneous time (Chatterjee 1993), through ambivalent, liminal historical processes and operations which enable forms of contestation and dispute (Bhabha 1990, 3). It is the coexistence of ambivalent and liminal processes in postcolonial nations that means that any attempt of enclosed national narrations or indeed of self-colonizing representations attempted to satisfy the Western gaze are confronted by constant contestations. The social significance of the nation-branding counter-campaigns analyzed here, and those comparable to them, can therefore be understood as directed

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towards the resistance of hegemonic constructions of the nation rooted in neoliberal discourses and executed through branding techniques. By resisting such constructions, these contestations help to shape the way actors imagine their communities and perform in them. In other words, this is a form of intervention in the symbolic battle for the nation, a struggle to decide how the nation is narrated. The nation, this “agency of ambivalent narration” (Bhabha 1990, 3), is a social construction anchored in structures of power that resonate in postcolonial societies for which there is an open and constant option to contest and dispute. In a sense, it could be said that it is precisely the awareness of being a postcolonial nation that activates the need to evidence fracture, fissures, and antagonisms not desired in the global market. The extension of this discussion to include the concept of memory has relevance for Peru as well as other Latin American countries. Considering that the “battles around memory” are not about having or not having a collective memory but rather about which narrative gains public presence, is finally installed in public opinion and passed on to further generations, these alternative narrations become even more significant. If, from the official side, there is an attempt to “forget” topics which potentially disturb the current reputation and potential competitiveness of Peru in the global market, alternative stories about the nation act as popular artefacts in the political struggle around memory. Given Jelin’s argument that “what can change about the past is its meaning, which is subject to reinterpretations, anchored in intentions and expectations toward the future” (2003, 26), then it follows that the artists “jamming” the brand narration are active in bringing their own understandings of the past into public view. Considering that the nation is validated in a daily, albeit unconscious plebiscite, nation branding serves to “perpetuate a conversation about what the nation is for in a global context” (Aronczyk 2013, 176). And “design activism” responses to nation branding “can produce alternative narratives or, at least, provide some of the tools to write new stories” (Julier 2011, 277). These new stories, given all their disagreements with the official narrative, need to be embraced: they too are reflected in the collective mirror that is regarded in the act of becoming a nation.7 FURTHER QUESTIONS: NATION BRANDING AS A NECESSARY FICTION? While I have analyzed this topic from a critical perspective, pointing out the contestations that emerged in the light of broader historical, socio-economic, cultural, and political processes, I have also noted that, considering Brand



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Peru’s enormous success in terms of mass dissemination and positioning, the nation-branding initiative has also created the possibility of imagining an “us.” I believe this is of central relevance to the Peru in which I have lived: fragmented, discriminatory, and deeply unequal. Nation-branding strategies, understood as neoliberal cultural policies, surely have to be re-examined and re-directed, but they are still of significant social relevance. And there’s the rub. Even considering their own problematic limits, the key role branding and advertising occupy in the shaping of identity and social cohesion in our contemporary world is not in question. Brand Peru has unquestionably given new stories to a post-conflict fractured nation. It has produced, even if only for a short period, a new “foundational fiction” (Sommer 1991) that can permeate reality and bind together individuals and collectives. Considering its success in this regard, how are we to engage with these initiatives? Do we accept them as strategies that countries need to implement to meet the neoliberal demands of the market? Are they unnecessary policies using up enormous resources that ought to be dismissed in a region with serious socio-economic and political problems? Or are they powerful techniques to shape a new sense of belonging that, thanks to their apolitical orientation, are precisely more significant in conflicted societies such as those of Peru and its Latin American neighbors? Nation branding is not about the evil advertisers and governmental public who, only concerned with power and economic revenue, control the nation’s values and identity for their benefit, against the saintly critical artists or civil society who know the “truth” of the nation. Nor is it about a real country versus a fake brand. This obviously exists to some extent and must be made visible, as I have attempted to show: branding initiates are subject to interests and goals shaped by specific imperatives and a particular locus of enunciation. However, I do not believe that “real” versus “unreal” or “pure” versus “impure” are useful terms for academic and public debate. Instead, nation branding must embrace its inherent political dimension and consequently, assume its constitutive inconsistencies and the impossibility of controlling the nation’s diverse stories. It is fundamental for the field and the actors involved in it to understand, from a political perspective, the historical conditions in which these narrations are being produced; from a conceptual perspective, problematize the notion of the ‘brand’ itself; and, from a methodological perspective, widen the perspective and strategies from which these narratives are imagined. Further questions must be raised for countries undergoing similar processes: how to construct a nation brand when historical projects of nation building have proven to be not just incomplete or limited but also guilty of reproducing class and race divisions, as Paulo Drinot (2015, 123) has argued

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with reference to Peru? How to sustain a nation brand when the nation itself has not yet been built? Is it correct to argue, as Nadia Kaneva has done in relation to the nation-branding experiences of post-socialist countries, that “without a nation there will be nothing to brand” (Brand South Africa, 2016)? In broader terms, what is different in or particular to the place branding experiences of the Global South/periphery/postcolonial context? How can we connect Bolivian, Peruvian, Indian, or Indonesian branding experiences? In embracing these tensions around the nation, it is possible to understand that nation branding activates a new discussion about that ambivalent contingency called “the nation” and, being a limit, it is also an opportunity. If, according to Noah Harari, “the real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups” (Harari 2016, 28) and that the “ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapien language” (Harari 2016, 28), then, nation branding could operate, if it is open to multiple locus of enunciation, as a 21st century myth for the creation of stronger collective bonds. NOTES 1. With reference to fashion and music, see Patiño (2014), and Montero-Diaz (2016). 2.  The official Brand Peru Facebook page has more than two million followers, which is a higher number than the followers of the official Facebook pages of all Peruvian political parties, the Peruvian Catholic church, the President and all the regional and local mayors, combined. 3.  In contrast, areas such as science, technology, academic knowledge or businesses in general appear briefly. These are the “silences” of the branding narrative. This is not an arbitrary invention of the campaign advertisers but a reinforcement of Peruvian common sense about the nation. In a 2009 survey carried out in Peru, 47 percent of participants answered that the most representative aspect of Peruvian culture was its food. A further 28 percent said archeological ruins, and 24 percent said music and dance (Instituto de Opinión Publica, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú 2009). 4.  According to official data, the poorest regions in Peru are precisely the ones with greater mining activity (Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas 2015). 5.  Marca Perú te pone al cholo, al serrano con su chullo, “ah lo nuestro” . . . ¿Qué paso cuando Humala ganó, cómo se puso el cotarro virtual?: “indios, la cagaron, deberían venir los marines navy seals y exterminarlos a todos,” . . . Entonces, cuando están en la vitrina “ah sí, ¡qué bonito!”, cuando se trata de una discusión de este tipo, “ah no, ¡serrano de mierda! 6.  Para mí la mejor manera de generar la opinión era intervenir el logo y no tanto adulterarlo sino un poco lo primero que pienso es que bueno pienso un poco desde la base de los mismos publicistas, ustedes dicen que este sello nos representan



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y representa muchas cosas, ¿no? Claro entonces vamos a empezar a buscarle otras cosas que ustedes no han mostrado como parte del país, en este caso pues la crítica va a lo que tenemos como fallas, a lo que tenemos como errores. 7.  To expand on nation branding and the public sphere see Varga 2013.

WORKS CITED Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities. 2nd. London: Verso. Anholt, Simon. 2007. Competitive Identity. The New Brand Management for Nations, Cities and Regions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Aronczyk, Melissa. 2013. Branding the Nation. The Global Business of National Identity. . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Arvidsson, Adam. 2005. “Brands. A critical perspective.” Journal of Consumer Culture V (2): 235–258. ———. 2011. “Creativity, Brands, Finance and Beyond: Notes Toward a Theoretical Perspective on City Branding.” In Brands and Branding Geographies, edited by Andy Pike, 305–323. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation.” In Nation and Narration, edited by Homi K. Bhabha, 291–232. London: Routledge. Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: SAGE. Brand South Africa. 2016. “Without a nation there is nothing to brand,” https://www .brandsouthafrica.com/south-africa-fast-facts/news-facts/south-african-competitiveness-forum-2016. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (2004). Hatun Willakuy: Versión abreviada del Informe Final de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. Lima: Gráfica Delvi S.R.L. Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dinnie, Keith. (ed.) 2008. Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Drinot, Paulo. 2015. “Construcción de nación, racismo y desigualdad: una perspectiva histórica del desarrollo institucional en el Perú.” In Construir Instituciones: Democracia, Desarrollo y Desigualdad en el Peru desde 1980, edited by John Crabtree, 11–31. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial. Govers, Robert, and Frank Go. 2009. Place Branding. Glocal, Virtual and Physical Identities, Constructed, Imagined and Experienced. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Harari, Noah. 2016. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New York: Harper Colins. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger. 2015. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Instituto de Opinión Pública de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. 2009. Percepciones sobre Cultura. Lima: PUCP. Jelin, Elizabeth. 2003. State Repression and the Labors of Memory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Julier, Guy. 2011. “Design activism meets place-branding: Reconfiguring urban representation and everyday practice.” In Brands and Branding geographies, edited by Andy Pike, 213–229. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Kania-Lundholm, Magdalena. 2016. “Nation for Sale? Citizen Online Debates and New Patriotism in Post-Socialist Poland.” In Commercial Nationalism: Selling the Nation and Nationalizing the Sell, edited by Volcic, Zala and Mark Andrejevic, 106-130. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Klein, Naomi. 2005. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. London: Harper Perennial. Lash, Scott, and John Urry. 1994. Economies of Signs & Space. London: SAGE. Lossio, Félix. 2014. “La necesaria fantasía de la marca Perú.” In Perspectivas sobre el nacionalismo en el Perú, edited by Gonzalo Portocarrero, 23–38. Lima: Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú. ———. 2017. “The Construction of Latin America as a Brand: Designs, Narrations, and Disputes in Peru and Cuba.” PhD diss. School of Modern Languages. Newcastle University (forthcoming). Lury, Celia. 2011. Consumer Culture. 2nd. New Jersey: Rutgers Univesity Press. Marca Perú 2011. “Documental Marca Perú 2011 (Versión Oficial con Subtítulos en Inglés),” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL9gsVy9gfU. ———. 2011. “Marca Perú: Documental Perú, Nebraska.” July 10, 2013. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=_1EbafMOjYM. ———. 2012. “Loreto, Italia: Campaña Nacional de la Marca Perú 2012,” https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYcGSiHf6JE. Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas del Perú. 2015, www.mef.gob.pe. Montero-Diaz, Fiorella. 2016. “Singing the war: reconfiguring white upper-class identity through fusion music in post-war Lima.” Ethnomusicology Forum 25 (2): 191–209. Ollins, Wally. 2002. “Branding the Nation—the Historical Context.” The Journal of Brand Management, no. 4: 241–248. Patiño, Paola. 2014. “Clase alta limeña y consumo de lo popular” In Perspectivas sobre el nacionalismo en el Perú, edited by Gonzalo Portocarrero, 57–98. Lima: Red Para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú. Peeren, Esther. 2014. The Spectral Metaphor. Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Portales, Álvaro. 2012. “Marca Perú/Mata Perú.” http://www.alvaroportales.pe. PromPerú. 2008. “Resolución de Presidencia de Consejo Directivo.” http://media.peru .info/catalogo/Attach/ResPCD_007–2008.pdf. ———. 2013. “Peru Country Brand Strategy. Background” [PowerPoint presentation], Lima. ———. 2014. “Hay un Perú para cada quien. Marca País Perú” [PowerPoint presentation], http://es.slideshare.net/IPAE_INNOVA/hay-un-per-para-cada-quien-marca -pas-promper.



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Renan, Ernest. 1990. “What is a nation?” In Nation and Narration, edited by Hommi K. Bhabha, 8–22. London: Routledge. Said, Edward. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin Books. Sommer, Doris. 1991. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Varga, Somogy. 2013. “The Politics of Nation Branding. Collective Identity and Public Sphere in a Neoliberal State.” Journal of Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (8): 825–845. Wood, David. 2005. De Sabor Nacional. El impacto de la cultura popular en el Perú. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Žižek, Slavoj. 2005 . El espinoso sujeto. El centro ausente de la ontología política . Buenos Aires: Paidós.

Chapter Three

Living the Brand Authenticity and Affective Capital in Contemporary Cuban Tourism Rebecca Ogden

Cuba’s brand is hot. In recent years, tourists have been flocking to the Caribbean island in increasing numbers. Mammoth queues snaking up to the check-in desks and around baggage carousels at José Martí International airport in Havana speak both to Cuba’s current popularity as a tourist destination and the failure of its struggling infrastructure to cope with waves of visitors. This latest boom in tourist numbers is undoubtedly correlated to the island’s recent increased visibility in the media in general. Key events, including the announcements of US policy changes toward Cuba in December 2014 by President Barack Obama (and partial reversals of those changes by his successor Donald Trump), the former’s 2016 visit to the island and the Rolling Stones’s free concert in Havana, have sustained the oft-repeated discourse that Cuba is experiencing a moment of radical, unprecedented, and irreversible change on economic, political, and cultural levels. The idea that Cuba should be seen “before it changes,” as the dominant narrative goes, implies that it is at risk of becoming “like everywhere else,” or losing its essential authenticity. Cuba is commonly perceived as an anomaly in a globalized world of digital super-connectivity, as well as one of the last bastions of socialism. The very notion of change is adding fuel to the fire of Cuba’s appeal. Cuba’s most recent tourism branding campaign, bearing the slogan Auténtica Cuba, strongly suggests an attempt to engage with this perception and to distinguish from competitors whose overexposure to global flows of visitors, capital and technology have apparently flattened them out, rendering them inauthentic. In particular, this chapter argues that the intimate, (ostensibly) unposed scenes of everyday Cuban life in the campaign position a construction of authenticity as a form of competitive difference. Within the crowded marketplace of international tourism, a brand plays to a country’s strengths by identifying and emphasizing distinction and singularity in its cultural and 79

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natural assets. Indeed, it may be considered especially pressing to carve a niche in the Caribbean tourism marketplace, given that the West has generally maintained a homogenous imaginary of the region (Sheller 2003; 2004). Tourism therefore represents a highly relevant context within the broader phenomenon of nation branding, in which national identity has become a competitive resource (Aronczyk 2013, 11). Intimate and sensory experiences are valued by tourists in the broad pursuit of authenticity, just as travel to the Latin American and Caribbean regions has long been imbued with the idea of discovery, encounter, and exotic and affective potential. This chapter considers the Auténtica Cuba campaign as a strategic exploitation of the island’s status as a singular site of supposedly authentic, person-to-person connection in an inauthentic world. As the chapter elaborates, Cuba’s unique selling point is rooted in the strategic marketing of affective capital, or in other words, the value found in intimate and interpersonal experiences. In foregrounding “ordinary” Cubans as its stars, the campaign relies on the population to be simultaneously the object, subject, and means by which the brand is mobilized: as this chapter goes on to explain, there is evidence of a shift in the designation of nation-brand ambassadorship from official roles, such as tour guides, to the population at large. However, despite the expansion of contexts in which Cubans and tourists might realize encounters (for various ends), persistent and stringent state regulations attempt to regulate contact between them, suggesting a complex series of conflicts and contradictions behind the brand. AFFECTIVE CAPITAL Tourism’s selective and deliberate assignation of value to certain storylines and images can be understood through the concept of symbolic capital. Latin America and the Caribbean have been depicted and consumed as sites of affective wealth, rich in the potential for intimate, sensory, and often sexual encounters, as numerous scholars have shown (Bandyopadhyay and Nascimento 2010; Cohen, 2010; Frohlick 2008). As Mimi Sheller argues, “the Caribbean has been repeatedly imagined and narrated as a tropical paradise in which the land, plants, resources, bodies and cultures of its inhabitants are open to be invaded, occupied, bought, moved, used, viewed and consumed in various ways” (2003: 13). The points on this affective cartography have been historically mapped by imperial circuits of exoticization, commodificaton, and consumption, according to Marta Savigliano’s important study (1995). For Savigliano, Argentine tango symbolizes one form of exotic capital—a raw export representing symbolic wealth in an imperial system of cultural



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production and consumption of Latin America by the West. Amalia Cabezas draws on and develops this conceptualization of exotic capital in her study on contemporary sex and tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic (2009), modifying it to examine how affective capital is extracted from the Global South and circulated in the contemporary sexual economies of these countries. From the exploitation of affect by transnational corporations in marketing narratives, to the ways in which tourism workers perform intimate forms of labor, the production and consumption of affective capital is crucial to the industries of tourism and hospitality in Latin America. Affect becomes especially relevant when we consider the value placed on embodied feeling in individual tourists’s pursuit of authenticity. Affect refers to states of body and mind, with an emphasis placed on emotions and feelings experienced in and through the body (Tolia-Kelly 2006), and thus is used to widely describe a range of embodied feelings beyond emotions, including sexual desire. Moreover, affect has been framed as “those intensities that pass body to body . . . in those resonances that circulate about, between, and sometimes stick to bodies and worlds, and in the very passages or variations between these intensities and resonances themselves” (Gregg and Seigworth 2010, 1). It is partly this sense of resonance, “contagion” (Probyn 2005), or “stickiness” (Ahmed 2014) that distinguishes affect from concepts such as feeling or emotion. Intimate experiences that allow access to these intensities and resonances are often considered crucial to the sense of truly knowing or experiencing a place (MacCannell 1973). Trying local food or gaining entry to sites “off the beaten track,” for example, allow an individual to demonstrate their concern with authenticity and thus assert their self-identity as a “traveller” (Pearce 1982, 31)—rather than having the much-derided status of “tourist.” As such, it is tourists’s desire to gaze on private “back spaces”—the lives of visited populations appearing somehow more authentic than their own—that has led to the proliferation of staged authenticity, according to MacCannell (1999, 95). However, there is a distinction between the authenticity of feeling and the authenticity of objects (Selwyn 1996). The authenticity of objects relates to a perception of a visited site or purchased product being traditional, or produced according to local customs. However, it is also the experience of connection with locals that lends a sense of authenticity (Conran 2011; Simoni 2016; Sin 2009). Clearly, locals may be the gateway to special knowledge, customs and language. However, the point is not simply whether a touristic experience is attributable to some certifiable original, such as a Cuban mojito served in Ernest Hemingway’s favorite bar. What also matters is how the tourist feels, and that they feel they are being their “true self”—that they are accessing a form of existential authenticity (Wang 1999, 358). Genuine feeling emerges

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from the possibility to affect and be affected by an (O)ther. As we will see, the intimate portraits and scenes privileged in the Auténtica Cuba campaign speak directly to this affective quest. AUTHENTICITY AND AFFECT: CUBA’S USP To speak of economic competitiveness in tourism branding, one must first take Cuba’s rather unique political and economic context into account. Cuba’s reinsertion into the global marketplace of tourism in the 1990s occurred under dramatic and exceptional conditions. Following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the subsequent period of intense economic austerity (known as the “Special Period”), the hard currency generated by a newly revived tourism industry constituted a fundamental source of income. Tourism was an economic safety raft which would allow the survival of the revolutionary project. A series of economic reforms emerged from extensive, urgent debate, proposing compromises that would have been considered impossible during periods of stability, and forcing an urgent reconsideration of new exports and industries to generate hard currency (Kapcia 2008, 159). Alternative export potentials such as nickel and biotechnology appeared inadequate in the face of Cuba’s enormous economic deficit. Having invested in tourism over the previous decade in tentative, measured steps, the only course for economic survival appeared to lie in the rapid expansion of the industry, predicated on Cuba’s geographical advantage, climate, and natural attractions. The development of tourism constituted the first major attempt since 1959 to project a competitive identity to the international marketplace—to practice nation branding. The Cuban context therefore represents a unique and accelerated example of nation branding’s impulse to apply the strategies and rationale of commercial branding in order to monetize cultural and territorial resources (Aronczyk 2013, 3). Early promotional strategy was characterized by inexperience, according to my interviews with executives at the Cuban Ministerio de Turismo (Ministry of Tourism)—or MINTUR. The first major tourism campaigns in the 1990s followed long-standing, formulaic tropes of the tropics used to market rum and tobacco, such as the figure of the mulata. The same interviews revealed that a lack of internet access on the island during this period also hampered MINTUR’s awareness of rival campaigns and thus the development of a modern, competitive marketing strategy. In the early 2000s, MINTUR’s Viva Cuba campaign featured photos of idyllic empty beaches; brochures made heavy reference to unspoilt and uncrowded white shorelines. Such images are a cornerstone of Caribbean tourism branding, in which the tourist



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is positioned as the sexual conquistador of virgin territory (Cohen 1995). In these representations, Cuba appeared a solid if unremarkable example of the generalized tourism marketing of Caribbean destinations as discoverable, conquerable, and possessable (Guerrón Montero 2011, 21), in turn symptomatic of a broader imaginary that links pristine landscape and an undeveloped society to sexual allure and virginity (Cohen 1995, 405). However, in analyzing the evolution of Cuba’s campaigns over the last three decades, we can see the progressive adoption of a more strategic approach that engages directly with neighboring competitors, contemporary market tendencies, and external representations. Auténtica Cuba, launched in 2011 by MINTUR with the input of Canadian design agency Brandworks International, is an example of this development. In contrast to the previous branding campaigns, Auténtica Cuba privileged the everyday lives of “ordinary” Cubans, featuring a series of unposed scenes: a couple on their wedding day (figure 3.1), children playing in the street, musicians and dancers at a party, and spectators enjoying a baseball game. The promotional video released as part of the Auténtica Cuba campaign features a montage of Cuban faces; the individuals featured are not posing workers in official tourism contexts, but farmers, fisherman, ballet dancers, school children, and general members of the population. In its selection of recognizably Cuban cultural scenes and locations, this new branding strategy appeared to tacitly recognize the outside world’s growing fascination with all things Cuban—what has elsewhere been described as the “Buena Vista Socialisation” phenomenon (Behar 2002), or the renewed appreciation for Cuban culture aided by the global success of Wim Wenders’s son documentary (1999). No-one could confuse the photographs used in the campaign with those of another Caribbean competitor; the slogan (even the choice not to translate the Spanish phrase) denoted a decision to emphasize singularity. Gone were the typically Caribbean landscape shots of virgin sands and palm trees, and in their place featured the identifying characteristics of Cuban life, replete with distinctive almendrones (vintage American cars), son, salsa, pastel-painted colonial architecture, and tobacco fields. The campaign responded to a more specific interest in Cuba, based on the notion that the country is an exception to tourism’s broader “McDonaldization” (Ritzer 1998)—that is, the rapid expansion into all areas of the globe of chain restaurants, shops, and other businesses characterized by a uniformly recognizable aesthetic and service. There are still no “golden arches” or equivalent franchises in Cuba, and the law continues to limit the extent of foreign investment, especially in the tourism sector. Furthermore, Cuba has a special nostalgic value as a place “frozen in time” (Babb 2011; Scarpaci and Portela 2009), a view which generally hinges on the island’s relative political, geographic,

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Figure 3.1.  Auténtica Cuba campaign image. Source: Auténtica Cuba campaign website.

and cultural isolation since the early 1960s, basic telecommunications, and still patchy internet access. Government restrictions and US embargo-related constraints concerning infrastructure and freedom of information have resulted in an uneven, staggered development of internet access on the island. Despite the very recent creation of Wi-Fi hotspots in parks and near bus stops in Havana, figures from 2016 indicated that only 5 percent of Cubans have internet access at home (BBC 2016). Moreover, using the internet in public hotspots is still expensive in relation to local wages. According to Cristina Venegas, Cuba is an example of a context in which “new” and “old” technologies coexist (2010, 118): old infrastructure is used out of necessity and modernization is realized through various methods of resolver—the uniquely Cuban practice of surviving or “getting by” through ad hoc means. This aspect of Cuban reality marks a contrast with competitors such as Mexico and the Dominican Republic, who comparatively appear as modern, developed, and digitally connected, with a great degree of visibility on the well-beaten tourist tracks. Despite the advantages of such mod-cons within a competitive tourist market, contemporary narratives frequently frame technology as a burden, as something from which it is necessary or desirable to escape. Indeed, one of Cuba’s unique appeals is that it is one of the few places left in the world that is untainted by the apparent “curse” of digital connectivity. The Cuban and Canadian designers of Auténtica Cuba were keenly aware of this external perception: at its launch, Brandworks’ Michael Clancy revealed that their first inspiration for the campaign came from a line in an Lonely Planet guidebook, which described Cuba as “one of the last truly unspoiled countries” (Kauremsky 2010). Tapping into this tourist motivation to escape modern life in general and its technological aspects in particular has made authenticity a touchstone of marketing approaches in Latin America and the Caribbean, with contempo-



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rary examples including Costa Rica’s “No Artificial Ingredients” campaign. Central to such marketing tactics and the type of tourist practices they target is access to intimate spaces, which are contrasted with official hostguest contact zones governed by the dynamics of servility and economic exchange. Tourists instead prize the opportunity, as Polly Patullo observes, “to be invited to a private party; to be given fruit from a yard or help with directions; to be shown around a school or join in a game of dominoes” (1996, 146). It is the everyday contexts of scenes such as streets, fields, and homes—and not plush hotel lobbies—that appear in the photography used in the Auténtica Cuba campaign. By foregrounding intimate settings and unposed portraits of “ordinary” Cubans (those who are not working in official tourism contexts), the campaign engages with a common perception of the population as the gatekeepers to what Cuba is really like—a matter of increasing importance to visitors. One explanation for this preoccupation is the external perception of the revolutionary government as censorial and repressive, making it hard to access the “real” Cuba. We might also conclude that Cuba’s relative isolation from global flows since 1959 has lent it a mysterious or unknowable air, heightening its appeal but further fueling the concern with authenticity. Moreover, and as mentioned previously, the touristic quest for authenticity does not center exclusively on the touring of and gazing on authentic objects, access to which is brokered by local “hosts.” Rather, the pursuit is underpinned by a desire to experience authentic feeling of intimacy and immediacy. As an extreme example of deferred technological development, Cuba seemingly offers unique opportunities for the type of real human contact lost to residents of advanced capitalist countries, seemingly isolated from each other by ubiquitous device screens, a chance for “unmediated contact with the Other in a hypermediated world” (Cohen 2010, 154). A clear interconnection therefore appears between Cuba’s status as untouched and unspoilt, its staggered and uneven development of digital technologies, and its affective promise of authentic encounter. It is this interconnection that is at the heart of the Auténtica Cuba brand message. Implicit in this message, as the next section elaborates, is the enrollment of the population in a system of ambassadorship: Cubans themselves are at once the object, subject, and means by which the brand of affective capital is mobilized. BEING THE BRAND, LIVING THE BRAND Branding experts remind us that individuals are needed to uphold the message of the brand (Anholt 2007). For Anholt, it is both essential and effective to the branding project that the population is motivated by “benign national ambition, and instinctively seizes every opportunity to tell the world about its

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country” (2007, 105). Tourism, of course, is a context in which the articulation of national and regional identity by employees is highly managed. Actors in formal and informal tourism spaces mediate and normalize stereotypes and interpretations (albeit often unintentionally) through their engagement with guests: these interactions, or petits récits, coalesce to form a general representation of place (Hollinshead 2004, 37). Just as the expression of an organization’s corporate identity relies on its personnel, tourism’s celebration of selected myths and its suppression of unwelcome narratives are sustained by its workers (Hollinshead 1999, 7). The task of “living the brand”—of embodying expected (positive) traits and perpetuating a certain image—falls mainly to tourism industry workers. It should not be surprising therefore that those working in “official” contexts—that is, at hotel desks or as tour guides—typically perform scripted types of work (Aguiar and Marten 2010). During the early influx of foreign visitors in the 1990s, tourists’s contact with the visited population was principally with Cubans working in the industry. Tourism spaces such as hotels and beaches were demarcated and policed, excluding Cubans and provoking accusations that the government was creating a “tourist apartheid” (Espino 2000; Roland 2006). A major factor in these decisions was a generalized anxiety about the social and political impact of tourists’s contact with the visited population and a perceived threat to revolutionary ideals (Sánchez and Adams, 2008: 32). This anxiety seemed to be justified by the emergence of the practice of jineterismo, the figurative (and literal) “riding” of tourists ranging from touting private restaurants and homestays to prostitution, the latter being an especially sharp thorn in the government’s side. These developments were particularly concerning for the government because of the intense global scrutiny and conjecture that characterized this period of the Revolution. Tourism opened the island up to a greater degree of visibility, and therefore increased scrutiny, but also held the potential to generate international sympathy: museum displays and videos played on tour buses directed tourists’s attention to the country’s unjust treatment by the US (Sánchez and Adams 2008), for example. Tour guides, trained by the state in specialized vocational institutions, were therefore at the front line of early brand management, responsible for counteracting negative perceptions and emphasizing positive ones. Vocational training directed guides to enact, perform, and embody a positive image of the country and its political system. Consider, for example, the opening paragraph of a 1997 study commissioned by state operator, Havanatur, regarding the ideal profile of the tour guide: Being a guide . . . is not a task which all are able to perform, because, in addition to the necessary academic preparation, it is necessary to have an excellent attitude regarding personal and behavioral qualities, that is, to have no personality



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defects or vices that may impair the performance of their work, a high spirit of service and the desire to show our country. A guide with a poor attitude regarding his work will develop a poor tourist product . . . or de-motivate the tourist by an inadequate projection and/or interpretation of our society.1

This paragraph confirms the key role that tour guides play in doing the affective work of creating a positive experience for the tourist as well as a positive portrayal of the nation. At this time in Cuba, tour guides also had to contend with the relative infancy of the industry, the inadequate infrastructure, and the reliance on tourism to bolster the failing economy: the document reiterates that guides should “demonstrate social recognition in the current conditions from which tourism in this country is developing, alongside its overriding importance to the economy.”2 The year before the report was written has latterly been considered the most extreme of the crisis. In parallel, guides’s responsibility to represent the nation in a positive light intensified as troubling social realities came to a head, including sex tourism, which emerged from a combination of general economic hardship, a debilitated state, and the new opportunities provided by tourism. Increased attention to these factors meant that it was expected that guides would positively reinforce the image of the nation, and in particular, the political system, by highlighting the Revolution’s logros sociales, or social achievements, such as low rates of crime and illiteracy. Anthropologist Florence Babb notes that Cuban tour guides continue to carry out this form of brand ambassadorship in fielding questions of a politically sensitive nature (2011). One of the ways that they do this, Babb shows, is through light cynicism and humor (2011, 57–58). From my own observations of guided tours in 2012 and 2017, I witnessed that guides dealt with foreigners’s questions regarding the social contradictions of tourism, including the exacerbation of wealth disparity, by drawing on emotional resources, such as tongue-in-cheek humor. Interviews with Cuban tour guides conducted as part of this research also revealed that improvising through affective means—humor, playfulness, and cajoling—was often required to compensate for material limitations at short notice, which were frequent in the early 1990s. For example, one former guide explained to me that she often relied on her charm and humor when scheduled tour-bus routes were postponed due to failed petrol supplies. This compensatory function of affective capital to overcome difficult material and political realities is evident in both the day-to-day dealings between hosts and guests and in the macro, discursive level of the campaigns (“we may not have infrastructure, but at least we are authentic”). It is clear, then, that affect is a key component in the work of nation brand ambassadorship. Beyond the exigencies of education and training, being

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an ambassador for the nation requires qualities rooted in affect. Cuban tour guides are trained to exhibit, embody, and reproduce emotions through their labor in ways which support a positive image of the nation. This form of emotional labor—to use Arlie Hochschild’s term (1983)—involves publicly observable facial and bodily displays of good feeling: tour guides should “always maintain a smiley and friendly expression towards clients, in tune with the hospitality and human warmth which characterizes the people they represent” (emphasis added).3 The circulation of affective capital involved in this work is a reflection of the positive traits of the wider population as open, hospitable, and friendly to foreigners, which are normalized through texts such as these. Tour guides ought to be viewed as important brand ambassadors, given the extended periods of time they may spend with tourist groups, but changes since the 1990s have meant that they are no longer the exclusive points of host-guest contact. Tourist “contact zones” (Pratt 1992) now extend far beyond the resort enclaves of Varadero. This is largely due to the sanctioning of a number of private businesses directed toward tourists as part of a significant program of economic reforms under Raúl Castro since 2007. For example, private guesthouses or casas particulares are now extremely common, with Air BnB jumping on the lucrative bandwagon and recruiting properties since April 2015; the website now also hosts adverts for fee-charging experiences such as cocktail-making and salsa dance classes with “genuine” Cubans. New mobile apps Junky and A la Mesa, which direct tourists toward private guesthouses and restaurants, are further manifestations of the new markets opened up by dual developments in policy and technology. Divisions between informal and formal sectors are less and less evident, both in terms of the restrictive mapping of tourist areas, and state controls over the individuals who occupy them. Indeed, the idea of the “informal” sector has changed considerably since early scholarship charted its emergence as an apparent vanguard of resistance (Jackiewicz and Bolster 2003). The Auténtica Cuba campaign reflects these shifts, symbolizing a bending towards contemporary tourist demands for intimate and unregulated contact with Cubans, and so legitimizing that contact, in turn. BEHIND THE BRAND: CONFLICTS AND CONTRADICTIONS The specific context of Cuba described in this chapter presents particular challenges to the applicability of nation-branding practices and offers interesting avenues of further investigation. For example, branding practitioners insist that the brand has to be enacted on the ground—“lived”—in order to be cohesive and successful (Anholt 2007; Dinnie 2015, 72), underscoring the



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significant but under-emphasized role of affect within the nation brand project. However, how this is actually enacted, by whom, and according to what “scripts” is not clear. Despite the emphasis that this chapter places on the role of marketing narratives to mold or confirm expectations of intimate experiences and encounters, outside the world of tour-guide training materials there is no official protocol for this kind of work; expectations between hosts and guests are inevitably navigated face to face, in an affectively-charged but adhoc, spontaneous manner.4 An ethnographic approach to this line of enquiry might open up the possibility of examining how and to what extent Cubans can themselves benefit from the brand’s manipulation of affective capital for their own ends (as entrepreneurial homestay hosts, for example). Certainly, it can be argued that tourists’s current interest in “authentic Cuba” and the associated marketing approach chosen by MINTUR allows Cubans to actively enroll themselves as ambassadors—or even as “affective entrepreneurs”—for their own financial and personal gain. In the 1990s, when basic necessities were scarce and hard currency was king, contact with tourists meant the possibility of access to tips and gifts of toiletries and clothes. For casa particular owners, the financial incentive of renting a room remains extremely high (currently up to $30 convertible pesos a night, plus extra potential income from meals, laundry, and bicycle hire). Yet despite these advantages there are also various problematic implications. The message of intimacy legitimizes tourist expectations to inhabit private spaces and to “go native.” However, asymmetries in economic agency and mobility between hosts and guests continue to be striking, even if Cuba has seen some economic recovery since its worst moments of austerity. Tourists cannot “go native” because they have the economic advantage and mobility to enter and leave the dynamic. As such, the complex, emotional work that is required to smooth over the colonial underpinning of the encounter, and naturalize its sense of intimacy, calls on affective skill sets in the host (and perhaps also to a lesser degree, the tourist). Tourists’s quest to experience intimacy (rather than to confront these indicators of inequality and their associated bad feelings) can be critically understood as an attempt to eclipse the structural inequalities on which the encounter rests. By seeking and satisfying emotions through encounter in ways that feel emotionally authentic on a personal level—an attitude that might be described as “going native”—the tourist is able to avoid questioning the larger inequalities that allow them to occupy that contact zone in the first place (Cravatte and Chabloz 2008). Such questions are further complicated when the role of brand ambassador is symbolically passed on to the population in general, and not enacted by paid representatives of a corporation or government agency, as this chapter has discussed. Many branding experts agree that the population is essential

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to conveying the brand in a successful way. Yet this enrolling of citizens into brand ambassadorship can be interpreted as a somewhat top-down, repressive model. In fact, common interpretations of the return of tourism in Cuba cast the state as monolithic: either stifling citizens’s engagement with new markets, or seemingly discarding social equity for foreign capital. In turn, Cubans’s participation in the affective economies of tourism is too rigidly categorized as a defiant vanguard of capitalism or too easily explained through discourses of vibrancy and inventiveness. Further research drawing on ethnographic methods would be instrumental in teasing out the reality that lies between these constructions and in expanding our understanding of the enactment of branding practices on the ground. What is already evident, however, is that the marketing of affective capital in the Auténtica Cuba brand gets caught up in various snags when it is transposed to “real life.” There are clear contradictions between its message of intimacy and the government’s continued efforts to monitor and regulate host-guest contact in various ways. Stop-and-search policing, for example, is not yet a thing of the past: police still make random requests for identification to Cubans who are seen fraternizing with tourists, particularly if they are dark-skinned, as I witnessed during two research trips to Havana in 2016 and 2017. While foreigners may now choose between an increasing range of homestay options, the owners of these private guesthouses are still subject to exacting administrative regulations, as well as substantial taxes. Furthermore, accusations that tourism has engendered a social and racial apartheid have once again come to the fore following reports that black Cubans are turned away from Havana nightclubs where patronage of white tourists has increased (Jiménez Enoa, 2017). A disconnect appears: in order for a brand based on the affective capital generated by host-guest contact to succeed, the creators of that brand (the State) must relinquish some control over the way that those narratives and images are engaged with on the ground. Moreover, Cuba’s agency in determining its branding objectives is tempered by the interventions of external perceptions, in addition to the fact that during times of economic crisis and uncertainty, the need to compete may override alternative aspirations regarding how the nation is seen from outside. For instance, the tourism campaigns’s appropriation of affective capital reinforces global power relations, confirming certain sites as rich stores of affective capital but impoverishing alternative aspirations to be seen as modern and forward-facing. As this chapter has argued, the campaign’s positioning of Cubans as the gateway to authenticity is directly correlated to the concept of human intimacy and immediacy in a world that has been rendered impersonal through digital hyper-connection. In commissioning Auténtica Cuba, MINTUR is clearly responding to contemporary interest in Cuba as the world’s



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last untouched and uncorrupted corner, a so-called time-warp where technology can be escaped and human contact may be rediscovered. Yet there is a resonant irony in this nostalgic framing, not least given that the transatlantic slave trade positioned the Caribbean firmly “at the origin of the plot of Western modernity” (Sheller 2003, 2). Moreover, it has been largely through the Internet that Cuba has been able to capitalize on the global fascination with the country; the accelerated expansion of tourism in Cuba would not have been possible without the foundation of telecommunications (Venegas 2010). In the early days, engagement with digital technologies, particularly within the visible areas of Havana’s hotels, became a marker of Cuba’s distinction and competitive, modern edge (Venegas 2010, 101). The Auténtica Cuba brand clearly and deliberately tells a rather different story. Despite these various concessions and contradictions, we may in fact interpret the extended queues at José Martí international airport as subtle evidence of the government’s reassertion of agency and control. MINTUR’s latest price hike of hotel rooms to quell recent surges of tourists has been described to me by the manager of a state tourism agency as a means of applying frenos (brakes) to what has presumably been the desenfrenado—frenzied and rapid—growth of the tourism industry. Certainly, one intended outcome of applying the brakes in this way is to allow time for the flagging tourism infrastructure to catch up with demand. But these measures also reveal the government’s desire to control the speed of tourism development according to its own terms, and to mediate tourism’s reach into Cuban social, cultural, and economic life. The ways that it attempts to broker host-guest interactions also hint at this desire to continue to claim back control. Concessions to market trends and tourists’s desires are mediated by political and social objectives within the nation, and vice versa. The conflicts and contradictions described here are evidence of a complex and often disharmonious dynamic between branders, brand ambassadors, and brand audiences, between desires, imperatives and drawbacks. NOTES 1.  El ser guía . . . no es una labor para la que todas sean adeptas, pues, además de la preparación académica necesaria, se requiere tener una excelente actitud en lo referente a las cualidades personales y de conducta, es decir no tener fallas de personalidad, o vicios que puedan menoscabar el desempeño de su trabajo, un alto espíritu de servicio y el deseo de mostrar nuestro país. Un guía con una deficiente actitud con respeto a su trabajo desarrollará un deficiente producto turístico . . . o bien desmotivar al turista por una inadecuada proyección y/o interpretación de nuestra sociedad (Experiencias de Havanatur en la formación de guías de turismo:

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Recomendaciones para la conformación de futuros programas de formación y recalificación 1997). All translations author’s own. 2.  La necesidad de su reconocimiento social en las condiciones actuales en que nuestro país desarrolla la actividad turística con un peso preponderante en la economía. 3.  Mantener siempre una expresión sonriente y afable ante los clientes, que esté en correspondencia con la hospitalidad y el calor humano, característica del pueblo que representa (my emphasis, my translation). 4.  See, for example, Hazel Tucker’s work on the subtle negotiations between hosts and guests in Turkey (2009).

WORKS CITED Aguiar, Luis L. M., and Tina Marten. 2010. “Scripting Taste, Marking Distinction: Wine Tourism and Post-Fordist Restructuring in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.” In Interrogating the New Economy: Restructuring Work in the 21st Century, edited by Norene J. Pupo and Mark P. Thomas, 173–93. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge. Anholt, S. 2007. Competitive Identity: The New Brand Management for Countries, Regions and Cities. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Aronczyk, Melissa. 2013. Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Babb, Florence E. 2011. “Che, Chevys, and Hemingway’s Daiquiris: Cuban Tourism in a Time of Globalisation.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 30 (1): 50–63. Bandyopadhyay, Ranjan, and Karina Nascimento. 2010. “‘Where Fantasy Becomes Reality’: How Tourism Forces Made Brazil a Sexual Playground.” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 18 (8): 933–949. BBC. 2016. “Cuba Plans to Install Wi-Fi on Havana’s Iconic Malecon Seafront.” September 22. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-37442854. Behar, Ruth. 2002. “While Waiting for the Ferry to Cuba: Afterthoughts about Adio Kerida.” Michigan Quarterly Review 41 (4): 651–677. Cabezas, Amelia. 2009. Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Cohen, Colleen Ballerino. 1995. “Marketing Paradise, Making Nation.” Annals of Tourism Research 22 (2): 402–421. ———. 2010. Take Me to My Paradise: Tourism and Nationalism in the British Virgin Islands. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Conran, Mary. 2011. “They Really Love Me!: Intimacy in Volunteer Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 38 (4): 1454–1473. Cravatte, Céline, and Nadège Chabloz. 2008. “Enchantment and Solidarity: Which Dream Does Fair Tourism Sell?” Tourist Studies 8 (2): 231–247. Dinnie, Keith. 2015. Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice. London: Routledge.



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Espino, María Dolores. 2000. “Cuban Tourism during the Special Period.” Cuba in Transition 10: 360–373. Frohlick, Susan. 2008. “‘I’m More Sexy Here’: Erotic Subjectivities of Female Tourists in the ‘Sexual Paradise’of the Costa Rican Caribbean.” Gendered Mobilities 1: 129–142. Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J. Seigworth. 2010. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Guerrón Montero, Carla. 2011. “On Tourism and the Constructions of ‘Paradise Islands’ in Central America and the Caribbean.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 30 (1): 1–6. Hochschild, Arlie. (1983). The Managed Heart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hollinshead, Keith. 1999. “Surveillance of the Worlds of Tourism: Foucault and the Eye-of-Power.” Tourism Management 20 (1): 7–23. ———. 2004. “Tourism and New Sense.” In Tourism and Postcolonialism: Contested Discourses, Identities and Representations, edited by Michael Hall and Hazel Tucker. London: Routledge, 25–42. Jackiewicz, Edward L., and Todd Bolster. 2003. “The Working World of the ‘Paladar’: The Production of Contradictory Space during Cuba’s Period of Fragmentation.” The Professional Geographer: The Journal of the Association of American Geographers 55 (3): 372–382. Jiménez Enoa, Abraham. 2017. “El Racismo Oculto En La Oscuridad de Las Noches Habaneras.” Vice. August 7. https://www.vice.com/es_mx/article/vbv5qa/el-racismo-oculto-en-la-oscuridad-de-las-noches-habaneras. Kapcia, Antoni. 2008. Cuba in Revolution: A History Since the Fifties. London: Reaktion Books. Kauremszky, Ilona. 2010. “Authentica Cuba: Putting Yourself in the Picture.” Travel Industry Today. July 5, 2010. http://travelindustrytoday.com/2010-07-05-authentica-cuba:10733. MacCannell, Dean. 1973. “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings.” The American Journal of Sociology 79 (3): 589–603. ———. 1999. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press. Patullo, Polly. 1996. Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in The Caribbean. London: Cassell. Pearce, Philip. 1982. The Social Psychology of Tourist Behaviour. Pergamon, Oxford. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge. Probyn, Elspeth. 2005. Blush: Faces of Shame. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ritzer, George. 1998. The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions. London: SAGE. Roland, Kaifa. 2006. “Tourism and the Negrificacíon of Cuban Identity.” Transforming Anthropology 14 (2): 151–162.

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Sánchez, Peter M., and Kathleen M. Adams. 2008. “The Janus-Faced Character of Tourism in Cuba.” Annals of Tourism Research 35 (1): 27–46. Savigliano, Marta. 1995. Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. Boulder; Oxford: Westview Press. Scarpaci, Joseph L., and Armando H. Portela. 2009. Cuban Landscapes: Heritage, Memory, and Place. New York: Guilford Press. Selwyn, Tom. 1996. “Introduction.” In The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism, edited by Tom Selwyn, 1–32. Chichester: Wiley. Sheller, Mimi. 2003. Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. New York: Routledge. ———. 2004. “Demobilizing and Remobilizing Caribbean Paradise.” In Tourism Mobilities, edited by Mimi Sheller and John Urry, 13–21. New York: Routledge. Simoni, Valerio. 2016. Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba. Berghahn Books. Sin, Harng Luh. 2009. “Volunteer Tourism—‘Involve Me and I Will Learn’?” Annals of Tourism Research 36 (3): 480–501. Tolia-Kelly, Divya P. 2006. “Affect—an Ethnocentric Encounter? Exploring the ‘Universalist’ Imperative of Emotional/Affectual Geographies.” Area 38 (2): 213–17. Tucker, Hazel. 2009. “Recognizing Emotion and its Postcolonial Potentialities: Discomfort and Shame in a Tourism Encounter in Turkey.” Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Place, Space and the Environment 11 (4): 444–61. Venegas, Cristina. 2010. Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Wang, Ning. 1999. “Rethinking Authenticity in Tourism Experience.” Annals of Tourism Research 26 (2): 349–70. Wenders, Wim. 1999. Buena Vista Social Club. Film. Germany, USA, UK, France, Cuba: Roadmovies FilmProduktion.

Chapter Four

Covert Nation Branding and the Neoliberal Subject The Case of “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” Paula Gómez Carrillo Covert nation branding, a mutation of the phenomenon of nation branding, is designed to intensify an exercise of power that incites, induces, and seduces citizens in their possible actions.1 Contrary to Melissa Aronczyk’s prediction that “nation branding may well cease to exist” (2013, 176), the application of marketing techniques to nations is finding new ways—specifically covert ways—to expand the logic of the market to all social realms, including the formation of subjectivity. The social media campaign “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” (henceforth referred to as ICNC), which claims to be a social movement started by citizens but has actually been crafted by private companies, is a case of covert nation branding that perpetuates a “neoliberal rationality” (Gordon 1991; Lemke 2001, 2002) through the intensified targeting of citizens from below. Situated within a framework of critical studies on nation branding and governmentality (Browning 2013; Dzenovska 2005; Graan 2013; Mehta-Karia 2012; Varga 2013; Volcic and Andrejevic 2011; Weidner 2011), this chapter defines covert nation branding as a sophisticated neoliberal technique of governmentality—an improved strategy of nation branding focused on the formation of neoliberal subjects. This novel technique could raise many questions for critical studies of nation branding. Nevertheless, this chapter sets out to bring into the debate the neglected perspectives of subjects who are “living the brand” (Aronczyk 2008; 2013). More precisely, it foregrounds the citizens’s own perception of their role within the nation-branding campaign. In order to advance and fully comprehend the perceptions of the Colombian citizens interviewed, it is of crucial importance to situate the overt and covert nation-branding practices of Colombia in their particular context. Colombia has a long and complex history of conflict and violence that has inevitably permeated its reputation and international relations. As such, 95

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the country’s difficult context is central to any understanding of its efforts to brand, market, and promote the nation. Narcís Bassols (2016) has investigated Colombia as a case among conflict-ridden countries where nation branding has been used as a mechanism to overcome the diminished reputation negatively affecting a country and its tourism opportunities. The reputation management of Colombia raises numerous challenges, such as the extreme contradictions present in an unstable society that do not adjust to the oversimplified narrative required to create an effective nation brand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the Reputation Institute (2017), a private advisory firm operating internationally, ranks Colombia amongst those countries with a “weak/vulnerable” reputation in the world. While nation-branding efforts aim to fabricate a singular positive image, Colombia is subject to different and contradictory representations in the global public sphere. According to Lina Echeverri, Eduardo Rosker, and Martha Restrepo, “Colombia has two types of associations: a productive positive one, given by the results of the coffee sector, and a negative one that includes two critical themes—drug trafficking and terrorism. The creation of the country brand for Colombia was intended to change the image and perception of a country that has been affected by a negative positioning in international markets” (2010, 410).2 Nation branding in Colombia has therefore been used as a tactic to erase undesirable “hygiene factors” (Aronczyk 2013) and improve the country’s bad reputation. Perhaps less evidently, a brand for Colombia has been produced to display the desired image of a modernized country. Although the discourse of modernization has been presented as a panacea for all of the nation-state’s ills, ironically, modernization and violence have been inseparable in Colombia. In this context, nation branding is a paradox. This chapter begins by succinctly mapping the complex relationship of modernization and violence in Colombia. Having described the historical events that contextualize the emergence of the country’s bad reputation, and therefore, the desire to transform it during the implementation of a neoliberal economic model, the second section explains the roots and development of nation branding in the country. The third section goes on to describe the new phenomenon of covert nation branding as exemplified by the case of ICNC, whilst its theoretical framework of neoliberal governmentality is outlined in section four. Finally, the chapter turns its attention to how advocates of ICNC perceive their role within this covert nation-branding campaign and to what extent this role can be defined in terms of a “neoliberal” subjectivity. MODERNIZATION AND VIOLENCE IN COLOMBIA Modernizing Colombia has largely meant economic development. After WWII, a pragmatic posture of industrial capitalism was adopted, where



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values of ​​ capital accumulation and consumption obscured the old ethics of modernity that had pursued the emancipation of society—progress, freedom, and equality (Leal 1996). During this period, coffee commercialization and exportation was at the epicenter of economic growth in Colombia, but the country was still regionalized, characterized by its fragmented society and profound social inequalities, and with a longstanding history of violence. The assassination of the Liberal Party presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, known as “El Bogotazo,” triggered an explosion of social chaos and violence provoked by an apparent political struggle between Liberals and Conservatives. However, according to Gina Rodríguez, at the core of La violencia (a period known as “The Violence”) was an anti-popular crusade in which the oligarchy sought to maintain their privileges. Demonstrations of extreme cruelty and violence escalated and were intensified by paramilitary groups (Chulavitas, Pájaros, and Contrachusmeros) created and supported by the conservative government and the Colombian elites (2013). The guerrillas, such as Los Comunes, formed as a reaction to the persecutions in the rural areas of the country (Molano 2015). General Rojas Pinilla’s subsequent coup d’état appeared as the solution that would establish political order after years of chaos, but by early 1957, Liberal and Conservative elites united to oppose the General under the National Front agreement. The coalition formally initiated the establishment of a capitalist state and the course of modernization in Colombia (Leal 1996). Nevertheless, the US demands for anti-communist action in Colombia during the Cold War and the elites’ desire to maintain their advantageous position (Castrillón 2013) led to the persecution and assassination of peasant leaders who had demanded profound agrarian reform (Molano 2015). Such tensions, in addition to the deterioration of peasants’s conditions and growing inequality, prompted the cultivation of illicit marijuana crops as a means of subsistence in rural areas, the emergence of new forms of guerrillas (FARC and ELN), and the legitimation of paramilitary forces (Arias 2011). During the final period of the National Front, these problems were far from being solved: an additional guerrilla group emerged, the M-19, and drug trafficking increased with cocaine production. Undeniably, drug traffickers contributed exponentially to the conflict as they were among the supporters of paramilitary groups that had, by 1989, been declared illegal (Americas Watch Report 1990). Subsequently, Colombia became a country indirectly managed by narcos and their capital. Parallel to the internationalization of the “drug war,” funded by the US government, Colombia was paving its way to neoliberalism under President César Gaviria (1990–1994). Economic reforms were introduced on the premise that Latin America could not overcome socioeconomic underdevelopment without implementing free-market policies and lowering trade barriers. Colombia’s

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external debt constraints, subjected to international financial capital, accelerated the implementation of a neoliberal economic model (Londoño 1998) and the creation, in 1991, of the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Gaviria’s government realized that the country’s bad reputation—the result of many decades of domestic conflict—was an obstacle to opening the national economy to global markets (Sanín 2016). Therefore, an important step towards the development of traditional forms of nation branding in Colombia occurred during this period, when the country developed a distinct urge to become competitive internationally. THE ROOTS AND DEVELOPMENT OF NATION BRANDING IN COLOMBIA In the mid-1990s, the Colombian government and private sector hired the consulting firm Monitor, co-founded by the legendary business guru Michael Porter, to conduct a study on the nation’s competitive advantage. Porter advised Colombia to begin restructuring its economy by considering one of ten strategic imperatives: “To sell or promote Colombia.” In the context outlined above, the concern with modifying the perception of the country in international markets was consolidated as one of the most pressing governmental objectives (Echeverri, Rosker, and Restrepo 2010). Prior to Porter’s consultancy, Colombia had only used marketing strategies to promote the nation in the field of tourism. According to Bassols, these efforts “were generally poor and inefficient and only a few resources were allocated to tourism development throughout the 1990s” (2016, 318). The first attempts were during the early 1970s with two campaigns targeting the domestic audience. Subsequently, two nation brands were developed under the National Tourism Corporation: Colombia Tiene Otro Color (Colombia Has Another Color) (1976), and Sol Muisca de Colombia Para el Mundo (Muisca Sun from Colombia to the World) (1991), which became an iconic brand and was used for 15 years to promote tourism in Colombia domestically and internationally (MINCIT 2009). It was not until Álvaro Uribe’s government (2002–2010) that Porter’s recommendation of selling the country as a corporation with multiple assets was implemented and the official brand Colombia es Pasión (Colombia is Passion) was created through PROEXPORT (Colombian Agency for the Promotion of Exports). Indeed, this was the first nation brand in Colombia operating to support exports and investment. Tourism continued to be an important element under the nation’s brand umbrella and two campaigns were launched: Vive Colombia, Viaja por Ella (Live Colombia, Travel Through It) (2001–2006)



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domestically, and Colombia, el Riesgo es que te Quieras Quedar (Colombia, the Only Risk is Wanting to Stay) (2007–2013) internationally. Risk was synonymous with Colombia as violence continued to blight the country. Tourism declined (MINCIT 2009) and international investors and buyers were hesitant. “Democratic Security Policy” was framed as the only measure to guarantee a stable country. President Uribe created a strong alliance between Washington and Bogotá that contributed to the war against drugs and terrorism while facilitating the implementation of military measures in Colombia (Borda 2009). The Colombia Free Trade Agreement was signed in November 2006, and even though it did not come into effect immediately, it was enough to validate Uribe’s decisions and display to the world that Colombia was ready to compete internationally. Juan Manuel Santos’s administration (2010–present) has continued to work on the still unfulfilled and longstanding promise of modernization. The neoliberal agenda is the compass that guides efforts to turn Colombia into a developed country, and Santos’s policies have intensified a predominantly extractive economic activity, which requires increasing direct foreign investment. The new nation-brand campaign, La Respuesta es Colombia (The Answer is Colombia), is considered by the government to be an indispensable marketing tool to enhance the country’s competitiveness internationally. The Colombia Country Brand was launched in 2012 and is currently managed by PROCOLOMBIA (formerly PROEXPORT). The official web page explains the supposed continuity with the previous brand: “The Colombia Country Brand is a Governmental Entity that has dedicated itself to promoting the nation’s brand since September 2011. ‘Colombia is passion’ was the first phase of a strategy that aims to promote Colombia internationally” (Colombia Country Brand 2017). However, the discourse that has managed the current nation brand is based on the “rebirth of Colombia,” implying a drastic separation between past and present, and suggesting a desire for complete detachment from any previous governments (mainly that of Uribe, as he has become Santos’s biggest opponent) and from periods of barbarity. A second aspect of Colombia’s branding discourse has to do with finally achieving modernization; it proclaims that Colombia is a estrella fulgurante (shining star) projected as the nuevo tigre de América Latina (new tiger of Latin America) (Colombia Country Brand 2017). Accordingly, the country provides solutions and answers to the multiple questions and issues of the world since it offers significant developments in terms of investment and exports, extraordinary natural resources, cultural heritage, human talent, and unique touristic experiences of “magical realism” (Colombia Country Brand 2017). Therefore, and grounded in the marketing positioning strategy of the Country Brand, Colombia is no longer a producer of problems but rather of answers—positive ones.

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An important step for the country and its positive reputation has been President Santos’s efforts toward ending violence in Colombia. After six years of negotiations, in September 2016, the Colombian government and the FARC signed a peace agreement, for which Santos received the Noble Peace Price in the same year. Colombia is currently framed nationally and internationally in terms of a post-conflict era, as an allegory of vanished conflict. Unfortunately, it is important to consider that the FARC is not necessarily the cause of Colombia’s problems, but rather just a symptom (Robinson 2015). Colombia and violence have historically gone hand-in-hand and there has been no solid solution to overcome this. Worldwide, Colombia remains one of the countries with the highest number of internally displaced persons, with over seven million registered cases (HIIK 2017). Violence in Colombia has taken multiple forms of expression, both active and passive, and its eradication requires profound social, political, and economic transformations. Only time will tell if Colombia is finally able to rise up in the ranking list of countries with “good” reputations. Currently, and despite the efforts of nation branding to erase the complex problematic that Colombia experiences, the country still ranks at the bottom of the list, and “narco-tourism,” in the form of phenomena such as “guided Pablo Escobar tours,” is even an attraction for some foreigners (Calderon 2013). OVERT AND COVERT NATION BRANDING IN COLOMBIA Nation branding, conceptualized as a “public good” by its proponents (Aronczyk 2013), requires public communication and publicity. The Colombian nation brand has been made visible through its logo (see figure 4.1), logo variations, slogan (“The Answer is Colombia”), tourism campaign (“Colombia, Magical Realism”), PR campaigns (press releases, news, and events), and communication platforms which support, inform, promote, and share content regarding CO (Official Webpage, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Google+). This can be described as overt nation branding, since governmental and corporate actors publicly explain and justify the marketing strategies that underpin the brand or the campaign. As the official Colombia Country Brand website explains in a section of its FAQs, Colombia Country Brand is a strategy designed by the Government that strives to position the country with a positive image towards the world. [. . .] The [“Answer is Colombia”] is a campaign focused on internationalizing Colombia and promoting it abroad. [. . .] Almost every country is being branded in order to



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bring more business and tourism opportunities. This is often done with Territorial Marketing, a tool that enhances competitiveness. (2017)

A further tactic of nation branding that overtly broadcasts the nation brand to the public has been the development of a “citizen participatory phase,” in which individuals are invited to actively collaborate with the brand. This “cocreation” (Volcic and Andrejevic 2011; Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2008) can emerge in different forms. For instance, the citizens’s ideas or opinions can be exploited to collect creative material to construct the brand, to evaluate the proposals and final result of the brand, or to participate in the maintenance of the established nation brand through different campaigns. Along these lines, Brand Colombia has recently launched the social media campaign #LoMejorDeColombia (#TheBestofColombia) where citizens are encouraged to post content about their positive experiences in Colombia. The high visibility of nation branding and its participatory aspect for citizens should not be confused with transparency or democracy. In fact, there are concerns regarding the reductive and undemocratic character of nation branding (Jansen 2008; Kaneva and Popescu 2011; Volcic 2012; Christensen

Figure 4.1.  Colombia Country Brand logo. Source: Procolombia.

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2013). However, a new and arguably more concerning phenomenon is the gradual extension of overt or visible nation-branding into more covert and intangible practices, with actors engaging in nation-branding activities increasingly moving into less visible spheres. The social media campaign ICNC could be classed as covert nation branding (see figure 4.2). Essentially, it is a nation-branding campaign deliberately constructed to appear as a social movement steered from below by Colombian citizens. It was launched officially on social media platforms in February 2013, and has been promoted using the following description: “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” is a social movement that promotes the beginning of a change in the perception held abroad on Colombia. Our main goal is to share the current positive features and qualities of our Country, and let everyone know that today we are in the spotlight of big investors from around the globe, thanks to our economic, social, and cultural growth over the past 15 years. (It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia 2013; emphasis added)

This so-called social movement started by encouraging Colombian citizens living in the country and abroad to search for the misspelling of Colombia with a “u” on mass media, consumer products, and other mediums, and to upload what they found onto social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram or Twitter) with the hashtag3 #Itscolombianotcolumbia. The purpose of this was to raise awareness of the fact that Colombia is correctly spelled with an “o” but also, and more importantly, to promote the country itself. Such efforts

Figure 4.2.  “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” logo. Source: Carlos Pardo.



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have elicited apologies and corrections from some public figures and institutions, and when this occurs, the small victory is also published online for the social movement to celebrate. Citizens are able to participate by creating and re-creating visual designs of the campaign to share with the community and the public (see figure 4.3). Parallel to the above, the movement’s advocates are driven to show their support by purchasing t-shirts, caps, notebooks, mugs, and other campaign merchandise, and upload selfies using such items as a means to support the social movement. In this “selfie-mania,” national celebrities participate in the ICNC movement by both fomenting the popularity of the campaign and the sale of the merchandise. Rather than being citizen-created, the supposedly social movement of ICNC was in fact manufactured by two private companies—Porter Novelli, a PR company, and Zemoga, a digital agency—in a joint effort with the official Colombia Country Brand. These two companies united to work on a presentation

Figure 4.3.  The ICNC Avatar, designed and posted in the ICNC Facebook page by Cesar Martinez.

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for the Social Media Week New York (SMWNYC) in 2013, and the campaign was rapidly created when the official brand of Colombia asked them to use the platform to promote Colombia (Castillo 2013). Indeed, during the SMWNYC, the speakers not only explained ICNC but also promoted the new official Colombia Brand by highlighting the campaign and slightly criticizing the previous nation brand, “Colombia is Passion.” Furthermore, their narrative to promote Colombia echoed the campaign “The Answer is Colombia” and predictably invited the audience to visit the official web page of the Colombian Country Brand (SMWNYC 2013). At the end of the SMWNYC presentation, the savvy team gave away t-shirts—the iconic merchandise of the social media campaign that has received investment from the official brand of Colombia (Vergara 2013). To add to this marketing strategy, five airplane tickets to Colombia were given away without mention of sponsorship, with the VP of Zemoga simply telling the audience that, “someone wants to give away these tickets” (SMWNYC 2013). A month later, the Colombian official brand was launching a similar contest in Times Square. The Porter Novelli agency in New York designed an exclusive event entitled “the Colombian Auction of Unique Experiences” to increase awareness of Colombia as a premier vacation destination and to launch the new brand image for the country abroad (Markelz 2014). During the SMWNYC presentation’s Q&A section, the VP of Porter Novelli Colombia mentioned that the official brand of Colombia supported the campaign of ICNC, as both parties were trying to accomplish the same things, namely attracting tourism, international investment, and business (SMWNYC 2013). Although the joint collaboration between a country’s official brand and private companies in nation branding is far from novel, the obscuring of these practices by positioning them as social movements geared from below is a recent and unique tactic. Given the nature of its formation, ICNC can be seen as a covert nation-branding campaign set out to reinforce the official Colombia brand and achieve traditional nation-branding objectives through the intense targeting of citizens. As a mutation and extension of traditional nation-branding practices, it is produced to penetrate social realms from below, targeting citizens with deliberate marketing strategies from above but disguising them behind a façade of spontaneous creativity from the grassroots of society—in this case, a social movement. The invention of indirect techniques for guiding the behavior of individuals takes us back to the main focus of this chapter: the intensified formation of neoliberal subjects through covert nation-branding practices. Indeed, in the context of neoliberal governmentality, covert nation branding is not simply an outcome of neoliberalism; it is an improved technique of government that aims to shape the conduct of national subjects.



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COVERT NATION BRANDING: NEOLIBERAL GOVERNMENTALITY AND THE FORMATION OF THE NEOLIBERAL SUBJECT Governmentality emphasizes that power is always operating in terms of specific rationalizations rather than being a monolithic force (Lemke 2002; Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006). Thus, “government” does not only refer to political structures; it designates the variety of ways in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed (Foucault 1982). Above all, governmentality involves the subtle directions of the conduct of the governed by using tactical skills and practical know-how (Dean 1999; Rose and Miller 1992). In light of this, and as a form of such governmentality, one could come to see neoliberalism as an economic rationality (Gordon 1991; Lemke 2001) that reforms institutional and individual conduct so that both come to embody the values and orientations of the market (Brown 2003; Dean 1999). Hence, and whilst foregrounding the market, neoliberal rationality “involves extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and social action, even as the market itself remains a distinctive player” (Brown 2003, 7). The government itself becomes a sort of enterprise whose task it is to universalize competition and invent market-shaped systems of action for individuals, groups, and institutions (Burchell 1996; Lemke 2001). As such, what we are dealing with is not so much a retreat of governmental intervention but rather a re-inscription of the techniques and forms of expertise required to exercise a neoliberal governmentality (Barry, Osborne, and Rose 1996). Hence, “the neoliberal forms of government feature not only direct intervention by means of empowered and specialized state apparatuses, but also characteristically develop indirect techniques for leading and controlling individuals without at the same time being responsible for them” (Lemke 2001, 201). Covert nation branding is one of several possible indirect techniques intended to reconfigure the subject according to a disciplinary logic that seeks to produce the forms of self-mastery, self-regulation, and self-control (Rose 1996) deemed necessary to translate the market goals of the nation-state into the choices and commitments of individuals (Volcic and Andrejevic 2011). The neoliberal subject conducts herself according to a prescriptive system, in which the individual is expected to approach the aspects of everyday life as an entrepreneur (Foucault 2008; Burchell 1996; Gordon 1991; Lemke 2001; Read 2009), becoming a subject of choices and aspirations of self-management (Varga 2013), self-actualization, and self-fulfillment (Rose 1999). The individual’s action is always carried out in terms of free will for the maximization of a version of happiness and fulfillment (Rose 1996), where the neoliberal subject

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is enjoined to take care of and be responsible for all aspects of the individual’s life (Dean 1999), including, indeed, the nation and its reputation. The entrepreneurial self, characteristic of the neoliberal subject, is not innate or given but rather constructed and self-constructed through a specific “asceticism” (Foucault 2005). The process by which the individual becomes a neoliberal subject is made up of specific practices of the self that take on a certain form in the layers of the subject’s experience. Experience here does not refer to an individual consciousness outside a system of conceptual possibilities, but rather is understood as the interrelation between fields of thought and knowledge, systems of power, and forms of subjectivity in a particular culture that determines the boundaries of thought in a given domain and period (Foucault 1990). “IT’S COLOMBIA, NOT COLUMBIA” AND THE NEOLIBERAL SUBJECT The theoretical framework outlined in the previous section is pivotal to address the following questions: how do advocates of “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” perceive their role within this covert nation-branding campaign? And to what extent could this role be defined in terms of a neoliberal subjectivity? Therefore, in attempting to answer these questions, the aim of this study is to comprehend the Colombian citizens’s “experience” when they engage with the indirect technique of neoliberal governmentality, ICNC, and to understand the particular ways of acting and self-governance exercised within this power relationship. Critical researchers of nation branding note that the primary responsibility for the success of the nation brand lies with the citizens (Aronczyk 2008, 2013; Browning 2013; Dzenovska 2005; Graan 2016; Varga 2013, Volcic and Andrejevic 2011), whose main role is to “live the brand”: to embrace, embody, and perform attitudes and behaviors that are considered compatible with the brand strategy (Aronczyk 2008; 2013). However, the majority of these critical studies fail to truly engage with the citizen, making this core element an implied category. Indeed, rather than becoming the focal point of these analyses, the perspective of the national subjects who are at the heart of nation-branding strategies is completely neglected.4 Considering the under-researched nature of national citizens’s perception of nation-branding practices in general and their own role and “experience” within these campaigns specifically, a thematic analysis has been chosen as a highly appropriate way to study the data elicited from ten in-depth interviews with Colombian citizens who are active participants and advocates of ICNC.5



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The findings of the research that underpins this chapter have been organized into three broader themes: the ambassador for Colombia; the extension of previous efforts; and the pedagogical tool. The Ambassador for Colombia Citizens who participate in and advocate for the ICNC campaign see their role as ambassadors for Colombia; indeed, this term was used spontaneously by most of the advocates interviewed without having been used previously by the interviewer . The advocates believe that there is a transition from their role as mere citizens to a role as ambassadors. In this regard, they explain that although every citizen has the innate attributes required to become a guardian of his country, it is only through a process of awakening—a kind of rite of passage—that the responsibility of being an ambassador can be assumed fully. According to the participants, the aforementioned innate qualities are predestined when the person is born in la tierra (the land),6 while the awakening experience arises from the interaction with foreigners, who tend to speak negatively about Colombia. It is through the encounter with the “other” that, for example, they realize that Pablo Escobar, the 1980s “king of cocaine,” still defines the past, present, and future of Colombia for many. It is only when they come into contact with a non-national’s impressions of Colombia that they reflect upon their country and their relationship with their land. The ambassador only becomes aware of his task of demonstrating that there is much more to Colombia than the mafia, violence, and underdevelopment, once he has personally suffered the consequences of the negative stereotypes that haunt the country. Regarding this negative experience, one of the participants stated: I am not a drug dealer, I do not have anything to do with the mafia, but I am treated like one of them, like a mula [drug mule] . . . why am I stopped in every airport and searched a thousand times? . . . why do I have to queue in a special line in immigration? . . . How am I not supposed to take it personally? . . . It is me who they are treating badly, of course it is a personal matter. (Interview with advocate of ICNC 2014)7

As we can see, the nation’s negative reputation indeed matters to the ambassadors. They perceive Colombia’s reputation as destructive for its citizens—a direct obstacle that affects their everyday interactions and potential as individuals. In this sense, the nation’s reputation is not just an abstract concept that is exclusively significant in the government’s sphere but is also

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a private matter. The participants agree that Colombia’s reputation is a burden that they have to experience directly and sometimes suffer without being prepared for it. Incidents such as feeling ridiculed, abused, or alienated in different daily situations due to their nationality provide participants with the stimulus to become ambassadors and unquestionably accept the nation’s reputation as their own responsibility. The participants shared the perception that it is inevitable that Colombia’s reputation would impact their everyday lives and spoil their opportunities for success. Thus, changing Colombia’s negative reputation into a positive one is not only about the country’s future and prosperity but also about their own. The “we” of the nation has the flexibility to be transformed into the “I” of the person. In this sense, it is the individual that has to shoulder the “burden” of Colombia’s reputation and is therefore responsible for changing it. To be an ambassador for Colombia is, at the same time, and perhaps more importantly, to be an ambassador for oneself. As one follower stated, “Let’s not pretend that it does not matter where are you from, success can be easily blocked because of your country’s reputation . . . but if you want to succeed in life you have to overcome difficulties . . . so it is better to be doing something about it and changing this rather than just moaning about it. Right?” (Interview with advocate of ICNC 2014).8 While the citizen desires the nation to prosper because it is the place where he was born, the ambassador sees himself as an active subject responsible for enhancing his nation in order to simultaneously enhance his own wellbeing. The ambassador moves from the “innate love” for his nation towards the choices and aspirations that bring self-fulfillment. The Extension of Previous Efforts According to participants, their task as ambassadors for Colombia started before the ICNC campaign was launched. Furthermore, they were already working on their own to correct the spelling mistake of Colombia with a “u,” as the following statement explains: I find it upsetting now, and I used to find it extremely upsetting before “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” appeared. I was already working on this. I used to write to companies that I believed were wrong. For example, I once wrote to a company because I bought some coffee in the US that had “Columbian coffee” written on the tag. (Interview with advocate of ICNC 2014)9

Another follower shared a similar experience and mentioned that “it was like they had opened my head and taken my ideas, of course I was not using the exact phrase, “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia,” which is fantastic by the



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way. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before” (Interview with advocate of ICNC 2014).10 Most of the participants thus perceived the campaign as a sort of materialized and improved extension of their own work and ideas. For them, the social media campaign is the medium they use to amplify their previous efforts. The advocates interpret the accomplishments of the ICNC campaign as their own success, feeling that they are pioneers of great ideas. The fact that they were able to anticipate the need to correct the misspelling of Colombia with a “u” before the social media campaign was launched enhances and affirms their innovative and visionary qualities. In other words, it endorses them as proactive individuals with initiative, as leaders who make things happen under their own steam. Participants of ICNC perceive that it is the campaign that supports them rather than the other way around. This finding adds a new angle to existing nation branding literature, which describes the way in which nation branding encourages citizens to see themselves as brand carriers (Browning 2013; Volcic and Andrejevic 2011). In this case, the participants do not see themselves as carriers but as proactive creators and innovators who use the brand for their own purposes. In other words, it is not the campaign that uses them but rather they that use the campaign. The Pedagogical Tool For the participants of ICNC, the “u” is much more than a wrong letter; it is the tip of the iceberg of a deeper problem regarding the world’s lack of knowledge about Colombia. The “ignorance” behind the use of the incorrect vowel is a direct reflection of the general ignorance about the country, and one that feeds the negative stereotypes and social stigma associated with Colombians. The campaign is therefore used as a pedagogical tool by participants, who perceive this instrument as a supporting factor in their goal of educating and correcting foreigners about Colombia: “‘It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia’ is not only about correcting the ‘u,’ it is about showing who we really are. It is not about erasing the past but about moving forward . . . Colombia is already moving forward” (Interview with advocate of ICNC 2014);11 “Let’s start from the beginning, the country’s name and where it is geographically located. Let’s start with the basics . . . if they can hardly memorize that, then how can we expect them to understand further matters . . . they just take the easy way of understanding Colombia through Hollywood movies” (Interview with advocate of ICNC 2014).12 In order to start from the basics and educate the international public, the participants create their own ways to instruct. They describe using the ICNC slogan as a description or profile picture in social media, as a signature

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in emails, as a way to end a presentation with clients, to make jokes with foreigners, etc. They refer to their creations as fun, clever, and polite. The advocates of the campaign become the orchestrators of the best ways to communicate the message. However, this active process or participation “has a ‘price tag’: the individuals themselves have to assume responsibility for these activities and their possible failure” (Lemke 2012, 91). Still, participants perceive failure as a motivation to continue working harder on what they consider a gratifying challenge to overcome. One of them states, “I have lost count of the emails I have already sent asking for the correction of the misspelling of Colombia. . . . At the beginning, I did not receive any replies . . . but it doesn’t matter, I continue looking for these mistakes and pushing for this change to happen . . . it is a challenge that I enjoy!” (Interview with advocate of ICNC 2014).13 Indeed, there is a paradox of great importance to highlight in this research. The participants aim to transform the conduct of the international public with the same tool that is used to govern their own conduct; after all, ICNC is at the same time a technique of self-formation and a pedagogical device to use with others. Burchell’s analysis of neoliberal governmentality (1996) elucidates this complexity in describing how neoliberalism sets out a model of relationships between government and the governed in which individuals are identified as, on the one hand, the object and target of governmental action and on the other, as the necessary partner or accomplice of the government. This shows that the role of the follower is not fixed or one-dimensional and that he can be both the target of the government and its collaborator at the same time. .

CONCLUSION Citizens who support and participate in covert nation-branding campaigns are engaged in a reciprocal power relation, where those governed are often found supporting their governors, indeed encouraging them. This complexity should not be reduced to the metaphor of the “passive carriers of the brand,” since supporters of ICNC are actively transforming their own public image, using the brand in order to improve and advance their aspirations. The results of this study highlight that, indeed, covert nation branding concentrates on nurturing subjects who see themselves as proactive, visionary creators and innovators who perceive the brand as a materialization and extension of their own ideas. As such, they effortlessly use the brand for their own purposes, which go beyond the future of the nation. The advocates of ICNC are not just ambassadors for Colombia but also for themselves.



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For them, Colombia’s reputation is an obstacle to success in a world where nationalities are still approached as if they were “labels.” Furthermore, the participants exercise their additional role of “change makers” by creating, inspiring, mentoring, and educating others about Colombia. The work of the ambassadors, of the “change makers,” is facilitated through the “pedagogical tool” of the ICNC campaign. They describe using this tool to eradicate ignorance about Colombia and to promote and change the image of the South American country; nonetheless, the drive behind their commitment is not simply patriotic—it is one by which they wish to promote and change their own image and therefore give themselves better opportunities in life. The formative elements of the neoliberal subject, incorporated in covert nation-branding practices, remain constant. Furthermore, an emphasis on self-branding is arising through the application of branding procedures and practices to the “cultivation of the self,” expressed through the campaign’s advocates’ particular and intense attention to self-reputation and self-image. The “cultivation of the self” refers to “the forms in which one is called upon to take oneself as an object of knowledge and a field of action, so as to transform [. . .] oneself” (Foucault 1986, 42). Therefore, when the subjects relate to themselves as brands that need to be constructed, promoted, and positioned, they are submitting their existence to a permanent exercise of exposure, competition, and achievement. Self-branding, in the context of the research presented in this chapter, is an attempt by the subject to ensure his freedom from Colombia’s negative national reputation, which paradoxically involves the enslavement of constant self-discipline. Therefore, self-care also involves caring for one’s own image, valuable in terms of the success it could bring. The art of existence is thus transformed into the art of appearances. The sophisticated technique of covert nation branding, which seduces human subjects while leaving them to assume different roles, to creatively participate and promote themselves, only endorses one kind of subjectivity: the neoliberal one. The practices of self-branding are underpinned by the same neoliberal rationality and could be approached, unsurprisingly, as a characteristic of the neoliberal subject. Therefore, the challenge that we face, as Foucault (1982) stated, is to promote new forms of subjectivity. The citizen support for and utilization of the ICNC campaign were dependent on an already established neoliberal rationality. The naturalization of this kind of rationality comes from different fronts that go beyond the techniques of overt or covert nation branding but that, in the end, are interrelated in the immediate everyday life of the citizens. Furthermore, in a conflict-ridden country like Colombia, the marketing strategies applied to the nation are contributing to the weakening of the already fragile critical debates amongst citizens around the historically rooted current problems that plague the country.

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Domestic problems have been reduced to a simplistic discourse of reputation management and ignored in the intricate practice of citizens’s self-branding.

NOTES   1.  “In itself the exercise of power is not violence; nor is it a consent, which, implicitly, is renewable. It is a total structure of action brought to bear upon possible actions; it incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult; in the extreme it constrains or forbids absolutely; it is nevertheless always a way of acting upon an acting subject or acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action. A set of actions upon other actions” (Foucault 1982, 789).   2.  All translations author’s own. En el caso de Colombia, existen dos tipos de asociaciones: una productiva y positiva dada por los resultados del sector cafetero y, otra, negativa que recoge dos temas críticos: el narcotráfico y el terrorismo. La creación de la marca país para Colombia tenía como propósito cambiar la imagen y percepción de un país que ha sido afectado por un posicionamiento negativo en mercados internacionales.   3.  “A word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#), used on social media websites and applications [. . .] to identify messages on a specific topic” (Oxford Dictionary Online 2017).   4.  See, however, Kania-Lundholm (2012).   5.  All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement.  6. La tierra, is an expression used to refer to Colombia as more than just a country. La tierra could be understood as a cocoon with a life of its own. As a feminine noun, la tierra carries connotations of nurture and the maternal.  7. Yo no soy un narcotraficante, yo no tengo nada que ver con la mafia pero me tratan como uno de ellos, como una mula . . . ¿Por qué me paran en cada aeropuerto y me chequean mil veces? . . . ¿Por qué tengo que hacer una cola especial en inmigración? . . . ¿Cómo no me lo debo tomar personal? . . . es a mí al que tratan mal, claro que es un tema personal.  8. No pretendamos que no importa de dónde eres, el éxito fácilmente puede bloquearse por la reputación de tu país . . . pero si tu quiere ser exitoso en la vida tienes que superar las dificultades . . . pues entonces mejor hacer algo al respecto y cambiarlo en vez de quejarse. ¿Verdad?  9. Me molesta ahora y me molestaba enormemente antes de que apareciera “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia.” Yo ya estaba trabajando en eso. Yo le escribía a las compañías que creía que estaban mal. Por ejemplo, yo una vez le escribí a una compañía porque compré un café en Estados Unidos que tenía escrito en la etiqueta “Columbian coffee.” 10.  Es como si me hubieran abierto la cabeza y cogido mis ideas, obviamente yo no estaba usando la misma frase “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia,” que es increíble, por cierto. No sé porque no se me ocurrió antes.



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11.  “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia” no se trata sólo de corregir la “u,” se trata de mostrar quienes somos realmente. No se trata de borrar el pasado, pero sí de seguir adelante . . . Colombia va pa’delante. 12.  Comencemos por el principio, el nombre del país y en dónde está localizado geográficamente. Comencemos por lo básico . . . si difícilmente se pueden memorizar eso, entonces como esperamos que entiendan otros temas . . . ellos sólo toman el camino fácil de entender a Colombia, por lo que ven en las películas de Hollywood. 13.  Ya perdí la cuenta de los emails que he enviado pidiendo que corrijan el error de ortografía de Colombia . . . Al principio no recibí ninguna respuesta . . . pero no importa yo sigo buscando los errores y presionando para que haya un cambio . . . ¡es un reto que disfruto!

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Castillo, Mariano. 2013. “Social Media Campaign Wants to Remind you: It’s Colombia, not Columbia.” CNN. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/20/world/americas/ colombia-not-columbia/. Castrillón, Javier. 2013. “La Guerra Fría en Colombia: El Rol de Estados Unidos en la Política de Defensa Colombiana en el Período 1966–1970.” Revista Relaciones Internacionales, Estrategia y Seguridad 8 (1): 85–112. http://www.scielo.org.co/ scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1909–30632013000100005&lang=pt. Christensen, Christian. 2013. “@Sweden: Curating a Nation on Twitter.” Popular Communication 11 (1): 30–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2013.751855. Colombia Country Brand. 2017. http://www.colombia.co/en/. Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage. Dzenovska, Dace. 2005. “Remaking the Nation of Latvia: Anthropological Perspectives on Nation Branding.” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 1 (2): 173–86. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.pb.5990019. Echeverri, Lina Maria, Eduardo Rosker, and Martha Lucía Restrepo. 2010. “Los Orígenes de La Marca País Colombia es Pasión.” Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo 19 (3): 409–21. http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pi d=S1851–17322010000300006. Foucault, Michel. 1982. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8 (4): 777–795. www.jstor.org/stable/1343197. ———. 1986. The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of The History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books. ———. 1990. The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 of The History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 2005. The Hermeneutics of The Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–82. Edited by Frédéric Gros. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. Edited by Michel Senellart. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gordon, Colin. 1991. “Governmental Rationality: An Introduction.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 1–52. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Graan, Andrew. 2013. “Counterfeiting the Nation? Skopje 2014 and the Politics of Nation Branding in Macedonia.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (1): 161–79. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1548–1360.2012.01179.x. ———. 2016. “The Nation Brand Regime: Nation Branding and the Semiotic Regimentation of Public Communication in Contemporary Macedonia.” Signs and Society 4 (1): 70–105. https://doi.org/10.1086/684613. HIIK. 2017. “Conflict Barometer 2016.” https://www.hiik.de/en/konfliktbarometer/. It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/pg/itsco lombianotcolumbia/about/?ref=page_internal. Jansen, Sue Curry. 2008. “Designer Nations: Neo-liberal Nation Branding—Brand Estonia.” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 14 (1): 121–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630701848721.



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Kaneva, Nadia, and Delia Popescu. 2011. “National Identity Lite: Nation Branding in Post-Communist Romania and Bulgaria.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 14 (2): 191–207. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877910382181. Kania-Lundholm, Magdalena. 2012. “Re-Branding a Nation: Online Discourses on Polish Nationalism and Patriotism.” PhD diss., Uppsala University. http://swepub. kb.se/bib/swepub:oai:DiVA.org:uu-180903?tab2=abs&language=en.%20. Leal, Francisco. 1996. “El Estado Colombiano: ¿Crisis de Modernización o Modernización Incompleta?” In Colombia Hoy, edited by Jorge Orlando Melo Gonzáles. Bogotá: Presidencia de la República. http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/ historia/colhoy/indice.htm. Lemke, Thomas. 2001. “‘The Birth of Bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s Lecture at The Collège de France on Neo-liberal Governmentality.” Economy & Society 30 (2): 190–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140120042271. ———. 2002. “Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique.” Rethinking Marxism 14 (3): 49–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/089356902101242288. ———. 2012. Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Londoño, Carlos Enrique. 1998. “La Apertura Económica En Colombia.” Revista Pensamiento Humanista (4): 39–51. https://revistas.upb.edu.co/index.php/Pensa mientoHumanista/article/view/336. Markelz, Michelle. 2014. “La Respuesta es Colombia.” Hispanic Executive. http:// hispanicexecutive.com/2014/la-respuesta-es-colombia/. Mehta-Karia, Sheetal. 2012. “Imagining India: The Nation as a Brand.” Studies in South Asian Film & Media 4 (1): 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1386/safm.4.1.7_1. MINCIT. 2009. “Política de Mercadeo y Promoción Turística de Colombia: Colombia Destino Turístico de Clase Mundial.” http://www.mincit.gov.co/mintur ismo/publicaciones/195/politica_de_mercadeo_y_promocion_turistica_de_colombia. Molano, Alfredo. 2015. “Fragmento de la Historia del Conflicto Armado (1920– 2010).” In Contribución al Entendimiento del Conflicto Armado en Colombia, edited by Eduardo Pizarro Leon Gómez and Víctor Manuel Moncayo Cruz. Colombia: Comisión Histórica del Conflicto y sus Víctimas, http:// www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/mesadeconversaciones/PDF/Informe%20 Comisi_n%20Hist_rica%20del%20Conflicto%20y%20sus%20V_ctimas.%20 La%20Habana%2C%20Febrero%20de%202015.pdf. Read, Jason. 2009. “A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity.” Foucault Studies 6: 25–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.22439/ fs.v0i0.2465. Reputation Institute. 2017. Country RepTrack: The World’s Most Reputable Countries. https://www.reputationinstitute.com/CMSPages/GetAzureFile.aspx?path=~ %5Cmedia%5Cmedia%5Cdocuments%5Ccountry-reptrak 2017_webinar_v9g.pd f&hash=fce3cbc6c821696dfd62c6a5419d3b614bf60665d4c4a41da14155d31f3c9 dce&ext=.pdf. Robinson, James. 2015. “The Misery in Colombia.” Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad 76: 9–90. https://doi.org/10.13043/DYS.76.1.

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Rodríguez, Gina Paola. 2013. “Chulavitas, Pájaros y Contrachusmeros. La Violencia Para-policial Como Dispositivo Antipopular en La Colombia de Los 50.” Paper presented at the XIV Jornadas Interescuelas Departamentos de Historia, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza. http://cdsa.aacademica.org/000–010/487. Rose, Nikolas. 1996. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Free Association Books. Rose, Nikolas, and Peter Miller. 1992. “Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” The British Journal of Sociology 43 (2): 172–205. https://doi .org/10.2307/591464. Rose, Nikolas, Pat O’Malley, and Mariana Valverde. 2006. “Governmentality.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2: 83–104. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev .lawsocsci.2.081805.105900. Sanín, Juan. 2016. “Colombia Was Passion: Commercial Nationalism and the Reinvention of Colombianness.” In Commercial Nationalism, Selling the Nation and Nationalizing the Sell, edited by Zala Volcic and Mark Andrejevic, 54–72. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. SMWNYC. 2013. “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia.” Livestream video, 1:36:53. February 20, https://livestream.com/smwnyc/events/1895700/videos/12154412. Varga, Somogy. 2013. “The Politics of Nation Branding: Collective Identity and Public Sphere in the Neoliberal State.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 39 (8): 825–845. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453713494969. Vergara, Cristian. 2013. “¿De qué se trata la campaña ‘It’s Colombia, Not Columbia?’” P&M, February 27. http://www.revistapym.com.co/destacados/que-se-trata -campana-its-colombia-not-columbia.html. Volcic, Zala. 2012. “Branding Slovenia: ‘You Can’t Spell Slovenia With Out Love. . .’” In The Branding of Post-Communist Nations: Marketizing National Identities in the “New” Europe, edited by Nadia Kaneva, 147–167. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge. Volcic, Zala, and Mark Andrejevic. 2011. “Nation Branding in the Era of Commercial Nationalism.” International Journal of Communication 5: 598–618. http://ijoc.org/ index.php/ijoc/article/view/849. Weidner, Jason. 2011. “Nation Branding, Technologies of the Self, and the Political Subject of the Nation-State.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association Annual Conference. http://citation.allacademic.com/ meta/p500795_index.html. Zwick, Detlev, Samuel K. Bonsu, and Aron Darmody. 2008. “Putting Consumers to Work: ‘Co-creation’ and New Marketing Govern-mentality.” Journal of Consumer Culture 8 (2): 163–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540508090089.

Chapter Five

Resisting the Brand, Resisting the Platform? Digital Genres and The Contestation of Corporate Powers in Belén Gache’s Radikal Karaoke Claire Taylor This chapter provides an analysis of an online poetic project in which digital technologies are employed to contest the corporate powers so often associated with those technologies, and to encourage us to critique the processes of branding. The work under analysis is Argentine author Belén Gache’s Radikal Karaoke (2011), an online piece combining text, still and moving images, sound files, and user-activated effects. Immediately referencing the popular musical performance format of karaoke that first originated in Japan, this piece works via the re-cycling of platitudes and commonplaces that characterize corporate branding, trademark symbols, slogans, and rhetorical phrases. In so doing, this work provides a critique of the encroaching powers of corporate giants, of the structures of faceless corporate capitalism, and of branding as, in Adam Arvidsson’s words, the “paradigmatic embodiment of the logic of informational capitalism” (2006, 13).1 Belén Gache is one of the leading authors of experimental fiction in the Hispanic world, and her works often engage with the potentials and yet the dangers of digital technologies. A founder member of the Fin del mundo net. art group, along with Jorge Haro, Gustavo Romano, and Carlos Triknick, Gache has contributed significantly to theoretical writings on experimental literature and hypertext, with particular focus on the potentials that hypertext has for creating non-linear writing, interactivity, and greater input from the reader.2 Classifying herself as nomadic rather than defined by a specifically Argentinean or Spanish identity, Gache’s works encourage us to critique the current socio-economic conditions of both countries, such as the neoliberal consensus and the increasing corporate take-over of public domains. Gache’s work is frequently characterized by a play with pre-existing literary genres, authors and texts, on the one hand, and a metatextual reference to the process of their own (digital) creation on the other. Indeed, Gache has 117

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often commented, both in her theoretical writings and in the blurbs to her own creative work, on the fruitful connections between the features offered by contemporary digital technologies, such as hyperlinking or multisequentiality, and prior, pre-digital forms of literary experimentation (2006, 17). She constantly reminds us that non-linear, multisequential narrative formats are not exclusive to the much vaunted arrival of digital technologies, but have a rich literary heritage; this, in her view, provides such formats with their potential for resistance. In fact, as many of her works demonstrate, far from seeing digital technologies as the ultimate culmination of a prior literary tradition, as the answer to the failings and limitations of the printed page, Gache often directs our attention to the failings of digital technologies themselves, and attempts to awaken the reader-viewer to the potentials for sinister manipulation of these technologies. It is this latter aspect of her oeuvre—the use of digital technologies in order to open our eyes to the potential manipulation of these technologies in the interests of corporatism—that will come to the fore in the piece under analysis here. Radikal Karaoke, as the title suggests, engages with the interactive song game, karaoke. First originating in Japan in the 1970s, and becoming hugely popular worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s, karaoke as a form is a musical performance intimately associated with technology. Shuhei Hosokawa and Toru Mitsui, in their edited book on the genre, provide the suggestive notion of “global technology, local singing” to characterize how karaoke functions, and note how the electronically mediated voice is one of the central features (and pleasures) of karaoke (2001, 13–14). As a cultural performance dependent on technology, the format of karaoke stands, I argue, as a sort of synecdoche for late capitalism: for what Manuel Castells has termed “informational capitalism” in which capitalist restructuring, technology, and corporatism work hand-in-hand (2010). The reference to karaoke, then, flags up for us the technologically mediated format of the work we are about to enter, but also, and perhaps more importantly, draws out the notion of the unthinking repetition of received content from the system, since karaoke involves the reproduction of words by the user, allowing, in its traditional form, for little or no deviation. As this analysis will reveal, the system in question in Gache’s critique is the system of late capitalism, and she encourages us to draw parallels between the unthinking repetition of the words of the karaoke system, and the unthinking reproduction of the system of late capitalism. Here, the copying of certain forms and behaviors—central to branding—is mimicked and ultimately critiqued through Gache’s resistant karaoke format. Gache describes Radikal Karaoke as a “poetry collection that appropriates the rhetoric of political propaganda”3 (Gache 2011, n.p.), indicating an understanding of “poetry collection” not in terms of a textual collection after



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the fact, but, instead, in terms of the very creative process of the poetry itself. Immediately following this, Gache’s insistence on the “the rhetoric of political propaganda” frames her endeavor with a critical stance, and indicates how her poetic practice involves the re-mixing of set phrases and commonplaces from political and corporate rhetoric in order to generate poetic expression. Indeed, as we shall see below, Radikal Karaoke works through the collection and repetition of platitudes and commonplaces stemming from corporate rhetoric, slogans and catchphrases, which Gache encourages us to deconstruct by means of parody, and through the shock contrast of sound, image, and text, producing a biting critique of contemporary politics and the world order. Gache then makes clear she uses these set phrases in order to “interrogar los discursos hegemónicos” (interrogate hegemonic discourses) (2011, n.p.). As we will see below, the way in which these poems are constructed, and the manner in which the reader-user activates them, encourage us to deconstruct these “hegemonic discourses.” The engagement with corporate branding and rhetoric is immediate from the opening page of Radikal Karaoke, which employs a limited palette of colors in which blue, green and black predominate. To the left of the screen, a silhouette of a male figure can be seen with a microphone in his hand, karaoke-style; to the right is located the title of the work and, above this, the acronym “RK,” set inside a circle, with the “R” in mirror script. A backdrop of a blurred map in dark blue can be seen stretching across the whole of the screen. In the middle distance, between this background and the title and image of the foreground, can be seen a row of figures, also silhouettes, each wearing a suit and tie. Before we have even entered the work proper, then, the main issues presented by Radikal Karaoke are clearly set out. Firstly, the representation of the title of the work as an acronym placed within a circle immediately creates a visual parallel with the commonly recognized ® symbol, denoting a registered trademark. Gache’s Radikal Karaoke thus instantly brings to mind commercial property and corporatism, with her acronym standing as a synecdoche for corporate powers and their branding practices. Moreover, the fact that her “R” is represented in reverse format indicates that her work will encourage us to take a critical view of these powers: that is, the standard ® symbol is now presented as its mirror image, illustrating how Gache’s work will encourage us to view the other side of, or the reality behind the mirage of, these corporate powers, and so to resist the brand. Gache’s reverse symbol thus raises issues of ownership and copyright, and encourages us not to be seduced by the brand, but to maintain our distance, and critique the “immaterial capital” and “colonization of the life-world by corporate power” that branding represents (Arvidsson 2006, 7; 14).

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Secondly, the fact that the backdrop to the page is a world map, whose outlines are unclear, and which does not bear the names of individual countries, encourages us to question the global reach of the corporate powers we are about to examine. That the map is, quite literally, the backdrop upon which the mock trademark is superimposed provides a visual metaphor for the encroaching powers of corporate giants, whose global reach both traverses national boundaries, and mobilizes national identities as brands. Indeed, the fact that the map is not a map of any recognizable country or region, but instead a generic representation of landmasses, implies that corporate branding works by only superficially engaging with place, and in fact disavows the real, material, geographic conditions of production. Marx’s original critique of the fetishism of commodities, which concealed the real producers of commodities (Marx 2001, 107), now finds its twenty-first century parallel in the brand’s immateriality, its superficial mobilization of national traits, and simultaneous disavowal of the material conditions of production. Thirdly, the row of figures each wearing a suit and tie, whose blurred silhouettes are virtually indistinguishable one from the other, and whose faces are not visible, encourages us to view them not as individuals but as a line of types. We are, thus, presented with an image of a series of clones within a system, and with a (literally) faceless corporate capitalism that operates through simplification, and through the streamlining effects of branding. The work itself then loads and we are offered a choice of two languages through which to access the content—Spanish or English. Once we have selected our language, a green screen then appears, offering us the choice of three possible speeches. These are: Ex Africa semper aliquid novi (There is always something new coming out of Africa), Mirad como Kate presume de su anillo (Look how Kate shows off her ring), and “We have no past, you have no present” (in English in the original). Here, Gache’s three discourses are not original lines of poetry composed by the author herself, but are, in fact, drawn from an existing pool of set phrases, encompassing both classical antiquity and the contemporary era. The first of these phrases comes from an aphorism translated from the Greek by Roman author Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) and included in the Historia Naturalis.4 The phrase conveys the notion of the African continent as the source of exotic wonder and surprise. The saying has passed into everyday parlance and has become a commonplace, often being employed in reports, films, and documents about the African continent. From the popular Hollywood movie starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, Out of Africa (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1985), to scores of documentaries, travelogues, and books, the phrase has been used time and again to refer to Africa, and per-



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petuates an exoticist stereotype about the continent.5 This phrase selected by Gache, thus, is a timeworn cliché, noticeable for its inauthenticity as well as its intertextuality, and is representative of capitalism’s insatiable desire for new and “exotic” branded goods to sell and consume. The second phrase, by contrast, has its origins not in the classical past but in a hyper-contemporary event: it refers to the moment in which Kate Middleton, who was at that point the fiancée of Prince William, of the British royal family, showed off her engagement ring to the press. This title thus makes reference to so-called “Kate Middleton-mania,” and to the vacuities of the contemporary press in its desire to commentate on the minutiae of the lives of the royal family. Moreover, despite the contemporary nature of its source, this phrase again demonstrates a lack of authenticity, being a press cliché frequently employed to generate interest in the upcoming royal wedding—with the royal family being a highly marketable brand in itself, and playing a large part in the “British brand” abroad. The third phrase does not come from one particular source but is in itself a mash-up or remix, building on the punk slogan, “no future” first voiced in the song “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols, and dialoguing with Francis Fukuyama’s infamous notion of the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1989; 1992). The first of these sources derives from a UK subcultural context and expresses an anarchist and nihilist view, epitomizing on the one hand an oppositional stance, and on the other a rejection of the notions of consensus and community that are conventionally deemed necessary for political action.6 The second source—Fukuyama’s 1989 essay, subsequently expanded in his 1992 book—argues that, with the death of Marxism, history has come to an end, and the triumph of liberalism is likely to prevail. Widely seen as a celebration of the neoliberal state, Fukuyama’s notion has been criticized by scholars on the left who have viewed it as an apology for neoliberalism.7 This remixed phrase, then, brings together conflicting worldviews and, interestingly, indicates the need to interrogate the motivations behind the circulation of such slogans. Emptying a phrase of its meaning or context is an inherently punk gesture (of partial resistance), but is also, of course, a common ploy of corporations and their branding practices.8 What Gache has done here is to draw to our attention an unexpected parallel, in her combination of oppositional gesture with a hegemonic one. The notion of “we have no past, you have no present” threatens to erase historicity and the prior configuration of national identity: national identity is no longer about history, but is now a de-historicized, marketable commodity. In all three cases, the phrases that Gache has chosen encourage us to pick apart slogans, whether these be of Western exoticization of the other, of media populism, or of the discourses of the triumph of neoliberalism.

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On selecting any one of these three speeches, the interactive interface of Radikal Karaoke then loads. The main part of the screen comprises a video in black and white which shows rows of spectators, applauding. The video is played on a continuous loop and sped up, such that the spectators constantly applaud without respite, moving their hands in a frenetic rhythm as they face us. Beneath the video lies the control panel of the work, consisting of firstly of a row of buttons each identified with letters, and, beneath these, the text of the karaoke. In this work, the user has to take on an active role in the execution of the poetry. Firstly, active participation is required to read the text aloud since, as in karaoke, the words of the poem appear in the lower part of the control panel so that the reader-user can speak them. Using the arrow keys of the control panel, the reader-user makes the text scroll forward, and is required to read out a series of commonplaces. That these are commonplaces is immediately made obvious by the opening to the speeches, which recycle a set of clichéd phrases to engage the audience: “Good evening. It is an honor to be here today in front of this audience. I would like to use this occasion to say to you . . .” (Gache 2011, n.p.).9 These same words are reproduced at the start of the first two speeches, regardless of which we choose, meaning that, once we have played this poetic game more than once, we become alert to the lack of authenticity to these opening lines. This feature puts us on our guard regarding the text we are entering, and the role we are expected to play. The opening phrases of welcome—“good evening;” “here today;” “this audience;” “this occasion”—are without context, bearing no markers of time, place or occasion, and thus function as catchphrases that draw the audience in. These phrases, which mimic corporate and political slogans and sales pitches, force us to consider the emptiness of corporate and political rhetoric—both, in their different ways, incorporating forms of branding—since these same phrases are repeated ad nauseum throughout the work. After these phrases of welcome, the ones that follow are then composed of the re-mixing and re-combinations of found texts. As Gache explains, these poems are constructed “from a fixed verbal structure incorporating random texts” (2011, n.p.), and in this way, the poetic value of the work does not lie in the originality of each phrase in itself, but rather in the creative combination—and, perhaps more importantly, the creative clashing—of these phrases. Gache’s technique here draws both on contemporary theories of digital technologies and on established, pre-digital, literary experimentation. Regarding the latter, notable pre-digital precursors of Gache’s tactics can be found in OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), whose recombinant and procedural poetic practices involved the creation of poetry via a series



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of restrictions or constraints.10 As Chris Andrews has argued, the use of constraints in OuLiPo practices has important liberatory power: Constraints focus the writer’s attention on a particular aspect of the text’s construction, transforming it into a game. [. . .] This tends to invert the process of composition as it has been traditionally taught in rhetoric, obliging the writer to begin with problems of elocution or verbal patterning, which come to determine—in a certain measure—the “invention” and disposition of the content. There lies, perhaps, the secret of the constraint’s paradoxical liberating power. (2003, 230)

Crucial to note here is the potential for inverting the process of rhetoric, rather than complying with it. I would argue that Gache draws on this potential for inversion, as her resistant, recombinant phrases encourage us to see beyond the slogans and catchphrases of corporatism. Regarding the former, Gache’s creative combination of fragments of texts is, of course, enabled by digital technologies, and scholars have argued that the techniques of remix and mashup are particularly representative of contemporary digital practice. Early, utopian conceptualizations of remix saw it as offering “active engagement of the user” and “hope for abolishment of producer and recipient (consumer),” yet these potentials are largely unrealized (Sonvilla-Weiss 2010, 12), and, indeed, the blurring between these roles can often be productively co-opted by global corporations. As Christian Fuchs has persuasively argued, the rise of the “prosumer” enables corporations to reduce their labor costs and exploit consumers who work for free, in effect using “free labour [that] produces surplus value that is appropriated and turned into corporate profit” (2012, 143). Such a phenomenon is a version of what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, amongst others, have described as the “immaterial labor” intimately linked to the rise of what they term “informatization,” and central to late capitalism (2000, 289–294). Remix as a technique is thus ambiguously located: on the one hand purporting to offer greater agency to the user, and on the other allowing the user to be drawn into creating content for free that can be appropriated by global corporations—the ultimate in surplus value. Gache makes use of this ambivalently encoded practice of remix by bringing together fragments of slogans, catchphrases, and media hype in order to enable us to glimpse the cracks and contradictions in corporate rhetoric. For instance, if we have selected the “We have no past, you have no present” speech, after a series of opening platitudes which fully insert us into the world of corporate speechmaking, phrases are interwoven which undermine this corporate rhetoric due to their frankness. For example, as we continue in this speech we read that “Our policy has degenerated into a mere lust for

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money,” and “Our policy has been one of gradual progress of falling into the deep well of despair.” Such phrases, inserted without warning into a stream of apparently bland slogans and catchphrases create unease in the reader through their shock value, and provide glimpses into the harsh realities and material conditions that are deliberately obscured by, and underlie, the glib corporate rhetoric. Gache thus mobilizes some of the key terms of corporate branding (“policy,” “progress”), in order to then undermine them with the insertion of phrases that betray the material conditions underpinning this practice. In so doing, she is undertaking a defetishizing critique of the process of branding, which can be understood through Matthew Sharpe’s arguments about branding and the fetish (2003). Sharpe, taking the logo as representative of the process of branding, draws out Marx’s concern in the early chapters of Das Kapital that capitalism creates a quasi-religious spectrality of its own, in the guise of the realm of commodities, or “real abstraction.” Sharpe then argues that the logo as representative of branding practices is “but the latest and even the purest level of this abstraction,” since we witness the “absolute subordination of use value to its fetishistic aura” (2003, n.p). Accordingly, Gache here undertakes a defetishizing critique, in that she provides us with brief, fleeting moments when the veil is lifted, and we see through the spectacle (in the Debordian sense) of the corporate phrases and slogans. A further way in which this resistance to corporate rhetoric is encouraged is through the interactive elements of the work. As well as interaction through vocalizing the words on screen, the reader-user also plays a key role in activating the visual poetry of Radikal Karaoke. Visual effects are controlled by the reader-user by means of the keys indicated in the control panel and, on pressing the relevant key, the reader-user creates changes in the video file showing in the main content screen. The seven keys lying at the right-hand side of the control panel—Z, R, G, B, K, A1, and A2—produce modifications in the video in the main screen, changing its color or speed. Thus, for example, when a user presses a key the image takes on a green tone, or a yellow tone, depending on the chosen key. Further to this effect, the seven keys on the left (V1–7), change the video completely, replacing it with a new moving image. Using these controls, we can substitute the original image (the spectators applauding) with the following video files: a nuclear bomb exploding (V2); a black and white spiral that constantly spins (V3); a menacing face with red, hallucinatory eyes in the form of spirals (V4); an alien who moves quickly across our screen in front of an urban backdrop (V5); or a group of slaves who drag a heavy burden towards the camera (V6). In the same way as the original video, these new videos are repeated on a continuous circuit and their content encourages us



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to reconsider the words with which we are presented. In this way, the videos function as a form of meta-poetic commentary that makes us question the text that runs across the lower part of the screen and which, if we are playing along with the rules, we will be reading out loud. For example, if we select V6—the image of the slaves dragging their heavy burden—the video offers us a pessimistic view of contemporary life in the twenty-first century. The video file depicts a group of slaves arranged into two lines, with each line shouldering a thick rope that stretches behind them to a large, cumbersome object in the background. Dressed in loincloths and bare-chested, the slaves strain at the rope, moving their burden slowly forward, whilst the slave driver stands to the right of the frame. Since the video is presented on a continuous loop—in reality, the video lasts barely three seconds, and then starts again—we see the slaves advance a few centimeters, making a great effort, only to return once more to their starting place and begin anew. Gache’s video offers up to us our own image: our roles as individuals trapped within a continuous cycle with no let-up, enslaved by the large corporations and late capitalism of the twenty-first century. Moreover, the fact that the video is set on a loop immediately references the contemporary trend of memes and GIFs which are circulated with ever greater frequency, and which (inadvertently) flag up our own entrapment in limited cycles of news, media, and systems. This reconfiguration of historic violence as surface—as a looped video—implies that we must now be attuned to contemporary forms of (structural) violence which are exerted on the individual via the corporate practices of late capitalism. Another of the video files, triggered by button V5, presents a very short black and white animated sequence, lasting some three seconds, set on a loop. An extra-terrestrial figure with a withered body, an enlarged head and black holes for eyes flits across our screen at a frenetic pace, whilst an alien spacecraft hovers in the background over high-rise buildings. Of deliberately poor quality such that it is possible to discern the jumps and cracks across the screen, this image, through the semantic association of “alien” with “alienation,” immediately stands as the representation of our alienation under late capitalism. Similarly, if V4 is selected, the video file reflects our contemporary situation in thrall to large corporations. In this file, a pair of red, staring, hypnotized eyes stand out, with the pupils replaced by a vertiginous, ever-moving spiral. Coupled with the red tone that colors the image in its totality, these eyes produce a disconcerting effect in which the human face is distorted and rendered partially machine-like. This video, then, reflects another aspect of our contemporary human condition: hypnotized by consumerism—and indeed, given Gache’s frequent exhortations in her work to question the

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expected uses of digital technologies, hypnotized by social media—the human being is converted into a zombie. Gache makes reference here to the oft-commented symbolic association of the zombie figure with the mindless consumer, in thrall to commodity fetishism.11 In all of these video files, then, Gache engages in a critique of the technological advances that underpin her own poetic practice. Far from presenting us with a utopian vision of a technologically-enhanced world, Gache makes us question the same digital technologies on which her work is based, and here suggests the dangers of allowing ourselves to be hypnotized by digital technologies in the service of late capitalism. As she herself states in the preamble to this work, “By mechanically repeating slogans we have turned ourselves in zombie society. There’s not us who speak but others (power? market? language itself?) speaking through us” (Gache 2011, n.p.).12 Here, Gache’s comments bring together a poststructuralist critique of the individual as constructed through language (as articulated by Heidegger, Derrida, and others), with a neo-Marxist critique of the individual in thrall to the “aura” of the brand. In this sense, her linking of “power,” “market,” and “language itself” is the nexus at which branding lies: she speaks here of the very language of branding itself—of the phrase that speaks for the whole, the slogan that sums up and promises the experience, the “lifestyle” for us (Klein 2000, 20–23). In all of these examples, through the creative recombinant practices that we undertake as we participate in this work, Gache encourages us to deconstruct the texts that we are speaking. For example, if we select V6 we are presented with a marked contrast between the rhetoric we are asked to vocalize when we arrive at the phrase nosotros somos los protagonistas (we are the protagonists) and the image of the slaves who are clearly far from the protagonists in their own history. In this way, as we read and manipulate the images, we become aware that Gache’s aim is to question neoliberalism and the powers of large corporations, to question political rhetoric, and to question the indiscriminate consumption of social media. Yet it is striking that we are, of course, situated as ventriloquized participants here, and the degree of our agency is deliberately restricted: all we are permitted to do, if we remain within the rules of the game/system, is to repeat the rhetoric of the system. And indeed, this stance we are forced to adopt—of clones repeating the branding rhetoric—will take on a particular significance when we reach the final button of the game. It is thus the last of the videos, V7, that turns out to be the most shocking and disturbing for the reader-user. The eagle-eyed—or perhaps, the technologically cautious—will have noticed that on starting this game we are asked permission to share our microphone and webcam with belengache.net. Per-



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haps taking this to be a necessary feature in order to make the karaoke audio work, most reader-users will, no doubt, have accepted this request without questioning the reason. However, in the last of the video files the use of our own voice and image becomes chillingly clear. For, after having passed through a series of slaves, of aliens, of cybernetic entities, if we activate V7, what appears on the screen is our own image. That is, Radikal Karaoke has captured the image generated by the webcam of the user, and projects it onto the screen in front of us: what we see on screen is our own face, as we sit at the computer, reading out the text. In this way, the user finds him/herself implicated in the work, and the oft-cited feature of interactivity at the heart of electronic literature finds a particularly unsettling enactment.13 We are interpellated into the game not through an avatar on the screen in our stead, but through the direct representation of ourselves on screen. What Gache is indicating to us here is that we too are clones, hypnotized and trapped in the system. Just as with the other characters seen in the earlier videos, so we too are enslaved by the corporate system, and hypnotized by branding, as we have bought into a “lifestyle” and an “identity” offered by the brand as the ultimate fetish. Indeed, it is worth noting that the various key figures in this work—the zombie as representing the consumer in thrall to commodity fetishism, the slave as representing alienated labor, the faceless representatives of corporate power with which the game opens—are all, in some sense, emptied out—of content, of historicity, of subjectivity, and of agency. Such an emptying out is a key process of branding, which takes up and de-historicizes figures in order to promote not just a product, but also to circulate a brand “identity” and aura. The case of Che Guevara has often been cited in this regard, with merchandising of his portrait in multiple forms including posters and t-shirts, and its use in advertisements for vodka, jeans, and soap powder, amongst others. As Memou has noted, in so doing, the image of Che has been “deprived of its ideological and political context” and becomes “timeless and ahistorical” (2013, 450).14 Our insertion into this line of alienated figures thus forces us to consider how we, too, may be robbed of our agency by the workings of late capitalism. And more than just this: it forces us to consider how our very sense of identity, our very sense of individuality or diversity is in fact an aura sold to us through the process of branding. It is this shock moment which is perhaps the most powerful in this piece: Gache is playing with the norms of interactive literature, and her exploration of the potentials of digital technologies finds its culmination in this moment in which she breaks the fourth wall to bring us directly into the game that we thought we were playing as an external observer. Now we find ourselves to be one such player within the game/system; by encouraging us to reflect upon our imbrication in the game, Gache, by extension, encourages us to reflect

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upon, and critique, our imbrication within the systems of corporate models and global capital. In sum, this ludic but thoughtful piece makes a series of serious reflections on the status of the individual under late capitalism and corporatism, and the way in which this very notion of “the individual” may be a product of branding practices. Undertaking a defetishizing critique, Gache aims to unmask and denaturalize the hegemonic discourses of corporate capital, strip away the fetishistic aura of the brand, and enable her reader-player to see through the spectacle. NOTES   1.  Arvidsson argues that brands are the embodiment of the logic of informational capitalism for two main reasons: because they are in themselves “immaterial, informational objects”; and because they are an example of “capital socialized to the extent of transpiring the minute relations of everyday life” (2006, 13).   2.  See, in particular, her 2006 volume, Escrituras nómades.  3. All translations author’s own: conjunto de poesías que se apropian de la retórica de la propaganda política.   4.  Although the phrase has popularly been attributed to Pliny, Pliny himself admitted that he was doing no more than copying down a Greek aphorism. Feinberg and Solodow (2002) demonstrate how this refrain has its origins in the work of Aristotle who, for his part, was commenting on a popular refrain.   5.  See Feinberg and Solodow (2002, 255–256) for a detailed account of uses of the aphorism in contemporary documentaries, travelogues, speeches and correspondence.   6.  See Davies (1996) for more on this slogan and the nihilist attitudes underpinning it.   7.  See, for instance, Derrida’s critique of Fukuyama in Spectres de Marx (1993).   8.  See, for instance, Naomi Klein’s analysis of how terms like “diversity” were taken up by large corporations such as Nike and Benetton, and in so doing became emptied of meaning (2000, 122).  9. Buenas tardes. Es un honor estar hoy aquí frente a esta audiencia. Aprovecharé esta ocasión para deciros . . . 10.  See Gache’s Escrituras nómades (2006, 187–189) for her thoughts on OuLiPo as a precursor to contemporary electronic literature. 11.  See David McNally for an overview of the zombie figure as representative of alienation under capitalism, in particularly the development from its early use as “zombie laborers” through to its more recent incarnation as the “ghoulish consumer” (McNally 2012, 133–134). 12.  In English in the original. 13.  Interactivity, and the different ways in which is enabled, has been one of the key areas of debate within studies of electronic literature; see, for instance, Glazier (2002), Montfort (2003) and Hayles (2008).



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14.  See also Cambre (2016) for an overview of the appropriations of the famous Guerillero heroico (heroic guerrilla-fighter) image of Che Guevara by advertising agencies and others.

WORKS CITED Andrews, Chris. 2003. “Constraint and Convention: The Formalism of the Oulipo.” Neophilologus, no. 87: 223–232. Arvidsson, Adam. 2006. Brands: Value and Meaning in Media Culture. London: Routledge. Cambre, Maria-Carolina. 2016. “Stealing or Steeling the Image? The Failed Branding of the Guerrillero Heroico Image of Che Guevara.” Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Images Studies 3 (1): 64–91. Castells, Manuel. 2010. End of Millennium. Oxford: Wiley. Davies, Jude. 1996. “The Future of ‘No Future’: Punk Rock and Postmodern Theory.” Journal of Popular Culture 29 (4): 3–25. Derrida, Jacques. 1993. Spectres de Marx: L’état de la dette, le travail du deuil en la nouvelle Internationale. Paris: Galilée. Debord, Guy. 1994. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. Feinberg, Harvey M. and Joseph B. Solodow. 2002. “Out of Africa.” The Journal of African History 43 (2): 255–261. Fuchs, Christian. 2012. “The Political Economy of Privacy on Facebook.” Journal of Television and New Media 13 (2): 139–159. Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. “The End of History?” National Interest, 16: 3–18. ———. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin. Gache, Belén. 1994. Luna india. Buenos Aires: Planeta. ———. 1999. Divina anarquía. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. ———. 2002. El libro del fin del mundo. Fin del Mundo Ediciones. ———. 2004. Lunas eléctricas para las noches sin luna. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. ———. 2006. Escrituras nómadas: Del libro perdido al hipertexto. Gijón: Ediciones Trea. ———. 2009. Cuaderno de historia universal. Buenos Aires: Fin del Mundo Ediciones. ———. 2011. Radikal Karaoke. http://belengache.net. ———.Góngora Wordtoys. http://belengache.net/gongorawordtoys/gongorawordtoys. html Glazier, Loss Pequeño. 2002. Digital Poetics: The Making of E-Poetries. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hayles, N. Katherine. 2008. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. Klein, Naomi. 2000. No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs. London: Flamingo. Marx, Karl. 2010. Capital, volume one. London: Electric Book Company.

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McNally, David. 2012. “Land of the Living Dead: Capitalism and the Catastrophes of Everyday Life.” In Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth, edited by Sasha Lilley, David McNally, Eddie Yuen and James Davis, 125–163. Oakland: PM Press. Memou, Antigoni. 2013. “Re-appropriating Che’s Image: From the Revolution to the Market and Back Again.” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 13 (2): 449–451. Mitsui, Toru and Shuhei Hosokawa, eds. 2001. Karaoke Around the World: Global Technology, Local Singing. New York: Routledge. Montfort, Nick. 2003. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Cambridge: MIT Press. Queneau, Raymond. 1961. Cent mille milliards de poèmes. Paris: Gallimard. Sharpe, Matthew. 2003. “The Logo as Fetish: Marxist Themes in Naomi Klein’s No Logo.” Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice 6. https://clogic.eserver.org/2003/sharpe. Sonvilla-Weiss, Stefan. 2010. “Introduction: Mashups, Remix Practices, and the Recombination of Existing Digital Content,” in Mashup Cultures edited by Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss, 8–23. New York: Springer.

Chapter Six

Protests, News, and Nation Branding The Role of Foreign Journalists in Constructing and Projecting the Image of Brazil during the June 2013 Demonstrations César Jiménez-Martínez “Everything will probably be fine” doesn’t make it a good headline. “Stadia might not be ready,” that makes a good headline (“Anna,” British freelance journalist).

THE JUNE JOURNEYS SHATTER BRAZIL June 12, 2013 marked exactly one year before the start of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the second to be held in Brazil.1 During the months leading up to the event, Brazilian and international newspapers, magazines, television newscasts, and blogs covered the concerns and hopes of Brazilians for the upcoming soccer tournament. The FIFA World Cup was more than a sporting event for Brazil’s national government. Together with the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, it was a communicative platform from which to announce the alleged “emergence” of Brazil as a global power, or, as some authors argued, its move “from the periphery to the core” (Grix, Brannagan, and Houlihan 2015, 474). Indeed, the speech given by then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October 2007, when Brazil was confirmed as host of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, is illustrative of this point: “We are here assuming a responsibility as a nation, as the Brazilian state, to prove to the world that we have a growing, stable economy, that we are one of those countries that have achieved stability” (Da Silva 2007; emphasis added, my translation). For the Brazilian authorities, the FIFA World Cup represented an opportunity to direct the gaze of people from all over the world towards some of the political, economic, and social achievements that Brazil had accomplished 131

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in the twenty-first century. However, on June 13, 2013, all positive views of Brazil and its preparations for sporting events were shattered. An estimated number of between 5,000 and 20,000 people took to the streets of downtown São Paulo to demonstrate against an increase in public transportation fares (Gohn 2014). After violent clashes between demonstrators and the military police, two hundred people were arrested and an unknown number were injured, including journalists from some of Brazil’s main national newspapers (Gohn 2014; Zanchetta 2013). The protests had started in early June, organized by the non-partisan activist collective Movimento Passe Livre (the MPL or Free Fare Movement). Over time, the MPL lost their relative control over the demonstrations and participants called for different and sometimes contradictory demands. People protested for or against a whole array of causes, including gay rights, the costs of the stadia for the World Cup and the Olympics, deficiencies in public health and education, as well as against corruption among the political class. The protests became the largest period of social unrest in Brazil since 1992, when people demanded the impeachment of then-President Fernando Collor de Mello. June 20, 2013 alone saw one million people protesting in 353 cities, including state capitals Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, and the federal capital Brasília (Conde and Jazeel 2013; Gohn 2014). It is estimated that one in every twenty Brazilians took part at some point in the demonstrations (Branford and Rocha 2015, 33). Following the kick off of the FIFA Confederations Cup on June 15, the demonstrations became the main news story about Brazil in the national and foreign media, and were ultimately called the June Journeys, or Jornadas de Junho in Portuguese. Research into the June Journeys has often focussed on the implications of the protests for politics, social movements, and the media within Brazil. Most particularly, various studies have examined how the main national media conglomerates as well as alternative media collectives covered the demonstrations. Whilst the coverage by the foreign media—particularly from the United States and Western Europe—has been signalled as evidence of the historical and political relevance of the June Journeys for Brazil (e.g. Conde and Jazeel 2013; Figueiredo 2014; Kühn 2014) most analyses have neglected how the protests were shown abroad. Furthermore, studies have failed to acknowledge the impact of the protests on Brazil’s international image. This is a significant omission. During the coverage of the demonstrations, foreign journalists stated that the protests were not only a democratic exercise or an expression of the weakness of a national political system, but also a disruption of the image of Brazil. For instance, the New York Times stated that the demonstrators wanted to denounce



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“their leaders for dedicating so many resources to cultivating Brazil’s global image” (Romero 2013), and a BBC report held that the protests were “not the image that Brazil wanted to present to the world during the Confederations Cup” (Rainsford 2013). This chapter addresses some of these neglected issues. I scrutinize in particular the role of a specific set of actors in constructing and projecting Brazil in and through the media: foreign journalists. Unlike nation branding executives, foreign journalists do not explicitly aim to project a specific image of Brazil. Yet their accounts contribute to the collage of “cumulative pictures of the social totality” through which the nation is shown to foreign audiences (Frosh and Wolfsfeld 2007, 126; see also Orgad 2012). The data for the chapter comes from twenty interviews I conducted between March 2014 and October 2015 in São Paulo, Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, London, and New York, with foreign correspondents and freelance journalists who covered the June Journeys. Unlike previous studies of the coverage of Brazil by foreign journalists (Brasil 2012; Dalpiaz 2013; Gobbi et al. 2006; Paganotti 2009), the focus of this chapter is not on how “accurate” or “distorted” their portrayals were in comparison with an “authentic” Brazil. Instead, the aim is to examine foreign journalists’s accounts of the process of constructing and projecting in and through the media a particular version of Brazil, as well as the institutional, financial, technological and cultural conditions that underpinned or constrained that process during June 2013. A focus on the role of foreign journalists acknowledges that nation branding experts are not the only actors taking part in the symbolic construction and projection of the nation (Bolin and Ståhlberg 2015; Saunders 2012). It also highlights how the branding efforts of government officials and consultants do not happen in a vacuum, but rather in a media environment that may foster or constrain particular projections of national identity. Whilst nations, as Benedict Anderson famously stated (2006), may be imagined communities, this imagination is not summoned out of thin air, but is embedded and expressed in and through concrete institutions, practices and expressions (Mihelj 2011). Beginning with an examination of how the critical literature on nation branding has failed to acknowledge the media in their own right—both as institutions and technologies—this chapter goes on to describe some of the Brazilian authorities’s efforts to promote a positive image of their nation abroad, in order to highlight what was at stake during the June 2013 demonstrations. I then discuss four issues that the foreign journalists interviewed identified as impacting on the coverage of the June Journeys: news values, editorial decisions, the commodification of news, and visual technologies.

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NATION BRANDING AND THE MEDIA Nation branding is, together with public diplomacy, the most recent incarnation of the task of projecting a positive image of a nation abroad.2 Whilst there are competing definitions of nation branding, there is some consensus that it involves the use of marketing and advertising techniques to enhance the reputation of a nation (Aronczyk 2013; Castelló and Mihelj 2017; Kaneva 2011; Surowiec 2017; Volcic and Andrejevic 2011). Since the late 1990s, governments from all over the world have spent hefty sums of money engaging in various initiatives that promise to re-build and project “new” or “updated” versions of national identity in order to advance political, economic, and/or cultural agendas (Aronczyk 2013; Bátora 2005; Bolin and Ståhlberg 2015; Hall 2012; Kaneva 2011, 2016; Mains 2015; Saunders 2015; Surowiec 2017; Valaskivi 2013; Wood 2017). Nation branding advocates claim that the globalization of capitalism and the spread of communication technologies have made the international image or reputation of a nation as important as economic or military power (Anholt 2007; Dinnie 2008; van Ham 2001). Indeed, they often claim that nation branding is justified by the pursuit of “soft power.” The latter is a concept originally coined by American political scientist Joseph Nye in 1990, which refers to “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideas and policies” (Nye 2006, x). Although the relationship between soft power and nation branding is disputed,3 it might be the case that, due to its explicit reference to power, Nye’s concept has facilitated the legitimacy of nation branding among political circles and justified the expenses of its activities. Critical studies of nation branding have highlighted how these initiatives commodify national identity and craft a fairly homogenous version of the nation, which masks diversity and internal conflicts. These works have scrutinized accounts of politicians, diplomats, or branding executives who construct and project images of nations. Although media organizations have been identified as significant actors for the construction and communication of nation-branding initiatives, they have rarely been considered as agents in their own right (Bolin and Ståhlberg 2015). The nation branding literature has failed to acknowledge the beliefs, perceptions and experiences of the individuals working for media organizations. It has often portrayed the media as a set of neutral organizations and technologies, exploited by different groups wishing to advance their own agendas (Bolin and Ståhlberg 2015; see also Mihelj 2011; Silverstone 1994). Such literature has overlooked the rich tradition in scholarship about media production, and specifically news production, that has highlighted some of the conditions constraining the work of media



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professionals (e.g. Altheide and Snow 1979; Benson 2013; Hannerz 2004; Landerer 2013; McQuail 2010; Schudson 1989; Shoemaker and Reese 1996; Tenenboim-Weinblatt 2014). A focus on foreign journalists is useful to examine the media as agents in regards to nation branding, that is, as organizations underpinned by commercial, political, cultural as well as technological constraints. It also stresses the asymmetric power relationships at the core of nation branding. Most nation branding consultants are based in the United Kingdom and the United States, with governments in the global south as clients (Aronczyk 2013). Furthermore, rankings such as the Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index and FutureBrand’s Country Brand Index place much weight on interviews with individuals predominantly based in Western nations. Whilst nation branding advocates promise to level the international arena, giving more opportunities to small- and medium-sized nations to advance their agendas (Anholt 2007), in practice, “peripheral” or “emerging” nations compete to capture the scarce attention of “core” ones. Hence, nation branding consolidates power imbalances on a global level. In doing so, it becomes a manifestation of the competition state, that is, the fact that states are increasingly driven by the aim of “maintaining and promoting competitiveness in a world marketplace and multi-level political system” (Cerny 2010, 6). Likewise, as this chapter shows, nation-branding initiatives carried out by “peripheral” countries are often targeted at media organizations from “core” locations, such as the United States and Western Europe. A “NEW” AND “UNKNOWN” BRAZIL Whilst nation branding originated in the United Kingdom and the United States, elites from “emerging” or “developing” nations, such as those from Latin America, have enthusiastically followed the advice of nation branding advocates and experts (Turner 2016). For the governments of Peru, Colombia, Mexico, and Chile, among others, nation branding—usually translated into Spanish and Portuguese as marca país or marca-país—has represented a relatively cheap way to construct and project a positive version of national identity for foreigners, as well as promote internal cohesion and a sense of domestic pride (see, for example, the case of Peru in this collection). Blending exoticism with suitability for a global market, governments have tried to leave behind perceptions of failed economies, unstable political systems, dictatorships, and pre-modernity in order to attain political, cultural, and predominantly economic goals (Aronczyk 2013; Jiménez-Martínez 2013, 2017; Lossio 2014; Niesing 2013; Prieto Larraín 2011; Sanin 2016; Villanueva

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Rivas 2011). Within the region, Chile has been viewed as the role model to follow due to the direct involvement of Simon Anholt—the British consultant considered to be “the father” of nation branding—and the creation of Image of Chile Foundation, a state-sponsored institution that aims to control the communication of a particular narrative of the nation (Chagas de Moura 2013). Unlike Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Colombia, the Brazilian authorities never developed a singular, specific marca-país or national brand (Chagas de Moura 2013). Indeed, efforts to summarize and project Brazil as a single nation have historically proven difficult due to its geographically vast territory and multi-ethnic population (Sento-Sé 2007; Lessa 2008). Whilst successive Brazilian governments have engaged in various tasks to create an image of Brazil for foreigners, these initiatives have been restricted to specific state agencies and have not led to the development of a more holistic national brand. Brazil’s tourism board, Embratur, the trade and investment promotion agency, APEX-Brasil, as well as the Secretary of the Presidential Office, have all crafted distinctive, and sometimes contradictory, initiatives aimed at projecting a version of Brazil abroad, through campaigns such as “Brazil Sensational!,” “Brazil Beyond,” and País Rico é País sem Pobreza (A Rich Country is a Country without Poverty) (Chagas de Moura 2013; Niesing 2013; Nogueira and Burity 2014). Notwithstanding the disputes emerging out of and between these efforts, there was an attempt across the whole of Brazil’s state apparatus to capitalize on the mediated attention provided by the hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games (Soares e Castro 2013). The Brazilian government elaborated a promotional plan aimed at coordinating the programs of state agencies, with the intention of communicating Brazil as an open, market-friendly, and politically relevant nation on a global scale (Ministério do Esporte 2011). Various initiatives sponsored by government departments intended to show a “complex,” “modern,” and “new country still mostly unknown by the world,” characterized by economic accomplishments, political stability as well as a successful reduction of inequality (Ministério do Esporte 2011, 5). Official initiatives targeted media organizations mostly from the United States and Western Europe, with marketing campaigns such as “Brazil is Calling you. Celebrate Life here” and “The World Meets in Brazil” (Niesing 2013; Da Silva, Ziviani, and Madeira 2014). These targets are far from new; concerns about how “the world” sees Brazil traditionally refer to its perception by audiences and authorities from the United States and Western Europe. Feelings of insecurity or isolation within South America, the search for markets and trade beyond that region, and the relevance that Brazil has historically had



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for the commercial and geopolitical interests of the United Kingdom and the United States, have historically driven local elites to seek the maintenance of approval and friendly ties with the United States and Western Europe (de Albuquerque, 2016; Montero, 2014; Smith & Vinhosa, 2002). Indeed, Brazilian authorities, journalists as well as academics have perpetuated the relevance of the American and Western European gaze within the South American nation, to the point of equating “being seen by the world” with “being seen by these particular international powers.” Hence, communication strategies devised to create and project a specific image of Brazil for the world were primarily pitched at individuals, organizations and governments from the United States and Western Europe (Mello, n.d.; Niesing 2013; Ocke 2013). The 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup was key to Brazil’s promotional plan. It was intended to be a dress rehearsal for the infrastructure and safety of the World Cup of the following year, as well as a platform to communicate through the foreign media Brazil’s national unity and logistical successes (Ministério do Esporte 2011). However, as discussed earlier, the June Journeys represented a significant disruption to the authorities’s original aims, with thousands of Brazilians protesting on the streets, demanding improvements to healthcare and education, instead of reflecting the successful and harmonious nation portrayed in the state-sponsored marketing campaigns. Whilst the coverage of Brazil by media organizations from the United States, Western Europe and South America effectively increased during the FIFA Confederations Cup, most of the stories emphasized police violence and the potential effect of the protests on the upcoming World Cup. Significantly, they questioned the perception of Brazil as an emerging global power and narrated the protests as a “social awakening” of Brazil, hence implying that locals finally revolted against decades of corruption and sub-standard living conditions (Imagem Corporativa 2013; New York Times 2013). Some of these stories claimed to reveal the “real” Brazil, suggesting that the “true” nation—with a slowing economy, high social inequality and political corruption—had remained hidden under years of official propaganda (e.g. Phillips 2013; New York Times 2013). Drawing on the accounts of foreign journalists, in the remainder of this chapter I detail some of the processes and conditions through which this specific perspective of Brazil became visible in and through the media. NEWS VALUES The first protest of the June Journeys took place on June 6, 2013, when around 2,000 people gathered in downtown São Paulo (Gohn 2014). Over

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the following days, the protests increased in size, violence, as well as in the level of coverage by the Brazilian media (Intervozes 2014; Telles 2013; Cammaerts and Jiménez-Martínez 2014; Becker and Machado 2014). However, it was only after the violent demonstration of June 13 that media organizations from outside Brazil, particularly from the United States and Western Europe, paid any attention to the June Journeys. Indeed, foreign news media organizations consistently produced articles and reports of the June Journeys only after June 15, when protests accompanied the hosting of the FIFA Confederations Cup in several cities across Brazil (Imagem Corporativa 2013).4 When I asked foreign journalists why the protests had become news at this point and not earlier, they listed a series of supposedly neutral news values justifying the coverage of the protests at that precise moment. News values—also called news criteria or news factors—are the underlying and subjective reasons used by media professionals to select what to cover (Harcup and O’Neill 2001; Galtung and Ruge 1965; Harcup and O’Neill 2016; Hartley 1993; Caple and Bednarek 2013; Golding and Elliott 1979; Palmer 2002; Lacey 2009; McCurdy 2013). Most foreign journalists I interviewed described news values as a neutral, deterministic checklist of the factors and characteristics that make a story relevant or attractive. Foreign journalists stated that some of the news values that justified the relevance of the June Journeys were the number of protesters taking to the streets and the violent clashes between the military police and demonstrators, as well as the apparent similarities with protests occurring in other settings, such as the Arab Spring or the demonstrations simultaneously happening in Turkey. The following comment from Todd Benson, Brazil Bureau Chief for Reuters News, illustrates how foreign journalists perceived and applied news values during the June Journeys: We started writing when it got to about 10,000 people, but it was the violence that made us start writing about it more than the size. As soon as the police brutality happened, that’s when it became politically sensitive with unforeseen implications [. . .] But the world was interested at that moment because a big sporting event was starting and that’s when they said, oh God, the sporting event being marred by protests, there’s our story. That’s when everyone flocked to it.

Here, Benson describes some of the news values underpinning the coverage of the June Journeys by foreign media organizations. It also highlights the relevance of one specific news value in particular: the coincidence of the demonstrations with the FIFA Confederations Cup. According to Benson, the most decisive factor driving the coverage was not the violence, the number of people on the streets or the political implications of the June Journeys, but



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the friction caused by people taking to the streets when Brazil was hosting an international soccer tournament. Several interviewees expressed similar viewpoints, stressing the significance of the simultaneity of the protests with the FIFA Confederations Cup. Foreign correspondents held that the juxtaposition of the protests with this soccer tournament was particularly newsworthy for at least three interrelated reasons. Firstly, according to the interviewees, the protests contradicted the traditional image of Brazil as a soccer-obsessed nation. An article in the New York Times stated that “the soccer-mad country, it turns out, has a lot more to be mad about than its favourite sport” (Zinser 2013). Reporters often stated that their job was to spotlight facets of Brazil that went beyond the stereotypes of carnival, favelas, beaches, sexually available women, and soccer. They admitted, however, that these stereotypes influenced the type of stories they could report about Brazil. Hence, images of Brazilians protesting against the hosting of both the FIFA Confederations Cup and the upcoming World Cup contradicted the generalized perception of Brazilians as obsessed with soccer. As Larry Rohter, former South America Bureau Chief for the New York Times, observed: “The idea that Brazilians would be demonstrating against the construction of soccer stadia is counterintuitive. [Foreign journalists think] Don’t they love soccer so much down there?” Secondly, journalists admitted that the issues raised by demonstrators have been affecting Brazil for several years, if not decades. However, the “accidental overlapping,” as one interviewee put it, of the demonstrations with the FIFA Confederations Cup brought international interest in debates that were traditionally kept within national boundaries. Journalists stated that the money spent on sporting venues became a symbol of Brazil’s social inequality, where large shortfalls in health and education provision persist. Thirdly, of particular interest to foreign journalists was the possibility that similar protests could disturb the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. The FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games are among the most important contemporary mega and media events in terms of revenue and audiences (Tomlinson and Young 2006). In recent years, different groups have attempted to exploit them as platforms to draw direct attention to different agendas, such as denouncing human rights abuses or forced evictions committed by the authorities of the host city or nation (Cottrell and Nelson 2010; Price 2008). Significantly, whilst the June Journeys were originally protests against public transportation fare increases, they subsequently embraced a greater number of sometimes contradictory demands (Becker and Machado 2014; Guedes 2014). Despite the broad array of issues driving people to the streets, in their reports, foreign media organizations often emphasized the connection between soccer and protests, highlighting the risk

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that the protests posed to the organization of the then-upcoming FIFA World Cup (e.g. Downie 2013; Joyce 2013; Watts 2013). EDITORIAL DECISIONS News values alone do not explain why the media cover a particular event in a specific manner. Some of these values, in fact, can be the product of an afterthought, given that, when reporting, journalists take an instinctive approach or follow a “gut feeling” (Schultz, 2007; see also Bruggemann, 2012; Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006). Whilst some interviewees stated that they covered the protests simply because that was “the truth” or “the story,” others held that editors played a decisive role in the choice and shape of news stories, an assertion that echoes with previous studies about news production (Bruggemann 2012; Hannerz 2004; McCurdy 2013). Most interviewees termed editors as the ultimate media gatekeepers. According to these accounts, editors not only requested content that they deemed to be interesting or relevant to audiences, but also had the final word on how a particular event was narrated. Journalists described their relationships with their editors as fraught with tension and frustration. Foreign correspondents and freelance journalists held that editors often preferred content that was sensational or that complied with prevailing stereotypes of Brazil, such as soccer, carnival, samba, sexually attractive women, beaches, favelas, and violence. Television producer “Emma” recalled how a crew she was guiding through São Paulo were disappointed by a favela that “wasn’t that poor,” because it did not resemble the one seen in the film City of God (Meirelles and Lund 2002), the Oscar-nominated movie that spread violent images of Brazilian shantytowns around the world. Brazilians often criticized foreign journalists’s descriptions of the South American nation. Politicians, diplomats, academics, and journalists have claimed that individuals and organizations from Western Europe and the United States have traditionally constructed a “wrong” or “distorted” image of Brazil (de Almeida 2004; Brasil 2012; Buarque 2013; Buarque 2015; Dota 2010; Paganotti 2009). Indeed, public and private efforts to project the image of Brazil abroad often claim that one of their main aims is to correct foreigners’s “distorted” perceptions in order to show the “authentic” Brazil (Buarque 2013; Niesing 2013; Ocke 2013; Wood 2014). Yet the emphasis on exoticism, eroticism, poverty, and violence is not exclusive to foreigners. During the 1960s, Brazil’s military dictatorship launched a series of tourism advertising campaigns emphasizing the beauty of the beaches and the sensuality of Brazilian women in order to divert attention away from



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human rights abuses (De Rosa 2013; see other examples in Antunes 2014; Frey 2014). Foreign journalists responded to this criticism by stating that they actually cover a broad array of subjects, going beyond the typical associations of Brazil with, as one interview put it, the “four Ss”: samba, sand, sex, and soccer. Some interviewees pointed out how editors shaped news reports to make them fit with agendas that change over time. Indeed, the foreign coverage of the June Journeys challenges the “protest paradigm,” which states that the media are often biased against demonstrations (see also Cottle 2008; Harlow and Johnson 2011; Kyriakidou and Olivas Osuna 2017). Various reports about the June Journeys published by foreign media organizations adopted a relatively celebratory tone toward the protests, stressing how “the Brazilian people” were rising up against the organization of sporting mega events to the detriment of investment in public services (Cohen 2013; The Economist 2013; New York Times 2013). Yet only a year earlier, at the end of the London Olympic Games, newspaper articles focussed precisely on the supposed enthusiasm of Brazilians about hosting both the World Cup and the Olympics. Hence, editors overlooked the very same underlying tensions that, twelve months later, during the June Journeys, were under the spotlight. The experience of “Anna,” a freelancer for several news agencies, is particularly illuminating: [At the end of the London Olympics in 2012] I was asked by an editor to write a story on how people in Rio were really, really excited about the Rio Olympics. And, I wrote the story, but most of the people I talked to weren’t that excited. Most of the people I spoke to were saying, “well, you know, we’d rather have the money spent on other things. We’d rather that the investments go on housing and education rather than new stadiums.” [. . .] And when it was published, the editor just cut the negative stuff out, just left the stuff about happy people. So that was kind of interesting, because the editor in that instance had—and this happens a lot—a preconceived idea of the story that he wanted and it didn’t really matter that the inputs I had found didn’t fit into that narrative, they just got cut.

The news values discussed earlier assume that a particular event has some intrinsic characteristics that make it especially newsworthy. Anna’s comments reveal, however, that media professionals emphasize or underplay some features of these events in order to make them fit within preconceived ideas of what should be published. Significantly, nation branders have claimed that their job consists of shedding light on some “essential” characteristics of national identity that are more suitable for global markets. Hence, foreign journalists and nation branding executives work in a strikingly similar fashion: both groups highlight and conceal specific features of a given nation, in

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order to advance various political, economic or cultural agendas (more details about nation branding executives can be found in Aronczyk 2013). In the case of the June Journeys, foreign journalists emphasized that their editors did not lie about the protests. Instead, they simply responded to a perceived logic of what works in the media. These emphases or omissions seemed to have a profound effect on the version of the protests—as well as the version of Brazil—that the media ended up showing. As television producer “Emma” reflected: I think that, internationally speaking, the story [of the June 2013 protests] that was published wasn’t necessarily accurate [. . .] Although it did present some facts, it certainly left out the rest of the facts that would’ve made the story completely accurate. And I feel that if it had added in all these extra facts, then they [the editors] would’ve said “Well, that’s not a story.”

Emma’s quote sheds light on journalists and editors’s imperative to narrate “a story” through their reporting. The development of that story leads out of necessity to the inclusion of certain elements in a narrative, and the exclusion of others. A similar process occurs in the formation of national identity, which requires that only particular historical episodes or figures are selected to be remembered, to the detriment of others (Renan 1990 [1882]). Branding executives follow a similar process in their attempts to reduce the nation to a single brand (Aronczyk 2013; Kaneva and Popescu 2014; Volcic 2012). Whilst authorities, branding executives, and journalists claim to be merely showing the “authentic” nation, their actions reveal its constructed and contested nature, with individuals and organizations employing the idea of the nation to achieve different outcomes (Calhoun 2007). Hence, editorial decisions are a powerful reminder that rather than seeking the essence of the nation, a more productive approach would be to ask, “what is the (construct of the) nation used for?” and, “who are those who try to use it?” THE COMMODIFICATION OF NEWS Foreign journalists, particularly those working freelance, claimed that they had very little leverage over the decisions taken by their editors. Journalists, by their own account, had to struggle to propose subjects or angles that went beyond preconceived stories or expectations regarding Brazil. Most interviewees held that the possibility of showing different sides of Brazil in the media was constrained by economic pressures. From this viewpoint, media organizations were described as being mostly concerned with generating the



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largest profits possible (Hamilton 2004; Strömback and Esser 2009). News were fundamentally a commodity to be traded, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, in a market of symbolic goods. As two foreign journalists stated: Obviously, the media don’t care about Brazil; they don’t naturally care about anything. I mean, they care about selling newspapers and making more clicks. I don’t know, I’m kind of a cynic. When something like that [the protests] happens, obviously the media have some wonderful people doing their stuff and there are people who think it is really important to report on that stuff, [but there are] all kind of reasons why these things get reported, and one of them is of course profit. (“Julie”) I think in any country, not just Brazil, there are certain aspects of the culture that newspaper editors are more willing to publish stories on [. . .] because they sell newspapers. Most of the time people are more interested in soccer stories about Brazil than they are about social justice stories, so there are going to be a lot of more stories about soccer. (“Anna”)

Whilst “Julie” and “Anna” highlight the relevance of news values and editorial decisions, they hold that profit maximization is the dominant principle guiding the publication of news. Several academics have stated similar viewpoints (e.g. Hamilton 2004; Strömback and Esser 2009), and others have observed that news editors have acquired an entrepreneurial role, increasingly concerned with generating economic benefits for their news organizations (Tunstall 1995). Critical studies in news production have discussed at length the role of economic pressures on news media. Some authors portray them as being opposed to the journalistic ideals of fairness, independence, and objectivity (Champagne 2005; Hamilton 2004; Landerer 2013; McChesney 2004; Strömback and Esser 2009). Various interviewees stated that the interest of foreign media organizations in the June Journeys was partly explained by the commodification of news. Such commodification was also one of the drivers of the previously discussed emphasis on the risks that the protests posed for the organization of sporting mega events. Indeed, as Vincent Bevins, correspondent for The Los Angeles Times in Brazil, contended, some freelance journalists saw the coverage of the June Journeys as an opportunity to increase their earnings: Freelancers that are just trying to get their name, and it’s all about their name, and they’re just trying to get that $600 for that big article [. . .] I saw this happening up very close during the protests against the World Cup. All the freelancers saw this as a huge opportunity to make more money, but to do that, to reach more publications, TV channels or websites, they were very willing to simplify and reinforce stereotypes. They weren’t willing. They were forced to do so.

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The above quote reveals the pervasiveness of a commercial viewpoint, with even disruption and dissent becoming commodified. Such pervasiveness is another expression of the spread of the logic of capitalism across various social settings. Nation branding is also underpinned by similar principles, relying on the commodification of national identities (Aronczyk 2013; Kaneva 2011; Volcic and Andrejevic 2015). However, whereas branding consultants deliberately engage in such processes of commodification, the journalists interviewed here constructed a narrative of frustration and victimization with and by the media and its commercial imperatives. Foreign journalists portrayed themselves as almost devoid of agency, as prisoners of perverse commercial pressures which they reluctantly accepted. As British journalist “Julie” stated: “It is a whole kind of system that is probably guilty of that.” VISUAL TECHNOLOGIES Several analyses of the June 2013 protests have emphasized the role played by digital technologies during the demonstrations. Studies have celebrated how alternative media collectives and individual citizens employed digital media not only to coordinate protests, but also to contest some of the official versions of Brazil produced to support the hosting of sporting mega events (e.g. Almeida and Evangelista 2013; Becker and Machado 2014; Conde and Jazeel 2013; Peruzzo 2013; Viera 2013). For instance, in mid-June 2013, Brazilian filmmaker Carla Dauden achieved notoriety after she uploaded to her YouTube account a video called “No, I’m Not Going to the World Cup” (Dauden 2013). In just over six minutes, she criticized the Brazilian authorities for hosting the 2014 World Cup, highlighting issues such as public money being spent on the tournament rather than on healthcare or education. She remarked in the video that “we do not need Brazil to look better for the world, we need our people to have food and health” (Dauden 2013). Within a couple of hours, “No, I’m Not Going to the World Cup” received more than 500,000 visits, and in less than a week it had gained 2.5 million views (Phillips 2013; Tognozzi 2014). Some authors have claimed that while domestic authorities’s employ an apparently dated mass media, activists or alternative media collectives rely on digital media, which have a lower cost, apparently facilitate unplanned gatherings of people, and supposedly offer endless possibilities of disruptive action (Dayan 2013; Bennett 2003; Thompson 2005). However, state agencies in Brazil have relied heavily on digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and their own websites to disseminate some of their marketing campaigns (Da Silva et



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al., 2014). Indeed, as Paula Gómez Carrillo’s chapter in this collection shows, authorities may even exploit the apparent spontaneity of campaigns generated through social media, as part of their nation-branding initiatives. Notwithstanding these different viewpoints, all interviewees agreed that new technologies have facilitated the production and circulation of visual content. Various authors have stated that digital media, the commodification of media content, as well as the perception that images are more immediate, emotional, universal, and circulate more freely than the written word, have all contributed to the growth in the production and circulation of images over the last few decades (Becker 2017; Frosh 2003; Griffin 2012; Khatib 2013; Roosvall 2010; Sturken and Cartwright 2001). In the case of the June Journeys, foreign journalists stated that images—understood strictly in the visual sense—played a key role in the construction and projection of a particular version of Brazil. They described images as being more powerful than texts and sometimes, as effective tools to attract the attention of audiences. Yet most interviewees adopted an ambivalent viewpoint towards images. Some freelance journalists complained that articles about the June Journeys that, in their view, had been written in a fairly balanced way, were sensationalized once they were accompanied by images of chaos or destruction. Furthermore, foreign journalists held that the emotional appeal of images risked transforming accounts of the protests into mere spectacle, stressing violence and chaos rather than the political aims that originally drove the demonstrations.5 Those risks seem to be greater still in the case of television. As television producer “Emma” contended: Of course, you get contacted by some video news agencies that specifically were looking for violence. So they were specifically looking for violence in these protests, saying, if there’s a protest, give us some images if it gets violent. —And did they put it in those terms, directly? That’s exactly how they put it.

Significantly, visual spectacle did not only mean focussing on destruction and violence. Interviewees stated that images were partly responsible for constructing a romanticized version of the June Journeys, omitting previous episodes of social unrest in Brazil as well as some of the structural conditions that facilitated the eruption of such social unrest. As one interviewee put it, photos of Brazilians protesting outside the National Congress in Brasilia gave the impression of a revolution happening in the country, when that was not the case. Likewise, foreign journalist “Julie” said, [Audiences] should be shocked every day by the police actions against protests and people on the periphery, but that is not visible. People were actually

Figure 6.1.  Interviewees held that the emotional appeal of images risked transforming accounts of the protests into mere spectacle, stressing violence and chaos. The image shows members of the military police shooting rubber bullets during the protest of June 13, 2013 in downtown São Paulo. Source: Gabriel Vinicius Cabral.

Figure 6.2.  Foreign journalists claimed that photos of Brazilians protesting outside the National Congress in Brasília, like this image taken on June 17, 2013, gave the impression that a revolution was occurring in the country, when that was not the case. Source: Valter Campanato/Agência Brasil.



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shocked to see that happening to middle-class kids. People like them, people like their kids. It was quite brutal in a way, because people were in shock because it was people like them.

CONCLUDING REMARKS The accounts of foreign journalists who covered the June Journeys show that the media are not “empty spaces” in which government officials and branding consultants create and communicate their versions of national identity. Indeed, as stated earlier, nation branders are far from being the only actors crafting images of a particular nation (see also Saunders 2015). The media are both organizations constituted by diverse actors—with aims, routines and expectations—as well as technologies that may affect how particular versions of a given nation are constructed and projected to foreigners. The shape that a particular nation takes in the media is not only fostered or constrained by political economy issues, such as the commodification of news or media ownership. Cultural matters are equally relevant. Throughout the chapter, interviewees’s accounts revealed how influential predominant stereotypes of Brazil were in the coverage of the June 2013 demonstrations. A significant point that arises from the analysis of the interviews is the striking similarity between some accounts that nation branders give of their own work and the construction and projection of national images by foreign journalists. It has been stated that nation branding is a manifestation of what has been called “commercial nationalism” or “economic nationalism”—that is, the primacy of economic practices as markers of nationhood, as well as the adoption of an economic viewpoint to evaluate the legitimacy of institutions (Castelló and Mihelj 2017; Kaneva 2016; Volcic and Andrejevic 2015). But these features are hardly unique to nation-branding initiatives. Indeed, it may be that news media also perpetuate a type of commodification of national identity, not too dissimilar to that encouraged by nation branding. Further research is needed to examine the roles of branding experts, authorities, as well as journalists not as isolated individuals, but actually in relation to each other. Such an approach may be useful to examine the similarities and differences in their actions as well as the perceptions of the environments in which they operate. In addition, it may also help to illuminate the possibilities and restrictions for resistance to the kinds of national images and narratives these actors produce. Hence, future analyses of nation branding should adopt a holistic approach, focussing not only on those

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who create the brands or those targeted by the brands, but also on the role of media professionals. As this chapter has showed, the beliefs, norms, perceptions, and practices of foreign journalists are significant in shaping the different images and narratives of a nation that end up circulating through the media environment. NOTES 1.  Brazil hosted the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 1950. Brazil was experiencing then a period of political and economic optimism. The Brazilian authorities built the famous Maracanã Stadium for that tournament. In the final match, Brazil was unexpectedly beaten 2–1 by Uruguay, an event that supposedly had a deep effect on shaping Brazil’s national consciousness (for more about the 1950 World Cup, see Buarque 2015; Goldblatt 2014). 2.  Attempts to construct and project a positive version of national identity aimed at foreigners are by no means new. In the 19th century, various Latin American governments took part in world fairs. Governments used these events as an opportunity to showcase a “modern” version of the nations they claimed to represent, with economic, political and cultural achievements supposedly at the same level of those from Western European countries (Tenorio-Trillo 1996). Likewise, countries like Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay have hosted sporting mega events such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games. Latin American authorities have staged these type of events in an attempt to convey messages regarding “emergence” or “rise” of their nations in the global order (see, for instance Brewster and Brewster 2006; Grix, Brannagan, and Houlihan 2015). 3.  See, for instance, the discussions in Fan (2008), Kaneva (2011), Surowiec (2017) or Szondi (2008). 4.  The FIFA Confederations Cup was played in Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza and Salvador. In each of those cities, activist networks unrelated to “Movimento Passe Livre” such as the Popular Committee for the World Cup, organized protests to increase awareness of the social cost of hosting mega sports events. 5.  For more about the relationship between images and spectacle, see Brighenti (2010).

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-republica-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva-na-cerimonia-de-anuncio-do-brasil-comosede-da-copa-do-mundo-d. Da Silva, Regina, Paula Ziviani, and Thaise Madeira. 2014. “Os Megaeventos Como Arena: O Jogo Das Identidades E Os Espetáculos Das Culturas.” XXIII Encontro Anual Da Compós, Na Universidade Federal Do Pará, Belém, de 27 a 30 de Maio de 2014, 1–17. http://compos.org.br/encontro2014/anais/Docs/GT03_ COMUNICACAO_E_CULTURA/artigo_compos_2014_vf_2157.pdf. Dalpiaz, Jamile. 2013. “Representações Do Brasil Na Imprensa Britânica: Uma Análise Cultural Do Jornal The Guardian.” Revista Ciberlegenda 29: 74–94. Dauden, Carla. 2013. No, I’m Not Going to the World Cup. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=ZApBgNQgKPU. Dayan, Daniel. 2013. “Conquering Visibility, Conferring Visibility: Visibility Seekers and Media Performance.” International Journal of Communication 7: 137–53. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1966/845. de Albuquerque, Afonso. 2016. “Voters against Public Opinion: Press and Democracy in Brazil and South Africa.” International Journal of Communication 10: 3042–61. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3807. De Rosa, Gian Luigi. 2013. “The Development of the Tourist Imagery of Brazil in between Stereotypes and Clichés.” In Tourism and Tourist Promotion around the World: A Linguistic and Socio-Cultural Perspective, edited by Elena Manca and Francesca Bianchi, 21–29. Universitá del Salento. Dinnie, Keith. 2008. Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Dota, Maria Inez. 2010. “A Imagem Do Brasil No Discurso Do New York Times. Aspectos Sociais.” Signo Y Pensamiento 56: 388–404. http://revistas.javeriana.edu. co/index.php/signoypensamiento/article/viewFile/2569/1837. Downie, Andrew. 2013. “Brazil Protests Pose Challenge for World Cup Organisers.” Reuters, June 18. http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brazil-protests-soccer-idUKBRE95H17220130618. Fan, Y. 2008. “Soft Power: Power of Attraction or Confusion?” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 4 (2): 147–58. doi:10.1057/pb.2008.4. Figueiredo, Rubens. 2014. “Apresentação.” In Junho de 2013: A Sociedade Enfrenta O Estado, edited by Rubens Figueiredo, 7–13. São Paulo: Summus Editorial. Frey, Aline. 2014. “Confinement and Violence in the Streets of New Brazilian Cinema.” In Brazil in Twenty-First Century Popular Media: Culture, Politics and Nationalism on the World Stage, edited by Naomi Pueo Wood, 55–71. Plymouth, UK: Lexington. Frosh, Paul. 2003. The Image Factory: Consumer Culture, Photography and the Visual Content Industry. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Frosh, Paul, and Gadi Wolfsfeld. 2007. “ImagiNation: News Discourse, Nationhood and Civil Society.” Media, Culture & Society 29 (1): 105–29. doi:10 .1177/0163443706072001. Galtung, Johan, and Mari Holmboe Ruge. 1965. “The Structure of Foreign News.” Journal of Peace Research 2 (1): 64–91.

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Chapter Seven

International Love? “Latino” Music Videos, the Latin Brand of Universality, and Pitbull Andrew Ginger

“Panamericana Music Republic of the Americas.” These words are emblazoned on the back of a departing vehicle at the end of the video for “Sunset” (2015) by Puerto Rican singer Farruko. “Sunset” is predominantly in Spanish, with English sections. It features Nicky Jam, of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, and Shaggy, the Jamaican-born Canadian-American vocalist who served in the US Marines during Operation Desert Storm (Hollomon 1995). The telling phrase—“Panamericana Music Republic”—the linguistic mixing, and the collaboration between singers of diverse backgrounds encapsulate an aspirational brand that extends through and out of specific nations of “Latin” America, their descendant and diasporic populations, and across “Anglo” America. The brand seeks to establish its vision through music and music videos: it is a “Music Republic.” The present chapter is concerned both with such an expansive notion of a Latin music brand, and with the latter’s deep connections to long-term preoccupations among descendent populations of the former Spanish monarchy (empire) across Latin America and beyond. I will argue that there is a confluence between the broad terms in which a “Latin” universalism was framed historically, and the ways in which some commercially successful “Latin” music videos are branded. In so doing, I will give particular but not exclusive attention to Pitbull, the self-proclaimed “Mr. Worldwide,” and especially his music video “International Love”: the two titles resonate with universalism and globalism. I will set “International Love” both amid Pitbull’s wider body of work and, at the outset, within a broader field of “Latin” music videos. On the one hand, I acknowledge how a universalizing brand of “Latin” music could end up characterized as a vehicle for a patriarchal imperialism exercised through market forces. The latter appear to render everything ultimately homogenous. On the other hand, I give serious consideration to an alternative 159

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view, in which the creation of a universalizing “Latin” music brand can be understood as a practical, strategic act which re-positions “Latins” as a powerful global force. Artistes re-appropriate to this end a range of stereotypes used to marginalize “Latins.” Rather than erasing specific cultural or societal roots, or denying their relevance, the universalizing strategy explicitly draws on them as sources for its own globalizing vision. Instead of evoking a putative, all-powerful, homogenizing “Late Capitalism,” this alternative account treats markets as constituted, in practice, by encounters between a variety of actors through which “capitalism” takes shape. Within such encounters, strategic interventions—such as creating a globalized “Latin” brand—become feasible. In turn, the universalizing strategy exhibits its own inherent fragilities precisely because it seeks to break free of overwhelming constraints and limitations. In exploring how the universalizing “Latin” brand might be deemed plausible, I draw both on historical texts of “Latin” universalism and, by way of support, on some recent work in ethnology. It is not my purpose, in so doing, to sit in moral judgement either in condemnation or praise, but rather to establish more fully what might be involved—for better or for worse—in embracing one important version of a universalizing “Latin” music brand. “I am not imposing anything, I am not even proposing anything, I am setting things out,” as Isaiah Berlin liked to say (in Hardy 2013, 91).1 The Pan-Latin anthem “La Gozadera” (also 2015) presents in stark form some of the broad aspects of a universalizing “Latin” music brand. The song was published by the multinational corporation Sony Music Entertainment’s US Latin branch in collaboration with the Puerto-Rican singer Marc Anthony’s Miami-based Magnus Media (on the foundation of Magnus Media, see Romero 2015). The lead singers are the Cuban group Gente de Zona, working together with Marc Anthony himself. In the video and song, we encounter exultant references to a range of countries across the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Americas and beyond. The very first sung words, from the mouths of the Cubans, are “Miami me lo confirmó” (Miami confirmed it to me), followed by “Puerto Rico me lo regaló” (Puerto Rico gifted it to me).2 These affirmations assert the connection between Pan-Latin sensibilities and two territories integrated with the United States: Miami—a center of immigration and of business connections across the Americas, and Puerto Rico—a semi-autonomous ‘Hispanic’ state and former Spanish Caribbean colony linked into the United States. The bridging between the “Anglo” and “Latin” Americas is reinforced by the presence of the Star-Spangled Banner, which we find among the many dancers who are body-painted with flags from the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Americas. From here, the song proceeds outwards from the Caribbean, including Gente de Zona’s Cuba (Del Caribe somos tú y yo—You and I are from the Caribbean), to a mass of



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countries. Together these purportedly form an aggregate “Latin” community, without in so doing losing their individual particularity: Si tú eres latino, saca tu bandera (If you’re Latino, get your flag out), the singers urge, combining a shared reality (“Latino”) with distinct local contributions (“your flag”). In “La Gozadera,” we find a threefold combination around “Latino” identity: a proclamation of a shared “Latino” society across the Americas embracing the United States “Latin” populations; a Pan-Americanism in which the “Latin” element takes the lead. Finally, the “Latin” reaches beyond the integration of the hemisphere itself to a notion of global community inspired by the “Latinos.” El mundo se está sumando a la fiesta de los latinos (The world is joining the Latinos’ party), we are assured. The latter affirmation has a specific and powerful resonance in the music industry. Over recent years, “Latin” music emanating from businesses in the United-States has attained a remarkable prominence combined with major commercial success. Habitually, “Latin” performers are from a Spanishspeaking family background in the US either through Puerto Rico or among migrants. Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin have Puerto Rican parents, for example, while Christina Aguilera and Pitbull have immigrant fathers (Ecuadorian and Cuban respectively); Enrique Iglesias, born in Madrid, spent much of his early life Miami. More exceptionally, Shakira is Colombian by birth. Such artistes have secured an unprecedented and sustained level of global visibility for “Latinos” in the world of music. Numbers of YouTube views for more recent videos give a crude but highly effective indicator of their quantitative impact. At the upper end, the Spanish-language version of Enrique Iglesias’s “Bailando” has been seen over two billion times; Shakira’s trilingual “Waka Waka: This Time for Africa” makes it well above the tendigit mark, as does Romeo Santos’s bilingual “Propuesta indecente.” It is testament to the strength of this phenomenon that, during the period of writing and editing this chapter, Luis Fonsi’s collaboration with Daddy Yankee, “Despacito” soared to a record breaking 3.7 billion views (Figures as at 20 September 2017). To put this in numerical context, there are just over seven billion people in the world. Across the board, figures of several hundred million views of videos featuring “Latin” performers are far from uncommon. There are, as Deborah Pacini Hernández has suggested, complications in seeing this simply as a mainstreaming in the music industry of a loosely described Latino culture. She refers us to “Negus’s observation [. . .] that the cultural predispositions and ethnoracial imaginaries of music industry personnel, not observable sociocultural and demographic realities, will overdetermine the industry’s economic decisions” (2010, 162). Moreover, commercial success is closely correlated to the support or otherwise of the music industry of a predominantly “Anglo” country, the United States of America.

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Equally, there is a risk that such qualifications may deflect from stark, immediate realities as much as they clarify them. There is a brute strategic fact on the ground, to which this chapter will continually return, and which is worth stating with corresponding crudeness. So far as culture goes, masses of people—not just a niche or elite audience—are listening to or looking at people from inside Spanish-speaking groups on a scale they were not before people like Ricky Martin or Jennifer Lopez came on the scene in the late 1990s. Marc Anthony has put the point succinctly: “Latin artists are among some of the world’s biggest brands” (Romero 2015). The notion that there could be such a thing as a “Latin” music brand draws on the broader use of terms such as “Latin,” “Latino,” or “Hispanic.” Rather than being taken as essentialist, such terms can be employed, for good and ill, as strategic interventions—that is, simultaneously as a recognition of a state of affairs and an exercise of agency through it. In a philosophical essay on Hispanic identities, Gregorio Velazco y Trianosky observes that, in practice, “the relation between subject self-identification and objective socially-constructed categories should be conceived as a dynamic one.” Such terms address what he calls “a particular quotidian cultural context or range of contexts” (2010, 291–292). So, for example, in a brief speech attacking the Republican President Donald Trump, Pitbull speaks of “nosotros los latinos” (We Latinos). His point in so doing is to invoke commonalities in the experience and aspiration of immigrants to the United States from Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries (Uforia Music 2015). In a rather different situation—a broadcast for MTV’s Playlist concerning his hit song “Calle Ocho/I Know You Want Me,” Pitbull talks of how he “fused together” a rhythm from Brazil, a “vibe” from the Dominican Republic, and an evocation of the Calle Ocho carnival in Miami (Ultra Music 2009). Here, the “Latin” is a triangulation between cultural products from the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking societies, and a zone within and giving access to the United States. Looked at as a strategic intervention, the success of a putative “Latin” music brand realizes a recurrent aspiration among descendant peoples of the global Spanish monarchy, since its decline and disintegration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: to participate in substantive ways in a larger global order and to be heeded in so doing. Often, lyrics and images evince a globalizing universalism stretching out from the “Latin” to the rest of the world. In “Waka Waka,” the dancing Shakira, frequently in close-up, is crosscut with clips from soccer games featuring a wide-range of international teams. It is as if the Colombian’s body and singing were transmission points connecting loyalties from around the globe. In a very different video—“Can’t Hold Us Down” (with Lil’ Kim)—Christina Aguilera, portrayed in a lower-



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class, mixed-ethnicity US neighborhood with a substantial “Latino” population, speaks up for “my girls all around the world.” Arguably, it is the rapper Pitbull who, by dubbing himself “Mr. Worldwide,” has most overtly embodied the globalizing trend in “Latin” music. Likewise, his album titles include, variously, Planet Pit, Globalization, and Global Warming: Meltdown. In an excellent recent essay on him, Karen A. Secrist comments that, like him or not, Pitbull “is unquestionably one of the biggest stars in pop and, arguably, the most visible post-Latin-music ‘boom’ male performers” (2013, 215). In common with many of his contemporaries, Pitbull—birth name Armando Christian Pérez—is more than a singer. A 2014 interview-based documentary for the TV program Aquí y ahora aptly refers to him as a marca global (global brand), the marca Pitbull (Pitbull brand). The documentary explores how his success as a singer led to collaborations with multinational companies, some of which are given expression in videos, as is the case with Playboy in “Wild Wild Love” (with G. R. L.), or DreamWorks in “Celebrate” (with the Penguins of Madagascar). Pitbull himself stresses the importance in this respect of Miami, referenced explicitly as his business base in “Wild Wild Love.” The Aquí y ahora documentary reminds us how the city is significant for its multinational economic reach, and specifically as a platform for Latin American business endeavors (Salinas 2014). Pitbull acts not simply as a face for products but, for example in the case of the Miamibased vodka company Voli, as a shareholder; their drinks often appear in product placements in his videos (Muhammad 2016).3 In an essay on the contemporary music scene in Miami, José Dávila describes how Pitbull emerged among a group of individuals in “the workingclass suburban neighbourhood of Coral Park, in South Miami [. . .] by all accounts a pivotal catalyst for the nascent Miami movement.” Miami was by then, Dávila notes, “a Latino city”: “Spanish is the language that animates the city.” Dávila observes that Miami was “Latino” in a broad sense at this time, populated not just by those of Cuban descent but by immigrants from across Latin America (2009, 200; 202). Crucial to the Pitbull brand is an assonantal rhyming link that associates these origins with his globalizing aspirations: he is both “Mr. Worldwide” and “Mr. 305” (the telephone prefix of Dade Country, from which he sprang). Similarly, in the opening of the video for “International Love” we find interlinked the Cuban flag, that of the United States, and Pitbull’s declaration that he is “international, so international.” In turn, the two banners are emblazoned across a dramatic image of the globe spinning through space, with which—now covered in a range of flags, and ringed by the words “Mr. Worldwide”—the video also ends. This planetary vision frequently serves as a backdrop for the antics of Pitbull and those of his collaborator, Chris Brown. The video consists largely of images of the two men

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performing in a variety of settings, interspersed and sometimes combined with visions of dancing women. Pitbull’s overall globalizing outlook may be summarized in his own succinct words, uttered in his World Cup anthem “We Are One (Olé, Olá)”: mi mundo, tu mundo, el mundo (my world, your world, the world). There is purportedly a fusion between Pitbull’s experience of the world, that of others, and global reality. It has not proved difficult to criticize or sneer at Pitbull. Secrist cites one critic who was moved to remark, “Pitbull sounds like a sexually repressed pimp who has no musical talent” (in Secrist 2013, 213). Foss, Domenico, and Foss point to crude, predictable gender stereotyping in his work: “Rapper Pitbull’s songs and videos prescribe that masculinity is constituted largely by sexual prowess and the achievement of material success. [. . .] If men are supposed to be sexually confident and aggressive, women are supposed to be sexually available” (2013, 109–110). Even interviewers sympathetic to him, including the presenter for the Aquí y ahora documentary, have challenged the singer on such issues. On one viewing of “International Love,” from the lyrics to the succession of writhing young women in different national colors, what joins the world together—penetrating through its frontiers—is Pitbull’s vibrant penis. The rapper claims inter alia that though he does not play football, he touches down everywhere. “Everywhere?” asks Chris Brown. “Everywhere,” Pitbull confirms. As if to fulfil many critical theorists’ worst fears, Pitbull, repeatedly seen standing astride gigantic towers, erections in a city district, allies the triumph of money and capital with an assertive phallocentrism that leaves women and foreigners in subjugation. In one sequence, he thrusts his groin over and again at an appreciative audience. In “Fireball” from Globalization, Pitbull takes the time to quote and then modify the words of Julius Caesar: “I saw, I came, I conquered. Or should I say I saw, I conquered, I came.” On such a critical account, the “Mr. Worldwide” brand is a form of twin imperialism: that of a rampantly sexualized patriarchy combined with the marketing power of the US music industry and associated economic forces. Such is the “Imperio Pitbull” (Pitbull Empire), to borrow the subtitle of the Aquí y ahora documentary. To the extent that a “Latin” identity is integral to the brand, it would be hoovered up from the globe along with a whole host of cultural products, thence to be reduced to the level of yet another commodity, as some commentators on Hispanic music fear (for example Simonett 2011, 129–130). In the words of one VP of public relations, Pitbull generó un producto perfecto (created a perfect product) (Salinas 2014). In turn—so this argument would go—by embracing such powerful market forces, and perhaps in spite of himself, the “Latin” artiste ends up losing his own distinguishing characteristics. Having transformed himself into a product, he becomes, in



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Figure 7.1.  Still from the “International Love” music video. Source: RCA Records.

his videos, as homogenous as everything else on sale: just another wealthy man in a suit getting out of an expensive car, just another singer on a stage somewhere that could be anywhere. Yet, perhaps the very ease with which people can score such points off Pitbull—even the fact that people may feel minded to score points so easily— might give us pause for thought. That is not the same, of course, as dismissing these observations; it is simply to say that we might consider whether there may be more to the story. In her 2013 essay, Secrist looks through hostile critical reactions to Pitbull among some US reviewers. They often depict him, she says, as “a twenty-first-century version of the Latin lover incarnate—all bravado and no substance, a stereotypical and unsophisticated stock character who is solely motivated, as another reviewer put it, by ‘his dogged pursuit of pleasure’ and thus cannot be expected to control his bodily impulses.” In antagonistic reviewers’s eyes, Secrist concludes, Pitbull is associated with “a pervasive ‘Latino/a threat,’ linked to fears of immigration, of supposedly ‘unchecked [. . .] fertility,’” along with older prejudices about Hispanics (2013, 218; 220). Secrist’s essay shows how easily moral and aesthetic outrage at Pitbull—or anyone like him—can elide with negative stereotyping of “Latin” men (and vice-versa). At the very least, such an observation should encourage one to pause over negative reactions to Pitbull whatever one’s final conclusions about the rapper. The video for “International Love” pointedly conjures up many of the fears to which Secrist alludes, in what could be taken as an opposing fantasy. The “Latino” Don Juan has gone from being a Miami-based “Mr. 305” to “Mr. Worldwide.” His feared libido stalks the globe unconstrained,

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taking womenfolk everywhere. He has seized even Capital itself, standing atop the glass towers typical of a city awash with finance. Scenes of endless partying flicker past to the exclusion of decent hard work. Likewise, in “Time of Our Lives,” the solution to the financial struggles of a “Latino” family is, stereotypically, to host a fiesta. As fears of “Latinos” come true, an apocalypse occurs: from the outset of “International Love,” lightning bolts and thunder echo across the conquered globe. The cosmically glittering images of Pitbull’s success elide into visions of a world caught in a violent glowing storm, splintering and shattering with the light. The very imagery used to ghettoize and confine men like Pitbull is now used to break through all frontiers. “As a matter of fact, you should thank me/Even if you don’t you’re welcome Yankees [. . .] Who got the keys to the world now, yours truly,” he says in “Don’t Stop the Party.” The feeling of pushing back is evident in the opening track of Globalization, “Ah Leke,” a collaboration with the Jamaican singer Sean Paul: “The globe is my home,” he affirms, but “Grew up around keys and violence/Was taught to stay silent /Silence.” To borrow the title of Alejandro Mejías López’s book on transatlantic modernismo (2009), the “Imperio Pitbull” is, on this account, brought about by an “inverted conquest.” This is globalization, but not as we know it. The supreme world power, the United States, will fall into the hands of the “Hispanics.” “Next step La Casa Blanca,” Pitbull announces in “Rain over Me.” No hay carro, vamos en balsa (There’s no car, we’ll go by raft), he adds with melancholic irony, alluding to Cubans who take to rafts in pursuit of asylum in the USA.

Figure 7.2.  Still from the “International Love” music video. Source: RCA Records.



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Pitbull’s claim here to be “Mr. Worldwide” and to offer “International Love” is a robust, bald assertion of global relevance, of universality. The latter term has fallen somewhat into disrepute among many theorists involved in Latin American cultural studies due to something of an historic about-turn. There had been a long tradition of Latin American—and more broadly “Latin”—universalism. That line passes, among others, through the Mexican José Vasconcelos’s prophecy of a coming utopian Universópolis in the 1920s ([1925] 1967), the artist Joaquín Torres García’s vast manifesto for Universalismo constructivo published in 1944 in Buenos Aires, and earlier nineteenth century universalizing republicanism in Colombia and Mexico. James E. Sanders’s Vanguard of the Atlantic World (2014), dealing with the latter phenomenon, has been one of the few overtly sympathetic recent studies of such universalism. The claim staked by such universalisms amounts to something larger, less confined by locality even than recent terms like “transnational,” “transcultural,” or “deterritorialized.” As Torres García explains, “this aspiration exceeds the mere exchange of cultural values and of art” (1944, 20).4 Summarizing the perspective of intellectuals opposed to these historic universalisms, in her study of Latin American cultural criticism Patricia D’Allemand remarks that “all these endeavours take as their starting point a firm belief in the historical character of aesthetic and cultural production and reception, a belief that separates them [. . .] from universalist modes of interpretation” (2001, 16).5 That is to say, hostile critics suppose that, by definition, universalist outlooks are unable truly to address specific historical realities. Striving to rescue from the critique of universalism some notion that we are not simply confined to our historical and geographical circumstances, that we might reach out to all humanity, a range of scholars have engaged in rather complex linguistic and intellectual gymnastics. A case in point is Walter Mignolo’s coining of the term “diversality” as “the future alternative to globalization” in opposition to the European Marxist Slavoj Žižek’s renewed (and politically narrowly conceived) “universality” (2002, 89). The hostility to universalism is to some degree deserved: the term universal has a history of being used as a way of oppressing others or veiling prejudice, or simply as a mask for a specific population group. “International Love” in places echoes with such limitations, supposedly touching down everywhere, but not mentioning large portions of the globe. In this line of thought, it is sometimes assumed that universalisms were, as Mignolo put it, “abstract” (2002, 91): devices that flattened out local diversity, and glazed over inequality. We might observe this in “International Love” in the women whose national label is all that differentiates their destiny as they become items in a list, in flags that are no more than digital effects, in culturally specific locales that appear only as a succession of interchangeable decorative projections on a back screen.

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The ethnologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing has questioned some of the assumptions behind this kind of rejection of universals. In her observation of interactions in a globalized world, she remarks, “How can universals be so effective in forging global connections if they posit an already united world in which the work of connection is unnecessary? Scholars have not much addressed this question because the idea of the universal suggests abstractions, which turn away from the practical successes and failures of universal claims” (2005, 7). Likewise, historically, many Latin-American attempts at universalism were offered up as a set of practices intended to solve a geopolitical and cultural problem in global relations, not just as a concept in the abstract. Like many others, Torres García hoped to escape and replace “the hegemony of those peoples (of the north) over the Latin race.”6 Arguably, this strategic starting-point, outlook, and objective—a wish to break out of the constraints of domination by other powers and peoples in Europe and in the “Anglo” world—is what, for many people, most characterizes “Latin” identity, above and beyond the attribution of any specific characteristics to it. “For this reason,” Torres García explains, “on another occasion, I turned the map upside down, to show that our north [or, ‘reference point’; a pun] was the south, so, in a way, breaking with the spiritual tyranny of Europe” (1944, 961; 991).7 Such an about shift in power relations is what the video for “International Love” dramatizes and visualizes, ending with the entire globe encircled by the words “Mr. Worldwide.” If the problem was tactical and strategic, so is the victory, wrought in Spanglish, seduction, and music sales. The story of “the Pitbull brand,” of Mr. 305 becoming Mr. Worldwide, is the embodiment of that aspiration for strategic transformation: “Took my life from negative to positive,” as he puts it in “Give Me Everything,” and reiterates on multiple other occasions. To a startling extreme, pragmatic considerations predominate here. Pitbull explicitly rejects the most commonplace standard for authenticity in the world of Hip-hop and R&B—whether one “keeps it real”: “I ain’t trying to keep it real,” he states trenchantly in “Rain over Me.” In the same song, he juxtaposes, casually but pointedly, the promotion of an associated brand with the strategic destiny of the “Latin” peoples: “Voli’s the new vodka/Latin’s the new majority.” Both assertions are patterned on the same sentence structure, underlining their equal status in the lyrics, and their intimate association with one another. The stereotype of the leisure-addicted “Latin,” partying with his drink, is turned to moneymaking, and moneymaking to political victory. If successful vodka sales by a “Latin” man can secure the “inverted conquest,” then, perhaps, the success of the vodka brand in question is indeed equivalent to a Latin majority, and vice-versa. The VP for Public Relations, who described Pitbull as the perfect product, attributes his marketability not least to his being “genuino” (genuine). This



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clearly does not mean that he reveals everything about himself—famously, he keeps his private life out of the limelight—and nor is it a more conventional statement of authenticity, as we have seen. Rather, I take it to mean that the “Pitbull brand” resonates with the circumstances and aspirations of many people among the “Latin” population. In that sense, the brand rings true. Specifically, it frankly addresses a desire to break free of confining circumstances—economic and cultural—and to stand tall both in the United States and in the world. At the same time, it recognizes the stereotyping of “Latins” and turns such labels to its own advantage. In this strategy, being genuine trumps keeping it real. In a sense, with Pitbull, what you see is what you get. It is not clear to what degree Pitbull’s vision for his brand (or that of similar “Latin” artists) consciously derives from universalist Latin-American written tradition. At a minimum, as Billboard Magazine reports, “His parents were first-generation Cuban immigrants who didn’t let their son forget about his culture. They required him to memorize the works of Cuban poet José Martí, and Pitbull understood the power of words right away” (Billboard Magazine [n.d.]). Martí would certainly figure among Latin America’s exponents of “strategic universalism,” as Oscar Montero notes, borrowing Paul Gilroy’s phrase (2004, 61). Equally, the commonalities observed here, between historical universalisms and the “Mr. Worldwide” brand may be due to ongoing structural similarities in the situation of “Latins” over a longer period of time. The parallels include an experience of being peripheral to a hegemonic power, and (relatedly) the widespread use of loosely formulated notions about “Latinity” (for example, that “Latins” prefer leisure over hard work). Classic strategic universalisms—whether in Vasconcelos’s Raza cósmica or the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó’s Ariel (1900)—frequently combined two interconnected practices. First, they would acknowledge the importance of “Anglo” or “Northern” hegemony in providing the basis of the modern world. Second, they would affirm that “Latin” peoples would both inherit and surpass that legacy precisely because of characteristics often deemed to have excluded them from its achievements thus far. Typically, for Rodó, “Northern” civilization has reached the limit of what it can bring the world in its valuing of work, utilitarian values, and the pursuit of material prosperity. “Latin” societies have the opportunity to integrate with and transform this economically driven globe through their preserved connections to older legacies: the cults of beauty and “universal amor de las almas” (universal love of souls). This process would regenerate the Latin peoples (Rodó [2012], loc. 432). Paul Burgess, VP of TVT Records, who at one stage represented Pitbull, echoes the strategy of hemispheric and/or global integration from a Latin base: “From a marketing standpoint, the key is how do these artists speak to the mass audience and still speak to the Latin community” (Billboard

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Magazine 2006, 26). With distant echoes of José Martí’s hemispheric dreams for the Americas, the Cuban-born Emilio Estefan has similarly stressed how much Pitbull’s success owes to his effecting an “unión de las dos culturas” (union of both cultures), “Anglo” and “Latin” (Salinas 2014). Likewise and more pertinently still for Pitbull as “Mr. Worldwide,” Vasconcelos sees the “Anglos” as providing a puente (bridge) toward a truly universal civilization. The word is not coincidental: he has in mind the physical and financial infrastructure connecting the globe. “Latins” can transfigure global interconnectedness because of their abundancia de amor (abundance of love), within which Vasconcelos includes both a powerful sexuality, and a willingness to have sex with people of all nationalities and “races” that leads to aesthetically pleasing mestizaje. Such is the path to Universópolis (1967, 20; 32). It is not perhaps what Vasconcelos intended (he had in mind a combination of socialism and the need for reproductive sex), and it raises the same questions about gender power relations considered above, but Pitbull’s proclamation of “International Love” amounts to something recognizably similar. Discussing the video for “Calle Ocho,” Pitbull says it presents what he calls “international dames,” explaining that “the best thing is when they mix. [. . .] They come out beautiful” (Ultra Music 2009). The skyscrapers and cars of “International Love,” the very digital technology that mixes the video, have been turned into vehicles (a “bridge”) for Pitbull’s “abundance of love.” In “Feel This Moment,” multiple images appear simultaneously on the screen, often in triptych, lining up diverse places and times, depicting coaches, planes, airports, roads, and stage equipment. The path to Universópolis has become a pragmatic combination of business and cultural strategies. Pertinently in this respect, Tsing warns against seeing something called “global capitalism” as “monolithic”—as some kind of smooth system in which all is evened out. She emphasizes rather how it is “messy,” affirming that “the cultural specificity of capitalist forms arises from the necessity of bringing capitalist universals into action through worldly encounters” (2015, 4; 11; 12). Seen in these terms, the transformation of Armando Christian Pérez into “the perfect product” is not simply the conversion of “Mr. 305” into one more global commodity just like any other. Rather, on this account, Pitbull’s intervention in the economy would inflect and change market forces themselves, altering their purposes. In “Feel This Moment,” Pitbull goes so far as to suggest that major corporations become subject to his aims: “I break down companies with all my peeps.” In turn, the rhetoric of ongoing conquest points to how his music is supposed to “cambiar el mundo poco a poco” (change the world little by little [emphasis added]), as he has put it (Salinas 2014). The economic means do not exclude, but rather imply the purpose of changing the world societally and culturally.



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At the heart of this “Latin” universalism and “global brand” is a treatment of time, place, and mortality, which involves a release from a narrow concept of context. That is the notion, so pervasive, and so ever subtly reinvented in cultural studies, that things are what they are in their places and times, in “the location of culture” as Homi Bhabha had it (1994), and that the only alternative to believing this is a fallacious, abstract universalism. The very point of tactical and strategic universality is otherwise: the point is to forge an intimate union between “Latinity” and all humanity, to find the one in the other. Pitbull does not cease to be Mr. 305 simply because he has become Mr. Worldwide—más que nada, soy latino (more than anything, I’m Latino), he has said publicly (Uforia Music 2015)—and he can only become Mr. Worldwide by being Mr. 305. Torres García once more puts the point succinctly: “an art, no matter how universal it may be, needs at the same time to come from a specific place and a particular historical moment. Otherwise, it would be non-existent, lifeless” (1944, 110).8 Universals can only take shape through and out of specific places and times, and, conversely, things born of a place and time can be universals. In the video for “International Love,” Pitbull’s body is flanked by world city backdrops, stands within the blue globe, even stretches through the cosmos. The “Latino” male from Miami, “Mr. 305,” is thus corporeally fused with the universal and vice-versa, echoing the multiple meaning—anatomical and geographical—of the words “there’s not a place where your love does not affect me.” The rapid cutting slices across time and place, more than that is utterly indifferent to them, ecstatically leaping from one undated scene to another, switching casually between identifiable places and abstract or fantastical backdrops. No one knows which was before or after, and no one cares. At one point, Chris Brown is in a suit, then in a more casual get-up sporting a cap, and then in his suit; no explanation is sought or needed. Attaining escape velocity from limits of place and time—“I’m overseas at about a hundred Gs”—Pitbull looks to release from and through the pile-up of limitations from his past. In this, he is like the “Latino” family in the aptly named “Time of Our Lives,” who free themselves from accumulated debts by throwing a rent party, in line with the stereotype of “Latin” fiestas. There is an expression of intense joy in this fusion of rootedness and escape, a “fantasy hotter than Miami” in Pitbull’s words from “International Love.” Angie Romeo of Variety Latino aptly remarks that key to the singer’s success is this: “Pitbull has a very powerful weapon, and that is the ability to bring joy to people’s lives” (Salinas 2014). Or, as one Pitbull song title has it, “Don’t stop the party.” Or, indeed, as the supreme stereotype of the Latin lover, the ancestral Don Juan rebuked his critics, Tan largo me lo fiáis (You reckon I can only go on so long).

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It is indeed a fantasy lived out: the fragility of Pitbull, and of the universalizing “Latin,” plain to hear and see. In Out of Time, the film theorist Todd McGowan discusses visual techniques in contemporary cinema that resemble the rapid cross-cutting seen in “International Love.” He calls this approach an “atemporal mode,” and argues that it reveals a trauma: the reality of death which cancels all time—past, present or future—and from which we seek to escape in cinematic temporality (2011). The release from chronology takes us to what we are fleeing. In turn, death—the greatest of all limitations, the ultimate guarantor of boundaries in time, and thus of context—haunts Pitbull’s songs. Right at the start of “International Love,” he muses that he will be “305 to the death of me,” pairing in one phrase mortality and location. More recently, in “Feel This Moment,” he again reflects that he is a “Long way from them hard ways” but even so “Always 305.” Faced with this, he declines to assume things will continue as they are: “I see the future but live for the moment.” The moment both releases him from past or future, the succession of temporality and the threat of a return to his confined context, while, in so doing, reminding him precisely of those things. “You can’t catch me boy,” he chants as he sets out on his inverted conquest in “International Love,” but then, “Cremate my body and let the ocean have what’s left of me.” In the haunting of release by mortality, of escape by confinement, more still in the hope that we might look beyond such specters, we come to the heart of this “Latino” music brand, and of what brands it. “Forget about that,” Pitbull tells us—because if we don’t, there will be no way out of Dade County, or out of context, or out of death. NOTES 1.  Je n’impose rien, je ne propose même rien, j’expose. All translations author’s own. 2. The lo (it) is not defined initially, but later refers respectively to the fact that a party has started and to arroz con habichuela (rice and beans), a dish associated with Puerto Rico. 3. See also the homepage for Voli, accessed March 28, 2016, http://volivodka .com/welcome/#home. 4.  sobrepasa esta aspiración [. . .] al mero intercambio de valores culturales y de arte. 5.  todos estos proyectos tienen como punto de partida una convicción en el carácter histórico de los procesos de producción y recepción estética y cultural, convicción que los separa [. . .] de modelos de lectura universalistas. 6.  la hegemonía de esos pueblos [del norte] sobre los de la raza latina. 7.  Por esto, ya en otro tiempo, volvimos el mapa al revés, indicando que nuestro norte era el sur, y así, cortando, en cierto modo, con la tiranía espiritual de Europa.



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8.  un arte, por universal que sea, tiene que ser al mismo tiempo, de una tierra dada y de un momento histórico. Sin esto sería inexistente, sin vida.

WORKS CITED Berlin, Isaiah. 2013. The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas. Edited by Henry Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Billboard Magazine. n.d. “Biography: Pitbull.” http://www.billboard.com/artist/149 0081/pitbull/biography. ———. 2006. “Targeting the New Latino.” Billboard Magazine, March 11. D’Allemand, Patricia. 2001. Hacia una crítica cultural latinoamericana. Berkeley: Centro de Estudios Literarios Antonio Cornejo Polar. Dávila, José. 2009. “You Got Your Reggaetón in My Hip-Hop: Crunkiao and “Spanish Music” in the Miami Urban Scene.” In Reggaeton, edited by Raquel Z. Rivera, Wayne Marshall, and Deborah Pacini Hernández, 200–212. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Foss, Sonja K., Mary E. Domenico, and Karen A. Foss, 2013. Gender Stories: Negotiating Identity in a Binary World. Illinois: Waveland Press. Hollomon, Danielle. 1995. “Scooby Dooby, Y’All.” Phoenix New Times, October 12. http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/scooby-doo-yall-6424397. Lowenhaupt Tsing, Anna. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press. McGowan, Todd. 2011. Out of Time: Desire in Atemporal Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mejías López, Alejandro. 2009. The Inverted Conquest: The Myth of Modernity and the Onset of Transatlantic Modernism. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Mignolo, Walter. 2002. “The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101.1: 57–96. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876– 101–1-57. Montero, Oscar. 2004. José Martí: An Introduction. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Muhammad, Latifah. 2011. “Pitbull Signs on to Promote Voli Vodka.” The Boombox, 25 March. http://theboombox.com/pitbull-signs-on-to-promote-voli-vodka/. Pacini Hernández, Debora. 2010. Oye cómo va! Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rodó, José Enrique. 2012. Obras. [n.p.]: Ediciones de la Biblioteca Digital. Romero, Angie. 2015. “Marc Anthony Goes Mogul, Launches His Own Entertainment Company Magnus Media.” Billboard Magazine, April 25. http://www.bill board.com/articles/columns/latin/6545800/marc-anthony-magnus-media-launch -own-company. Salinas, María Elena. 2014. Aquí y ahora: Imperio Pitbull. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=6h2mxrH3kgc.

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Sanders, James E. 2014. The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Secrist, Karen A. 2013. “Critical Cacophony: Notes on the Reception of Pitbull’s ‘I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho).’” In Latinos and American Popular Culture, edited by Patricia M. Montilla, 211–228. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Simonett, Helena. 2011. “Re-localized Rap and Its Representation of the Hombre digno.” In Transnational Encounters: Music and Performance at the US-Mexico Border, edited by Alejandro L. Madrid, 128–144. New York: Oxford University Press. Torres García, Joaquín. 1944. Universalismo constructivo: Contribución a la unificación del arte y la cultura de América. Buenos Aires: Editorial Poseidon. Uforia Music. 2015. “¡Cuídate del Chapo, papo! Pitbull tiene un mensaje para Trump.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRePaO4inPs. Ultra Music. 2009. “Pitbull—I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) with Pitbull Introduction.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9_klwCok0&list=PLyryiSZDpm KRZv8fYgBNL2uGM__MzLkmL&index=18. Vasconcelos, José. 1967. La raza cósmica: Misión de la raza iberoamericana. Madrid: Aguilar. Velazco y Trianosky, Gregorio. 2010. “Mestizaje and Hispanic Identity.” In A Companion to Latin American Philosophy, edited by Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte and Otávio Bueno, 238–296. Oxford: Wiley & Blackwell.

Chapter Eight

The Paradoxes of the “Cuban Brand” Authenticity, Resistance, and Heroic Victimhood in Cuban Film Dunja Fehimović

SOCIALISM AND SEX APPEAL: CUBA IN THE SPECIAL PERIOD AND BEYOND Clearly, Cuba is not a traditionally powerful country—it is small, it has modest resources, a limited and rapidly aging population, and, for more than half a decade, it has been politically and economically isolated from most of the rest of the world. However, thanks to some of its political values, foreign policies, and vibrant culture, the Caribbean island surely has one of the most distinct international images, particularly when it is considered alongside nations of similar geographical or economic stature. Utter the word “Cuba,” and a variety of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and words come to mind: the steely determination of Korda’s Che; colorful 1950s cars; Hasta la victoria siempre; fat, fragrant habanos (cigars); Viva la Revolución; Cuba libres, mojitos, daiquirís; revolutionary red; salsa, son, rhythm; mulatas and militias. It is an irony central to my discussion here that these associations integrate the highly sellable sensuality associated with a tropical, Latin island with a proud politics that refuses to sell out. In the current international popular imagination, it is difficult to separate Cuba’s socialist project from its sex appeal. This situation has its origins in the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and its euphemistically named aftermath in Cuba: El Período Especial en Tiempos de Paz (The Special Period in Times of Peace). Subject to a US trade embargo reinforced in 1992 (with the Torricelli Law) and 1996 (by the Helms-Burton Act) to isolate the country further from much of the rest of the world, and suddenly without allies to support its political system and underwrite its economy, Cuba hit dire straits. The island lost 80 percent of its imports and 80 percent of its exports; its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) dropped by 34 175

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percent; and the average Cuban lost 5.5 kg (12 lbs) (Franco et al. 2013). As the population dealt with daily blackouts and crippling shortages of basic goods, the state turned suddenly and heavily to tourism as a source of hard currency. Initially considered a “necessary evil,” tourism has since become a staple of the island’s economy. In this same period, the release of Ry Cooder’s Buena Vista Social Club album (1997) and Wim Wenders’s eponymous film (1999) created a sensation by combining catchy music with the frisson of apparent near-extinction and the neo-colonialist thrill of (re)discovery. Cuba’s international visibility skyrocketed as a new image formed around the nostalgic notion of an island “frozen in time,” an authentic culture on the brink of disappearance, and a people surviving against the odds. Whilst the so-called Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon constructed an unlikely appeal out of the debris of a decaying landscape, it also resuscitated many of the old, pre-Revolutionary associations and attractions that had turned Cuba into the USA’s “brothel” or “gambling den,” as popular sayings had it: rum, sun, and sexuality. These ideas fed off and into the return of pre-Revolutionary phenomena such as prostitution and fomented the rise of inequality, as race-, age-, and gender-inflected differences in opportunities and earnings started to separate those who had contact with foreigners and access to remittances from those who did not. Intensified interaction with the Western (capitalist) world, Fidel Castro’s retreat from public office and life, and Raúl Castro’s economic reforms have all contributed to a growing sense of impending political transformation, and visitors to the island have become increasingly motivated by a desire to see Cuba “before it changes.” One of the results of this perception has been the investment of the present—particularly the late 1990s and early 2000s—with a fetishized aura of authenticity that has permeated almost every manifestation of culture and quotidian life. At the same time, the new international image epitomized by (but far from limited to) Wenders’ film had reached many individuals otherwise unsympathetic or indifferent to Cuba’s politics, generating a curiosity about the island that testified to a transformation of geopolitical consequences (such as the limited availability of new technologies) into aestheticized, cultural authenticity within a tourist gaze. Since the early 1990s, then, the island’s appeal has gone beyond the sun, sea, and sex uniformly associated with so many Caribbean islands, and traditionally linked to Cuba, to incorporate authenticity and resistance in the face of adversity as unique sources of mystique and exoticism. But this glorification of authenticity and survival against the odds were not restricted to the foreign, tourist gaze; a parallel transformation had been taking place within Cuba itself, as the hardship and widespread disillusionment of the Special Period saw official discourse turn increasingly to notions of an authentic yet besieged national identity and culture to unify the country.



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Launched in 1999, the Batalla de ideas (Battle of Ideas) exemplifies the centrality of affective and identitarian appeals within the state’s attempt to inspire and mobilize political commitment. This extensive program of local, regional, and national campaigns emerged in direct response to the so-called Elián saga—the custodial battle that ensued between Elián González’s extended family in Miami and father in Cuba when the young boy’s mother died during their illegal crossing of the Florida Straits. The case became a rallying point for the Batalla’s aims to re-engage the population in general, and younger generations in particular, with the revolutionary project, recalling Lee Edelman’s discussion of the unifying power of the child as a symbol of society’s investment in the reproduction of the (heteronormative) status quo (2004). The use of primarily cultural and educational initiatives in the attempt to combat growing inequality and the incursion of capitalist, individualistic ideologies (Weppler Grogan 2010, 55) suggested the primacy of cultural over armed struggle at this stage of the Revolution. Indeed, Fidel Castro’s proclamation that “la cultura es lo primero que hay que salvar” (culture is the first thing we must save)1 began the reconfiguration of the long-standing trope of Cuba as “plaza sitiada” (a town square under siege) along cultural rather than military lines. In such a context, cultural and national authenticity—inherently politicized through their defining resistance to the corrupting forces of capitalism and US imperialism—acquired quasi-heroic value. As the pervasive sense of urgency and threat contributed to a belonging defined along notably affective, cultural, and national lines, the Revolution was resignified as a trait of the national character; righteous resistance, resilience, and ingenuity—summed up locally by the words luchar, resolver, and inventar—were elevated to the status of quintessential Cuban virtues. Outside of Cuba, meanwhile, these same characteristics took on a renewed prominence in the perception of many international solidarity groups and sympathizers. Solidarity brigade visits—long coordinated by the Instituto Cubano de Amistad entre los Pueblos, or ICAP (Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples)—became an especially important source of basic goods and manpower, and several new initiatives, such as the Canadian Volunteer Work Brigade, began during these crisis years. Such organizations and individuals, who had long been rallying around a worldview that pitched Cuba as a righteous David to the USA’s Goliath, were once again mobilized by the paradoxical notion of the island as both hero and victim, struggling and surviving in the face of egregious injustice and insidious aggression. In sum, three common elements came to underpin Cuba’s image in this period, both domestically and internationally: cultural authenticity, resistance in the face of hardship, and a position of heroic victimhood. As we will see, these characteristics come to form the basis of what I am calling

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a paradoxical Cuban “brand” that has been consolidated in recent cinematic representations of the island. The use of such a term may seem out of place in reference to Cuba, but since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, the island’s political marginality and economic precarity, on one hand, and clear stock of cultural capital and popular appeal, on the other, have arguably placed it in a perfect position from which to benefit from the strategic practices of branding. After all, many of Cuba’s Latin American neighbors, such as Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, have harnessed their cultural heritages and popular images in concerted efforts to improve their international standing and economic competitiveness, whether through official nation-branding campaigns or smaller-scale strategies in specific sectors. Notwithstanding such similarities, however, Cuba’s case remains unavoidably unique: the very politics that has shaped its exotic appeal prevents the country from appropriating practices or discourses of branding— and the neoliberal logic on which they are based—in any overt way. Indeed, as will become evident, this resistance to capitalism in general, and the idea of “selling” as “selling out” in particular, feeds into a paradoxical brand that persists because it serves multiple purposes for multiple audiences. Rather than being concocted via a coordinated campaign, this brand emerges through cultural forms, amongst which cinema occupies a special position. As hinted by the effects of the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon and reinforced by revolutionary Cuba’s strong filmmaking tradition, the power of film to circulate affecting sights and sounds makes it an ideal lens through which to examine the persuasive phenomenon of branding. FILM IN REVOLUTIONARY CUBA The new government’s first cultural initiative, taken just three months after the triumph of the Revolution on January 1, 1959, was the foundation of the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos, or ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry). In prioritizing this cultural form, the Revolution recognized its potential to spread social and political ideas and ideals to the population and, through extensive newsreels and documentaries, help them keep pace with the rapid transformations occurring at every level of society. Although the surprising mention of film’s “extraordinary power of advertising and suggestion,” which might be used to “spread the word about our country and its riches and . . . benefit tourism” (“Ley no.169 de creación del ICAIC” [1959] 2008),2 would not become relevant until more recently, ICAIC’s founding law also laid the bases for an immediate and lasting industrial, political, and cultural focus on domes-



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tic audiences. Accordingly, film began to function in an analogous way to the successful literacy campaign of 1961, which created contact between different sectors (urban, rural, young, old) through a collective effort and a series of standardized materials that circulated a new set of (ideologically appropriate) references. Initiatives such as the Cine móvil (Mobile cinema) project, which exposed many small, isolated rural communities to cinema for the first time, helped to make all Cubans feel valued by the new government and involved in the changes taking place. As we can see in Manuel Octavio Gómez’s documentary about a rural community watching a film for the first time (Por primera vez/For the first time, 1964)—itself then screened to local audiences around the country—cinema played a key role in the creation of a new, revolutionary imagined community.3 This prioritization of Cuban realities, protagonists, and audiences was not only a result of the Revolution’s emphasis on national sovereignty and development, but also a reaction to the erasures and distortions of an industry previously dominated by Hollywood (and a few other industries—notably that of Mexico), where Cuba featured as an exotic backdrop, if at all. Negotiating the place of film in relation to Fidel Castro’s notoriously ambivalent statement on culture and critique within the Revolution (1961), ICAIC has remained independent from the state despite a number of crises over the course of its history.4 Operating for a long time under the direction of Alfredo Guevara, a close friend of Fidel Castro, the institute has enjoyed the freedom to produce films using a variety of cinematic styles, never adopting any official aesthetic, much less the socialist realism associated with Cuba’s Soviet allies. Despite this variety, over time the film institute developed a particularly strong tradition in critical, socially-conscious documentary and fiction feature films, which addressed the political needs and problematics of their times by questioning the status quo and encouraging the active participation of viewers in its transformation. The centralization, coherence, and commitment of the film industry previously secured by ICAIC was drastically eroded during the Special Period. The state found itself without funds to continue subsidizing production and development; emigration increased, severely depleting the pool of actors, directors, and technicians; and generalized shortages of goods from paper to film stock hit the industry hard. Given the scarcity of human and material resources, production dropped dramatically, hitting an all-time low in 1996, when no new feature films were completed (Chanan 2004, 480). At the same time, the film institute was now obliged to seek a new role as provider of services for foreign producers in exchange for hard currency. Whilst the productions made by the few individuals with access to new digital technology and equipment slowly started to diversify the industry, disturbing its

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centralization and enriching its representation of the nation, such incipient “independent” cinema was fundamentally restricted by its limited production capacity and exhibition possibilities. For the majority of filmmakers, then, the only way to produce a film with any real chance of reaching audiences was to rely on foreign co-producers and the international marketplace. Luckily, thanks to initiatives like the Spanish film fund, Ibermedia, and the widespread curiosity fed by cultural phenomena such as Buena Vista Social Club, these partners were often not difficult to find. As Elliot Young convincingly argues, this context required a new approach from Cuban artists, who were now not only obliged to consider “the ambiguous and ever-shifting bounds of what the Cuban state [would] allow” (2007: 28) but also the demands of an international marketplace. This situation subjected Cuban culture to neoliberalism’s inevitable and insatiable thirst for difference, contributing to a proliferation of stories about homosexuality and Afro-Cuban religiosity (Fernandes 2006: 46) and a turn toward individual, micro-histories. Such narratives, which represented a marked change from the previous focus on revolutionary, historical, and popular grands récits, have often found their place within the broader tendency I have been describing. Young’s analysis, for example, focuses on Fernando Pérez’s Suite Habana (2003), a melancholy documentary following the lives of several Cubans that the author sees as displacing utopian, heroic narratives with “the everyday struggle for survival, which is heroic in its own way” (2007, 28). However, whilst Young concludes, rather stridently, that “[t]he commodification of Cuban art in the international marketplace has provided artists with a greater degree of autonomy than at any time since the revolution began” (2007, 44), the ‘brand’ that emerges from many recent films from and about the island suggest that the Special Period merely initiated a new and equally precarious balancing act for Cuban cinema, this time between two masters: the state and the market. A CUBAN BRAND? HABANA BLUES AND LA PELÍCULA DE ANA Since the start of the Special Period, then, a combination of contemporary concerns and practical requirements associated with international coproduction—such as the need for a certain number of the cast and crew to come from the co-producing country—has shaped a series of narratives that bring together Cuban characters and foreign figures to explore the opportunities and anxieties raised by Cuba’s renegotiation of its relationship to the wider world. The result is a pattern of films that foreground the interactions between Cuban artists, musicians, and creators and foreign tourists, consumers, or producers, in what can



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be seen as an allegorical exploration of the island’s problematic re-immersion in global flows of capital. Whilst exposing the dilemmas that arise out of such contact, these films also evidence a kind of Cuban “brand” that advances economic agendas, resonates with the local population, and appeals to international solidary audiences, who have traditionally rallied around the notion of Cuba’s righteous resistance and integrity in the face of external threats. This brand is paradoxical because it effectively sells Cuba by perpetuating an image and narrative of the island defined by its resistance to “selling” itself and so “selling out”—losing its authenticity and relinquishing its position of heroic victimhood. This paradoxical Cuban brand is developed and circulated in many recent films, where it comprises both aesthetic and political facets. In the first category, we note the recurrence of an aesthetics of nostalgia, which manifests itself in sepia or gold-tinted images of decay and ruin. This is combined with a focus on exoticism as embodied by landscapes, people, and objects such as old cars, and counterbalanced by images that communicate a sort of naïve vitality, conveyed by music, dance, colors, and color saturation. In the second category, the aforementioned values of resistance, resilience, and ingenuity are foregrounded through mises-en-scène and narratives that transfigure geopolitics and ideology, with their heavy toll on everyday lives, into markers of cultural identity. Out of both aesthetic and political-cultural characteristics emerges the third, and most important trope within this brand: a non-conformity or resistance that endows Cuban characters—and, by extension, Cuba—with an uncompromising authenticity. This, in turn, establishes an aura of heroic victimhood configured in accordance with the political leanings of the audience in question: in relation to either the hardships imposed by an oppressive regime, or the difficulties created by the combination of a crippling trade embargo, on one hand, and an encroaching neoliberal order, on the other. In what remains of this chapter, I will consider two films that exemplify this phenomenon, each nuancing it in slightly different ways. Both tell stories about the encounter between local culture and international marketplace, giving us a glimpse “behind the scenes” at the performative nature of the Cuban brand. This deconstruction is undermined, however; just as the films’s knowing invocations of the island’s aesthetic appeal and political idiosyncrasies ultimately perpetuate the power of the brand, their focus on enduring authenticity in the face of attempted exploitation ultimately reinforces the brand’s key characteristics. As we will see, then, these critical examinations of Cuba’s new position in a capitalist world may deconstruct the Cuban brand, but they also gesture towards the stifling limitations imposed by its paradoxical logic. Our first film, Habana Blues, was directed in 2005 by Benito Zambrano, who studied film at Cuba’s prestigious international film school (Escuela internacional de cine y televisión—EICTV) before relocating to his native Spain. Coproduced by ICAIC and a number of European companies, including Ibermedia

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and Eurimages, the film won the Goya (Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars) for Best Original Score, and was accompanied by a soundtrack that spotlighted “alternative” Cuban musicians such as outlawed punk group, Porno para Ricardo. It tells the story of attractive, womanizing mulato Ruy and his best friend Tito— poverty-stricken young musicians from Havana who channel their frustrations into their rock ‘n’ roll music. When Spanish record producers arrive to scout out the local talent, the two do their best to charm and seduce them. Eventually, they are offered a contract on several conditions, all of which are intended to ensure that the band can be touted as “dissidents,” particularly in the US market. Tired of waiting for his big chance, Tito is willing to do whatever it takes to leave the island, but the proud Ruy baulks at this compromise, despite the fact that success could allow him to rejoin his (soon to be ex-)wife and their children, who are emigrating to the USA. Finally, after performing their first and last concert together, the two friends are forced to part. La película de Ana (Ana’s Film, 2012) was made by Cuban director Daniel Díaz Torres, whose mixed professional past, in which he had enjoyed both notoriety and success,5 did not impede ICAIC from co-producing the film alongside foreign partners Ibermedia, SK Films, and Jaguar Films S. A. Protagonist Ana is a struggling actress fed up with her mediocre roles in increasingly absurd pseudo-historical television melodramas. When she learns that an Austrian crew have arrived to film a documentary about prostitution (or rather, as we will see, jineterismo), she decides to take on the role of a lifetime. Coached by real prostitute/jinetera Flavia, she develops the character of Ginette, whose candid, no-nonsense attitude proves an unexpected success with the foreign directors. The Austrians commission her to film her own segments for inclusion in the documentary, and Ana teams up with her husband and professional cameraman, Vergara to construct some rather elaborate scenarios. However, when one of the producers decides to test whether she is a “real” prostitute, Ana takes a stand. In the analyses that follow, I will highlight the ways in which these films engage with the tropes of a paradoxical Cuban brand in terms of aesthetic appeal and political attraction. By exploring the limitations of both films’ critical perspectives on the subjection of Cuba, Cubans, and Cuban culture to market imperatives, I will show how the Cuban brand’s paradox is not only crucial to its success but also central to its coercive, co-optive power. HABANA BLUES The narrative of Habana Blues is not just enriched by music: it is built around it. By exposing both diegetic (Spanish producers) and extra-diegetic audiences to a range of contemporary Cuban sounds—from rap to heavy metal—



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Zambrano’s film dialogues with Buena Vista Social Club, arguably the most influential recent musical and visual representations of Cuba. Despite the fact that Zambrano’s vision seems to rebel against the nostalgic narratives and cultural expectations generated by Ry Cooder and Wim Wenders’s work, however, it soon becomes clear that the two projects partake of the same dynamic, “discovering” and then distributing Cuban cultural products for international consumption. Moreover, just as Wenders’ film played on the idea of the unexpected survival of authentic remnants of some bygone, golden age, Zambrano similarly constructs an appeal out of the element of surprise: surprise that this isolated island, apparently frozen in time and under the strict control of a socialist state, could be home to so many contemporary, cuttingedge countercultures. Whereas Cooder and Wenders’s aging crooners resist the ravages of time and a depoliticized impoverishment, Zambrano’s artists keep creating music in the face of practical, economic, and (implied) political restraints. By “capturing” these “true” manifestations of Cuban culture and sharing them with an unsuspecting world, both Wenders and Zambrano build what I have described as the Cuban “brand”—a marketable identity with authenticity and resistance at its core. Just as the Spanish producers of Habana Blues’s narrative openly deliberate how to construct the musicians they have “discovered” as dissidents for added cachet in the American market, so its director deliberately concocts images and narratives of resistance and authenticity out of existing cultural resources. Like Cooder and Wenders before him, Zambrano’s project involved both a film and a soundtrack, which went on to win the Premio de la música (a Spanish music award) after being released on CD following the film’s success. Tellingly, although it does include a few songs by pre-existing Cuban bands (such as Porno Para Ricardo and the humorously entitled Free Hop group, Free Hole Negro), the majority of tracks on the album are performed by Habana Blues Band, a group created by the film project itself. A collaboration between musicians involved in the film and the creation of its soundtrack, the group went on to tour around Spain. The band thus successfully performed more than twenty-five concerts despite changes in line-up following the exit of Kelvis Ochoa and Boris Larramendi, whose fame as part of Habana Abierta—a group itself created thanks to a Spanish initiative—testifies to the mise-en-abyme relevance of the film’s story of contact, collaboration, and co-option between Cuban musicians and foreign producers. The film’s musical focus justifies a tour of the capital’s underground music scene, exposing viewers to unexpected cultural forms in hidden spaces of Havana that do not always reflect the images circulated by the likes of Buena Vista Social Club. Nonetheless, as we watch the music producers being shown around the city and introduced to the local talent,

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viewers are made to occupy the same position as these tourist-consumerbusinessmen—bringers of wealth and opportunity who must therefore be impressed and even seduced. Seduction comes to mind because Ruy, who is identified from the start of the film as a (married) ladies’s man with ulterior motives, soon starts a sexual relationship with Spanish producer, Marta. As the lead singer of the band and the sexual star of the show, the camera’s gaze is highly invested in Ruy’s green eyes and dark skin. Much is made of his status as mulato throughout the film, particularly in dialogues that abuse Cubans’s tendency to pepper conversation with racial epithets. This reconfiguration of the trope of the Cuban mulata—prevalent since colonial times and persisting in tourist campaigns and packaging of “typical” national products such as rum and cigars—taps into a wider othering, objectifying tendency that figures Cubans as key sources of a stereotypically exotic, aesthetic appeal. Whilst Tito undoubtedly plays second fiddle to Ruy’s magnetism and charisma, his dreadlocks stand as surprising but recognizable markers of difference, inscribing the Cuban with a double otherness based on both nationality and counterculture. In these ways, the diegetic seductive allure of the musicians and their work both contributes to and mirrors the extra-diegetic appeal of the film’s sights and sounds for an international audience. By showcasing variety and offering something new, Habana Blues taps into the international market’s insatiable appetite for difference, whilst unwittingly revealing that this national, racial, cultural difference is patterned on (paradoxically) familiar tropes and stereotypes. Thus, the protagonists drive the Spanish producers around to the “undiscovered” loci of “authentic,” contemporary Cuban culture in their old Chevrolet, which Marta describes incredulously, in one scene, as a reliquia (relic) and a máquina del tiempo (time machine) (see figure 8.1). One of the most iconic symbols of Cuba in the international imaginary, classic cars evoke the nostalgia that surrounds the image of an island frozen in time popularized by Wenders’s film. At the same time, the foreigners’s surprised and delighted responses to the musicians’ “relic” exemplify the transformation of geopolitical consequences into aesthetically pleasing cultural quirks within a tourist-consumer gaze. As we see later in the film, Tito’s fury at the Chevy, which refuses, once again, to start, hints at a rather different experience from the Cuban side, but within the guided tour offered by the film, such an obstacle is reconfigured as yet another aspect of an “everyday struggle for survival” (Young 2007, 28). From this perspective, serious and structural problems become opportunities for characters to demonstrate personal qualities of resilience, ingenuity, and resistance, fulfilling the expectations of heroic victimhood associated with the Cuban “brand.”



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Figure 8.1.  Ruy and Tito drive the Spanish producers around the city in their old Chevrolet, which the producers describe as “relic” and a “time machine.” Source: Still from Habana Blues.

Although foreign critics have noted the relative lack of street sequences that ensures that “Havana doesn’t get the usual picturesque treatment” (Holland 2005), it is telling that those we do see are shot from the perspective of the ‘time machine’—the old Chevrolet. The resulting addition of movement and speed (as opposed to the slow pace prevalent in Wenders’s film) to the familiar images of a dilapidated cityscape speaks to the film’s conflicted procedure: reinforcing the stasis of stereotypes and drawing on their appeal whilst simultaneously trying to disrupt them by highlighting cultural dynamism. Tellingly, the rock concert planned by Ruy and Tito—which they are almost forced to abandon because of a clause in the Spanish producers’s contract—takes place in a crumbling theatre miraculously made fit for purpose by a couple of homely caretaker-types who are the embodiment of Cuban ingenuity.6 At the same time as it draws on established tropes, then, Habana Blues constructs its particular piquancy—its element of surprise—from the juxtaposition of such nostalgic aesthetics with an “authentic” cultural dynamism: a rock concert in a beautiful ruin. Whilst it may disturb the stasis of stereotypes, this combination still shores up investment in particular markers and loci of authentic, aestheticized Cubanness (see figure 8.2). Such is the case, for example, with the rooftop of a “solar” (tenement building), on which all the bands we have been watching are inexplicably gathered for a celebratory sequence that marks the end of the producers’s tour. Not only does this synecdochic space offer a view over the city, but it also figures spatially the film’s convenient packaging of variety for an international marketplace avid to consume picturesque “otherness.”

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Figure 8.2.  Ruy and Tito pose with their instruments on the rooftop of a tenement building, a space that has become a marker and locus of authentic, aestheticized Cubanness. Source: Still from Habana Blues.

If Habana Blues’s showcasing of variety and novelty appeals to the global market’s insatiable appetite for difference, in Cuba’s case, this is also an insatiable appetite for dissidence. It is not only the titillating promise of political subversion that sells particularly well abroad; as Cuban film critic Joel del Río has noted in relation to the recent break-out success of Cuban zom-com Juan de los Muertos (Juan of the Dead, Brugués 2012), even the more ambivalent (albeit equally problematic) notion of “independence” carries a cachet in relation to what is often perceived as an oppressive state (2014). Aware of this dynamic at a diegetic level, the film also appeals to such demand extra-diegetically through the subversive music it shows and circulates—particularly Porno para Ricardo, which, led by the iconoclastic Gorki, has actually been banned from playing live on the island. Later, during an extended scene at an underground concert, politically daring lyrics about Cuba rebelión are hammered home with all the volume and subtlety expected from the band’s heavy metal sound. These sequences feed foreign curiosity about contentious issues such as freedom of speech, playing off and into reductive, binary notions of dissidence and oppression. After all, most viewers will either fail to notice or soon forget that ICAIC appears as one of the film’s co-producers, a fact that speaks to the Revolution’s historic albeit fluctuating tolerance for critical cultural expression. Instead, the prevalence of interiors and improvised performance spaces such as garages reinforces the sense that Havana’s vibrant underground music scene and its associated youth cultures



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are flourishing in spite of and in resistance to an oppressive political context, as well as a situation of economic deprivation. At the same time as appealing to those hungry for dissidence, the film also carries an attraction for those who are sympathetic with Cuba’s political project. Additionally, its showcasing of how people resist—both endure and deal with—everyday hardship can also be made to fit in with dominant domestic discourses of survival, or la lucha, (literally meaning “the struggle”) and common experiences such as emigration. Details such as those that populate the opening sequence showing the band recording in Tito’s home—including the power cut and the grandmother-cum-back-up singer’s relegation to the bathroom, where the acoustics are better—frame the struggle to live and especially to produce culture within the terms of endearing resilience and humorous ingenuity. Although Tito’s decision to accept the contract may initially seem to alienate him from this kind of international audience, his eventual decision to defy the foreign producers’s terms and join Ruy onstage goes some way to reconciling him with the values of loyalty, solidarity, and authenticity crucial to many Cuba-sympathetic viewers’ narratives about their own relationship with the island. Meanwhile, Ruy’s decision to reject the contract is framed in terms that invoke popular criticisms of capitalism: he refers to the producers as “vampiros” (vampires) who will suck the musicians’s creativity, bleeding them for all they can get. Ironically, given his sexual exploits in the film, Ruy states that he refuses to be a whore, but demonstrates self-awareness when he proclaims that he will not sell out on his music, which is the only authentic thing that he has left. The two characters and their context thus allow the film to balance appeals to geographically and politically diverse audiences, elaborating a critical perspective on the compromises created by Cuba’s current situation. At the same time, as we have seen, the film’s mise-en-scène cashes in on the aesthetic tropes and tendencies of the Cuban brand, whilst its narrative perpetuates the brand’s reliance on the notion of integrity in the face of global capitalism and its exploitative, extractive tendencies. LA PELÍCULA DE ANA Habana Blues’s reflection on the personal, political, and creative compromises necessitated by Cuban artists’s encounter with the international marketplace may be nuanced in its sympathetic portrayal of both Ruy and Tito, but it does not turn an equally sophisticated gaze on its own operations in this regard. By contrast, La película de Ana adopts a meta-critical approach that shows the making of multiple films within the film, foregrounding the interaction between Cubans as performers and foreigners as producers and consumers.

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As we will see, the pattern we have already identified is present, albeit in a different key: Díaz Torres, the Austrian producers, and Ana all choose images that will resonate with and reinforce touristic ideals and fantasies, perpetuating Cuba’s appeal. Although it culminates in an assertion of integrity that resonates with Ruy’s rejection of the Spanish recording contract, the ending of La película de Ana also indicates the possibility and, indeed, urgency of breaking away from the images and narratives associated with the Cuban brand. By highlighting the discomfort and even damage that the strategic, commercial reconfiguration of identity can cause, however, this film also reveals the difficulty of articulating resistance in the face of a brand whose central paradox speaks to the wider, all-consuming nature of market logic. In this film, like in Buena Vista Social Club before it (albeit to a lesser extent), the fascination with filming Cubans in ruinous locations expresses an aestheticizing tendency that takes in both location and people at once, turning inhabitants into props within a picturesque mise-en-scène of otherness. For example, the Austrian crew decide to film an important and very personal interview with Ana (as jinetera, Ginette) on a Havana rooftop, recalling Habana Blues’s similar investment in the aesthetic appeal and synecdochic power of this space. As Ana fries in the sun and complains about the onlookers that have gathered, one of the directors enthuses about the location, explaining that they did not want to film somewhere that might look like Miami, or anywhere else, for that matter. The director’s specific mention of this historic US hub for Cuban immigrants, which boasts its own Little Havana, speaks to a fetishization of the Cuban capital’s socialist cityscape that locates authenticity in a combination of geopolitics and aesthetics. However, his preoccupation with ensuring the recognizability of a distinctively Cuban backdrop ultimately subordinates the former to the latter, testifying to the reconfiguration of socio-economic realities as sources of unique appeal within the Cuban brand. As Ana tries to shield herself from the sunlight, she complains that the directors exageraron con la luz cubana (went overboard with the Cuban sun), and grumbles, half-jokingly, that instead of giving her the parasol, they have placed it over the camera (see figure 8.3). Clearly, the exotic and “authentic” foreign location and experience are paramount, whilst the local actor is assimilated as just another source of local color. With a critical self-awareness typical of the film, and crucial to its deconstruction of such objectification, Ana/Ginette interrupts her monologue to camera to tell the Austrian crew that she knows that for them, she is just la puta exótica, folclórica (the exotic, folkloric whore). Whilst La película de Ana thus exposes and critiques the construction of an appealing but reductive brand that has proven crucial to the success of Cuba’s tourism industry and cultural exports, it also suggests the possibility that such



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Figure 8.3.  Ana complains, half-jokingly, about the fact that the Austrian film crew have left her to fry in the sun, using the parasol to cover the film equipment. Source: Still from La Película de Ana.

seductive performance can convey a certain truth. In one memorable moment in this sequence, our protagonist narrates her experience of living through the Special Period. Her performance appears so genuine and its affective impact is so undeniable that the viewer is left unsure as to whether they are watching Ginette, Ana, or indeed the actress Laura de la Uz herself. Whilst the Austrian producers look on, captivated but somewhat uncomfortable, the camera cuts to Flavia. Watching from behind the scenes, the “real” jinetera nods in recognition, tears in her eyes. Both the foreigners and Flavia share the impression of the authenticity of this performance, and it is on this basis that the producers decide to involve Ginette more heavily in the project. Similarly, the sense that they have glimpsed some truth or acquired real insight is also one of the film’s central appeals for its viewers. For example, some Cuban critics (Santana Zaldívar 2013) highlight the claims that the film is based on a true story, while others (Sánchez 2013) circulate an anecdote regarding the spontaneity of Flavia’s (actress Yuliet Cruz) reaction, which was filmed without her knowledge. Such details reinforce domestic audiences’s investment in the film’s “authentic” depiction of their experiences while also intensifying foreign viewers’s (including the Austrian crew) captivation as they watch this exposition of “truth.” Moreover, as the crew’s combination of fascination and awkwardness suggests, it is precisely our awareness of having intruded into a personal, private sphere that heightens the appeal of the performance, promising its authenticity. Such moments of personal exposure may elicit cathartic identification from local audiences, but they are thus also easily coopted into the Cuban brand, which is constructed around an authenticity kept out of

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reach of the corrupting effects of a global capitalist system. As will become increasingly evident, the resultant inescapability of this brand, which is reinforced paradoxically in the very moments that seem to break with its impositions and expectations, raises serious concerns about the ethical implications of brands and branding. The fetishization of authenticity and hardship evident in the foreign producers’s choice of subject matter and interest in Ginette is not a one-way process. That Cubans are aware of the appeal of certain elements or representations of their reality is borne out by Ana’s very decision to play this charismatic jinetera character. Her over-the-top appearance and “hooker-with-a-heart-ofgold” persona constructs an undeniable appeal out of a combination of candidness, sexuality, and humor. When the producers ask Ana to take a camera to record “raw,” direct footage of her reality, she goes about staging a series of elaborate scenarios with her husband, a professional cameraman named Vergara. These sequences feature an alcoholic aunt, a hospitalized grandmother, and a salacious street party enhanced by hand-held camera close-ups on gyrating hips. Perhaps the most memorable of these scenarios sees Vergara pay a local man to sit on the wall of a decayed building, directing him to look up entre las ruinas (amongst the ruins) whilst drinking rum. For Ana, the miseen-scène is too forzado (forced), and the fumigator her husband has hired in place of a smoke machine is a step too far. Whilst her husband insists that they need more equipment and, above all, money to pay their subjects, Ana points out that these requests would risk making her seem an una puta demasiado especializada (an overly specialized whore), inviting questions about her true identity. The images the couple construct suggest their awareness of an international appetite for both hardship and titillation, distasteful poverty and attractive charm. Their filming process, meanwhile, demonstrates the difficult and very deliberate balance of production values and aesthetics that this combination necessitates. By providing viewers with an insight into the construction of images of Cuba, La película de Ana not only draws attention to the constructedness of documentary itself, but also sheds light on the particular configuration of the Cuban brand, which relies on paradoxes such as attractive ruins, seductively-performed authenticity, and heroic victimhood. If the film reveals that both foreign producers and local performers are complicit in the construction of a problematic but appealing vision of the island, it also nuances this by consistently raising questions regarding the balance of power between the two parties. Ana’s decision to play a kind of prostitute seems to subject her to the desires and expectations of the producers in her pursuit of financial gain. We are thus invited to draw parallels between the actress and her character but, in fact, the relationship between Ana and the Austrians is not so straightforward, as the very distinction between



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prostitution and jineterismo suggests. Literally derived from the world jinete ( jockey), this local term’s colorful associations imply agency and control on the part of the Cuban, who “rides” the foreigner/tourist for all they can whilst charming and seducing them. Most often used to refer to services of a sexual or at least romantic nature, jineterismo can also simply take the form of companionship or conversation. At times it is translated as ‘hustling,’ and can be used to describe the offering of goods, recommendations, or unofficial guide services to passing tourists. In each case, though, it occupies an ambivalent space between authenticity and performance, projecting an appealing image of Cuba and Cubans by using discourses of friendship, family, and emotional connection for strategic ends.7 Whilst prevalent market logics place power in the hands of the buyer, Teresa Marrero points out that “Cuba’s jineterismo suggests that the provider of services can play and manipulate to its advantage the relation between consumer and provider” (2003, 238). In this way, jineterismo unsettles assumptions about intentions, agency, and control in foreigner-local interactions, blurring the lines between affective and commercial, spontaneous and strategic, authentic and artificial exchanges. As a lens through which to think about branding, moreover, it prompts us to reexamine not only the authenticity of the brand but also the agency of the branded. Díaz Torres adds to our uncertainty about how to interpret the characters and their relationships by playing on the similarities and differences between acting and jineterismo. Firstly, of course, Ana the actress plays the jinetera, Ginette (a name which, when pronounced in a Cuban accent, resembles the character’s profession). When Ana’s husband finds out that she has been lying to him about the nature of her role in the Austrian documentary, his first reaction is to call her “whore,” before he realizes the full significance of his words. Later, when he watches her recorded performance, he comments that she plays the part too well. Ana gets the job through Flavia, a “real” jinetera who assumes the role of acting coach to teach the actress how to behave like a fellow professional. In return, Flavia wants Ana to help her become a television actress, but when Ana replies that one needs special training, talent, and presencia (presence) to act, Flavia dismisses this, saying: Actuar es como putear un poco, ¿no? (Acting is a bit like whoring, isn’t it?). Later, the women have a conversation in which Flavia asks Ana whether she would get naked for a role. She replies that it would depend on the character and the director, but adds that Actuar es como encuerar el alma (Acting is like baring your soul). At first glance, this seems to continue the playful blurring of boundaries that suggests that both acting and jineterismo occupy an ethically ambiguous space between performance and authenticity. However, as the film progresses, this sug-

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gestion of a selective overlap between these categories becomes increasingly indicative of the problematic nature of Cuba’s paradoxical brand. By acting the jinetera, Ana provides the foreign producers with the “exotic, folkloric whore” that they want and expect to see in exchange for money, but at the same time, through Ana’s words to Flavia and her performance on the rooftop, the film also figures acting as a way of expressing or accessing truth. Both jineterismo and acting involve physical and emotional labor located somewhere along a sliding scale between the “artificial” and the “authentic.” But whereas performance in the former is instrumentalized for strategic and primarily economic ends, the latter is also a privileged means through which to explore or reveal a reality that lies beyond the surface. Thus, while the playful blurring of boundaries between the two activities might suggest a performative rather than essential model of identity, La película de Ana in fact posits the existence of a core identity or truth that can be revealed and even defended through artistic performance. Ana’s initial decision to become involved with the project can be understood in this way, revealing her pride and asserting her independence. Not only is it clearly justified in terms of her desire to provide for her family, but it also allows her to reject the patronizing paternalism of her wealthy and obnoxious brother-in-law from Miami. The film thus posits the strategic use of performance as not only a mode of survival but also as a form of defiant resistance. Ana points out that this is her best performance yet—the one in which she has come closest to her grandiose claim that acting is like baring one’s soul. Despite or rather precisely because of this, she not only resists one producer’s sexual advances, but also exposes him by secretly filming their encounter and screening it in front of the whole production team. In exposing the protagonist’s “true” self—making her aware of her own strength and integrity—Ana’s performance paradoxically reveals and reinforces the distinction between the “act” (Ginette the jinetera) and the “authentic” (Ana the self-respecting artist). In turn, these distinctions between artifice and reality contribute to the film’s deconstruction of the Cuban brand, exposing it as not only performative but also potentially exploitative. However, by reasserting the existence of truth and identity, the film also shores up an investment in authenticity, and by portraying the authentic self as admirably resistant, it perpetuates a narrative of heroic victimhood. For all La película de Ana’s wry self-awareness, then, its ultimate irony is to be found in the way in which it reinvigorates the very brand that it sets out to dismantle. CONCLUSION: RESISTANCE, RE-BRANDED Although Cuba has now emerged from the Special Period, its national film institute has not regained its old prominence. The opening up of interactions



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between Cuba and the world initiated in the early 1990s has expanded local filmmakers’s interests and aspirations, and multiplied their opportunities. As a result, ICAIC’s bureaucratic, hierarchical, and centralized model has become unappealing for many, who have gained better access to international networks of production, exhibition, and distribution, as well as to digital technologies with which to embark on flexible, small-scale “quasiindependent” projects. At the same time, foreign partners and audiences are in ready supply thanks to a healthy international appetite for Cuban culture that has been reinvigorated by recent events. Most notably, the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the USA on December 14, 2014 and the loosening of travel restrictions have generated a fresh wave of fascination, evident in everything from film (the eighth instalment of the Fast and Furious franchise notoriously used Old Havana as a picturesque backdrop for its testosterone-fueled car races) to make-up (Bobbi Brown’s “Havana Brights” blushers and The Makeup Shack’s “Havana Nights” eyeshadows, for example). As a result, and as the consistent reappearance of tropes such as the picturesque ruin, classic car, and hypersexualized mulata in many recent Cuban films suggests, commercially-oriented images and narratives are being harnessed in order to gain access to international partners and markets. Ten years ago, Elliot Young was already expressing the optimism that such a situation seems to justify, enthusing over the greater autonomy that the filmmakers’s new “ability to negotiate between two masters” will provide (2007, 26). For me, this view invests too much in the supposed benevolence or, at least, neutrality of the market. Some films utilize the Cuban brand and its set of recognizable and attractive tropes in order to secure their own market appeal, perpetuating the brand and renewing its power along the way. However, as the combination of Habana Blues’s diegetic plot and extra-diegetic development suggests, the resultant negotiations between creative expression and market expectation, personal integrity and external demand, bring dilemmas that cannot easily be dismissed. Indeed, the ambivalence of the relationships between Zambrano’s Cuban protagonists and foreign producers demonstrates that Cuban society—not to mention the state—is still far from reconciling itself to the sacrifices and demands of the market. Although Habana Blues’s critical acuity does not seem to extend to its own operations, other films, such as La película de Ana, demonstrate the possibility of a self-aware approach that plays with familiar aesthetic and narrative tropes in order to expose the labor that goes into the construction and performance of the brand. However, the greater critical ambition of La pelicula de Ana also exposes an ironic truth: that the assertion of authenticity and the refusal to “sell” oneself or “sell out” in fact bolster the unique appeal of the Cuban brand—a brand that is used to commodify Cuba around the world.

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Figure 8.4.  Ana raises her hands to frame the passing tourists who are catcalling to her. Source: Still from La Película de Ana.

In one of La película de Ana’s final frames, the protagonist looks at a group of foreign men catcalling her from a passing classic car. Her initial reaction is to give them the finger, but slowly she raises her other hand and mimics a camera, framing them (see figure 8.4). Just prior to this scene, Ana uses the foreigners’s own film equipment to document the attempted violation of the Austrian producer, finally assuming the role of image-maker and fulfilling the prophecy of the film’s title. From this position of relative power, the film implies, Ana may able to resist the objectifying, reductive gaze of the foreigner and the exploitative implications of market exchange. Such an assertion of agency is evident in this, her final gesture, in which our protagonist rejects the objectifying, foreign gaze whilst reaffirming the need to keep producing images, narratives, and performances, albeit from a different point of view. But what happens when we try to articulate such an alternative perspective? As we have seen, the result of Cuba’s unique geopolitical position and place in the public imaginary is a brand that derives its coherence and competitiveness—its success—from a central paradox that allows it to assimilate resistance into its very core. This raises a question whose wider relevance becomes clear when we consider the co-option of the cultural capital of marginal groups or the commercialization of resistant forms of expression: what forms can resistance take in the face of an overwhelming logic that is perpetuated by branding and encapsulated in the brand? How can we attempt to alter the status quo without falling prey to the advance of neoliberalism, whose endless expansion threatens to swallow our protests whole, only to sell them back to us? It is only with an understanding of the mechanisms of this movement—within which brands and branding play an important role—that we can hope to find any answers.



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NOTES 1.  All translations author’s own. This phrase, uttered by Fidel Castro in the depths of the Special Period, was adopted as the title of the Fifth Congress Proceedings of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, or UNEAC (the National Writers’s and Artists’ Union) in 1993. 2.  El extraordinario impacto publicitario y de sugestión que posee la imagen cinematográfica sobre el espectador, y la consecuente oportunidad que se tiene de popularizar nuestro país y sus riquezas y de favorecer el turismo. 3.  Here I adapt Benedict Anderson’s famous formulation of the nation as “imagined community,” developed in relation to the role of print media in the formation of European nationalisms ([1983] 2006), to suggest how cinema helped Cubans conceive of their belonging to a new, revolutionary national collective. 4. Castro’s Palabras a los intelectuales (Words to the Intellectuals) memorably summarized the young Revolution’s cultural policy with the words Dentro de la Revolución, todo, [. . .] contra la Revolución, nada (Within the Revolution, everything [. . .] against it, nothing) (1961). This attempt to lay out the roles and responsibilities of artists, writers, and intellectuals within the revolutionary process without shutting down creative experimentation and critical analysis was triggered by a short documentary entitled P. M., directed by Sabá Cabrera Infante and Orlando Jiménez Leal (1961). Three decades later, Daniel Díaz Torres’s Alicia en el Pueblo de Maravillas (Alice in Wondertown, 1991) caused another convulsion, threatening to limit creative expression once again. For more on these controversies, see Chanan 2004, and for a nuanced reading of the “Palabras,” see Kumaraswami 2009. 5.  Díaz Torres had directed the aforementioned notorious Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (1991), which had been censored and almost caused the closure of ICAIC, before going on to enjoy popular success with comedies such as Hacerse el sueco (Playing the Swede, 2001). 6. The aforementioned review of the film praises “d. p. Jean Claude Larrieu’s faithful documenting of dingy, dilapidated interiors—including the magnificent abandoned theater where Habana Blues is planning to play” as “stunning” (Holland 2005). This enchanted description testifies to the success of the film’s mise-en-scène in drawing from and reinforcing a Cuban brand that combines the charm of crumbling surroundings with the charisma of a people whose heroic victimhood is defined by resilience, ingenuity, and resistance under difficult circumstances. 7.  These can range from food and drink, an evening out in a venue otherwise unaffordable for most locals, imported clothes or other goods, to even an opportunity to travel or a spousal visa.

WORKS CITED Anderson, Benedict. [1983] 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

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Brugués, Alejandro. 2012. Juan de los Muertos. Film. Spain, Cuba: La Zanfoña Producciones, Producciones de la 5ta Avenida, Soundchef Studios. Cabrera Infante, Sabá and Orlando Jiménez Leal. 1961. P. M. Film. Cuba. Castro, Fidel. 1961. “Discurso Pronunciado por el Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, Primer Ministro del Gobierno Revolucionario y Secretario del PURSC, como Conclusión de las Reuniones con los Intelectuales Cubanos, Efectuadas en la Biblioteca Nacional el 16, 23 y 30 de Junio de 1961.” June 30. http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/ discursos/1961/esp/f300661e.html. Chanan, Michael. 2004. Cuban Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cooder, Ry. 1997. Buena Vista Social Club. CD. World Circuit Records. del Río, Joel. 2014. “Seducidos por la independencia: cine cubano del siglo XXI.” Progreso Semanal. February 17. http://progresosemanal.us/20140217/seducidopor-la-independencia-cine-cubano-del-siglo-xxi/. Díaz Torres, Daniel. 1991. Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas. Film. Cuba: ICAIC. ———. 2001. Hacerse el sueco. Film. Cuba, Spain, Germany: ICAIC, Igeldo Komunikazioa, Impala, Kinowelt Filmproduktion. ———. 2012. La película de Ana. Film. Cuba, Spain, Austria, Panama: ICAIC, Ibermedia, SK Films, Jaguar Films. Edelman, Lee. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke University Press. Fernandes, Sujatha. 2006. “Recasting Ideology, Recreating Hegemony: Critical Debates about Film in Contemporary Cuba.” Ethnography 7 (3): 303–327. https://doi .org/10.1177/1466138106069520. Franco, Manuel, Usama Bilal, Pedro Orduñez, Mikhail Benet, Alain Morejón, Benjamín Caballero, Joan F. Kennelly, and Richard S. Cooper. 2013. “PopulationWide Weight Loss and Regain in Relation to Diabetes Burden and Cardiovascular Mortality in Cuba 1980–2010: Repeated Cross Sectional Surveys and Ecological Comparison of Secular Trends.” BMJ 346 (April). Gómez, Manuel Octavio. 1967. Por primera vez. Film. Cuba: ICAIC. Holland, Jonathan. 2005. “Review: ‘Habana Blues.’” Variety. April 1. http://variety. com/2005/film/reviews/habana-blues-1200526818/. Kumaraswami, Par. 2009. “Cultural Policy and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Cuba: Re-Reading the Palabras a Los Intelectuales.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 28 (4): 527–41. “Ley no. 169 de creación del ICAIC.” [1959] 2008. Cine Cubano, la pupila insomne. August 15. https://cinecubanolapupilainsomne.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/ley-no169-de-creacion-del-icaic/. Marrero, Teresa. 2003. “Scripting Sexual Tourism: Fusco and Bustamante’s STUFF, Prostitution and Cuba’s Special Period.” Theatre Journal 55 (2): 235–249. Pérez, Fernando. 2003. Suite Habana. Film. Cuba, Spain: ICAIC, Wanda Visión. Sánchez, Abel. 2013. “Flavia, la compañera de lucha.” La Jiribilla. January 12. http:// www.lajiribilla.cu/articulo/flavia-la-companera-de-lucha. Santana Zaldívar, Ernesto. 2013. “La película de Ana, del director Daniel Díaz Torres. ¿Más comedias para burlarnos de nosotros mismos?” CubaNet Noticias. May 27. https://www.cubanet.org/articulos/la-pelicula-de-ana/.



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Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba Congreso. 1993. “La cultura es lo primero que hay que salvar.” Fidel Castro: memorias. La Habana: UNEAC. Weppler-Grogan, Doreen. 2010. “Cultural Policy, the Visual Arts, and the Advance of the Cuban Revolution in the Aftermath of the Gray Years.” Cuban Studies 41 (March): 143–165. Wenders, Wim. 1999. Buena Vista Social Club. Film. Germany, USA, UK, France, Cuba: Roadmovies FilmProduktion. Young, Elliot. 2007. “Between the Market and a Hard Place: Fernando Pérez’s Suite Habana in a Post-Utopian Cuba.” Cuban Studies 38 (December): 26–49. Zambrano, Benito. 2005. Habana Blues. Film. Spain, Cuba, France: Canal, Ibermeida, ICAIC, Eurimages.

Chapter Nine

Branding, Sense, and Their Threats Brett Levinson

The majority of chapters in this book deal with the way in which Latin American states strive to “brand” the nation through both the advancement of positive images and the championing of capitalist ventures. The campaigns target the domestic public in the interest of neoliberal consensus, that is, the production of the populace’s conviction that, due to (and only due to) the market, the nation is moving in the proper direction, that is, toward a more perfect democracy. Similar manoeuvres take aim at an international audience in the name of tourism and venture capital. In the second case, the idea pitched is that globalization, multinational enterprise, and democracy pertain to a single movement. Foreign speculation and travel have increased bountifully because the Latin American nation is already democratic, hence safe, accommodating, and likely profitable to the investor. And the nation will grow more democratic, progressively safer and more accommodating, as future investment, crossing into and moving beyond national borders, flourishes. The contributors to this volume mainly assess critically these procedures, balancing empirical research about actual “brands” against analyses of branding’s adverse socio-economic effects. The intellectuals illustrate, in other words, how the upbeat stagings, exulting the “richness” of the nation, also conceal more distasteful matters, results too of the neoliberal democratic state, such as the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, the unwieldy migration of the unemployed from rural to urban zones, and drug-related violence. In short, branding, while casting itself as a tool of the universal good, represents in fact a single interest: entrepreneurship and consumerism. It benefits the naturalization and propagation of the division between capitalist and worker, which naturalization generates stability, domesticates rebellion, and 199

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thereby proffers an image of democracy. Stated in an alternative fashion, the signs of branding translate the injustices of neoliberalism, a neoliberalism in which a pluralist multitude enters into a non-violent accord (the non-violence is key, for it testifies to an unanimity whose apparent root is, rather than aggression, popular consent and rational decision, in other words, democracy) by virtue of a market that is the cradle of knowledge and culture no less than wealth and poverty—and translate the material inequalities of neoliberalism into the ideas and ideals of fairness and parity. My intervention tackles the possibility that this welcomed critical scrutiny of branding on the part of Latin American cultural studies, rather than exposing contradictions within the contemporary Latin American nation-state, stands in complicity with it. Michel Foucault demonstrates in The Birth of Biopolitics (Foucault 2008, 134–137) that a foundation of neoliberalism is a general odium of monopoly. Neoliberalism banks on competition, on the multiplication of duopolies, such as Coke versus Pepsi, since duopoly produces the illusion of freedom (conflated with selection), and so leads to the consumer’s tendency to embrace, then reproduce on his or her own accord, the economic structure that often harms him or her. Critique, I will argue, too easily gives rise to one more duopoly, i.e. naïve versus enlightened estimations of the market, and so appeals to and reconstitutes the configurations it would hope to question. The critique of the neoliberal market is a demand of that very market I therefore conclude by advocating, regarding national branding, a critique of critique, whose endeavor has a name: deconstruction. I SEE YOU, I HAVE YOUR SHOE: DEMOCRACY, SUBJECT, TERROR Colombia.co, or Colombia, país diverso, strives to attract capital into Colombia by commemorating the nation’s lush nature, as well as the diversity of its ethnicities, foods, cultures, saberes, art forms, and exports. One cannot be surprised that a webpage from the birthplace of Gabriel García Márquez celebrates Colombia as the “land of magical realism” (www.colombia.co) all the while intercepting a popular, alternative perception: Colombia, country of drug-trafficking and urban viciousness. The statement that marca país Colombia puts forth, then, might be summarized as follows: “Obviously, violence is not absent from Colombia. However, such savage activity does not embody the truth of the nation. It is perhaps imagined as truth. Yet it is so vis-à-vis a Western ideology that casts particular, contingent elements (e.g., the drug trade)—soon to be overcome—as the state’s totality and essence.” Colombia.co, qualified in other terms, proposes to make available to the



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viewer/reader the idea (the eidos), as opposed to the standard representation (mimesis), of Colombia: the real Colombia (ésta es Colombia, we read at the top of the site), replete with exquisite natural and cultural abundance that one can experience in fact (through investment, tourism, or merely by looking, including on the Internet), and that transcends stereotypical images of moral poverty and political corruption. The variety of Colombia’s ecological splendor, racial make-up, diet, and creativity are thereby the key to the national brand that Colombia.co promotes. A brand, of course, never exists in isolation. It is not an individual marca that relates to others. Rather, from its emergence, a brand is this relation: a relation to another label, through which it derives its value. Thus, an original multiplicity both yields the brand’s existence, and is key to the brand’s branding. Since monopoly is anathema to the neoliberal arrangement that Colombia, país diverso promotes, opposition to that monopoly through the endorsement of pluralism is fundamental to the “pitch” of the site’s trademarks. Assortment is the condition of choice; selection is the requisite of freedom; liberty is the criterion of democracy; and democracy is the indispensable support of the branding campaign of Colombia.co. The heterogeneity that is legible upon the webpage, however, is specific. It surfaces as the combination of lo típico or the native, on the one side, and the transnational or the urbane, on the other. Hence, upon Colombia.co, images of indigenous peoples in traditional dress are pictured over against new highways that render accessible Colombia’s expensive tourist seasides. Among the brands publicized on Colombia.co is SYOU, pronounced as both “shoe” and “I see you.” A Netherlands company founded by a former agent of Nike, SYOU manufactures in Colombia a type of tennis shoe, marketing the product globally as an example of Colombian craftsmanship (although SYOU commenced its operations in Burkina Faso). SYOU’s eventual goal is to fabricate sneakers from as many nations as is conceivable, thereby formulating a marca whose selling point is its reflection of the world’s plurality. SYOU shoes, the SYOU website accentuates, result from Colombian minds: artists, photographers, students, illustrators, and filmmakers, who conceive shoes with colorful designs that capture “the beauty of Colombian flora and fauna,” rendering the footwear attractive to an audience whose interest is the quality of the foreign. The fabrication of the product, that is, reflects the reason, talent, diligence, and spirit of the Colombian (“demonstrating the greatest talents and highest quality in the entire world”) whose SYOU merchandise possesses a “quality” that “highlights the land of coffee’s natural, human, and cultural wealth.” In addition, SYOU laborers, far from browbeaten, contribute freely, recognizing that their “work is constructing a nation,” aiding in the “fomentation of ethical practices” (Black Book 2017).

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A transnational corporation that lends support to, and is propped up by a native population, SYOU embodies a multiplicity (local/global) whose function is to produce belief in a Colombian subject—worker, supervisor, and designer—who makes logical and imaginative, thereby unfettered, determinations. Such a subject would surmount the limitations imposed by both a “strictly” Western capitalism and a suspect Third World state. Branding, marketing multiplicity, constructs the positive reality of an emancipated local, national I in whom investment, also of an I, is accordingly warranted. The truth of the consumer (his or her liberty qua subject) is bound to the Colombian’s ability to choose SYOU rationally, properly, and sovereignly, unbound to outside interests, as the two subjects—maker and purchaser (or investor)—form a duopoly, a structure of election, consequently of the subject. A subject, of course, does not first exist, and then choose, but rather s/he comes into being through that capacity to make rational choices. The term “democracy” does not appear on Colombia.co. This absence—of democracy, and therefore of state politics—in fact serves best the politics of both SYOU and Colombia, país diverso. For when a national website announces that workers of a transnational firm agree (as products of a democratic consensus) to toil for the “fomentation of ethical practices” that help in “constructing a nation,” it announces as well, as if behind its own back, the existence of unethical labor practices within the same economy, a Colombian democracy not yet fully constructed, and Colombian bodies that do not offer or have not historically offered such consent: a lack of democracy within the democracy. The lack thereby represents a demand for the market’s intervention, for a filling of the gap, hence for the production of the SYOU brand. In fact, a democracy that advertises itself as “under development” is not quite a democracy at all. Democracy represents the demos, all the people, and all parts of the state, else it is not democracy. Not-the-whole, Colombian democracy, as pitched by SYOU’s statement on its treatment of the worker, is bound to its limitations. SYOU’s proclamation of this limit, while representing a promise to help complete the democratic project, also serves to broadcast, in the name of the brand, the threat faced by the unfinished state. Colombian democracy, unfilled and unfulfilled, thus touching and infected by an external position by virtue of its boundaries, is not self-determined. Fastened to, or in Spanish, sujeto a, the outside, it is not free. This outside, while intrinsic to the state’s definition of itself, is not a property or part of the state, nor of any other institution. This is precisely why it arises as a menace that, SYOU’s website implies, must be curbed. The exterior is an undefined non-part, indeed, because definition, the boundary of the state, generates it. No definition can account for the external danger, since definition introduces, rather than contains this hazard. Indeterminate as



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the excess of determination, the unaccounted-for because unnamed surfaces as an unmonitorable force that threatens absolutely the sovereignty of the democratic nation upon whose accreditation capitalism, within neoliberalism, counts. The publication of the peril, then, pertains to the marketing of SYOU. For the publicity functions as a statement on the necessity of transnational companies, such as SYOU, within Colombia, whose interventions will complete the democratic endeavour, and thereby shelter the nation from a hazard that, falling between the nation and the globe, unspecified because the boundary on all tags, augurs the worst for all. One is reminded of the phrase found upon signs within New York City subway cars (the maxim has since spread throughout the United States): “If you see something, say something.” That is, if you feel threatened by a force that cannot be identified, a “something,” inform the police. As with SYOU’s suggestion concerning the menace that Colombia’s incomplete democracy represents, the mere intimation of a terror within the most everyday aspects (such as travelling on the subway) of existence, a terror never labelled is far more coercive than any actual identification of the cause of alarm. SIGNIFIER AND LABEL Because the operation of branding turns on the label, and thereby the signifier, in my view a greater understanding of branding demands an incursion into the principles of Saussurean linguistics, the principles of which outline, precisely, the link between signifier and value. Saussure in fact posits language, la langue, as a collection of signifiers. No such signifier exists autonomously. It does so through a differential relation to another within a finite, completed organization. “Cat” represents the concept “furry domestic animal on the sofa” by means of its difference from and connection to “purrs,” that is, within a unified idiom, grammar, vocabulary, semantics, and alphabet. “Inside” such a structure, the signified is relative (to another signifier) and contingent (on a context). “Cat,” after all, can always be followed by “ain’t to be trusted,” consequently, signify “dude.” Conventional rather than essential, the bind between a signifier and particular signified may be strong since conventions are themselves strong. However, because conditional, no signified is ever absolute or necessary (Saussure 1966, 65–68). Snags arise, however, when one considers that la langue is itself a signifier. Therefore, it cannot, by Saussure’s own logic, represent “language as such,” the whole or system that is the requisite of the individual sign. La langue in fact cannot fail to gain its standing as representative of the totality of language through its link to other signifiers, for example, alternative

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French terms for language, which include langage, parole, and idiome. And if la langue means relative to other signs, it turns into one more signifier in its chain, extending rather than containing the string it would make “whole.” Thus unlimited, language, or any articulation within language, potentially materializes as a run without termination, an undifferentiated, and thereby meaningless, mass. Indeed, if la langue is itself just additional language, another signifier, it yields something akin to a spurious infinity: not a set of signifiers but confusion, babble, a naught without even signifiers or parts (signifiers, after all, result from distinctions within a contained aggregate). Saussure conceives la langue as a means to delimit artificially the field of language, which delimitation would render the discipline of semiotics or linguistics possible. In so doing, he introduces an aporia he does not seem to have anticipated. La langue either arises as a signifier relative to others, thereby fails to embody the all that, by definition (the definition of any “all”), is non-relational; or else la langue, because a totality, is not a signifier, and the apparent object of linguistics, la langue, is not itself linguistic. Indeed, in the second case, la langue is not anything in particular, or anything at all. In other words, if la langue is a signifier, language does not exist as a specific field, nor do any of the “elements” within it, for it is a “without:” a without any enclosed domain. Conversely, if language is not a signifier, it is not composed of a relation of signifiers since one relative, one member of the family, namely, la langue itself, is not relative since it is the totality—and language, this set of differential relations, fails to exist yet again. Let us attack the aporia from a different angle. “Cat,” I noted, means “furry domestic creature” through its relationship to other signifiers within a structure or context. It also signifies, however, vis-á-vis repetition, the conventions and rituals which lead a linguistic community to link arbitrarily a given signifier to a given signified. Iterable from its inception, the signifier thereby appears (is repeated) in varied settings, each of which potentially multiplies the conceivable signifieds. The multiplication is nonetheless limited. A signifier can mean many things but not anything at all, since a limit—a contained unity—is its condition. La langue, then, counts on repetition, like any signifier. It repeats itself, nevertheless, in a special manner, unlike any other signifier. As the signifier that founds, upholds, and frames the field of language, on the one hand; and as the extra player that hypothetically unfolds any statement into a nonsensical run, on the other, la langue is, at once, both representation qua meaningfulness and also ceaseless iteration of the same (one signifier after another signifier after another signifier after) qua meaninglessness. Indeed, without difference, a system, consequently logic and meaning, is unimaginable. Thus the repetition of the signifier, the latter’s standing as the coexistence



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of meaning and meaninglessness, never appears. For if it does, it appears as an image, as meaning and representation, from which senseless repetition retracts in advance. This is not to suggest that repetition is absent from such representations. It is there, as we shall see in greater detail. Wrapped into the signifier, nonsense is the material condition, as well as the a priori risk of, representation. The repetition of la langue, in other words, is the withdrawal of (subjective and objective genitive) the signifier, asystematic meaninglessness that, if unrealizable, remains the augur of every articulation. Defined by the imperfection for which it can neither account nor do without, language nonetheless does not “lack” anything. La langue, because its definition (la langue) exposes a force that it, language, cannot include, is its imperfection. This is why Jacques Derrida writes in Demeure that “language does not exist, no one has ever encountered it” (Blanchot and Derrida 2000, 20). The assertion recalls an earlier Derrida proclamation, from The Truth in Painting, that addresses the relationship of work (ergon) and framework (parergon): “There is no natural frame. There is frame, but the frame does not exist” (Derrida 1987, 81). A frame, if one were to exist, takes the form of a line, hence of a mark that does not add to the content of the work—for, if it adds content, it belongs to the ergon rather than serving as parergon. Yet, as already noted, a frame cannot not function as a contact zone that yields an influx, not only more to the work but, in fact, too much, thus the potential non-existence of the work as such. No work without frame; yet the frame does not exist since its existence is its breaching, its erasure. State and market are unthinkable without the boundary between them; yet, with this boundary, they are again non-existent. In fact, the neoliberal state turns on the difference between the value of the commodity (the market) and moral, ethical, and political values (represented, often, by the signifier “democracy”), for only through the production of a selection between the two can the individual or collective choose; that choice represents freedom. However, when state and market are set off one from the other they are so through an artificial abstraction. A separate state and/or market do not actually exist since the line between them is crossed as a condition of its taking place; and the crossing, the intrusion of one by the other, leaves behind both domains. So it would seem. However, a phrase such as “the frame does not exist” appears, represents or means something, because—and only because—there is frame, however unnatural (“There is no natural frame”). The set “[t]here is frame, but the frame does not exist” is itself the performance of a unit which renders conceivable the apprehension and/or comprehension, the cognition of the declaration. “The frame does not exist” appears, that is, because a there— that is, a not here, a non-presence—gathers the work into a fictive whole. The appearance of Derrida’s pronouncement, as mere appearance or apparition,

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is not lacking material, for the matter is there. Similarly, the state and market are not presences, since they never stand as separate realms. Nonetheless, the requisite of their positing, consequently of the contemporary world, is their difference, hence their thereness. In Writing and Difference Derrida sustains that the “break with this structure of belonging can be announced only through a certain organization, a certain strategic arrangement which, within the field of metaphysical opposition, uses the strengths of the field to turn its own stratagem against it, producing a force of dislocation that spreads itself throughout the entire system, fissuring it in every direction and thoroughly delimiting it” (Derrida 1978, 20). “[C]ertain strategic arrangement” announces (an announcement is linguistic) any “arrangement’s” insertion into a fictive unity, one such as state or market, which insertion yields the sense and sensibility of being. Yet this very organization, once articulated, exposes sensibility to a “fissuring [it] in every direction,” to a “thorough de-limiting” whose result is an unmanageable, indifferent, insensible disorder, one that lies at the threshold of every order. The signifier that, with the emergence of structuralism, serves as a tool for the understanding of value in general, and is itself a value (the value of presence, which representation represents), discloses as well a valuelessness that dwells at the formative margins of value as such. There is the state and market, just as there is Latin America, and there is language. There is the frame that partitions the globe out into detached domains with separate values, and knowledge into separate fields, each also with a value. In the context of branding, then, it must be stressed that the thereness of a frame inserts the excess of every property within the state and the market, though the frame does indeed frame, contain, each such a property. There is the proper name, a proper assertion upon which all properties count but for which none can account. About the relationship between state and market as staged, for example, by Colombia.co, a national website whose function is to brand private brands, there is the confusion between the two (state and market), which renders impossible their coordinated but separate operations. Or rather, it would render them impossible if the state and market did not operate, individually but together, to negate the force of the disorder that they themselves put into play. THE CRISIS OF CRITICISM: IT IS NOT THE SHOES I am trying to uncover, however slowly, the structure of branding, irreducible to that of the commodity. For the brand, unlike a commodity, is not necessarily a product of labor or material. It is a signifier. The Hegelian-Marxist



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model that dominated intellectual pursuits in the 1930s and 1940s, gives way to the structuralist model for this very reason: value, beginning roughly in the 1950s, is no longer deemed to hinge simply on the production of objects but also, as Saussure suggests, on the circulation of signs. A brand, an example of la langue, is a sign that appears as the value that transcends the chain of differential relations, the market, arising, therefore, as the invaluable signifier without signified, one that assures value itself, consequently incentivizes investment, This hypothetical signifier without signified, this desired label, confronts but one problem: it does not exist. For a signifier that transcends its circulation among other signifiers, its existence as one value relative to others, is not a signifier. The signifier without signified, far from transcendental, is nonsensical, meaningless, and worthless. Branding, in other words, combats the valuelessness that it itself publicizes. It does so by first casting the “it does not exist” of value as a lack of value (when, as just shown, valuelessess is in fact a there is) which it, the brand, stops up. Hence SYOU posits the democratic state, which within the branding practices that the company deploys represents the highest value, as a perfection that has not yet been realized, that is under development, or that, at least in Colombia, is currently lacking. SYOU is then able to brand itself as a source of salvation, as the plug for a lack—Colombia’s lack of democracy— which, if fully espoused, would prevent Colombia, hence democracy, from giving way to an unnamed terror, an absolute disorder that would undermine even the prospects of democracy, thereby of the prospecting of the state and market which democracy, today, buttresses. Nike, the prior company of SYOU’s founder, provides an excellent example of the branding ideal, which SYOU would one day also like to represent. Sealed by a swoosh, Nike seems to mean what it means or be what it is, regardless of its relations. The Nike brand means Nike, pointing up the ideal of any branding procedure: to represent itself autonomously and automatically, beyond the repetitions and rituals, and hence the contingency and vulnerability, of the typical mark within the market. Therefore, the Nike swoosh can be affixed to virtually any object, adding value. Loosened from reference to a specific product or signified, such as athletic gear, the reference to which would limit Nike’s capacity to circulate, Nike represents value itself: the value of value which transcends all commodities. The Nike mark serves as a guarantor that the essence of being is value, just as la langue, for Saussure, is the guarantor that that essence of being is meaning (not a specific meaning, but meaningfulness)—or at least la langue would guarantee this if only it existed. The telos of neoliberalism, as already suggested, is to fend off the material non-being, the valuelessness of being which the signifier as frame at once

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introduces as possibility and negates. This is why North American liberalism, which advocates for the value of each and every person and each and every representation of the person, and global neoliberalism, which espouses the value of each and every thing, are part and parcel of the same operation. Both create the myth or story of a valuelessness-to-come, a world without value, in order to cast their institution—state or market—as the means to thwart the crisis, consequently, as a necessity. The liberal/neoliberal brand, in short, advertises the systemlessness of the state or market as the lack of a system, which lack it then seals, in this manner acting not only as a defender of a permanent order—value, today, being a relationship to another value within the order of capitalism—but also as an embodiment of the highest value, beyond the corrupt state and the crass commodity. I want to make this last point still again, though almost in a reverse manner. The Nike brand that gains a value on the market which appears to transcend both circulation and devaluation at the hands of the competition that circulation portends, could not appear on the market at all unless it circulated among Adidas, Converse, SYOU, and so forth. Analogous to Saussure’s la langue, the brand must, in order to be, repeat itself as its own opposite, as, at once, guaranteed worth and relative worth. And it seems to accomplish the feat by posing as another unit within the unity that it itself represents (by stopping the hole, hence completing or unifying a market that is otherwise contingent). In this fashion, it arises as an agent of pluralism—adding itself as an alternative to the accomplished homogeneity that it generates—consequently of choice and of the liberated subject that choice spells: of the subject who may, freely, either work for or consume a given brand. This is why the philanthropy of Nike’s co-founder, Phil Knight, is so key to the brand (Marum 2016). Charitableness (so implies Nike’s branding operation) is the highest value of Nike, which is no mere product with a certain price tag or stock value, but a source of true, eternal values—value itself. As the unity of a whole that is without relations, the brand is the transcendental good that guards the state/market duopoly from the incursion of disorder which a lack (however imaginary) of secure boundaries augurs. But that is not all that a brand strives to be. It also seeks to attain the status of another label, a different value, one that exceeds the One qua global homogeneity, thus arising as a transcendental virtue in an alternative fashion. Beyond the vulgarity of commodification (and, the exploitation of the worker, which the commodity conceals within itself) and money, it represents the value of more choice, thereby, of more subjectivity, greater freedom. These two “highest goods” (embodied, in structural linguistics, by the common and proper name) are manifestations of a) the State as indivisible sovereign, which assures stability; and b) the market, the pluralism that prof-



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fers selection, thus the sovereignty of the individual (which, of course, can be collective). The issue, of course, is that these two goods cannot co-exist; they contradict one another. To be sure, the contradiction does not appear as such within the neoliberal state or the global economy. Appearance is a form of representation. Contradiction, conversely, while there, within representation, is representation’s other. Yet contradiction, today, is no longer contradiction (as it was for Marx) but the force of a particular aporia: every signifier turns on repetition, yet no signifier signifies this repetition. Every brand, as signifier, sends into withdrawal the repetition or copy, the sheer contingency, that it is, and upon which it banks. Repetition is the withdrawal of the signifier/ label/brand, of sensibility and value, which the commodity, always already a knock-off, iteration, or copy of another commodity, pushes off site in advance. SYOU, obviously, does not enjoy the market influence of Nike. But it pitches its value in a manner that is analogous to that of the more celebrated brand. We noted that the signifier itself, SYOU, signifies both “I see you” and “shoe” within the “universal idiom” of English. Yet the signifier, SYOU, does so, that is, takes on these meanings without belonging to English, or to any language. As if English and as without a language, SYOU thereby appears, at once, as a signifier without relationship to other signifiers (as not one element among others within a la langue), hence as a transcendental signifier; and as a signifier whose multiple meanings signify multiplicity itself, hence as the field of choices which generate subjects. SYOU, the sign, says, in essence: I see you Colombians, I distinguish you as the Other, and thus offer to you SYOU, a shoe of your own, a brand that signals both your uniqueness and autonomy and the global recognition of this uniqueness—and therefore, also, the non-necessity of the capitalist abuse that typically comes with international investment into Latin America and the Third World. For that oppression arises from the non-recognition of your unicity, the treatment of the underdeveloped and worker as disposable life. I, SYOU, present to you a label that will compete with other labels on the global market, yet as your agent: as agent, therefore, of the pluri-universe that is for your good, and for the good in general.

SYOU, as supersensible name and one sensible brand among others, represents, at one and the same time, the value of the nation, of Colombia, and the value of global pluralism that adds even more to Colombia’s value. To sum up, then: as illustrated at the outset of this chapter, SYOU brands itself, first, both via its own website and a national website, by promoting pluralism’s lack, a lack marked by SYOU’s unrealized goal to celebrate the minds and spirits of every nation with its shoes. It then fills in this lack by adding Colombian reason (via the Colombian design and talent that lie

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behind the tennis shoes) into its product and then into the world market, thereby turning a homogeneous globalization into a contained pluralism. Contradictions arise, however, when we take into account that a unit within any plurality is further divisible (“Colombian” splits into “Colombian woman,” then into “Colombian indigenous woman,” “Colombian lesbian indigenous woman,” and so on). The world is infinitely plural. Therefore, a particular multiplicity is never sufficiently multiple, never satisfactorily universal, never suitably free. Either the brand, like the signifier that any brand is, restricts the multiple; or there is no order of multiplicity in which the brand can stand but, instead, only the undifferentiated, the interminably divided, the meaningless, the valueless, the unidentifiable, the terrible, because without field. The latter, the unidentified, which threatens order and value themselves, is today embodied by the drug-trafficker, the terrorist, and the migrant: anyone who circulates without property or distinction, without identity or means of identification. SYOU posits the globe, in other words, as simultaneously too liberal and lacking liberalism, thus always in need of one more figure, itself, SYOU, to complete the globalization project—else the worst may come. SYOU, as an example of a brand, would package into its name 1) lo típico, the very nature (flora and fauna) of Colombia, whose nature is the freedom of the democratic subject to enjoy this nature; 2) the universal good, the global; 3) pluralism, that is, the choice between local and global; and 4) the repetition of the local by the global, which neither the global nor local, much less SYOU itself represents—with a fourth possibility portending the annihilation of the first three. The brand, to state matters one more time, is the promise of a contained pluralism. It assumes a framed area, a signifier or set of signifiers, such as Latin America or Colombia (when, in fact, neither “Latin America” nor “Colombia” are currently confined to an identifiable geographical zone), which bounded whole incorporates a multiplicity of values or labels whose worth lies not in any individual unit but in the relationship and relativeness (rather than absoluteness), the pluralism of the overall unit. Yet this zone, as zoned, also assures, or would assure, ideally or theoretically, that the pluralism is not infinite, that the outside (the market relative to the state or the sovereign state relative to the market) cannot subsume the inside, or vice-versa. Zoning and separating, consequently, guards neoliberalism from its own potential annihilation. Yet, paradoxically, the brand, the market, neoliberalism, must market this obliteration, the unconditional fissuring of pluralism, its potential slippage into an uncontained mass, therefore into an indifference that is so because without property or proper name, because unidentifiable hence unmonitorable, for solely the marketing of this absolute threat can justify the



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brand that staves off the danger. Otherwise, the brand is a useless product, akin to a label or tag that is ripped off the entity to which it is attached, and tossed away. Destruction is promised by the very containment mechanism that suppresses this horror. In fact, containers or bounded units cannot choose to permit entry to this and deny entry to that since they are exposed to anything whatsoever as a condition of their emergence. The lines between state and market, and between brands, which yield the contained pluralism that we call globalization or even democracy, are the medium by means of which all lines are erased, and pluralism is splintered into nonsensical non-being. A brand tries to brand itself, not as one more product on the market, but as proper name for this bond and boundary between inside and outside, whose name otherwise—so says the brand itself—is lacking. Thus, terms such as “local” and “global,” “state” and “market,” “Same” and “Other,” products within the intellectual or analytic marketplace, are no less brands than are “Nike,” “SYOU,” or “Colombia.co.” Just as these signifiers partition the universe into the separate units that guarantee meaning by sending away the threat to meaning, to wit, repetition, branding represents an effort to split subjects into individual properties and values, from which effort withdraws the “unbrandable” or valueless iteration of one brand by another. At the root of the Greek Krinein (criticism or critique) lies the notion of separation. To criticize or analyze is to separate inside from outside. Assuming division, contemporary Latin American cultural criticism decides where these divisions will be drawn. The problem, as disclosed by phenomena such as “branding,” is that division is no longer (if it ever was) given, since any divide gives way, as its requisite, to infinite contamination of one unit by another, hence to absolute indifference. It is thus not surprising that the root Krinein also includes the Greek for “crisis”—a crisis that results from nonseparation or indifference, the impossibility of analysis due to the collapse of the unity of meaning, a collapse that is always already impending. The critique of the “branding of Latin America” can do nothing other than what branding itself does, which is to introduce neoliberalism as crisis by dividing today’s socio-political arena into so many identifiable values, including Otherness,” “subjectivity,” “multiplicity,” and “empowerment,” which critique presents as on the brink of ruin—which potential wreckage represents the demand for more or better critique, more precise divisions, and less indifference. The “crisis” of critique, which deconstruction announces, and which critique promises to stave off, is that the old divisions, such as that between First and Third World, North and South, autonomy and dependence, care and indifference, which rendered critique possible, now form iterations

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of one another, no longer lending themselves, precisely, to critique. Critique cannot think itself for what it is: the repetition of the object of critique. If the purpose of branding is to preserve the structures of value by means of which branding casts itself as necessary, the goal of present-day critique is to preserve the structures of meaning by means of which critique retains its relevance, all the while disavowing an intrinsic component of this structure: its non-existence (though there is structure). Just as the branding process cannot account for the valueless repetition of branding—to work, the brand as foundation of the One must repeat itself as one amongst others—upon which it banks, the critique of branding cannot account for the meaningless iteration of critique that critique is. This is why the demand of branding is also the demand of deconstruction, which—while bound to repeat the gestures of critique—arises as a critique of critique, or of the thinking of difference as this repetition. WORKS CITED Black Book. 2014. “SYOU Makes Sneakers a Truly Global Affair.” http://bbook .com/fashion/syou-makes-sneakers-truly-global-affair. Blanchot, Maurice and Jacques Derrida. 2000. The Instant of My Death/Demeure: Fiction and Testimony. Translated by Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Colombio.co. N.d. “Colombia, país diverso.” http://www.colombia.com. Colombio.co. N.d. “Tenís de Colombia para el mundo.” http://www.colombia.co/ esta-es-colombia/talento/tenis-de-colombia-para-el-mundo-2/. Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1987. The Truth in Painting. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave. Marum, Anna. 2016. “Phil Knight plans to give most of his fortune to charity.” http:// www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2016/04/phil_knight_charity.html. de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1966. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Epilogue

The discourses and practices examined in this book challenge us to reach beyond disciplinary boundaries in our attempt to keep pace with the manifestations and consequences of branding—a phenomenon that functions according to the characteristics of what Gilles Deleuze has called the “society of control” (1992). Standing in contrast to Michel Foucault’s disciplinary societies, Deleuze’s formulation attempted to account for a new historical phase, a system characterized not by the enclosures of school, factory, and prison but rather by modulating controls enacted through perpetual training, corporate systems, and electronic tagging (1992, 3; 7). In 1992, Deleuze was already describing marketing as the center of a new type of capitalism, and writing, aghast: “We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world” (6). The transformation of values and identities into brands was under way. Part of the society of control—which functions as “a single corporation that now has only stockholders” (Deleuze 1992, 6)— branding thus operates through the consensus of select stakeholders, and—in tune with the continuous, limitless, modulated functioning of control—its sphere of influence and application is constantly evolving and expanding. Responding to such a context, Branding Latin America’s contributors push the analysis of brands and branding beyond the spheres of advertising, business, marketing, and PR. By applying critical theories to contemporary examples and offering new perspectives on established objects of analysis, the chapters in this book gesture toward the insufficiency of traditional disciplinary approaches and begin to trace the outlines of a new field of study that might better grasp the complex configurations of identity, culture, citizenship, governance, and politics that are emerging in our contemporary world. Rather than offering conclusions about this still-developing field, this epilogue instead proposes a series of questions and suggestions for further inves213

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tigation, indicating how brands and branding may provide new perspectives on the imbrication of economics, politics, history, and culture. The question of culture and branding, for instance, is understudied from both sides. It would be fruitful to consider how cultural productions of different kinds contribute to the unofficial “brand” of a place or community. The global popularity and marketability of cultural phenomena such as Brazilian telenovelas or Argentine tango have spread particular images of their respective countries of origin. But how do such cultural phenomena—and even broader tendencies such as the Latin American literary “Boom” of the 1960s and 1970s—contribute to the construction of captivating, coherent but problematic narratives and images of a country or region? How do the industries of publishing, cinema, music, journalism, and education feed into this? May they obscure, reinforce, or undermine the unofficial “brand” in question? Transnational circulation and consumption may “detach” local or national cultural referents from their origins; for example, the quintessentially British James Bond comes to be associated with the USA, instead, as a result of the literary character’s detour through Hollywood-esque, big-budget action cinema (Higson June 19–21, 2017). Meanwhile, Cuban timba music is played in salsa clubs around the world, where its combination with diverse musical traditions repackage it as a homogenized “Latin” export, thereby contributing to a new “brand” that has a particularly ambiguous relationship with the “local.” Such examples provoke further questions about the negotiations between specificity and broad appeal, local significance and international consumption that are raised by the global circulation of culture. The reverse process is also worthy of further interrogation. How are cultural phenomena harnessed by explicit branding initiatives, from the small scale of products to the larger scale of national tourism or campaigns? Cerda Pereira’s description of the exhibition of Chilean paintings alongside geological samples at World Fairs invites us to extend the discussion of how private and public institutions, and even states, capitalize on culture. How does instrumentalization as part of a brand—a market-oriented version of identity—transform the cultural phenomenon in question? How does it condition interpretation? Remembering that Chile’s staging of nationhood at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka brought about the commission of the El Rostro de Chile photo series, it would be useful also to explore the cultural products that are produced, directly and indirectly, by such initiatives. How do the resulting paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, and narratives depict, stage, or reconfigure relationships between local and global, national and international? How effective are they in creating the desired, strategic image? How can we measure such effectiveness? What kinds of relationships do the artists establish with their “patrons,” and what kinds of spaces of contestation or



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agency are formed therein? On the other hand, culture is also commissioned and instrumentalized by the private sector. How do companies and corporations use existing cultural phenomena to develop their brand? What effect does this have on the cultural “products” in question, in terms of reception, signification, circulation, and consumption? What kinds of power dynamics are at play in these co-options and collaborations? On the other hand, we might ask: to what extent do such co-options and collaborations invite comparisons between culture and other potential “selling points,” such as infrastructure, industry, or natural resources, and what do these points of comparison reveal? This prompts the consideration of how images and narratives—such as those that draw out exoticism and affective capital, for example—continue to impact not only perceptions of but also geopolitical realities within the region. It has been claimed that branding may allow historically peripheral countries to turn the tides in their favor through the articulation of competitive identities, though there are serious doubts hanging over Anholt’s claims (2003) that branding can create a new, fairer world order. Regardless of whether or not this is the case, however, branding offers a way to reconsider world systems theory in a new light; it invites us not to confirm or reject its classifications of center/periphery, developed/ underdeveloped, but rather to consider how those pervasive narratives, which may have fallen out of favor in many academic circles, are nonetheless invoked, reinforced, resisted, or reconfigured by practices and discourses of branding. These questions should be of interest to those working in and conducting research on international relations and diplomacy. The extent to which branding efforts draw on and affect, confirming or changing, particular relations—whether bilateral bonds between nations or regional power dynamics—is an area ripe for investigation, especially in light of the fact that the United States’s longstanding monopoly of influence in Latin America has recently come under threat from extra-hemispheric actors such as China. If both nation-states and private companies must position themselves competitively within a global system, artists, filmmakers, writers, and other creators are increasingly faced with similar imperatives if they wish to survive in an increasingly interconnected world. In order to carve a space for themselves and compete with others, creators are often forced to articulate not only their visions but also themselves in terms of a brand—a distinctive identity oriented towards the market. What kinds of negotiations does this involve between creativity and competition, and between the local and “universal”? We might also explore the complex political implications of language, race, and gender produced by such negotiations. For instance, it is not coincidental that the artist discussed by Claire Taylor, Bélen Gache, chooses to employ Spanish (her native language) and English (the lingua franca of global business) in

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her work; this choice creates access to a combined market of nearly one billion people, but may also be seen as a response to other factors, such as the prevalence of English in net art, the need to network with other artists, or the particular cultural capital associated with English as a de facto “universal” language. It is also possible to see this as a deliberately critical decision—as part of Gache’s refusal to identify in terms of her nationality (Spanish-Argentine), which may indicate a skepticism of territorial ties, or even a rejection of a Hispanic “brand” and its attendant expectations in terms of subject-matter, perspective, or politics. This raises questions regarding the constraints and freedoms offered by the branding of creator and creative work; what opportunities are gained and what sacrifices made? Might it be possible to benefit from branding whilst maintaining a critical distance from its instrumentalizing and reductive operations? The exploration of such issues of agency becomes increasingly relevant as we consider the relationships of citizens to various branding projects. What differences are there between branding efforts directed internationally and those targeted at domestic populations in order to foment social cohesion or enlist support for particular policies or political campaigns? In what overt and covert ways do corporations and nation-states conscript consumers and citizens, and to what extent can we see these efforts as new disciplinary measures? What challenges do such efforts face, and what possibilities do they present for citizens to reinforce, contest, or co-opt these brands for their own purposes? What intended or unintended benefits might citizens and consumers derive from their involvement in branding efforts? Rather than exclusively viewing branding as a top-down process, it is thus critical to explore the effect of popular initiatives on the perceptions, images, and narratives of place, and the use of these images and narratives for alternative, even resistant projects. These questions bring to mind the view of the individual as brand “ambassador” suggested by Ogden, whose chapter described how citizens are called upon to “live the brand” and thereby support a national economic project, whilst also being motivated by their own immediate needs and desires. Similarly, Gómez Carillo’s discussion of the citizen’s transformation from passive victim of their country’s reputation to active ambassador for its promotion calls our attention to the impact of global inequalities and power dynamics on individual lives. The need to give serious consideration not only to the impact of geopolitics on individual expectations, experiences, and lives but also to individuals’s agency or ability to intervene in these situations is increasingly recognized in conferences (such as the “Popular Culture and World Politics” conference series) and academic studies (see, for example, Benwell and Hopkins 2016) that invoke notions of “everyday geopolitics.” Just as the free-market logic of competition filters down to reconfigure citizens as stakeholders and identities as brands, the notion of grassroots, spontaneous,



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or “popular” branding campaigns, artificial or otherwise, challenges us to connect the macro-levels of global capitalism and geopolitics to the microlevel of everyday life. As such, and as this book insists, the study of brands and branding should not be limited to the fields of business, advertising, and marketing, but should instead follow the mutations and infiltrations of branding and its underlying neoliberal logic across all levels and spheres of social life, moving beneath, between, and beyond disciplinary divides to account for its modulatory, continuous, and limitless functioning. At the same time as responding to recent developments, a consideration of contemporary branding brings fresh perspectives to historical phenomena: it may, for example, add another “layer” to the story of the evolving, unequal power dynamics initiated by conquest. We might think of the reinvention of the Chilean colonial and creole elite as a new entrepreneurial class in the late nineteenth century, mentioned in Cerda Pereira’s chapter. Given this context, we are provoked to interrogate who is doing the branding: who are the advisors, consultants, policy-makers, and beneficiaries of new, branding-oriented national projects? What does the relationship between these different actors tell us about the state and status of a country in the world at a particular time? Several contributions in this volume prompt us to consider successive systems of international classification and ways of thinking about the local (and particularly the national) in relation to the international, the global, and the “universal.” How do current rankings such as the Nation Brands Index or the alternative Good Country Index relate to these earlier traditions? What are the effects of their predominantly quantitative approach, which converts relationships, inequalities, differences, and similarities into higher or lower positions in a list? Finally, as Levinson’s chapter prompts us to reflect, capitalist logics and branding practices may have taken root within academic institutions and academic work themselves. In countries such as the UK and the US, public spending cuts and tighter control over budgets have increasingly subjected universities to neoliberal forms of management and evaluation, increasing the precarity of academic labor. At the same time, rising student fees have imposed logics of consumption and customer satisfaction which, in turn, dictate access to public as well as private funds. The reorientation of higher education toward employability and “value-for-money,” as well as demands for quantifiable “outputs” and “outcomes,” have hit humanities and arts subjects particularly hard, as reflected by the closure and contraction of many Modern Languages departments. This conflicted relationship between higher education and neoliberalism has been particularly visible in Latin America in recent years; in Chile, mass student demonstrations that took place over 2011–2013 demanded state support and reforms to address inequalities in the accessibility and quality of secondary and higher education. Meanwhile, in

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Colombia in 2011, students mobilized against a proposal to create new, forprofit universities, which many viewed as an attempt to follow a “Chilean model” in higher education (Wallace 2011). What forms of competition are imposed when academia is subjected to neoliberal practices and logics? How have discourses and practices of branding infiltrated the academy, from individual researchers to departments, universities, funding bodies, and even ministries of education? What are the effects of neoliberalism generally and branding specifically on institutions as well as on specific subject areas? What are the roles and responsibilities of students, academics, and universities in the face of such developments? What is the current function of higher education and of academic investigation? What kinds of research is being conducted, by whom, and for whom? These questions take on particular inflections in relation to the field of Latin American Studies and its associated disciplines, as the Cold War emphasis on politics, economics, and international relations is reconfigured by a new focus on the dual importance of the region as market and rising economic power and reframed in terms of an appealing cultural “brand.” Moreover, such questions acquire increasing urgency given political polarization and rising anti-immigration sentiment around the world; in this context, public institutions such as universities (and within these, humanities and liberal arts departments in particular) have become focal points for social movements such as Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter (Nyamnjoh 2016 and Lebron 2017, for example), as well as wider debates around feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and racism. The perspective of branding here becomes doubly important, as its discourses and practices reconfigure individual and collective articulations of identity and also impact the forums in which these are represented, contested, and reconfigured. WORKS CITED Anholt, Simon. 2003. “Brand New Justice: The Upside of Global Marketing.” Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Benwell, Matthew, and Peter Hopkins, eds. 2016. Children, Young People and Critical Geopolitics. Abingdon, Oxon: Ashgate. Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October 59: 3–7. Higson, Andrew. June 19–21, 2017. “Soft Power and National Cinema: James Bond, Great Britain and Brexit.” presented at the Cinema, Soft Power and Geopolitical Change, University of Leeds. Lebron, Christopher J. 2017. The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.



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Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2016. #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa. Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG. Wallace, Arturo. 2011. “Estudiantes en Colombia protestan como los chilenos.” BBC Mundo. October 12. http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2011/10/111012_colom bia_protestas_estudiantiles_aw.

Index

Page references for figures are italicized. activism, 20, 27, 144, 148n.4; design, 60, 72; non-partisan, 132; visual, 69 agency, 26, 83, 123, 126, 127, 144, 162, 191, 215, 216; of ambivalent narration, 72; assertion of, 194; of Cuba, 90–91; digital, 103; economic, 89; government, 89; spectral, 67; tourism, 91 Aguilera, Christina, 161, 162 Alfonsín, Raúl, 14 Alicia en el Pueblo de Maravillas (Alice in Wondertown), 195nn4-5 Allende, Salvador, 43, 45n10 ambassador: brand, 59, 87, 88–91, 216; of the change makers, 111; for Colombia, 107–109, 110; for Cuba, 85, 87–90; nation-brand ambassadorship, 80. See also Colombia; Cuba Anderson, Benedict, 8, 20, 37, 47, 53n1, 70, 71, 133, 195n3 Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index, 135 Anholt, Simon, 8, 10, 63, 85, 135, 136, 215 Anthony, Marc, 160, 162 “The Answer is Colombia,” 59, 100, 104 APEX-Brasil, 136 Aquí y ahora, 163, 164

Argentina, 4, 14, 20, 38, 148n2; Argentine depression (década perdida), 7. See also dictatorship; nation-branding Ariel, 13, 169 “Auténtica Cuba,” 24, 59, 79, 80–5, 88, 90–1, 84. See also authenticity; Cuba authenticity, 23, 24, 29, 59, 79, 81, 82–5, 90, 121, 168, 169, 176, 181, 183, 187–93; cultural, 24, 176, 177; fetishization of, 190; glorification of, 176; lack of, 121, 122; national; 177; of objects, 81; pursuit of, 80, 81; Aylwin, Patricio, 15, 44 Bachelet, Michelle, 48, 55 Bailando, 161 Balmaceda, José Manuel, 38 Batalla de ideas (Battle of Ideas), 177 Baudrillard, Jean, 69 Benson, Todd, 138 Black Lives Matter, 218 brand: ambassadors, 59, 80, 87–91; audiences, 24, 91; identity, 3, 50, 60, 61; image, 10, 104; of Latin music, 159, 160; licensees, 59; values, 21; Cuban, 29, 175, 180–2, 187–90, 192–4, 195n6; Pitbull, 163, 168, 221

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169. See also nation-branding; logo; slogan; stereotype; tourism Brand Country Paraguay, 59 branding: campaigns, 8, 22, 23, 30, 63, 83, 110, 178, 217; discourses, 29, 30; logos, 21, 60; narrative, 65, 74n3; strategy, 49, 50, 63, 83; corporate, 26, 117, 119, 120, 124; literal, 6; resistant, 26; self-branding, 25, 111–112; tourism, 79, 82. See also nation-branding Brandworks International, 83, 84 Brazil, 4, 14, 17, 18, 27, 30, 38, 131–47, 148nn1–2, 162, 178, 214; authentic/ real, 137, 140; favelas, 139, 140; foreign journalists, 27, 43, 131–5, 137–48, 146. See also authenticity; FIFA World Cup; Jornadas de Junho (June Journeys); nation-branding; Olympic Games; stereotypes “Brazil Beyond,” 136 “Brazil is Calling you. Celebrate Life here,” 136 “Brazil Sensational!,” 136 BRICS, 17 British brand, 121 Buena Vista Social Club: (album), 176; (film), 27, 178, 180, 183, 188; phenomenon, 27, 83, 176; “Buena Vista Socialisation,” 83 Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), 55n17 Calle Ocho/I Know You Want Me, 162, 170 Canadian Volunteer Work Brigade, 177 “Can’t Hold Us Down,” 162 capitalism: contemporary, 71; corporate, 117, 120; global, 12, 13, 17, 20, 134, 170, 187, 217; industrial, 96; informational, 118, 128n1; late, 26, 118, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 160; liberal-democrat, 66; Western, 52, 202; world, 12 casa particular, 89

Castro, Fidel, 176, 177, 179, 195n1,4 Castro, Raúl, 88, 176 “Chicago Boys,” 15, 16 Chile, 3, 8, 14–15, 21–2, 26, 35–53, 53n6, 53–54n8, 54nn10,16, 55nn17,19, 55–56n21, 59, 135, 136, 148n2, 214, 217–18; Chilean International Exhibition, 37; “Chilean Miracle,” 44, 46; national sovereignty, 41; pavilion, 38–52, 50; 23 International Expos, 22. See also dictatorship; nation-branding; World Exhibitions “Chile Always Surprising,” 59 China, 48, 49, 50, 56n22, 215 Cine móvil (Mobile cinema), 179 citizenship, 8, 18, 30, 61, 68, 213 City of God, 140 La Ciudad de las Relaciones (The City of Relationships), 48 Cold War, 40, 42, 54n16, 218; anticommunist action in Colombia, 97; post-Cold War, 10 Collor de Mello, Fernando, 132 Colombia, 19, 25, 26, 59, 95–112, 112nnnn2,6,9-10, 113nnn11-13, 135, 136, 162, 167, 178, 200, 201, 202, 203, 206, 207, 209–11, 218; Colombia Country Brand, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 101; “Magical Realism,” 99; public good, 100. See also ambassador; drugs; ICNC; nation-branding; SYOU, violence Colombia.co/Colombia, país diverso, 200–2, 206, 211 Colombia, el Riesgo es que te Quieras Quedar (Colombia, the Only Risk is Wanting to Stay), 98 Colombia Free Trade Agreement, 99 Colombia es Passión (Colombia is Passion), 20, 59, 98, 99, 104 Colombia, país diverso, 200–2 Colombia Tiene Otro Color (Colombia Has Another Color), 98 colonialism: in Chile, 36, 43, 45, 53nn1,5, 54n15, 55n17, 217; colonial centers,



Index 223

13, 20; coloniality of power, 13; colonized peripheries, 20; in Cuba, 83, 89, 176, 184; in Peru, 61, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74; postcolonial societies, 69 Colvin, Marta, 41, 42 commodification, 133, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 180, 208 Continuidad y cambio (continuity and change), 14 Cooder, Ry, 27, 176, 183 Cossio, Jesús, 66 Country Brand Project, 63 creole elite, 36, 217 Cuba, 23, 24, 27, 29, 59, 79–91, 160, 161, 163, 166, 169, 175–94, 194n1, 195nn3,6, 214, 185, 186; Cuban immigrants, 163, 169, 188; heroic victimhood, 29, 175, 177, 181, 184, 190, 192, 195n6; the Revolution, 82, 85, 86, 87, 176, 177, 178–80, 186, 195n4. See also ambassador; Auténtica Cuba; authenticity; nationbranding; Special Period; tourism cultivation of the self, 111 culture jammers, 68 Dauden, Carla, 144 Debord, Guy, 12, 70, 124 Deleuze, Gilles, 213 democracy, 15, 16, 30, 71, 199; in Chile, 44, 45, 47, 48, 55nn18–19; in Colombia, 101, 200–203, 205, 207, 211 Derrida, Jacques, 126, 205–6 desaparecidos (disappeared), 14 Despacito (song), 161 Díaz Torres, Daniel, 29, 182, 188, 191, 195nn4–5 dictatorship: in Argentina, 14–19; in Brazil, 140; in Chile, 43, 44, 45, 46–7, 48, 55nn18-19, 135; in Peru, 62 “Discover Nicaragua . . . Experience Nicaragua,” 20 Dominican Republic, 81, 84, 162

Doy lo mejor de mi para mi México (I give Mexico the best of me), 9 drugs: trafficking, 96, 97, 107, 200, 210; narcos, 97; war on, 19, 97, 99. See also Colombia; violence “Ecuador Loves Life,” 59 Eliécer Gaitán, Jorge, 97 “Embrace your Passion, Invest in Argentina,” 20 Enlightenment, 12, 54 Errázuriz, Federico, 36, 37, 43, 53n3 Escobar, Pablo, 100, 107; guided tours, 100 Eurimages, 182 excluidos (excluded), 14 “The Family of Man,” 42 FARC, 97, 100 Farruko, 159 Fast and Furious, 193 “Feel This Moment,” 170, 172 fetishism, 26, 124, 128, 188; of commodities, 26, 120, 126, 127; of authenticity, 176, 190 FIFA Confederations Cup, 132, 137, 138, 139, 148n4 FIFA World Cup, 17, 18, 27, 131, 132, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 148nn1-2, 164. See also Brazil Fin del mundo net., 117 Fine Arts Palace, 39, 40 Fonsi, Luis, 161 Foucault, Michel, 25, 105, 106, 111, 112n1, 200, 213 “four Ss,” 141 free-market, 1, 8, 30, 97, 216 Frei-Montalva, Eduardo, 40, 43 Friedman, Milton, 15 Fujimori, Alberto, 15, 62 Future Brand, 63 FutureBrand’s Country Brand Index, 135 Gache, Belén, 26, 117–28, 128n10, 215–16

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García, Alan, 62 García Márquez, Gabriel, 200 Gaviria, César, 97–98 Gente de Zona, 160 “Give Me Everything,” 168 globalization, 2, 4–9, 11–13, 21, 79, 30, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 199, 211; global brands, 59, 68, 163, 171; global marketplace, 5, 19, 21, 23, 59, 68, 71, 72, 82, 98, 135, 141, 186, 209; of capitalism, 12, 17, 20, 128, 134, 170, 187, 190, 217; homogeneous, 210 Global South, 74, 81, 135 Global Warming: Meltdown, 163 Gómez, Manuel Octavio, 179 “go native,” 89 González, Elián, 177 Good Country Index, 8, 217 Gozadera, La, 160, 161 guerrilla, 97 Guevara, Alfredo, 43, 179 Guevara, Che, 127, 129n14 Habana Abierta, 183 Habana Blues, 29, 180–8, 193, 195n6 Habana Blues Band, 183 Hacerse el sueco (Playing the Swede), 195n5 Harberger, Arnold, 15 hard power, 10, 11 Hip-hop, 168 Hobsbawn, Eric, 70 Ibermedia, 180, 181, 182 ICAIC, 178, 179, 181, 182, 186, 193, 195n5 ICNC, 25, 95, 96, 102–4, 106–11, 112nnn9-11, 102, 103 identity: brand, 3, 6, 17, 50, 52, 60, 61, 127; competitive, 10, 30, 60, 82; corporate, 51, 86; Cuban, 183, 188, 192; cultural, 8, 17, 181; Hispanic, 162; instrumentalization of, 6, 8; Latino, 161, 164, 168; narratives

of, 21; Peruvian, 62, 64; regional, 86; Spanish, 117; stereotypical, 28; strategic, 17. See also national identity Iglesias, Enrique, 161 Imagined Communities, 53n5 imagined community, 8, 20, 70, 133, 179, 195n3; Cuban, 29 IMF, 14, 15 Imperio Pitbull, 164, 166 import substitution industrialization. See ISI Instituto Cubano de Amistad entre los Pueblos (ICAP, Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples), 177 Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry). See ICAIC “International Love,” 28, 159–72, 165, 166 intimacy, 24, 85, 89, 90 ISI, 14 “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia.” See ICNC Jaguar Films S.A., 182 Jameson, Fredric, 70 Jam, Nicky, 159 Japan, 40, 41, 42, 117, 118; “Japanese Miracle,” 44 jinetera, 182, 188–92 jineterismo, 86, 182, 191, 192 Jornadas de Junho (June Journeys), 131–3, 137–9, 141–3, 145, 147, 146 Juan de los Muertos (Juan of the Dead), 186 karaoke, 117, 118, 119, 122, 127 Klein, Naomi, 68, 126, 128n8 El laberinto de la soledad, 13 la langue, 203–5, 207–9 Larraín, Rafael, 36, 135 Larramendi, Boris, 183



Index 225

Latin American Free Trade Association, 43 Lira, Pedro, 39, 40 Léniz, Fernando, 44–5 logo, 3, 10, 23, 50, 61, 68, 70, 124; brand, 21, 49, 60; Brand Peru, 63–5, 67, 74n6; Chile, 47, 49; Colombian, 100, 101, 102; corporate, 6 #LoMejorDeColombia (#TheBestofColombia), 101 Lopez, Jennifer, 161, 162 Loreto, Italia, 64 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 131 Lund, Kátia, 140 Machu Picchu, 66 magical realism, 99, 100, 200 Marambio, Augusto, 40, 41 marca país/marca-país, 135, 136, 200 Martí, José, 79, 91, 169, 170 Martin, Ricky, 161, 162 McCann Erikson Perú, 64 “McDonaldization,” 83 Meirelles, Fernando, 140 memory, 6, 37, 62, 72 Menem, Carlos, 14 mestizaje, 170 Mexico, 2, 3, 4, 13, 14, 19, 26, 42, 84, 135, 136, 148n2, 167, 179. See also nation-branding México, creo en tí (Mexico, I believe in you), 9 “Mexico: the place you thought you knew,” 20 Miami me lo confirmó (Miami confirmed it to me), 160 Ministerio de Turismo (Ministry of Tourism) in Cuba. See MINTUR MINTUR, 82, 83, 89, 90–1 mise-en-scène, 181, 187, 190, 195; of otherness, 188 modernization, 13, 37, 43, 84; in Colombia, 96–9 Movimento Passe Livre (MPL, Free Fare Movement), 132, 148n4

moving image, 26, 117, 124 Mr. 305, 163, 165, 168, 170–1 Mr. Worldwide, 28, 159, 163–71 mulata, 82, 175, 184, 197 mulato, 182, 184 Museum of Modern Art for Children, 38 Music Republic, 159 NAFTA, 19 National Congress (Brasília), 145, 146 national identity, 8, 9, 26, 59, 60, 62, 80, 121, 133, 134, 141, 142, 147, 148n2; in Brazil, 135, 147; in Chile, 42, 52; in Cuba, 176; for foreigners, 135; in Peru, 64, 65, 66 “National Reorganization Process,” 14 National Tourism Corporation in Colombia, 98 Nation Brand Hexagon, 63 nation-branding, 8, 21, 23, 26, 178; in Chile , 50; in Colombia, 95, 96, 102, 104, 106, 110, 111; in Cuba, 80 Nation Brands Index (NBI), 8, 135, 217 nationhood, 9, 147, 214 nation-state, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, 20, 21, 71, 96, 105, 200, 215, 216 neoliberalism: apology for, 121; injustices of, 30, 200; consensus, 30, 117, 199; governmentality, 96, 104, 105, 106, 110; policies, 5, 19, 46; rationality, 25, 95, 105, 111; reforms, 8, 15, 45; subject, 95–6, 104, 105–6, 111 “New Right,” 6 “new visibility,” 27 The New York Times, 132, 137, 139, 141 Nicaragua, 19, 20 “No Artificial Ingredients,” 85 “No, I’m not going to the World Cup,” 144 No Logo, 68 nostalgia: aesthetics of, 181, 185; nostalgic narratives, 183; nostalgic value, 83. See also Cuba

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Obama, Barack, 79 Ochoa, Kelvis, 183 Olympic Games, 17, 131, 136, 139, 141, 148n2. See also Brazil otherness, 185 Others, 20, 82, 85, 107, 209; OuLiPo, 122–3, 128n9 El pabellón de Chile, 55n20 País Rico é País sem Pobreza (A Rich Country is a Country without Poverty), 136 Paz, Octavio, 13 La película de Ana (Ana’s Film), 29, 180, 182, 187–90, 192–4, 189, 194 Peña Nieto, Enrique, 2 Pérez, Armando Christian, 163, 170. See Pitbull Pérez, Fernando, 180 El Período Especial en Tiempos de Paz (The Special Period in Times of Peace). See “Special Period” Peru, 15, 23, 26, 59–74, 74nnn2–4, 135, 136, 178; Brand Peru, 60, 63–70, 73, 74n2, 64, 65, 66, 67; Amazon, 67; identity, 62. See also nation-branding Peru, Nebraska, 64 Pinochet, Augusto, 14, 43, 44, 46, 55n19 Piñera, Sebastián, 48, 159 Pitbull, 28, 159–72 Planet Pit, Globalization, 163 pluralism, 201, 208, 209, 210, 211 Porno para Ricardo, 182, 183, 186 Por primera vez/ For the first time, 179 Portales, Álvaro, 67 Porter, Michael, 98 Porter Novelli, 103, 104 PROCOLOMBIA, 99, 101 PROEXPORT (Colombian Agency for the Promotion of Exports), 98, 99. See also PROCOLOMBIA PromPerú, 61, 63 “Propuesta indecente,” 161

Puerto Rico me lo regaló (Puerto Rico gifted it to me), 160 racism, 23, 69, 218 Radikal Karaoke, 26, 117–19, 122, 124, 127 “Rain Over Me,” 166, 168 R&B, 168 Raza cósmica, 169 Reagan, Ronald, 6 Reputation Institute, 96 La Respuesta es Colombia (The Answer is Colombia), 99 Revolución en Libertad (Revolution in Freedom), 43 “Rhodes Must Fall,” 218 Rodó, José Enrique, 13, 28, 169 Ronjam, Markus, 65 El Rostro de Chile (The Face of Chile), 42, 214 de la Rúa, Fernando, 14 Santos, Juan Manuel, 99, 100 Santos, Romeo, 161 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 203, 204, 207, 208 Second World War (WWII), 36, 44, 96; sexual economies, 81. See also tourism Shaggy, 159 Shakira, 161, 162 slave trade, 6, 26, 91, 111, 124–127 slogan, 10, 21, 23, 26, 117; in Argentina, 119, 121, 123, 124, 126, 128n6; in Chile, 14, 41, 43; in Colombia, 100, 109; in Cuba, 79, 83; in Mexico, 9; political, 61, 122 SMWNYC, 104 socialism, 43, 44, 47, 79, 170, 175, 183, 188; socialist realism, 179; post-socialist countries, 74. See also Chile; Cuba Social Media Week New York. See SMWNYC soft power, 10–11, 26, 134



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son: (album), 27; (documentary), 83 stakeholders, 5, 7, 17, 21–25, 61, 213, 216 Sol Muisca de Colombia Para el Mundo (Muisca Sun from Colombia to the World), 98 sovereignty, 9, 16, 41, 179, 203, 209 Soviet Bloc, 29, 82, 175, 178 “Special Period,” 82, 175–80, 189, 192, 195n1 Star-Spangled Banner, 160 stereotypes, x, 8, 19, 26, 27, 28, 63, 71, 86, 140, 143, 147, 165, 185, 201; exoticist, 121, 184; global, 63; of Latins, 28, 160, 164, 166, 168, 169, 171; negative, 107, 109, 165; of carnival, 139. See also brand Suite Habana, 180 Sunset, 159 SYOU, 201–3, 207–12. See also Colombia telenovelas (soap operas), 30, 214 Thatcher, Margaret, 6 Third World, 6, 7, 20, 202, 209, 211 terrorism, 43, 44, 96, 99, 112n2. See also Chile; Colombia “Time of Our Lives,” 166, 171 tourism, 10, 20, 30, 59, 199, 214; in Brazil, 17, 136, 140; in the Caribbean, 80; in Colombia, 96, 98–101, 104, 201; in Cuba, 23–4, 29, 79, 80–91, 176, 178, 180, 184, 188, 191, 194; narco-tourism, 100; in Peru, 23, 61–2, 64; and racial apartheid, 90; and sex, 81, 83, 87, 139, 140, 141, 176. See also brand “true self,” 81, 192

Trump, Donald, 1, 2, 3, 4, 79, 162 Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC), 195n1 universalism: abstract, 171; globalizing, 162; historical, 167, 169; Latin, 159, 160, 167, 171; strategic, 169 Universópolis, 28, 167, 170 Vasconcelos, José, 28, 167, 169, 170 violence: in Brazil, 137, 138, 140, 145, 146; in Colombia, 95, 96–100, 107, 200. See also drugs La violencia (The Violence), 97 Vive Colombia, Viaja por Ella (Live Colombia, Travel Through It), 98 “Waka Waka,” 161, 162 Wenders, Wim, 27, 83, 176, 183, 184, 185 Western Europe, 52, 132, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 148n2 “Wild Wild Love,” 163 World Bank, 14, 62 World Cup. See FIFA World Cup World Exhibitions: Osaka, 35, 40–4, 50, 52, 214; Paris, 35, 37–9, 41, 51, 53n6; Santiago, 35–9, 51; Shanghai, 35, 48, 49, 50, 55–56n21; Seville, 35, 44, 45, 46, 47, 52. See also Chile “The World Meets in Brazil,” 136 World Music, 27 World Wide Web, 1 World War II. See Second World War Young and Rubicam Perú, 63, 64 Zambrano, Benito, 29, 181, 183, 193

About the Contributors

Melissa Aronczyk is associate professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, where she writes and teaches about issues related to media, identity, and public life. She has published two books: Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity (OUP, 2013), and Blowing Up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture (Peter Lang, 2010), an edited book with Devon Powers. She is a faculty fellow with the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, and she holds a PhD from the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Andrea Paz Cerda Pereira studied Sociology at the Universidad Católica de Chile (2000). For her MA in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (2003) she studied social and political participation practices of Chilean youth after the dictatorship (1990s). She then conducted a MA research project in Cultural Anthropology at Leiden (2009), where she focused on the ethical dilemmas experienced by volunteers participating in aid programs set up by the industry of tourism in India. Currently, she is writing her PhD on an ethnographic study of the Chilean Exhibit for the World Expo of Shanghai 2010. She teaches ethnography and works as adjunct researcher at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. Dunja Fehimović is lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese at Newcastle University, where she teaches on twentieth and twenty-first century Latin American and Caribbean literatures, cinemas, and cultures. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where her doctoral project examined twenty-first century Cuban film in relation to national identity. Together with Professor 229

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About the Contributors

Rob Stone, she is co-editor of the annual Screen Arts issue of the Hispanic Research Journal. Dunja has recently published articles in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JLACS), the Bulletin of Latin American Research (BLAR), and Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas on issues of memory, history, childhood, emotion, and identity in relation to Cuban fiction and documentary film. She has also contributed book chapters to The Routledge Companion to World Cinema (2017) on Caribbean cinemas, The Cinema of Cuba: Contemporary Film and the Legacy of the Revolution (IB Tauris, 2017) on the use of zombie, gothic, and comic tropes in Cuban film, and on Cuban cinema and branding to Nation Branding: Issues, Practices, and Strategies (Routledge, 2015). Andrew Ginger is chair of Spanish and head of the school of Languages, Literatures, Art History and Music at the University of Birmingham. He is a historian of the culture of Spain and the Spanish-speaking Atlantic, taking a highly comparativist approach. Since his first appointment as a lecturer in Edinburgh (1996), he has published four monographs, two edited collections, and numerous essays. These present a view of the Spanish-speaking world— particularly the nineteenth century—as politically, intellectually, and culturally advanced. Andrew’s central thematic concern is with the nature and significance of similarities across place and time, taking as his starting point the connections between the Spanish-speaking world and the West. Andrew has founded and co-lead an international network of over 180 researchers over two continents in nineteenth-century studies. His work ranges from political, scientific, and aesthetic thought through visual culture and literature. He has held numerous national roles including REF (Research Excellence Framework) subpanel member, AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) strategic reviewer, and chair of UCML (University Council of Modern Languages) Scotland. Paula Gómez Carrillo is a psychologist and anthropologist. She undertook a postgraduate study in Media and Communications at The London School of Economics and Political Science. Paula’s research has mainly focused on nation branding, advertising, and consumer culture. She has a professional background in the advertising and media industries, working for Publicis and Universal McCann. César Jiménez-Martínez is a lecturer in Promotional Cultures and Propaganda at Brunel University. He holds a PhD in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His thesis examined how various actors employed the media during the June 2013 protests in



About the Contributors 231

Brazil to project different versions of national identity. His research focuses on issues of media and nationhood, mediated visibility, nation branding and journalism. His work has been published in the International Journal of Communication, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Geopolitics and Liinc em Revista. He is currently in the process of preparing his thesis for publication. Brett Levinson is professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York, and author of three books: Secondary Moderns (Bucknell University Press, 1996), on Lezama Lima; The Ends of Literature (Stanford University Press, 2002), on the Latin American “Boom”; and Market and Thought (Fordham University Press, 2004) on contemporary philosophy and politics. He has also published more than fifty articles on literature, theory, and Latin American culture. Félix Lossio Chávez completed his PhD in Latin American Studies at Newcastle University, where he researched nation branding in contemporary Latin America, particularly in Peru, Cuba, and Colombia. He is the former general director of Cultural Industries and Arts at the Ministry of Culture in Peru and the former Executive Coordinator for the Network for the Development of Social Sciences in Peru (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú—Instituto de Estudios Peruanos—Universidad del Pacífico). He holds an MSc in Sociology (Culture and Society) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA in Sociology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, where he was also lecturer at the Social Sciences Department. He has published several articles in areas related to cultural industries, cultural policies, film studies, and social participation. Rebecca Ogden is lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Kent. She completed her AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council)funded PhD at the University of Manchester in 2015. Her research interests lie in the articulation of national identity through tourism and nationbranding in contemporary Cuba and Mexico. She has recently published an article in Social Identities on the appropriation of affect in guidebooks of Cuba. Rebecca’s recent project, funded by the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, explores Instagram photography and the digital tourist gaze of Havana. She has presented her research extensively at major international conferences, including those of the Society of Latin American Studies and the Latin American Studies Association. Rebecca has taught at the University of Manchester, at Lancaster University, and at universities in Argentina and Mexico, and has also worked as a research assistant within the University of Manchester research network “Diasporic Pathways for

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About the Contributors

Aspiring Cosmopolitan Cities.” Rebecca is also the social media editor for public scholarship website Cuba Counterpoints. Claire Taylor is professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Liverpool. She is a specialist in Latin American literature and culture, and has published widely on a range of writers, artists, and genres from across the region. Her particular geographical areas of interest are Colombia, Argentina, and Chile, although she also worked on literature, art, and culture from other regions. Within Latin American Cultural Studies, she take a particular interest in the varied literary and cultural genres being developed online by Latin(o) Americans, especially hypertext novels, e-poetry, and net art. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics, and is the co-author of the recent volume Latin American Identity in Online Cultural Production (Routledge, 2012), and author of the recent monograph Place and Politics in Latin America Digital Culture: Location and Latin American Net Art (Routledge, 2014). She recently held an AHRC Follow-On Funding grant for a project on Latin(o) American Digital Art, which included a series of impact and engagement events, and a book entitled Cities in Dialogue (LUP, 2016).