The Flower of Cuba: Rhetoric, Representation, and Circulation at the Outbreak of the Spanish-American War

Abstract

Did nineteenth-century newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst manipulate representations of Evangelina Cosío y Cisneros, a young Cuban woman, in order to spark the Spanish-American War? Hearst's arguments for American intervention in Cuba represented a deceptively uncomplicated public opinion, a consensus that only appeared to have been attained through rational deliberation. Situating this event in public spheres studies, this article demonstrates how the Hearst Corporation used representations of Cisneros to disrupt boundaries between political and commercial realms.

Notes

¹Many thanks to RR reviewers Brad Lucas and Jeremy Engels.

²The classic Revolutionary War era story of Jenny McCrea may also have inspired Hearst's representation of Evangelina Cisneros. The historiographical troping of revenge narratives (with respect to constructing the female captive) is detailed in Engels and Goodale's “‘Our Battle Cry Will Be: Remember Jenny McCrea!’: A Précis on the Rhetoric of Revenge.”

³The term Amazon arises frequently in nineteenth-century documentation on the Spanish-American war, invariably referring to Cuban women of color who joined men on the battlefield.