Listening to Salsa : Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican

title : Cultures Music/culture

author : Aparicio, Frances R.
publisher : Wesleyan University Press
isbn10 | asin : 0819563080
print isbn13 : 9780819563088
ebook isbn13 : 9780585370903
language : English
Salsa (Music)--Puerto Rico--History and criticism, Feminism and
subject music.
publication date : 1998
lcc : ML3535.5.A63 1998eb
ddc : 781.64
Salsa (Music)--Puerto Rico--History and criticism, Feminism and
subject : music.
Page i

Listening to Salsa
Page ii
MUSIC / CULTURE

A series from Wesleyan University Press

Edited by George Lipsitz, Susan McClary, and Robert Walser

Published titles

My Music by Susan D. Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, Charles Keil, and the Music in Daily Life Project

Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music by Robert Walser

Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West by Mark Slobin

Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue by Johnny Otis

Dissonant Identities: The Rock'n' Roll Scene in Austin, Texas by Barry Shank

Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Tricia Rose

Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital by Sarah Thornton

Music, Society, Education by Christopher Small

Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures by Frances Aparicio

Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology by Paul Thberge

Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theater by Edward Herbst

A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in Music from Basie to Motownand Beyond by Preston Love

Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening by Christopher Small

Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African American Music by Christopher Small

Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass's Akhnaten by John Richardson

Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience by Harris M. Berger
Page iii

Listening to Salsa
Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures

Frances R. Aparicio
Page iv

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
1998 by Frances R. Aparicio
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2
CIP data appear at the end of the book

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Every effort has been made to obtain permission from the copyright holders to reproduce the photograph on page 144.
A partial and earlier version of chapters 11 and 12 appeared in "'As Son': Salsa Music, Female Narratives, and Gender
(De)Construction in Puerto Rico," Poetics Today, Winter 1994.
Lyrics from "Ligia Elena" and "Ella se esconde" reprinted with permission of Rubn Blades Publications.
"Lleg de Roma" by Manuel Jimnez Canario, also known as "El Obispo." Copyright 1959 by Peer International
Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
"Tintorera del Mar" by Manuel Jimnez Canario. Copyright 1978 by Peer International Corporation. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
"Cuando las Mujeres Quieren a los Hombres" by Manuel Jimnez Canario. Copyright 1930 by Peer International
Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
"Somos Diferentes" by Pablo Beltrn Ruiz. Copyright 1945 by Editorial Mexicana de Msica Internacional S.A.
Administered by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. Used by
Permission.
"Obsession" by Pedro Flores. Copyright 1947 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
"Mujer" by Agustn Lara. Copyright 1931 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
"Arrncame la Vida" by Agustn Lara. Copyright 1934 by Promotora Hispano Americana de Msica S.A. Administered
by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
Continued on page 279
Page v

Dedicated to the puertorriqueas in my life,

to Mamita, my hermanas Diana and Vivian,
to my hijas chicana-riqueas
Gabriela and Camila,
and to all my Latina compaeras in culture.
Page vii

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi

Part I 1
The Danza and the Plena: Racializing Women, Feminizing Music
A Literary Prelude 3
Chapter 1 8
A White Lady Called the Danza
Chapter 2 27
A Sensual Mulatta Called the Plena
Chapter 3 45
Desiring the Racial Other: Rosario Ferr's Feminist Reconstructions of Danza
and Plena

Part II 63
The Plural Sites of Salsa
A Postmodern Preface 65
Chapter 4 69
Situating Salsa
Chapter 5 83
Ideological Negotiations: Between Hegemony and Resistance
Chapter 6 104
Cultural (Mis)Translations and Crossover Nightmares

Part III 119

Dissonant Melodies: Singing Gender, Desire, and Conflict
Theoretical Pretexts: Listening (as) Woman 121
Chapter 7 125
Woman as Absence: Hetero(homo)sexual Desire in the Bolero
Chapter 8 142
Patriarchal Synecdoches: Of Women's Butts and Feminist Rebuttals
Chapter 9 154
Singing the Gender Wars
Chapter 10 172
Singing Female Subjectivities

Part IV 185
As Somos, As Son: Rewriting Salsz
Listening to the Listeners: An Introduction 187
Chapter 11 191
As Son: Constructing Woman
Chapter 12 219
As Somos: Rewriting Patriarchy
Page viii
Afterword 239

Notes 247

Index of Songs and Recordings 281

General Index 283

Page ix

ILLUSTRATIONS

Piano Music for the Danza "Laura y Georgina" 18

Rafael Cortijo Playing the Timbales 36

Double Article Reviewing Salsa Concert and Rock Concert 71

Orquesta de la Luz 75

El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico 110

Daniel Santos, El inigualable 134

The New Xavier Cugat Orchestra CD Cover 144

Illustration in Abran Paso 145

La Lupe 180

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PREFACE

This book originally emerged out of my desire to give personal and cultural meaning to academic work, that is, out of a
profound need to reclaim the knowledge about Puerto Rican culture that had been denied to me through a colonial
education. But to limit the impact of this interdisciplinary study to the ways in which it has allowed for my personal
decolonization would not do justice to the larger issues it has provoked. By now it has become commonplace for prologues
to become personal confessions, a site, as postructuralists would say, for "locating the writing subject." As much as this
project has enhanced my own life, here I neither claim the role of organic intellectual (my upper-class upbringing limited
my identification with salsa music), nor do I feel compelled to "tell my story." Rather, a more productive framework for
these preliminary words would include tracing the process of the research project; reviewing the dilemmas, goals, and
tensions experienced by those of us who juggle popular culture in and out of the prudish and disembodied spaces of
academic production; and reflecting on the tenuous location that popular culture still holds in academe despite its
commodification as cutting-edge scholarship.

This interdisciplinary incursion is, first of all, an act of love toward the Latina/o culture and people. I have seen, among
those Latinas and Latinos whom I have known and loved, the destruction and pain that cultural displacement, exclusion,
and internalized colonialism can create. At the same time, I have also witnessed firsthand the strength that we hold in our
power of affiliation, cultural resistance, and reaffirmation. My efforts at analyzing our social contributions to popular music
sincerely reflect the respect, admiration, and responsibility that I feel toward these collective expressions, a cultural legacy
that was denied to me by my class upbringing and that this research project attempts to recover for myself, my daughters,
and for future students of Latino and Latina cultures.

Simultaneously, this project is a declaration of war. As a puertorriquea

Page xii
who still resists being labeled a ''feminist" scholar, I cannot but critique, from within, the traditional masculine discourse
that continues to imbue our everyday lives as Latinas/os with blatant objectifications and insidious mutings of women.
Thus, I must address those social contradictions posited by salsa and the larger Afro-Caribbean musical tradition from
which it emerges. Certainly, salsa by the very racial and class positionings of its composers and interpreters has
historically represented, because of its marginality, a delimited freedom with which to carve a space for social change and
for cultural resistance. However, as a musical industry dominated by men, salsa music continues to disseminate lyrics laden
with problematic, misogynist, and patriarchal representations of women. Thus, like other sites of popular music, it too
articulates the heterogeneous values and cultural negotiations of gender that Latinos and Latinas experience. While Afro-
Caribbean women, such as La Lupe, India, Celia Cruz, Deddie Romero, Olga Tan, Albita, and other emerging feminist
singers have sung with or against these discursive traditions, the politics of distribution and marketing, coupled with
masculinist historiography, have systematically rendered mute their voices, relegating them to the margins of mainstream
attention.

A revealing example of this marginalization is the September 1994 issue of Latin Beat, dedicated to salseras and, more
generally, to Latina musicians. "The Women's Issue," as it is titled, textually embodies the problematic location of women
within the industry and their ensuing contradictory representations. While many of the articles, authored by men, attempt
to contest women's invisibility and document the musical contributions of Latinas such as La India, Gloria Estefan, Selena,
Deddie Romero and of female groups like La Noreste and Wild Mango, 1 the "special" nature of this issue reveals the
systematic invisibility of women in Latin Beat's regular issues and in the music industry in general while emphasizing
their extraordinary, marked presence as women within the male-dominated world of popular music.2 In an otherwise
honest and productive attempt to render Latinas visible, "The Women's Issue" nonetheless frames women's professional
success as derivative. That is, it emphasizes the woman's genetic predispositions to music making (as in the case of Deddie
Romero, who comes from a family of musicians); it explains the woman's success as a result of her male mentoring and
management, as the brief discussion of La India suggests.

Eroticizing associations, analogous to the objectifying discourse of merengue and salsa songs, continue to inform
descriptions of female groups such as the Bay Area's Wild Mango.3 In Cali, Colombia, where eleven female salsa bands
have emerged since 1990, Olga Luca Rivas attests
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to the ways in which the male producers and managers exert their power in choosing the names of the groups. In addition,
they also determine the provocative clothing that many of the women felt personally uncomfortable wearing
onstage. 4 Briefly put, while Latina musicians and singers are gradually becoming more visible, their representation within
the music industry is systematically mediated by male gaze and authority.

Here I share with Tricia Rose her very tenuous position as a woman of color working on a musical tradition that has been
culturally oppositional yet deemed as egregiously misogynist. Like Rose, who was asked why she defended rap and why
she would consider Salt and Pepa as feminists when they wore high heels and lipstick, I have also found myself having to
explain the ambiguities of women's participation in salsa as both subjects and objects. Taking salseras seriously means
grappling with the ideological complexities behind feminist Latina singers who wear high heels and bright red lipstick and
perform seminaked, a tension that emerges, in part, from imposing Anglo feminist values on a particular Latina aesthetics
of the body.

Intercultural tensions such as the above became particularly striking when I presented my work in progress to various
cultural audiences. When lecturing on gender and salsa music to a predominantly Anglo audience, I was always wary, and
rightly so, that my feminist analysis of the lyrics would reaffirm the all-powerful images of macho Latinos that circulate in
this country.5Simultaneously, when sharing my work with Latina/o audiences, I found that many Latino men would try
to undermine the impact of salsa's sexism by reminding me that contemporary salsa male singers in the 1990s (e.g., Gilberto
Santa Rosa) were representing women in much more sensitive Ways and that machismo in salsa was really a thing of the
past. While I recognize that in the 1970s salsa songs articulated much more blatant forms of violence against women, I am
still convinced that neither salsa, the merengue, nor the bolero has yet transcended any of the masculinist tendencies that I
identify here. Even now, when the participation of women salsa performers has increased, the authorial control over
composition is still very much in the hands and pens of male composers and producers. Strong, radically feminist voices
such as La Lupe's have been relegated to the margins; women's central role in the early stages of salsa's development has
been dismissed by music historians.

With emerging figures such as La India and Albita Rodrguez, along with the posthumous renaissance of La Lupe's works,
I hope that my present gender critique will be deemed outdated. In fact, the fast rhythm of change in popular culture today
makes this type of study vulnerable to quickly losing its timeliness. Yet the question is not whether salsa is still machista.
Rather, how does this music continue to inscribe gender, how is
Page xiv

it gendered itself, and what is the impact of gender politics on its listeners? As Tricia Rose has eloquently explained, we
need to confront the contradictions in popular expressions and "incorporate them into an analysis which explores how and
why they retain currency not simply dismiss them because they do not measure up to an imaginary standard of politically
consistent expression." 6

While some Latino men have felt a strong ambivalence and even disavowal toward my work, it is in the act of "speaking
the unpleasant," to borrow a phrase by Adalberto Aguirre Jr., and at the risk of being labeled a "vendida" (as Sonia Saldvar-
Hull reminds Latina feminists) that I have found it possible to unite individual conscience and a desire for social
change.7 Some years ago, when I first taught a graduate course on popular music and contemporary Puerto Rican literature
at the University of Michigan, a Latina student came to my office to inform me that she was going to drop the class because
the feminist perspectives and critiques of salsa music that we discussed in the classroom were beginning to cause too many
conflicts in her relationship with her fianc. He was angry at her deconstructions of his favorite songs, lyrics that he
identified as part of his national culture and that reminded him of his childhood in the Caribbean. Salsa was for him a tool
for cultural reaffirmation. His anger at her feminist "betrayal" was channeled at the professor, accusing me of invading and
destroying his own popular culture and musical legacy with those feminist ideas. He asserted that I did not have the right,
as an intellectual (and as a woman?), to invade this cultural space nor to trespass on his personal life.

After a long conversation with my student, I persuaded her to finish the semester but not without having to reflect on my
role as a Latina scholar working on popular culture. Leaving my office that late afternoon, I was reminded of the
immeasurable power that we hold as teachers of popular culture and of issues of everyday life, a power that had affected
the personal life and intimate relationship of one of my students. Although this power was intimidating, I also felt the
greatest satisfaction and joy ever in my years of teaching, for then I realized that this course was transforming students'
values, attitudes, and ways of being.

This incident underscored the fact that teaching popular culture is beginning to radicalize traditional notions of how and
by whom knowledge is produced. Thus, the issue for me is not whether students have read the most fashionable and
required theory or literary texts or literary criticism as a quantifiable measure of their erudition but rather whether the
course and the readings promote the potential for personal and social transformations in my students, myself, and our
communities through the sharing of interdisciplinary approaches to culture.
Page xv

The case detailed above also introduced me to the difficulties of attempting to bridge academic values and popular
practices, what I call mixing deconstruction with dancing. When I go dancing to Latin music with my Latino and Latina
friends, they often complain that my analysis spoils their fun. Perhaps that is the curse shared by cultural studies scholars,
for we furnish evidence that there is no such thing as "pure" or unmediated cultural pleasure. However, the greatest danger
here lies in assuming that cultural critique is the exclusive product of academic training. As Part Four of this book
demonstrates, the most profound and serious theorizing about the meanings of salsa came from working-class Latinas who
articulated the ways in which they negotiate salsa music and culture to reimagine themselves and their relationships with
men.

Although popular culture is not yet fully institutionalized and rather tenuously accepted and acceptable, many cultural
critics, including myself, have accrued true material benefits and professional privileges from our incursions into popular
culture. While these contradictory circumstances have allowed for the publication of studies that might otherwise have
been deemed irrelevant, the danger lies in accepting such privileges without questioning them, without assuming a degree
of accountability to the "masses" musicians and artists on whom we depend. To assume this accountability implies pushing
academe into accepting the public role of intellectuals, rather than letting cultural analysis become another item in the
assembly line of intellectual activity, extracted from the everyday lives in which popular culture emerges. This means
advocating, through our work, for the value of publishing outside exclusively academic journals and convincing our
colleagues that learning should not be quantifiably measured by how many European and Anglo intellectuals one can
quote but by the social and cultural impact of our ideas and actions. In short, it means taking risks to transform the
dangerously comfortable spaces that we inhabit as intellectuals.

This book addresses the relations between gender and Latin popular music in ways that escape a particular disciplinary
approach, weaving the voices of Puerto Rican literary texts and Latin popular music to unify its different parts. (Unless
otherwise noted, all translations are my own.) What began in 1987 as a research project that examined the presence of
popular music in contemporary Puerto Rican narratives grew into a larger and more complex interdisciplinary enterprise
that deploys both musical and literary texts as equally significant cultural voices in exploring larger questions about the
power of discourse, gender relations, intercultural desire, race, ethnicity, and class. What seemed, at first, a book project on
music and literature in the manner of comparative literature, began to define itself
Page xvi

gradually as a book on culture and gender (not without the wonderful insistence of my former colleague, Eliana Rivero).
Since 1990, when the University of Michigan "discovered" me as a potentially interesting cultural studies and Latina scholar,
my research questions began to change through stimulating intellectual exchanges in the Program in American Culture,
where our own brand of cultural studies, informed by theories of race and ethnicity, was beginning to emerge. This
community has offered me larger "culturescapes" in which to locate my own intellectual preoccupations. In the route from
the deserts of Arizona to the bookish culture of Ann Arbor, this book began to take on a life of its own.

Rather than a history of women salseras, or interpreters, which is sorely needed, this book offers readers cultural studies
interventions into gender, culture, and music. It deals with the gendering of music and with the ways that music negotiates
gender roles. It focuses mostly on Puerto Rican music, but it necessarily connects these with Cuban and other Latina/o
musical forms. The central musical references that I use emerged mostly from their presence in the nueva narrativa of Puerto
Rico. For instance, Rosario Ferr's short stories, demonstrating her fascination with the cultural history of Ponce,
highlighted the danza and the plena. Luis Rafael Snchez's rewritings of boleros and Ana Lydia Vega's feminist narratives
on salsa, urban life, and sexual politics in San Juan all directed me to the particular songs used in this book. In their literary
works, these authors intuited how larger discursive structures and cultural texts mediate gender, race, class, and ethnic
identities.

The first part, "The Danza and the Plena: Racializing Women, Feminizing Music," is a detailed genealogy of the patriarchal
discursive tradition in Puerto Rico that has juxtaposed the danza and the plena, two central forms of Puerto Rican Creole
music, as either white or black. Here I also identify the patriarchal strategy of feminizing music evident in canonized and
foundational Puerto Rican essays since the end of the nineteenth century, a nationalist discourse that still informs the works
of contemporary male writers such as Edgardo Rodrguez Juli and Antonio Bentez Rojo, otherwise lauded for their
postmodern and hybrid approaches to Caribbean culture. This first part, then, discusses the historical gendering of music
and the resistance of the dominant sector against the Africanization or creollization of European dance forms, the
concomitant racialization of women in Puerto Rican society, and issues of interracial desire explored in the short stories of
Puerto Rico's major feminist writer, Rosario Ferr, whose work I read as oppositional rewritings of this patriarchal
discursive tradition.

"The Plural Sites of Salsa" (Part Two) constitutes a postmodern analysis that attempts to escape the futile efforts of defining
salsa as ideologically
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homogeneous. By offering a critical collage of diverse and conflicting deftnitions of salsa music proposed by musicians,
musicologists, and intellectuals and by unmasking the nationalist underpinnings of various texts about salsa, this section
strives to illuminate the heterogeneous social and political locations in which salsa has been inserted. Despite its
panCaribbean genealogy, salsa has been deployed as a marker of national identity by Cubans and Puerto Ricans alike, and
it has also been a marker of racial and class conflict in Puerto Rico during the 1980s. Within the postcolonial conditions of
the diaspora, U.S. Latino/a communities engage this music as a space for cultural reaffirmation. To complicate matters
further, salsa music also is being constructed by Anglo audiences, who, in many ways, continue to give it meaning in
eroticizing and depoliticizing modes, thus engaging in a process of feminization analogous to what I discuss in Part One.
Here, however, issues of crossover, appropriation, and cultural (mis)translation are salient, given the cross-cultural and
colonial underpinnings of this context.

The third section, "Dissonant Melodies: Singing Gender, Desire, and Conflict," is perhaps the most expectedly traditional
approach from a scholar "disciplined" in literary criticism. While I originally wanted to avoid a monodisciplinary reading
of songs as literary texts, the dearth of studies in gender and Latin(o) popular music creates the need to situate some
overarching representations and images of women within particular musical forms such as the bolero, salsa, merengue,
and rap. Here I argue that the motif of the "absent woman" in the boleros coincides with modernization, urbanization, and
women's systematic entrance into the labor force since the 1930s, that is, with women's departure from an exclusively
domestic realm. Together, as Afro-Caribbean musical forms, salsa, merengue, and rap share figurations of black women
and mulattas as food to be consumed and continue to articulate ambivalent feelings of both desire for and disavowal of the
mulatta through the synecdoche of her rhythmic butt. This patriarchal image, in turn, is appropriated "rebutted" by female
musicians, such as Lisa M, who deploy it to reaffirm their own power over men.

Equally urgent is the need to insert less well-known women's voices into the discussion of male-inflected lyrics, thus
offering the reader/listener a dialogic medley of gender, desire, and conflict as they are articulated in song. Of particular
significance is the shift in lyrics about gender relations between men and women, mostly during the 1970s. Analogous to
the conflictive dynamics between men and women that Deborah Pacini Hernndez identifies in Bachata: A Social History of
a Dominican Popular Music, salsa music of the 1970s is also characterized by male anger and hostility toward women, thus
articulating "the growing social and economic as well as
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emotional tensions between men and women" that ensued from urban migration and economic transformations in the
household. 8 The medley in Part Three also examines the bolero, traditionally deemed heterosexual, romantic music in
Latin America, through contemporary homoerotic rewritings by Luis Rafael Snchez and Iris Zavala.

The final part of this study, "As Somos, As Son: Rewriting Salsa," is the most innovative in light of the dearth of audience
research on salsa music in the Latina/o community, with the exception of Edgardo Daz Daz's ground-breaking study of
a Latin club in Austin, Texas. After listening to salsa songs for years, I realized that neither textual nor discourse analysis
would offer an adequate venue for understanding issues of audience reception and what Henry Giroux has called the
moment of "the produerive." Most Latin American cultural analysts prefer their own individual readings and analysis of
verbal, visual, or even musical lyrics over what the "masses" may have to say. Very little cultural analysis integrates
theorizing with the voices and ideas of those outside academe. Even the highly praised works about the masses and popular
sectors by Nstor Garca Canclini, Beatriz Sarlo, Jess Martn Barbero, and Ariel Dorfman fail to incorporate these
perspectives.9 Notwithstanding the primary role of these works in establishing the terrain of popular culture since the 1970s
and 1980s as a serious field of inquiry, this domain remains a scholarly territory inhabited and articulated by a chosen few
of the intelligentsia. Some Latin Americanists have even expressed an elite-ridden anxiety over the perceived
mainstreaming of mass culture and the concomitant demise of the written word.10 In this light, little has been advanced in
terms of democratizing the production of knowledge about popular culture. This final section, then, constitutes what I call
the critical praxis of "listening to the listeners," allowing their voices and their experiences as producers of meaning(s), to
complement my own feminist readings in Part Three.

The materials for this audience research emerged out of lengthy interviews with eight working-class Latinas from Detroit
and Ann Arbor, Michigan, ten Latina students at University of Michigan, and eight Latinos from Ann Arbor. Interviews
began with a series of questions regarding age, class, national origin, migration, and musical tastes and practices and
continued with open-ended questions about two songs, "As son" by El Gran Combo and Willie Coln's "Cuando fuiste
mujer," which were played during the interview. These two songs were selected among innumerable other possibilities,
first, because Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo Filippi had chosen "As son" as an epigraph to their own story and thus,
as a recognizable cultural text among Puerto Ricans. Willie Coln's song was chosen because it represents a sample of salsa
romnticaso in
Page xix

vogue now. Although I do not engage in ethnographic work per se (i.e., as participant observer), these interviews constitute,
I hope, a small but important contribution to much-needed audience research on salsa.

Given the tools of ethnography, it is no longer sufficient to speak about popular culture without including the voices and
knowledge of others. Too many of us think of ourselves as democratic, socialist, or even radical scholars, yet we speak only
from written interventions that privilege our own voices and those of other "experts" to the exclusion of nonacademic
perspectives. Moreover, how radical can this scholarship be when theorizing is still protected as the exclusive power of
those formally "educated"? Or when this scholarship is not accessible to those nonacademic or "popular" sectors who indeed
finance those very same cultural products? While I am fully aware that this book, as it is now written for an academic
audience, may not necessarily be accessible to those outside our well-guarded territory, we must continue to strive toward
expanding the dialogue beyond academic settings, thus reaching via radio, journals, television, and newspapers the very
communities that constitute popular culture. If we continue to speak to each other implosivdy, like a concentric force that
rejects any "outside" dement, then our work will fail to truly radicalize the production of knowledge that has kept popular
culture outside the canon.

Over more than six years this book was made, unmade, and remade by many others besides the designated author. First, I
want to acknowledge the financial support that I received from The Ford Foundation/National Research Council for the
postdoctoral fellowship in 198788 that allowed me to initiate this project. In addition, the University of Michigan generously
granted me two semester-long leaves of absence and a small research grant, the latter funded by the Office of the Vice-
Provost for Research. I especially want to thank Dr. Lester Monts, Vice-Provost for Academic and Multicultural Affairs, for
allowing me the uninterrupted time to complete the first draft of the book during the fall of 1994.

I also want to thank my previous colleagues and wonderful compaeras, Eliana Rivero and Elizabeth B. Davis, with whom
I shared very difficult years in the canculas of Arizona and who also had the pleasure of being cocolas displaced in the
southwestern regions of the country. Thanks also to those friends and scholars at University of California, Berkeley, who
made the 198788 fellowship year a most special time in my life: Marisol BerrosMiranda, Shannon Dudley, Pablo Furman,
Quique Cruz, Lichi Fuentes. Together they provided me with important knowledge about Latin American music and with
long fiestas and real music making, en fin, with a comunidadmusical.

Words of appreciation are merited by those colleagues and scholars

Page xx

whose work and commitment to popular music have enhanced my perspectives here, including Deborah Pacini
Hernndez, Juan Flores, Jorge Prez Roln, Peter Manuel, George Lipsitz, Robin Kelley, Steve Loza, Manuel Pea, Jorge
Duany, Angel Quintero Rivera, and Edgardo Daz Daz. My warmest gratitude to Don Pedro Malavet Vega, who graciously
shared with me his books about popular music in Puerto Rico in the very early stages of the project, and to Ral Fernndez,
whose erudition as a cocolo has been extremely helpful. I owe particular gratitude to those friends, colleagues, and students
who have read, commented on, and edited parts of the manuscript at different stages: Francine Masiello, Doris Sommer,
Laura Prez, Susana Chvez-Silverman, and Cndida Jquez. Lisa Quiroga and Wilson Valentn worked as my research
assistants in the stages of interviewing. I also want to thank Margarita de la Vega Hurtado, who bought books for me on
salsa and cancioneros during her frequent trips to Colombia; Lise Waxer, who has been in touch from Illinois and Cali,
Colombia, sharing ideas and materials; and Bridget Morgan, for her generosity in sharing resources and materials with me.
To Christina Jos-Kampfner a thank you from el corazn for her solidarity. To Renee Moreno and especially to Alexandra
Marchevsky and Brenda Crdenas who worked as my research assistants, an immense thanks for their attention to detail
and style and for their lucid suggestions. I also want to thank Eileen McWilliam, Suzanna Tamminen, and the staff at
University Press of New England for their support and professional attention.

I want to thank personally El Gran Combo and Derek Cartagena, Rubn Blades, and Willie Coln for their generosity in
sharing their lyrics and photos for this book. Also, my gratitude to Ms. Claire Johnston from Peer International for being
practical and realistic in her licensing agreement. Mercedes Prez Glass from Ansonia Records helped me track down some
record companies. Sonia Alvarez from ASCAP and Jessie Lema at BMI spent many hours identifying music publishers for
numerous songs; Jason Baluyut, from the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan,
spent an inordinate amount of time sending and receiving faxes.

Unfortunately, I was not able to quote directly many of the songs performed by women, nor was I able to publish some
photos that would have enhanced my discussion on women in music. While some producers did not cooperate, others
were difficult to locate and still others charged too high a fee. However, these were the exception. Most of the individuals
that I worked with showed a genuine interest and enthusiasm for this book and were very generous in allowing me to
share these materials with my readers. Muchas gracias a todos!
Page xxi

I feel deep gratitude to my parents, Jorge and Vicky, who initially expressed reservations about this work but who came
through, as parents always do, by becoming my Puerto Rico-based research assistants. My immense love and debt go to
Julio, from whom I have learned about activismo, dedication, and integrity; and to my daughters, Gabriela and Camila, who
have had to sacrifice the pleasures of having a mother available twenty-four hours a day but who, in the process, have
learned to recognize practices of gender exclusion as well as the dave beat. Without their unconditional love and their
unexpected patience, this book would not have been written. Last but not least, I want to recognize the contribution of all
the Latinas and Latinos who were interviewed for this project. Coming from settings as diverse as Detroit and Ann Arbor,
these voices, in my opinion, made this book a truly interdisciplinary and collective project, offering insights that I could
have never articulated on my own. Gracias!
Page 1

PART ONE
THE DANZA AND THE PLENA:
RACIALIZING WOMEN, FEMINIZING MUSIC

Page 3

A Literary Prelude

Music is a Woman.
Richard Wagner

The logic of binary oppositions appears to have become an obsessive fatal attraction.
Henry Giroux, Border Crossings

Whether or not we can in fact escape from the structuring imposed by language
is one of the major questions facing feminist and non-feminist thinkers today.
Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, New French Feminisms

In 1975, when Rosario Ferr first published ''When Women Love Men" in the journal Zona de carga y descarga, the story
"caused a terrible scandal" because it honored the memory of Isabel "La Negra" Luberza, a famous or infamous black
prostitute from Ponce, also Ferr's hometown, who had been shot to death in a drug-related homicide. The black-and-white
format of the journal highlighted the racial binary examined in the story as well as mourning for this controversial Afro-
Puerto Rican woman. Because Ferr's story contained "every obscene word in existence," the Ramayo brothers, who had
been partially financing the publication of Zona, decided to withdraw their support, a decision that ultimately led to the
demise of this radical and historically significant journal. 1
Prophetically, this scandal prefigured the continuing and profound impact that this short story has had on Puerto Rican
letters and on Latin American feminism. Like "The Youngest Doll" and "Sleeping Beauty," "When Women Love Men" has
been one of Rosario Ferr's most widely read and analyzed short stories.2 The author's personal and revealing essays
examining the genesis of this story in Spanish titled "Por qu quiere Isabel a los hombres?" and in English, "Why I Wrote
'When Women Love Men'" evince its canonized status as one of the most representative texts of Puerto Rican feminist
writing.3 "When Women Love Men" portrays the contradictions and desires of two socially opposed female characters:
Isabel
Page 4

Luberza, a white aristocratic lady and wife to Ambrosio, and Isabel La Negra, a black prostitute. Both love Ambrosio, and
after his death they have an encounter that is simultaneously competitive and mutually desirous. The ending, which has
led critics to categorize the story as "fantastic," suggests a fusion of both women into one indivisible entity.

In this light, most critics have read the story as an articulation of the common oppression of all women, regardless of their
race or class status. 4 This particular reading, informed by Elaine Showalter's concept of a "woman's culture," erases the
power differentials among women in diverse race and class locations and fails to show these gender(ed) identities as
problematic constructs in Puerto Rican patriarchal discourse. It is now compelling to situate this story, as well as two other
less-read stories from Papeles de Pandora (The youngest doll), within a tradition and against the grain of a white,
Eurocentric patriarchal discourse in Puerto Rico that has historically constructed women within a racial binary: white
ladies, black prostitutes. In this first part of this book I analyze how these sexual and racial iconographies have been
imposed on the discourse of musicology and, more generally, on discussions of national and cultural identity within the
Puerto Rican essay tradition.

In her article "Papeles de Pandora: Devastacin y ruptura," Ivette Lpez Jimnez alludes to the "paradigmatic" level of
Rosario Ferr's stories. This term, coined by Juri Lotman, refers to the presence of allusions, references, and borrowed
discourse (intertexts) from cultural areas outside literature per se. Thus, the meaning of the text is structured around other
systems of signs or cultural expressions, such as music, art, journalism, and the like.5 Like other stories in The Youngest Doll,
''When Women Love Men" is indeed constituted by musical intertexts and subtexts (source texts) that refer the reader to
the terrain of Puerto Rican popular culture, particularly to the Afro-Puerto Rican musical forms of plenas and bombas and
to the European-derived danza. The integration of popular codes within the literary text, evidence of a postmodern poetics,
possesses significant political, cultural, and literary repercussions. As Juan G. Gelp and other critics have observed, the
use of extraliterary references and allusions, particularly those regarding popular music and mass culture, has become since
the early 1970s a countercanonical strategy that democratizes literature and destabilizes the patriarchal and elite ideologies
that had characterized Puerto Rican literature since the end of the nineteenth century. This earlier patriarchal literary
discourse is clearly represented in the writings of Salvador Brau, for example, and reaches its apex with the rhetoric of
"cultural nationalism" in the works of the generation of the 1930s: Antonio Pedreira, Toms Blanco, and Ren Marqus.6
Page 5

Musical subtexts and intertexts suggest, first of all, a new definition and location of the literary text that questions and
displaces the privileged site of literature as an art for and by the elite. The postmodern politics of integrating popular
music neither classical nor art music within fiction destabilizes the modern(ist) notion of art as a space exempt from the
"vulgar" reality of the masses: it questions the idea of literature as a new reality that can substitute for and transcend the
social spaces of the masses. As Henry Giroux explains,

In treating cultural forms as texts, postmodernism multiplies both the possibilities of constructing meaning as well
as the status of meaning itself. In this sense, postmodernism redraws and retheorizes the objects and experiences
of politics by extending the reach of power and meaning to spheres of the everyday that are often excluded from
the realm of political analysis and pedagogical legitimation. In this case, the field of political contestation is not
restricted to the state or the workplace, but also includes the family, mass and popular culture, the sphere of
sexuality, and the terrain of the refused and forgotten. 7

In Puerto Rico, this postmodernism that blurs the boundaries between the elite and the popular has been engaged in by
writers who reexamine, contest, and ultimately deconstruct the hegemonic articulations of Puerto Rican culture.8 Among
these dominant paradigms one central social construct remains: the unified, homogeneous, and harmonic society devoid
of racial and social conflict, emblematized by the image of the gran familia puertorriquea, a central political, cultural, and
social rhetoric on the island since the early part of the century.

This image originated in the writings and political discourse of the hacendados (landowners), in their dealings with the
Spanish colonialist government during the latter half of the nineteenth century. It was later activated as a strategic response
to the economic and social displacement suffered by them after 1898, precisely as U.S. absentee capitalism began to buy
and mechanize the sugar production process previously controlled by this sector. According to Arcadio Daz Quiones, by
the 1930s the Puerto Rican economy was virtually monopolized by U.S. corporations and by a Puerto Rican bourgeoisie
that was both "allied and subordinated" to the interests of the metropolises. Another sector of the bourgeoisie, however,
had remained displaced by these transformations, and thus its members and heirs attempted to create alliances with the
workers' movement in order to confront the colonial power.

There emerged, then, two bourgeois sectors in conflict: the displaced, anticolonialist group and the new bourgeoisie that
benefited from the U.S. presence in the Puerto Rican sugar-based economy.9To garner the support of the workers for an
anti-U.S. stance, the political party of the displaced
 Page 6

landowners summoned up the image of the patriarchal dynamics that structured the haciendas in the past, within
the semifeudal relations under which workers and patrons (padrinos) lived together (convivencia) on the same terrain
and social unit, the latter protecting and even acting as family (padrinos) to the former (the workers), who provided
the labor force necessary for profit making. A homogenizing discourse of unity, harmony, and most
important, convivencia was produced by the heirs of this displaced social sector.

This discourse, however, was exclusionary and hegemonic by its very subject location. It has resurfaced throughout
the twentieth century, particularly during the 1930s, when writers like Antonio Pedreira, Toms Blanco, and later
Ren Marqus, as descendants of the displacedhacendado families, yearn for a nostalgic recuperation of this
preindustrial and premodern past. As Arcadio Daz Quiones has observed, the patriarchal icon of the gran familia
puertorriquea has emerged historically during times of crisis against the colonial presence of the United States.
Puerto Rican bourgeois writers have invoked an ideal past that never truly materialized, by locating social harmony
and convivencia within a specific historical time and space (Ponce, the haciendas, and pre-1898). Thus, they were able
to displace the gaze of their readers from a present moment of strife, social conflict, racial emergence of the black
proletariat, women's participation in labor, migration to the cities, and a more visibly heterogeneous society to the
tenets of a historical period very much desired strategically. To contest the presence of the United States in Puerto
Rico, writers like Antonio Pedreira and Toms Blanco constructed a bipolar tension between Anglo values imposed
by the colonizing and imperialist power and the old, traditional and safe values held by the white, European-bred
Puerto Rican aristocracy.

The ensuing hispanophilia, a result of this discourse of resistance against Anglo domination, underlies Puerto Rican
cultural discourse even today. For instance, the conflicting views currently voiced concerning Puerto Rican literature
in the United States written in English and about the diasporic community that produces it are excellent examples
of how this hispanophilia informs controversies around Puerto Rican identity. The discourse of resistance against
U.S. colonialism that has emerged on the island has led, ironically, to a static, fixed, and preterite construct of
puertoricanness that excludes and silences those "other" Puerto Ricans of the diaspora. This attitude, however,
should not be dismissed as arbitrarily reactionary, but it must be understood in terms of its historical genesis, that
is, as an initial expression of resistance.

Music, gender, and race necessarily converge in tracing this genealogy of

Page 7

patriarchal and phallocentric power that men have held, both sexually and discursively, over Puerto Rican women of all
racial configurations. Moreover, art music as well as particular forms of popular music have been consistently mediated by
images of women, that is, feminized in a pejorative and problematic way. In the terrain of musicology, as Susan McLary
notes, this feminization assumes diverse values and meanings, contingent on its historical moment and on the writers own
ideology. 10Nevertheless, it is clear that the gendered icons of music in Puerto Rican patriarchal discourse subsume race
and class factors.
In this larger, interdisciplinary framework, Rosario Ferr's short story, which suggests an integration of Afro-Puerto Rican
plenas with the European aristocratic danzas, white ladies with black whores, and desire with erotic pleasure can be better
understood not only as a feminist text by a Puerto Rican woman writer but as a feminist text that also speaks to and from
a Puerto Rican history of racial and discursive constructs. Located within this broader historical and discursive frame,
"When Women Love Men" is not reduced to a text that speaks to the homogenized oppression of all women but instead
emerges as a polemical fictional rendering of the cultural dualities and oppositions that mark westernized, masculine
writing.11 By opposing plena versus danza, black versus white, and pleasure versus desire, Rosario Ferr contests the
bourgeois literary tradition that has authored, and authorized, patriarchal definitions of women, of music, and of culture.
She proposes new modes of writing and reading a national Puerto Rican cultural identity in more complex and, hopefully,
democratic ways. Invoking Judith Butler, I have chosen to read Ferr's story as "a genealogical critique" that "refuses to
search for the origins of gender" and instead "investigates the political stakes in designating as an origin and cause those
identity categories that are in fact the effects of institutions, practices, discourses with multiple and diffuse points of
origin.''12 In other words, Isabel Luberza and Isabel La Negra are significant as culminations of and, simultaneously, as
deconstructive icons of this patriarchal discursive tradition.
Page 8

Chapter One
A White Lady Called the Danza

The Puerto Rican danza is a particular dance form that evolved from the English and European country dance
(contradanza) and became transculturated in the Caribbean. While the term danza in Spanish usually refers to dance in
general, in the Caribbean the danza is closely associated with the Cuban habanera or danzn, to which it is related. Most
scholarship on the danza focuses on its much-debated origins, locating its genesis as far back as the cantigas of Alfonso X
the Wise, as Samuel R. Quiones does, or in the Spanish country dance, which entered Puerto Rico through Colombian
immigration in 1813, as Cesreo Rosa Nieves suggests. 1 Historically, the danza became the national music of the island,
representing in fact the hegemonic interests of the dominant class sector at the turn of the century and throughout its first
half. At present the Puerto Rican danza is regarded more as an art form than as popular music or dance, thus following the
dominant ideology that has constructed it as the dance that evokes the yesteryears of the haciendas, as many rum and
cigarette advertisements produced in Puerto Rico continue to do.

However, the danza has also evolved into new songs, with political content and social protest, and it has recently been
revitalized by popular singers in Puerto Rico. The political value of this musical form as a vehicle for resistance against
imperialism, against tyranny, and against hegemony has been systematically silenced throughout Puerto Rican history.
The African heritage that forms part of its structure and musical texture also has been subjected to erasure through
systematic efforts to whitewash African-derived cultural elements from Puerto Rico's social imaginary. A closer
genealogical look at the danza as textualized in essays and literary texts since the late nineteenth century will reveal in
more complex detail the patriarchal and hegemonic motivations underlying racial and gender- and classbased inscriptions.
Page 9

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

In 1849, Manuel A. Alonso published El Gbaro in Spain, where he had lived for seven years. 2The fifth chapter of this first
exemplar of Puerto Rican literature is dedicated to the "bailes de Puerto Rico" [dances of Puerto Rico], which he categorizes
as three: (1) dances of society, which are no more than the echo or repetition of those of Europe (he includes the country
dance and the waltz as examples); (2) the properly Puerto RicanCreole hybrid dance forms, which Alonso names "bailes
degarabato"; and (3) the "bailes de bomba,'' the "least important" for the author, those of African origin that have not been
"generalized ever." Alonso, in fact, does not describe or mention examples of the last because, as he explains, black dances
"do not merit inclusion under the title of this chapter, for even though they are seen in Puerto Rico, they have not been
generalized" [no merecen incluirse bajo el titulo de esta escena, pues aunque se yen en Puerto Rico, nunca se han
generalizado].

Thus, in 1849, writing from Spain, Alonso deems invisible and unimportant the cultural presence and production of the
African population in Puerto Rico. Given their still unemancipated status as slaves, the "politics of inclusion" of African
popular forms was surely not a consideration for his elite reading public. Historically, indeed, the plena, the popular Afro-
Puerto Rican dance and song form, does not truly emerge as a singular, delineated musical form until the beginnings of the
twentieth century, precisely when the African population migrates into the cities to constitute an emerging urban
proletariat. At the time of Alonso's writing, however, the bomba was performed as a primary musical expression for the
slaves in the plantation societies. Alonso's utter dismissal of this song and dance form ensues from the marginalized status
of African cultural expressions, from their social construction as primitive, and from their invisibility in the national
paradigm.

Alonso engages centrally in the feminization of music as he describes the country dance being performed in Puerto Rico:

Sus pasos adquieren mayor encanto con la gracia de las hijas del Trpico; es imposible seguir con la vista los
movimientos de una de aquellas morenitas de mirar lnguido, cintura delgada y pie pequeo, sin que el corazn
se delate queriendo salir del pecho. . . .

Oh hijas de mi patria! nadie os iguala en el baile, nadie derrama como vosotras ese raudal de fuego puro como
vuestras frentes, ni esa voluptuosidad encantadora que solo nace en nuestro clima.

[These steps acquire greater charm with the graciousness of the daughters of the Tropics; it is impossible to follow
with one's eyes the movements of one of those
Page 10

dark-skinned, young women with languid gaze, slender waistline and small feet, without having one's heart reveal
itself wanting to come out of one's chest. . . .

[Oh daughters of my fatherland! no one surpasses you in dancing, nobody spills over like you that fire, pure like
your foreheads, nor that charming voluptuosity that is only born in our climate.]

In Alonso's eyes, the European country dance is enhanced by the tropicalizing effect, indeed the transcultural elements, of
the Caribbean culture, here discursively equated with the Caribbean climate and its biological product, the Creole female,
the daughters of the Tropics [hijas del Trpico]. From exile, Alonso's desire for the Puerto Rican woman and her beauty
finds a language that channels that absence into nostalgia for the land, the music, and the women. Puerto Rico (the
fatherland, the patria), the music, and women converge as a master metaphor for the distance imposed by his student years
in exile away from his native island. The central epithets employed to describe Caribbean women the languid look,
graciousness, and charming voluptuosity, the "randal de fuego puro," the fire and heat that emanate from the women's
bodies while they dance prevail in Puerto Rican cultural discourse.

In a similar vein, Amaury Veray, a composer, musicologist, and radical nationalist thinker explained, in an essay published
in 1956, the change from the rigid rhythms of the country dance to the flexibility and arpeggiotype structure of the Puerto
Rican danza as the expression of an overarching tropics: "Se dijero [sic] que vena a satisfacer este ademn de facilidad
mediante el cual los trpicos expresan sus manifestaciones artsticas" [It may be said that (the changes) satisfied this gesture
of facility by which the tropics expresses its artistic manifestations]. 3

Across the Atlantic, Alonso's male gaze imagines and discursively constructs a Puerto Rican woman Creole or
mulatta who possesses both a European-associated languor and an African-derived sensuality, a voluptuosity that Sander
Gilman has identified in its medical and aesthetic repercussions throughout Europe.4 This languor will continue to be
associated with the Puerto Rican danza and its concomitant aristocratic lady, the dama, while the African-derived
sensuality, dangerous promiscuity, and voluptuosity will characterize the discourse about the plena, about AfroPuerto
Rican music in general, and analogously, about the mulatta and black woman.5

Salvador Brau's essay "La danza puertorriquea," first published in 1885 in the Almanaque de damas [Almanac for ladies]
corrects Manuel Alonso's romantic description of the tropicalized country dance, the contradanza.6 A master figure of
positivism and heir to the values of the Enlightenment, Brau denounces the juvenile enthusiasm and the nostalgic tone
underlying
Page 11

Alonso's romanticized evocation of the country dance. Brau follows his critique with an explanation of the differences
between the European country dance, a figure dance, and the Puerto Rican danza, whose main part, called the merengue
(named for its sweet tone and nature), was at the time performed by individual couples, a transformation that signaled an
ideological shift from a premodern collectivity to an ascending individualism marked by Western capitalism. 7

Brau traces the transculturation of the European country dance in Puerto Rico to around 1842 or 1843, when a new dance
from Havana, Cuba, known as upa or merengue, began to displace the traditional country dance. While this thesis has been
the most widely accepted among musicologists, others, such as Braulio Dueo Coln, propose that the country dance was
initially transformed by the Venezuelan immigration to Puerto Rico around 18351840, an influx of upper-
class venezolanos that brought with it two central changes in the dance: from figure dancing to couple dancing and the
dismissal of the bastonero (the guide or leader who led the dance with his cane). These two changes signaled the danza as a
more democratic practice (by dismissing the strongly rooted authority of the bastonero), which in turn also led to more
intimacy between the man and the woman, who could now whisper to each other while dancing, a practice totally
unacceptable according to the traditional mores of the European country dance.8

The so-called upa, a term that was subsequently forgotten, was generally replaced by the more popular term, merengue. This
Cuban dance form, itself a transcultural product of the European country dance in Cuba, consisted of a 4/4 beat, like its
predecessor. It had two parts, the first of which was eventually called the paseo (promenade), made up of eight fixed
measures repeated in a slow tempo. The second part also consisted of eight measures and also was repeated, but it was
characterized by more agitated, playful rhythms, the danceable part per se. Edgardo Daz Daz reminds us that whereas
the paseo was danced by interdependent couples or as figure dancing, the merengue was performed by independent
couples who embraced as they danced throughout the salon. Thus, in its own internal structure the danza allegorizes the
social tensions mentioned above.9 While Brau names this second part the merengue, Amaury Veray later makes dear that
the merengue is only the final part of the dance, not the whole second part.10 Significantly, the merengue penetrated the
ballrooms of the Philharmonic Society by 1846, and by 1854 the original 8 measures had extended to 34 and later to 130!
Thus, Salvador Brau appropriately describes the merengue as an "invading or invasive march," a "revolution."11

Many individuals from the older generation, as well as traditionalists,

Page 13

considers the carnival part and parcel of his collective culture (nuestro extraordinario carnaval). The use of the possessive,
also deployed by Braulio Dueo Coln in the quotations below, suggests an ambivalent self-location on his part as a
member of the patriarchal bourgeoisie. The insistence on the possessive marks, discursively, a struggle for the ownership
and control of cultural practices. The ambivalence rests, then, on this sense of ownership of and identification with Creole
cultural productions and on a simultaneous distancing from the racial presence of African elements that these cultural
practices were making visible and audible.

Braulio Dueo Coln's observations in 1913 about the danza's African elements reaffirm this steady Africanophobia: "no
negaremos que hubo un tiempo en que nuestra danza degener de modo lamentable debido al mal gusto artstico de ciertos
compositores y directores de orquesta que utilizaron la bomba africana, imprimiendo a la danza un ritmo grotesco y, por
ende, antiesttico" 16[we will not deny that there was a time when our danza lamentably degenerated due to the bad artistic
taste of certain composers and orchestra directors, who employed the African bomba, pressing upon the danza a grotesque
and thus antiesthetic rhythm]. Read together, the colonialist and racist reactions of both Brau and Dueo Coln stress the
primacy of European musical structures in the musical canon as well as defining what is beautiful and "aesthetic." The non-
European, African structures and rhythms, described as ''antiesthetic," "grotesque," and primitive, prove to be too
subordinate to claim inclusion within a national paradigm of culture.

Revising and deconstructing this Eurocentric resistance to lo africano in essays about the danza, Angel Quintero Rivera has
recently examined the presence and the role of the bombardino instrument in twentieth-century danza orchestras. The
bombardino is a wind instrument that produces a sound similar to that of the clarinet but resembles a type of French horn.
It became one of the principal instruments in Puerto Rican danza orchestras; in fact, black musicians like Cocola built their
fame on their bombardino interpretive skills. Angel Quintero Rivera suggests that the tone and texture of the bombardino
were used, in fact, to camouflage the sounds of the African drums that were prohibited from entering the elite hacienda
ballrooms.17

The invasion of non-European instruments into the space of the upperclass landowning families also resulted in rhythmic
innovations and transformations. The use of the dot and the sixteenth note [el puntillo y la semicorchea] was, according to
Amaury Veray, the beginning of what later was to be called the tresillo elstico (flexible triplet) a term coined by Don
Fernando Callejo; its incorporation into the danza has been attributed to
Page 14

Manuel G. Tavrez. The tresillo elstico refers to the use of three notes against two within the same beat, thus creating a
syncopation in the rhythmic and melodic structure of the danza. Angel Quintero Rivera has analyzed this tresillo elstico as
also African-derived because it creates a rhythmic tension, a pull and push between the offbeat notes and their resolution
toward the principal beat.

The prohibitions against the merengue, the pejorative arguments against the faster rhythms, the incarceration of the
gireros, and the resistance to the new intimacy and the corporeal movements of the dancing couple, are dearly founded
in the Africanophobia of a repressive colonial system, an ideology consistently articulated by the local patriarchal
bourgeoisie and justified through sexual and racial constructs, inscriptions, and associations that linked "Africanness" and
the black population to exoticism, eroticism, unbridled sexuality, and indolence. The forces of civilization were obliged to
contain these sites of unlimited passion, for the "domino theory" of passions assumes that "sexual passions have no self-
regulating mechanisms, no internal limits." 18 Salvador Brau's ambivalence toward the new, transcultural danza is
expressed precisely in the context of this Africanizing process. For him, tradition (i.e., European elements and structures)
remains the desired state for Puerto Rican music, while innovation and cultural syncretism are mostly equated with
degeneration and with the concomitant profanation of its European subtexts. However, as Angel Quintero Rivera also
notes, Bran analyzes the danza as an instance of the ''stratified integration" by which the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie
attempted to construct this image of the gran familia puertorriquea. A racial and cultural allegory underlies Brau's view on
how the sounds of the Indian giro and the "trepidations" of the savage timbal are fused and harmonized (to be read as
contained) by the strings, the European instrumental legacy.19 Nevertheless, "both the Afro-Caribbean syncopation and the
transition to couple dancing were explicitly identified . . . with creole aesthetics and naturalism," as Peter Manuel observes
about both Cuba and Puerto Rico.20

The racializing and racist power of Brau's argument is further revealed when he deems this syncretism positive only in the
context of borrowings or contacts with European or U.S. composers. He first comments on the valuable influence of the
danza rhythms ironically, those same rhythms that he describes as grotesque and lascivious on the work of Louis M.
Gottschalk, who was "inebriated by the voluptuosity of this hybrid music."21 Brau also mentions the work of Don Flix
Astol, the Cataluaborn composer of "La Borinquea," a danza that remains Puerto Rico's national hymn. Astol also was
seduced by the eroticized rhythms of the danza. While Brau boasts about the international influence and the impact
Page 15

of Puerto Rican danza rhythms on other musical forms, a vision parallel to what we call "world beat" music today, he fails
to recognize that the power of the danza to attract the attention of foreign musicians and composers had actually rested
also on the eroticization of the habanera rhythm, a tropicalized otherness that Gottschalk himself desired, capitalized on,
and integrated into his own compositions.

What Brau could not assess, then, is the central role of the New Orleans-born pianist and composer in the development of
the Puerto Rican danza. According to Federico A. Cordero, Gottschalk's visit to Puerto Rico In 1859 marked the earliest
composition of a danza that contained the basic structure that Juan Morel Campos would later standardize.
Gottschalk's Danza Opus 33 is, to this date, the oldest danza to be found. In other words, the genesis of the Puerto Rican
danza as such is located in the intercultural circulation of the habanera rhythms as erotiziced by Gottschalk. 22
Salvador Brau's ambivalence toward the danza is also informed by the duality and binary oppositions emotion versus
reason, the body versus the mind characteristic of the discourse of the Enlightenment. Despite the fact that the hybrid
nature of the danza supposedly degrades the purity of its European sources, Bran still confesses his "love" for this music, a
passion that developed during his youth and to which his memories of the past are inextricably linked.23 At the end of his
essay, however, Brau insists that the Puerto Rican danza should not be experienced in the ballroom, where sensuality and
psychological perturbation may abound, but instead should be analyzed alone in the study, where, through reason, one
can discover the cultural syncretism and the diverse musical elements that the danza incorporates.

This very duality between reason and the affective also surfaces when Bran seeks to establish his own credibility and
authority as an objective writer. While his love for the danza stems from his youth and from its characteristic emotional
upheavals his essay is the product of a rational, scientific approach typical of maturity and, moreover, of his identity as a
man of letters who can translate into verbal discourse the dangerous pleasures that the music can trigger in him, a
translation between the arts that reeks of containment. This self-ascribed authority leads him to conclude that "this danza,
such as it exists among us, must disappear."24 The death of the danza in its Africanized and transcultural state, as
summoned by Salvador Brau, is necessarily followed by a positivist message articulated through icons of music and
dance images mediated by Bran through which the African, non-European aspects of the music and the feminine are
displaced and replaced by the "ronda sagrada del Trabajo y del Progreso, a comps de las armonas solemnes de la Ciencia,
de la Justicia y de la Frater-
Page 16

nidad universal" 25 [sacred circle of Work and Progress, to the beat of the solemn harmonies of Science, Justice and of
universal Brotherhood].

For Brau, the ascribed non-European (i.e., the erotic and emotional) aspects of the danza, synthesized as its feminine
traits "danza femenina de la molicie" [feminine dance of softness] must be eradicated and supplanted by the values of
work and justice, by the masculinity of science and reason. The westernized discourse of Salvador Brau functions here to
counteract the transcultural processes that symbolize a threat to positivism and to the Enlightenment. Brau mourns the loss
of the cultural purity that the European country dance embodied and all that it represented, and he denounces the
antirational values of indolence, melancholy, and eroticism that he locates in his constructed others: women and Afro-
Puerto Ricans. By equating femininity with an essentialized African lasciviousness and obscenity in this "objective" and
"scientific" study of the danza, Brau succeeds in constructing a hegemonic discourse about Afro-Caribbean music and
culture that still informs current attitudes about popular culture in Puerto Rico and elsewhere. The feminization and
simultaneous tropicalization (read Africanization and erotization) of the European creolized contradanza, as devalued by
Salvador Brau, continues to privilege a patriarchal, Eurocentric ideology over other cultural sectors that constitute Puerto
Rico and Puertoricanness, thus preparing the terrain for the contemporary struggles over cultural discourse that Juan Flores
summarizes.26

Brau's essay also may be read as a phobic, defensive reaction to the period of postemancipation and to the possible cultural
and racial displacements that the freeing of slaves entailed after 1873. In this context, Quintero Rivera also reads a
substantial degree of fear in Brau's essay about the danza, although mostly political and class-marked rather than racial.
This fear underlies the ideological shift of the Puerto Rican hacendados from a liberal stance to a much more rigid
conservative position:

. . . desconfianza de las iniciativas populares rayando en temor ante la explosin de actos de masa durante las
transformaciones polticas del cambio de siglo (las partidas sediciosas, las turbas republicanas, la organizacin
propia del proletariado en la Federacin Libre de Trabajadores y su prdica socialista), aunque no los mencione
Bran por su nombre27

[ . . . a mistrust over popular initiatives that borders on fear over the explosion of mass events during the political
transformations of the turn of the century (insurrectionary forces, republican forces, the organizing of the
proletariat through the Free Federation of Workers and their socialist preachings), although Bran does not mention
them].

Brau's feminization of the danza also dovetails with the still-strong literary tradition of romanticism in the Caribbean
colonies at the time, a move-
Page 17

ment that also explains the gendering of the Puerto Rican danza. As romantic music, the danza is usually based on a
biographical sentimental experience, and as programmatic music its titles and lyrics refer us systematically to the female
loved one, the amada. Songs such as "Margarita," "Violeta," and "Laura y Georgina" are but three of the best-known danzas
in Puerto Rico, and they all sing to women. 28

During the nineteenth century, a time of exile for many Latin American liberal writers, the desire for the idealized woman
extended also to the fatherland, to one's birthplace. (Notice the linguistic irony of the term in Spanish, patria, with its
patriarchal root; yet the cultural tradition includes both, as in the phrase "la Madre Patria" [The Mother Fatherland]). This
extended metaphor suggests the conflation of three central signifiers: woman, country, and nature. Jos Gautier Bentez,
Puerto Rico's most illustrious romantic poet, evinces this phenomenon in his poem titled "Ausencia" [Absence]. He
addresses Puerto Rico, his beloved island:

T das vida a la doncella [You give birth to the lady

Que inspira mi frenes Who inspires passion in me;
A ella la quiero por ti, I love her because of you,
A ti te quiero por ella.29 And I love you because of her.]

In this romantic tradition, already seen in the work of Manuel Alonso, the absence of the loved one translates into the
absence of the country (the national and political allegory), which itself increases the male subject's desire for both. In this
light, the romantic danzas in Puerto Rico have been valued as much for their sentimental lyrics as for their articulation of
a patriotic and national desire.

Also indebted to the positivist legacy, Antonio S. Pedreira, in his seminal essay on Puerto Rican culture and
identity, Insularismo, employs the feminizing strategy to describe the landscape of the island and, metaphorically, the
supposedly docile and "insular" character of the Puerto Rican people.30 According to Pedreira, in contrast to the epic and
grandiose geographic dimensions of other Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina, or Mexico, Puerto Rico consists
of "a tender, soft, bland, crystalline landscape," thus constituting a geography "of a minor tone," like that of "our danza
which tends towards languor and intimacy.'' This danza, "predominantly lyrical" in its tone, "adopts a soft air, . . . lovely,
and profoundly feminine." Pedreira concludes these remarks by equating music, gender, and geography: "The danza, like
our landscape, is of a feminine condition, soft and romantic."31 Pedreira's descriptions are meaningful in the context of his
colonizing thesis about the Puerto Rican, whom he defines as docile, "aplatanado" [self-defeating] and passive toward
history.
Page 18

The danza "Laura y Georgina," composed by Juan Morel Campos, was

originally dedicated to the Cap sisters, whose first names inspired
the title. Piano music published in 1958 by the Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriquea. Courtesy of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquea.

This contested vision of Puerto Rican identity 32 links the Puerto Rican to his/her geography: in a syllogistic argument,
Pedreira equates the poorly epic island landscape of "a minor tone" with the purported intellectual and cultural inferiority
of the Puerto Rican. Moreover, the slow and languid rhythm of the danza represents for Pedreira an additional symptom
of our
Page 19

supposed docility as a nation, a rhythm that stands in contrast to the fast rhythm of the North American fox trot. Here
Pedreira essentializes historically developed musical forms as static, ahistorical symbols of a particular culture, explicitly
gendering the respective national characters of Puerto Rico and the United States. He defines the feminine as Puerto Rico's
assumed weakness, while the masculine is associated with the epic, the grandiose, the North American culture, a discursive
gendering that emulates the colonizing gesture of first world countries toward those of the third world. 33

Despite Salvador Brau's anti-Africanizing sentiments, the danza became the national music for Puerto Ricans precisely
because its African elements were mediated and whitened. In 1942, Antonio Pedreira reread the danza as a metaphor for
the colonizability of Puerto Ricans evident in the slow rhythm of production of Puerto Rican life. This is a rather ironic
stance given his own position as a world aristocrat in the tradition of Rod and Ortega y Gasset against the commercial,
mass society of the United States. Yet if "[b]y the 1930's . . . most Puerto Ricans were coming to view the danza as archaic
and quaint," as Peter Manuel documents, then Pedreira's privileging of North American rhythms over the "soft, romantic"
texture of danzas is perhaps his way of negotiating his own fledgling entrance into modernity.34

Yet the traits that he essentializes as a sign of the docile and self-defeating Puerto Rican character have very little to do with
the value of the danza as a national music. He proposes a circular argument that results at best in a redundancy. In a
totalizing way, he reduces the danza to "a minor tone," a structural element that signals its supposed "blandness," but the
fact is that, musically speaking, not all danzas are written in a minor tone. And even if a substantial number of danzas were
composed in this modality, this particular trait has nothing to do with the maleness or femaleness of the culture from which
they emerge but rather with the predominant modalities of romantic music that characterize them. Yet if it is true, as Susan
McClary posits in Feminine Endings, that even the most traditionally neutral musical structures have been subjected to
gendered constructs and valued as such, the feminization and consequent devaluation of specific musical structures or
features like the cadences that McClary analyzes in her book or the minor tonality that Pedreira feminizes are integral to
the dissemination of patriarchal ideology.

Pedreira is hardly alone in his attempt to ascribe cultural, gendered and social meanings to the minor tonal system, a system
whose characteristics are based on intervals and relational tones.35This feminization, then, cannot be explained by any
inherent gender value in the minor tonality but
Page 20

rather by a larger project of constructing an image of Puerto Rican society that would reaffirm the masculinist and
patriarchal values of a Puerto Rican bourgeoisie that no longer controlled the land and thus clung to control over language
and cultural discourse. Pedreira himself explains neither his gendering of Puerto Rican culture nor that of the danza, as he
takes for granted the fixed meanings associated with femininity. By not questioning gender in his discourse, Pedreira
simply confirms the central role of the gendered constructs in the discourse of nationality. Pedreira succeeds in reaffirming
the stereotypes and negative values ascribed to the nonwhite, nonmale, non-European dements of Puerto Rican culture as
deviations from the norm, images that have survived under the myopic lens of historical amnesia.

This feminized image of the danza, still current in contemporary musicology, 36 can be easily contested with one historical
example, unsurprisingly omitted by Bran, by Pedreira, and by most musical histories in Puerto Rico. "La Borinquea," the
national anthem of Puerto Rico, is a danza in its musical features. Yet its own genealogy illustrates the significant silences
and omissions in official history that undermine the very myths and gendered constructs on which Eurocentric patriarchy
stands. The current lyrics of "La Borinquea" were composed in 1901 by Don Manuel Fernndez Juncos (18441928), a
Spanish-born Puerto Rican statesman, wrater, and composer, whose lyrics for "La Borinquea" even Pedreira criticizes as
''una danza bailable con tema ramplonamente buclico" [a danceable danza with an exaggeratedly bucolic theme].
Pedreira's judgments about Juncos were intended to prove his point about the "blandness" of the Puerto Rican national
character. The original melody of "La Borinquea," composed by Paco Ramrez, became the official anthem of the island in
1952, when the current governmental status of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was established. And in 1977, the lyrics
by Manuel Fernndez Juncos officially became the new text. Pedreira was accurate in his assessment of this text, a highly
patriotic song that was also politically safe in its pastoral description of the island's landscape:

La tierra de Borinquen [The land of Borinquen

Donde he nacido yo. Where I was born
Es un jardn florido Is a florid garden
De mgico primor. Of magical beauty.

Un cielo siempre ntido An ever-clear sky

Le sirve de dosel Covers it as a canopy
Y dan arrullos plcidos And the waves at its feet
Las olas a sus pies. Are its placid lullabies.

Cuando a sus playas When Columbus arrived

Page 21

Vino Coln. At its shore

Exclam lleno de admiracin: He exclaimed flail of admiration:
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
 Esta es la linda tierra This is the beautiful land
Que busco yo; That I have searched for;
Es Borinquen la hija This is Borinquen the daughter,
La hija del mar y d sol The daughter of the sea and the sun
Del mar y d sol Of the sea and the sun
Del mary d sol. Of the sea and the sun.]

Juncos's lyrics reaffirm Pedreira's constructs regarding the melancholy, docility, and passive nature of the Puerto Rican
danza. Nevertheless, Pedreira's feminization of the danza and of Puerto Rican culture is also heir to the romantic discourse
to which Manuel Alonso and Manuel Fernndez Juncos are also indebted. Fernndez Juncos's text, like Gautier Bentez's
poetry, conflates woman and island, thus creating a double, allegorical discourse of love and politics, of romantic desire
and national beauty, which has been lucidly examined in nineteenth-century Latin American literature by Doris Sommer. 37

The palatability and political neutrality of Juncos's version of "La Borinquea," uncontested in the 1952 call for new lyrics
to the national anthem,38 stand in sharp ideological contrast to a previous version written by Lola Rodrguez de Ti, a
Puerto Rican woman poet who struggled for Puerto Rico's independence from Spain and who died in Cuba after years of
exile.39 Lola Rodrguez de Ti capitalized on "La Borinquea"'s already popular melody (the one composed by Paco
Ramrez) and wrote a revolutionary version that was supposedly used during the insurrection of El Grito de Lares in 1868.
It thus became known as "El himno de Lares."40 This text is a call to violence and to nationalist patriotism, a summons to
the defense of the masses. It contains the image of the machete that later inspired nationalist radicals (the macheteros) and
became a symbol of the nationalist revolutionary struggles of recent years. It also reveals ''a Caribbean consciousness that
becomes a thematic concern for the women writers in the contemporary period"41 and for Nueva Trova singers like Pablo
Milans, who interpreted some of Ti poetry, particularly the verses "Cuba y Puerto Rico son / de un pjaro las dos alas."

Despierta Borimqueo
que han dado la seal!
Despierta de ese sueo
que es hora de luchar!

A ese llamar patritico,

no arde tu corazn?
Ven! nos ser simptico
Page 22

el ruido del can.

Mira! Ya el cubano libre ser;

le dar el machete la libertad.

Ya el tambor guerrero dice en su son

que es la manigua el sitio de reunin.
Bellsima Borinquen a Cuba hay que seguir!
T tienes bravos hijos que quieren combatir!

Ya ms tiempo impvidos no podemos estar!

No queremos, tmidos, dejarnos subyugar!
Nosotros queremos ser libres ya:
Y nuestro machete bien afilado est.

Por qu hemos de estar dormidos

y sordos a esta seal?

No hay que temer, Riqueos, al ruido del can,

pues salvar la patria es deber del corazn.
No queremos ms dspotas. Caiga el tirano ya.
Las mujeres indmitas, tambin sabrn luchar.

Queremos la libertad! Nuestro machete nos la dar! 42

[Wake up, borinqueo,

the signal has been given!
Wake up from your sleep
It is time to fight!
Does not your heart burn
to this patriotic call?
Come! for we will be pleased
to hear the noise of the cannons.

Look! The Cubans will already be free;

the machete will reward them with freedom.

The war drums speak with their sounds

that the grassland is the meeting place.
Most beautiful Borinquen, let's follow Cuba
You have courageous sons who want to fight.

We cannot remain impassive any longer!

We do not want to be shy, to be subordinated!
We want to be free now;
and our machetes are already sharpened.

Why should we be asleep

and deaf to this signal?

We should not fear, Riqueos, the noises of the cannon,

for saving our country is the duty of our hearts.
We want no more tyrants. May the tyrant fall!
Women, unconquerable, will also know how to fight!

We want liberty! Our machetes will assure it for us!

Page 23

Lola Rodrguez de Ti's hymn, a summons to both men and women to take up arms and fight against the Spanish troops,
challenges the images of Puerto Ricans as docile, passive and melancholic. These lyrics, a far cry from the innocuous
pastoral discourse of Fernndez Juncos, were popularized and learned by all Puerto Ricans, thus becoming the
counterofficial patriotic hymn during these times of struggle. Rivera Montalvo has indicated that this text marks precisely
the historical instance when "La Borinquea leaves the aristocratic salons and becomes the hymn of all Puerto Ricans." But
as history has shown before, this version was censored by the Spanish government, who correctly considered it a "song of
rebellion" against the Spanish regime. 43 That Pedreira strategically ignored and did not even allude to Lola Rodrguez de
Ti's "Borinquea," a text that belies his characterizations of the danza as feminine and passive (in its lyrics as much as in
its authorship), is not surprising given the radical oppositionality that Ti's text embodies. That the most aggressive,
"masculine," politically dangerous, and collectively powerful version of ''La Borinquea" was written by a woman
undermines Pedreira's arguments regarding the "feminine" aspects of Puerto Rican culture and about women themselves.
This historical example demonstrates, moreover, the imperative of restoring the historical memory that patriarchal
strategies attempt to suppress.

As time has proved, when Salvador Bran called for the disappearance of the Africanized danza at the end of the century,
his exhortation was useless and antiprophetic at best. Indeed, the Puerto Rican danza, in its most creolized (read
Africanized) form, acquired the status of national music, representative of the island and of the culture at the turn of the
century. Its most lauded representatives were the composers Juan Morel Campos and Manuel G. Tavrez, both of whom
were mulatto sons of artisan families in the Ponce area. What is relevant is not so much the origin of these composers but,
as Angel Quintero Rivera has indicated, "the musical analysis of the danza is very revealing as music produced by artisans
precisely in the midst of the process of their struggles for the recognition of their civil rights."44 Indeed, the manifestations
of the artistic and cultural presence of the mulatto, camouflaged within the discursive and aesthetic frames of the European-
born and aristocratic dances of the upper-classes, reveal, in their historical development, the struggles of the working
class in this case artisans and mulattoes to achieve a certain degree of hegemony. The previously discussed examples of
the timbal, the bombardino, and the syncopated rhythms in the tresillo elstico, indicate the mediated forms by which the
African-derived elements could be integrated into European forms, that is, accepted by the dominant class and acceptable
as a national symbol.

It is not a coincidence, either, that the social, historical, and political

Page 24

locus in which the danza developed was the southern city of Ponce during the second half of the nineteenth century. Ponce
was also the historical and social site in which the Puerto Rican Autonomist Party was born. This political party promoted
the image of the gran familia puertorriquea in its confrontations with the Peninsular government. Within the context of
national politics, the hacendados took on the role of padres de agrego (appointed parents), toward the arrisans, los honestos hijos
de la labor (the honest sons of labor). The presence and the contributions of the mulatto sector to the musical culture of
mainstream society at the time, albeit in camouflaged nature, was facilitated by the paternalisric ideology of the dominant
landowning sector. It is no coincidence, then, that Ponce, "la ciudad ms puertorriquea de Puerto Rico" [the most Puerto
Rican city in Puerto Rico], according to Luis Muoz Mara, was the geocultural hub of the landowners, of the gran familia
puertorriquea ideology, of the plena, of Isabel La Negra, and of Rosario Ferr's life and works.

More recently, after some decades of silence and oblivion, the danza has resurfaced in Puerto Rican musical culture in truly
different contexts from the aristocraric ballrooms in which it was performed. From dancing music of the aristocracy and
from national music at the turn of the century, the danza has survived mostly as a musical form interpreted and performed
by pianists and orchestras. Since the 1980s, however, the danza has undergone a process of metalepsis, 45 a cultural
transvaloration of meaning by which a musical form assumes a cultural and social meaning different from that of its origins.
In other words, the danza has been popularized and decontextualized, no longer bound to the upper-class landowner
society that sanctioned it as Puerto Rico's national music. It is no longer art music only, nor the music of nostalgia for the
patriarchal order that many Puerto Ricans still may want to evoke. Amaury Veray, for instance, points to the danza's social
value in his arguments against its "death" or disappearance. Yet he recognizes that the danza's prestige and life have been
limited to its performance and interpretation as art music. It is no longer danceable, thus its value as an expression of social
cohesion and collectivity has been diminished, if not totally annulled.

In 1981, however, Danny Rivera, a Puerto Rican popular singer of ballads and of autochtonous music (plenas, msica jbara,
and political nueva cancin) recorded a two-record album rifledDanzas para mi pueblo [Danzas for my People].46 Included
were some of the best known romantic pieces by Juan Morel Campos, Manuel G. Tavrez ("Margarita"), and Angel Misln
("T y yo"), side by side with Lolita Rodrguez de Ti's revolutionary and historically silenced "La Borinquea" and a more
recent composition by Vitn Caldern titled "Lolita." The last was dedicated to
Page 25

Lolita Lebrn, the nationalist political figure who was released from jail by Jimmy Carter in 1979, along with the other
political prisoners who had been convicted of attempting to assassinate President Truman and of attacking Congress in
1954 and jailed for twenty-five years. The danza, then, in 1980, was employed as a musical form that vindicates the
contributions of two radical and revolutionary women in Puerto Rican history, both of whom are named Lolita. Vitn
Caldern's danza in honor of Lolita Lebrn evokes the same revolutionary call to arms that Lolita Rodrguez de Ti had
penned more than a hundred years ago.

Danny Rivera's inclusion of both "La Borinquea" and of Caldern's "Lolita" is significant, as it represents a newly
embedded ideological feminization of the danza; that is, it continues the tradition of the gendering of this musical form,
yet the very figures that speak or that are spoken about in these pieces are the embodiment of radical action and
revolutionary struggle in Puerto Rico, an oppositional and liberating icon given the "colonial dilemma" of the island. 47 This
ideological shift in the ways that women are associated with the danza, congruent with the solidification of the feminist
movement in Puerto Rico during the 1970s, overturns the negatively valenced gender constructs of the danza, of women,
and of Puerto Ricans, inscriptions that both Brau's and Pedreira's patriarchal writings helped to constitute.

In Mapey's album Criollo y ms, two danzas, "La sensitiva" by Manuel G. Tavrez and "Marisel" by Modesto Nieves, are
performed as jbaro music, with its rhythms, instrumentation, and arrangements.48 Yet this synthesis of the European white
lady called the danza with the autochthonous music of the Puerto Rican mountains is not new. Antonio Cabn Vale's ("El
Topo") famous song, "Verde luz," also a danza, has already become the unofficial Puerto Rican anthem among the youth,
the politically active, and the Left. Mapey's criollo renderings of danzas as instrumental music reposition them away from
the classical musical canon and the traditional danza orchestra, integrating them within the popular canon of jbaro music.
The cuatros, guitarras, and giros, the same that were prohibited from participating in orchestras and dances earlier in the
century, are now the instruments that give voice to the danza.

These examples show how musical forms are rescued from oblivion and transformed in the process of recovery. The
democratizing and popularizing trend of the Puerto Rican danza is not surprising given the powerful movement of the
Nueva Cancin that has characterized Puerto Rican popular music since the 1960s. This movement has revitalized all Puerto
Rico's musical culture and integrated the danza into the musical context of a larger audience, the mulatto sector, returning
it, transformed, to the social
Page 26

and racial groups that historically contributed to its development. This recent metalepsis has challenged the discursive
dualities and oppositions established by the Eurocentric patriarchy in Puerto Rico in the struggles for discourse and power
that motivate these social constructs. The binary correspondences between the danza, the aristocratic white lady, and the
plena, the black prostitute and national site of pleasure, have been deconstructed by Puerto Rican musicians since the 1960s.
The danza, democratized, now emerges as another vehicle for popular expression and for the reaffirmation of a radical
ideology, an oppositional stance against the colonial status of the island. In this sense, the danza now converges with her
antagonist in discourse, the African-derived plena.
Page 27

Chapter Two
A Sensual Mulatta Called the Plena

If the feminized and racialized danza was the national music of Puerto Rico by the turn of the century, the Afro-Puerto
Rican plena, along with the bomba, was historically and discursively marginalized, erased, and dismissed as msica de
negros (music of Blacks). This opposition, which negates the racial hybridity of the Puerto Rican people as well as the basic
processes from which its transcultural manifestations emerge, continues to inform musicology. Moreover, it builds the
historical framework for current manifestations of racial binaries in the young, urban musical culture of Puerto Rico, as the
rockero-cocolo paradigm during the 1980s illustrates (cf. Part Two, "The Plural Sites of Salsa"). Like the danza, the plena is,
after all, a hybrid musical form that integrates both European and African elements in its form and lyrics. Their respective
differentialized genesis, racially and class-located, have led music historians and essayists to present the danza in
opposition to the plena, systematically denoting the former as "our national music" while relegating the latter to the fringes
of culture as "folklore." Lake the danza, the plena also becomes an object of feminization in Toms Blanco's essay, "Elogio
de la plena," 1 which I pose here as a central subtext to Rosario Ferr's "When Women Love Men.''

The origins of the plena, a form of song and dance practiced by the black and mulatto proletariat, have been located by
most musicologists in the coastal towns and areas of southern and southeastern Puerto Rico, that is, in the sugar-growing
plantation areas where the African population resided.2 While its chronological origins are still undefined, most scholars
date its emergence from around the turn of the century. Among some hypotheses, it has been proposed that the
term plena came from the tradition of singing and dancing outside during the evenings, particularly in nights of full moon
(luna llena or luna plena). Thus, the adjective for luna plenabecame synonymous with the dance and the music.3 Many
scholars have also indicated the English-derived partial origins of the
Page 28

plena, as they recount the presence of a couple, immigrants from St. Kitts, who used to play the guitar and tambourine on
the streets of Ponce to make a living. The husband used to tell the wife, "Play, Anna!" or "Play now!" which was heard and
rewritten into Spanish as Ple-na. 4 As Juan Flores has observed, the English source of the Puerto Rican plena has not always
been documented by music historians, yet it reveals the "multiple intersections and blending of cultures as working people
scatter and relocate," as well as the "regional Caribbean context for the emergence of twentieth century song forms in all
nations of the area: son, calypso, merengue, and many other examples of the 'national popular' music of their respective
countries were all inspired by the presence of musical elements introduced from other islands.''5

Juan Flores contributes to the growing scholarship on the origins of the plena by calling attention to the legacy of the
semilegendary Joselino "Bumbn" Oppenheimer (18841929), from the area of La Joya del Castillo, a proletarian barrio in
Ponce, where Flores locates the historical beginnings of this music. He recounts the "humble beginnings" of this music in
the work of Bumbn, whose job plowing the land was accompanied by singing and improvising plenas. The call-and-
response structure characteristic of this musical form was practiced and developed by Bumbn, who sang the solo while
his cuarteros (plowboys) responded with the refrains. Joselino Oppenheimer, also known as "King of la Plena," left his trade
as plowman and began the first plena band, dedicating himself to the music full-time. According to Flores, he was also a
popular panderetero (tambourine player), famous for his virtuosity in improvising as well as for his body performance with
the pandereta: "In the midst of a vibrant improvisation he would rest it suddenly on his shoulder, bounce it off his head,
or roll it along the floor, all the while twisting and jerking his body in a wild frenzy."6
The historical recovery of a figure such as Joselino Bumbn Oppenheimer and the identification of the English couple in
Ponce John Clark and Catherine George, the latter known as Doa Catn are significant contributions to the historical
reconstruction of the plena per se; Flores's documentation is valuable mostly in the context of an overarching silence that
has veiled the authorial contributions of specific individuals of the working class to the development of a national culture
or music. By minimizing the individual authorship of plenas under the rubric of anonymous oral tradition, musicology has
virtually erased the presence of working-class artists such as Joselino Oppenheimer from scholarship and official histories.
Authorship for white, European, and upper-class males has consistently been recognized and glorified under the Western
tradition of individualism and
Page 29

the romantic tenet of the "genius," yet the authority and creativity of black working-class individuals is systematically
diluted under the rubric of folklore and collectivity. 7 This issue is doubly poignant in the case of women's authorship in
popular music traditions.

Other theories suggest that the plena was born in 1916, during World War I as a result of U.S. influence on musical taste,
but this theory is quite unconvincing because of its lack of documentation. What is clear is that by the 1930s this Afro-
Puerto Rican musical form had been embraced as the "authentic" and "representative" music of the Puerto Rican
people.8 Puerto Rican writer Edgardo Rodrguez Iuli suggests, in fact, that the plena, "our first proletarian music,''
displaced the European-derived music in Puerto Rico, the danza, the contradanza, the minuet, and the rigodon.9 As I have
shown, the class struggles embodied in this musical displacement are evident in this case, for it was the popularity of the
plena that filled the void of a dwindling danza from the second decade of the century. This displacement reflects the class
and economic transitions created by the presence of U.S. absentee capitalism, a new economic structure that replaced the
dominant power of landowners with a capitalist wage labor, both in agriculture and later in the industrialization of the
urban areas. As Juan Flores states, "the emergence of the plena coincided with the consolidation of the Puerto Rican working
class":

The first two decades of the century, when plena was evolving from its earliest traces and disparate components
into a distinct, coherent form, saw the gravitation of all sectors of the Puerto Rican working population former
slaves, peasants and artisans towards conditions of wage labor, primarily in large-scale agricultural production set
up along capitalist lines. More and more workers, formerly inhabiting worlds separated by place and occupation,
came into direct association, both at the workplace and in their neighborhoods; their life experience and social
interests were converging, and assumed organized articulation with the founding of unions, labor federations and
political parties.10

The power of the plena to document and express the struggles of the working-class sector surfaces in many of its lyrics.
Structurally and aesthetically, the Puerto Rican plena has been compared to the German moritaten, the Mexican corrido,
and the Spanish romance, for like them, it narrates historical events from the point of view of the masses, of el pueblo. Taking
a satirical, parodic tone and perspective, the plena summarizes the events and the subsequent subjective reaction of the
people in stanzas structured according to the Hispanic oral tradition, featuring eight-syllable lines with assonant rhyme.
Unlike its above-mentioned counterparts, the plena is much more concise. Its lyrics are characterized by a call-andresponse
structure between the soloist and the chorus, which sings the refrain, an element clearly derived from the African musical
heritage and that
Page 30

is part of the tradition of salsa music. The Africanness of the instrumentation panderetas, guitar, cuatro, giro, maracas,
bongos, and a conga and its percussive predominance, along with the assumed "simplicity" and "repetitious" character of
its lyrics and rhythm, have been deemed primitive and unsophisticated by Eurocentric standards, an attitude that surfaced
in the controversy around the Bellas Artes Center. 11 Yet the felicitous dissemination of the plena throughout Puerto Rico,
across the Atlantic, and into New York had to do precisely with what those lyrics and African musical elements symbolized
in a historical period of economic and social change. As Ruth Glasser observes, "[T]he development of an important plena
scene in New York City had everything to do with the United States' relationship to Puerto Rico. The very processes that
sent musicians and their working-class compatriots into economic 'exile' in New York were also responsible for the city's
highly developed record industry.''12

Two of the most poignant examples of the marginality of the singing subject and of its ensuing decolonizing stance are
"Mamita lleg el obispo" ("Mother, the Bishop Arrived") and "Tintorera del mar" ("The Female Shark").

In "Mamita lleg el Obispo," first recorded by Manuel Canario Jimnez in 1927, the singer describes the arrival of a foreign
bishop in the city of Ponce.13 The characterization of the foreign figure and of religious authority defies the appropriate
respect expected by the church toward its officials:

Mamita lleg el Obispo [Mother, the Bishop arrived

lleg el Obispo de Roma; the Bishop of Rome arrived;
mamita, si t lo vieras Darling, if you could see him
qu cosa linda, qu cosa mona! he's so handsome, he's so cute!

Tiene los ojos azules He has blue eyes

la cara muy coquetona and a flirtatious face
ay, mami, si t lo vieras! Darling, if you could see him
qu cosa linda, qu cosa mona! he's so handsome, he's so cute!

El Obispo no confiesa The Bishop offers confession

Nada ms que a las fregonas Only to kitchen maids
con esa boquita dulce& with that sweet mouth
!;qu cosa linda, qu cosa mona! he's so handsome, he's so cute!

Y dicen las hermanitas And the nuns of the Order

del Sagrado Corazn: of the Sacred Heart say:
 "Muchachas, tengan cuidado, "Girls, be careful because
porque el Obispo es un gran len. the Bishop is a great lion."

El Obispo no come pia The bishop doesn't eat pineapple

que lo que come es toronja, instead he eats grapefruit,
ay, mami, si t lo vieras! Oh Darling, if you could see him
qu cosa linda, qu cosa mona! he's so handsome, he's so cute!

Page 31

El Obispo no toma ron The Bishop doesn't drink rum

que le gusta la caita instead he likes "moonshine"
Mamita, si t lo vieras, Darling, if you could see him
qu cosa linda cuando se pica! he's so cute when he gets drunk!

Los hombres estn rabiosos The men are very angry

al ver cmo estn las cosas, at the way things are going
pues, dicen que las mujeres for they say that the women
ahora se han vuelto todas devotas. have all become devout.

Dicen que el Obispo es jockey They say that the Bishop is a jockey
y monta la yegua Nora, and he rides Nora, the mare,
Mamita, si t lo vieras, Darling, if you could see him
qu cosa linda cuando la monta! he looks very good when he rides her!

La plaza de las Delidas The Square of the Delights

se llena cuando l se asoma; is crowded when he comes out;
y hay una que le ha pedido and one woman has asked him
un paseito en carro con gomas. for a ride in his car with rubber tires.

Mamita, un obispo solo Darling, one lone bishop

no da para ser de todas. is not enough for all of us.
Mamita, yo lo que quiero Darling, I wish to have him
es que me lo dejen para m sola. all for myself.]
The refrain, "Darling, if you could see him, he's so handsome, he's so cute," replaces the social respect that should be
accorded a bishop with sexual desire. The song develops this motif throughout; the eighth stanza reveals that the men are
angry because all the women have suddenly become religious devotees. The view of the foreign bishop as a human being,
fraught with vices and indulging in pleasures he is sexually appealing, he rides a mare (a pun for sexual activity), he likes
to drink the local moonshine is ironically encapsulated in the reference to the "Plaza de las Delicias" (Square of Delights).
The final stanza strongly suggests that this song may have been authored by a woman, for the last word sola reveals the
female subjectivity behind the poetic voice. This female perspective is not surprising, given the constant reference to the
foreign white male as an object of desire; it stands as an inversion of the phallocentric discourse about women of color that
permeates popular music.

Rosario Ferr herself offers a personal version of the political deployment of this plena. According to her, in 1952, the bishop
of Ponce, who was Irish, James MacManus, publicly opposed Luis Muoz Marn for reelection, even threatening to
excommunicate parishioners who voted for the latter given his relationship to a woman outside of marriage. The Popular
Democratic Party, headed by Muoz Marn himself, revised the traditional plena about the foreign bishop and played it on
radio stations all over the island. This is when Ferr first heard it. As a result, Ferr observes, Muoz Marn won the election
by 400,000 votes, "half of the population was ex-
Page 32

communicated from the Catholic Church, and some time later Bishop MacManus was ordered to return to New
York." 14 Thus, the oppositionality of this plena is double-edged: it speaks against religion and its institutional
representatives, and also inverts the discourse of sexual desire usually directed toward women.

This oppositionality has been deployed by Edgardo Rodrguez Juli to frame an essay about the historical visit of the pope
to San Juan, Puerto Rico. In "Lleg el Obispo de Roma"15 the author-chronicler capitalizes on this subject position of the
plena to indulge in a satirical, social critique of class divisions and racial inequities in Puerto Rican society through a
journalistic narrative of this historical event. Rodrguez Juli analyzes and documents the humor that still prevails among
the male Puerto Rican proletariat, a humor that distances itself from social institutions through parody and linguistic puns.

"Tintorera del mar" [The female shark] narrates the tragedy of a U.S. lawyer who visited Puerto Rico to represent the
interests of an American company during a strike. The song narrates the incident, which has become legend, of the lawyer
being attacked and bitten by a tintorera while swimming in the beautiful tropical waters of the island. The song addresses
not the lawyer, but rather the tintorera, reminding listeners through anaphoric repetition of her power:

Tintorera del mar, [Female shark,

tintorera del mar, female shark,
tintorera del mar, female shark,
que te comiste a un americano. you ate an American.]

This emphasis on the power of local fauna to destroy the foreign element, the lawyer, a figure who represents not only the
authority of the law but U.S. capitalist interests at their best, can be read as a political allegory against capitalist intervention
on the island. Again, the powerful nature of the female shark, who triumphs over the masculine hegemony of the United
States, offers an inflection different from those gendered dualities that Pedreira employed in 1942. In the popular
imagination the female shark is seen as an agent of power, an allegory for a culture of resistance in the colony against
imperialist intervention represented throughout various cultural texts as male, a textualization that culminates in Rubn
Blades's popular hit "Tiburn" (Shark).

The plena, like the danza, did not escape changes in its class-based social meanings. After the turn of the century, the
interests of the U.S. recording industry in "race" music found in Puerto Rico's folklore a new source of revenue. Thus,
Manuel "Canario" Jimnez, the most important singer and
Page 33

interpreter of plenas, was responsible for their first recordings in New York since 1926 and subsequent dissemination
internationally. 16 Mediated by the new technology of the LP and the radio (introduced in Puerto Rico in 1922), the plena
was inserted into different contexts of reception, creating new listening practices and reaching a larger, more diverse
audience, beyond the working-class sector from which it emerged. Commercialization of the plena led to its international
dispersion, yet as Jorge Prez-Roln has accurately shown, it also led to the trivialization of its content.17 In New York,
plenas appeared as part of the dancing repertoire in social clubs and dance halls as large as the Palladium, a new
environment that ultimately led to the plena's transformation in terms of lyrics and ideology.

The second chapter of the history of the plena, 1925 to 1950,18 is marked by the performances of Manuel "Canario" Jimnez,
who because of the nature of recording technology, sang shorter plenas, omitting many narrative details and emphasizing
the repetition of its refrains. The first signs of commercialization arise in Manuel Canario's instrumentation, which
promotes the melodic instruments over the traditional rhythmic section,19 a shift that corresponds to the systematic muting
of the African elements and polyrythmia in the hands of the dominant sector. The oppositionality of traditional plenas, still
alive in Canario's recordings, was drastically displaced by an emphasis on entertainment characteristic of Csar Concepcin
and his orchestra and Joe Valle, his singer. This major metalepsis was motivated by the popularity of the big band sound
and the mambo in New York among the middle-class Puerto Rican, Latino, and Anglo audiences. Changes in
instrumentation to include winds, trumpets, and saxophones accompanied this change in function, and Csar Concepcin's
orchestra embodied the shift from a plena conjunto to a dance orchestra with the big band sound. The invention of the
electric microphone20 allowed for larger dance halls and larger orchestras. The mambo style, popular at the time, was
synthesized with plenas, thus creating the plena-mambos that Csar Concepcin and Joe Valle made famous.

Nestor Gara Canclini has called these changes the resemantization of popular culture under the influence of
capitalism,21 which again illustrates the struggles for power between the dominant sectors and the subordinate classes. By
appropriating the oppositional plena for entertainment purposes, the upper classes and the U.S. music industry cripple its
radical ideology and the marginal subjectivity in the lyrics as well as in the rhythms. From collective, communal music,
improvised and oppositional, the plena turns into an individualized expression, much briefer and more contained. Indeed,
a musical historian has termed this period "the decline of the plena," arguing that a myriad of factors led to its
demise.22 Nevertheless,
Page 34

the renewed popularity with an international audience, as well as the revitalization represented in its musical syncretism
with the Cuban mambo and the experimental innovations and effects made possible with new technology, have been
considered positive aspects of the plena's commercial status. 23

This appropriation, however, did not last long. During the plena's third historical stage, the 1950s and 1960s, black
musicians Mon Rivera, Rafael Cortijo, and Ismael Rivera vindicated the plena, doing away with what they saw as trivial
entertainment, and returned it to the black Puerto Rican proletariat from which it originally emerged by making "full use
of recording technology" and creating "ingenious innovations to style."24 In this sense, Rafael Cortijo, like AfricanAmerican
rappers today, reappropriated the tools of the master technology to reaffirm the musical and cultural presence of the
marginalized. Indeed, to speak about technology and about media only as hegemony, as Leonardo Acosta does in Msica
y descolonizacin, is to miss the strategic appropriations of that media by marginalized sectors, a process that historically has
led to innovation and experimentation and to new traditions, as Peter Manuel has proposed in the context of India and
Tricia Rose has explored lucidly in AfricanAmerican rap.25

Edgardo Rodrguez Juli, in El funeral de Cortijo, pays homage to Cortijo's music and historical presence in Puerto Rican
culture.26 Juli employs intertexts and subtexts from plenas to metaphorize the problems of Eurocentric discourse and the
contemporary displacement of the sources of power in Puerto Rican society. The narrative form of the chronicle employed
by Juli is "appropriate to [the] relational method of cultural analysis" that Juan Flores proposes as an alternative to the
essentialist methods and "still prestigious metaphors of organic growth"27prevalent in Puerto Rican cultural discourse. This
"relational" approach, a contemporary response to both "Eurocentric, elitist privileging and to the relativism of the syncretic
model," aims to "identify not some originary identity but the contacts and crossings experienced by the culture as social
practice.'' In other words, the relational approach does not focus on either an exclusively Afrocentric view of Puerto Rican
culture nor a Eurocentric one but rather analyzes the "interplay with the non-African, elite and folkloric components."28

In this light, Rodrguez Juli's chronicle of Rafael Cortijo's funeral documents and reaffirms, with a self-ironic twist, the
social and racial conflicts that inform Puerto Rican urban society today. His acute analysis of social changes that Puerto
Ricans have witnessed since the 1940s as a result of the island's industrialization and Operation Bootstrap, what Juli calls
the "desarrollismo muocista" [Muoz-led development] of the times, is embodied in the concept
of desclasamiento (declassing). The author proposes this
Page 35

concept to refer to the dismantling of the hegemony of the once dominant landowning sector, and to the ensuing mobility
of many families from the rural areas to the city, a migratory flux that created hybrid living conditions within the
"metropolitan area" of San Juan. This desclasamientoled to the emergence of a mass culture and, as Jos Luis Gonzlez has
indicated, to the full-fledged development of a popular culture in Puerto Rico. 29

The popularity of Rafael Cortijo y su Combo around the 1950s becomes the representative icon of the "revolution of the
Puerto Rican Black" in the cultural terrain, a central part of the so-calledtrastoeamiento interno de valores culturales (inner shift
or inversion of cultural values) that Jos Luis Gonzlez observes not only in popular culture but in the new narrative of the
1970s, of which Rosario Ferr, Ana Lydia Vega, and Luis Rafael Schez are some of the most important representatives.
Rafael Cortijo's historical significance lies in the visual presence of blacks on television (in his show La Taberna India) and in
their musical prominence in radio; in other words, they "occupied" the social space of media and entertainment that
threatened and contested the "whiteness" [blanquitismo] of social clubs and dance halls. Moreover, Rafael Cortijo relocates
the plena away from the orchestra and within the combo, a conjunto-type group that, unlike the orchestra, articulates a
plurality of rhythms, a true polyphony of voices and instrumental performances that are not subsumed under an orchestral
score.

Cortijo's revolution in the world of Puerto Rican popular music also implies a decentering of the signifier within the musical
and verbal text, that is, a shift from a representational and denotative language to a more centrifugal, connotative language
coded in the colloquialisms of the proletariat. This new role of language is reflected in the Puerto Rican nueva narrativa,
which Rosario Ferr deploys in her short story "Maquinolandera." Edgardo Rodrguez Juli traces this shift:

La Elena proletaria de Canario, aquel paradigma de la plena antigua cuya concrecin siempre parte de una ancdota
y algunos detalles felices, aqu se ha convertido el soneo vago, quiza ms sugerente, definitivamente ms irnico:
la plena abandona el contorno proletario y se acerca a los lmites imprecisos de un lenguaje en clave, para iniciados,
jerga del exdusivismo lumpen del arrabal y el casero. Toda la msica de Cortijo es as, rica en connotaciones
malevas y pobre en denotaciones realistas.

[The proletarian Elena of Canario, paradigm of the old plena whose concreteness comes from an anecdote and some
happy details, here (in Cortijo's music) has become a vaguesoneo, perhaps more suggestive, definitely more ironic:
the plena abandons the proletarian terrain and aproaches the imprecise boundaries of a coded language, for
initiates, the exclusive dialect (jerga) of the lumpen of the ghetto and the housing project. All of Cortijo's music is
such, rich in delinquent connotations and poor in realist denotations.]30
Page 36

Rafael Cortijo playing the timbales on the album cover for Nochc de temporal,
Ansonia Records, SALP 1476. Licensed by Ansonia Records.

Cortijo's art of signifying, through linguistic puns and centrifugal discourse in "El yo yo," "El bombn de Elena," and
"Maquinolandera," among others was associated with the Afro-Puerto Rican bomba. It paved the way for the development
of salsa music in the early 1960s in New York (where Cortijo also performed with Ismael Rivera). Juli's observation of the
"exclusivist" nature of this coded language of the lumpen suggests that the black marginalized sector was no longer content
with a mediated presence in cultural production, with a ''Juan Morel Campos . . . negro vestido con el frac del arte
blanco" 31 ["Juan Morel Campos . . . a black dressed with the tuxedo of white art], as the cultural negotiations of the danza
exemplified in history. In the 1950s, Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera occupied the public space of radio and television,
articulating the needs and interests of a long-forgotten social sector that was, however, as-
Page 37

suming a larger role in the economics of the island as well as in the economy of the mainland. Salsa music in the 1960s
represented the apex, the heightened presence of the working-class Puerto Rican, not only on the island but on the mainland
United States. (The fact that El Gran Combo de PR was a continuation of Rafael Corfijo y su Combo reveals this historical
continuity.)

Rodrguez Juli thus proposes a new way of reading Puerto Rican society and culture through the relational approach that
Juan Flores identified. This polyphonic and decentered perspective is informed precisely by Cortijo's new plenas with their
centrifugal language: the voices of the black urban proletariat, the residents of Barrio Obrero (Workers Neighborhood)
where Cortijo and Ismael Rivera lived, and the so-called punks (tteres) of Luis Llorens Torres public housing projects
assume a dialogic role with and against the homogenizing discourse of the dominant white sector.

Given the displaced powers of official sources of authority in a colonial Puerto Rico, illustrated by the authority of the U.S.
Secret Service over the local police during the pope's visit in "Lleg el Obispo de Roma" (Juli's literary text), both the church
and the U.S. consumer economy impose their own strategies of warfare on power. 32 These institutions constantly confront
the masses, placing them within divided spaces and class boundaries, as exemplified in the mise-en-scne of the pope in
the parking area of Plaza las Americas, the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean, or via the stratification of language. This
division of space clearly illustrates a "strategy" as Michel de Certeau defines it, in opposition to the ways in which the
powers-that-be manage, distribute, and control the place, the tactics, and "the space of the other"; they ''make use of the
cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers."33

In Rodrguez Juli's text, these tactics are articulated in the voices of the proletariat, the poor and the marginalized, which
are heard through the fissures of the master narratives also imbedded in the chronicle. The jokes about the pope through
which the "ancestral anti-clerical sentiment" is filtered,34 the sexual discourse a lo mamichulin directed toward women, the
satiric perspective that pokes fun at authority mediated by the traditional plenas (as in "Mamita lleg el Obispo"), counteract
in a dialogic mode the traditional and mystifying music of the church ("Holy, holy, holy shall be God" [Bendito, bendito,
bendito sea Dios]). This popular discourse, rooted in the musical dialogism and the satiric perspectives of the plena, informs
the new narrative of the 1970s, thus establishing the power and primacy of this musical form as a vehicle of a Puerto Rican
collective consciousness that has been able to articulate the social, class, and
Page 38

racial struggles for hegemony that have characterized Puerto Rican cultural history. 35

In this light, Toms Blanco's influential essay of 1935, "Elogio de la plena" (In praise of the plena), has been hailed as a
"landmark essay" that fostered the ''wide recognition" of the bomba and the plena "as the most distinctively Puerto Rican
musical tradition."36 But although Toms Blanco, a medical doctor, historian, journalist, and defender of civil rights in
Puerto Rico (18961975), wrote to praise and exalt Afro-Puerto Rican music, his own subject location as a white male and
member of the generation of the 1930s places him alongside Antonio Pedreira and Ren Marqus, among other patriarchal
figures. Toms Blanco's "Elogio de la plena" should not be read in isolation but in the context of his own class and racial
subject position and especially in relation to his other contributions to racial definitions and to the racial debate in Puerto
Rico, namely, El prejuicio racial en Puerto Rico (1937). That controversial, problematic, and ambivalent piece was written only
two years after the publication of "Elogio de la plena."37

To acclaim "Elogio" as antiracist discourse is to ignore the racial and gender constructs underlying Puerto Rican cultural
thought that permeate his writings. Not as virulently anti-African as was Antonio Pedreira, Toms Blanco assumes a
conciliatory stance toward racial conflict in Puerto Rico, a perspective plausible only through the silencing of social and
racial conflicts on the island. An overarchingly homogenizing discourse, El prejuicio racial en Puerto Rico minimizes the
intensity and dangers of racial attitudes in Puerto Rico by positing an antinomy between its expression on the island, which
Blanco characterizes as "juego de nios" [children's game], and the violent racism (lynching) and segregation (Jim Crow
laws) exercised in the South of the United States, which Blanco terms "authentic" racial prejudice. He compares racist terms
in English and in Spanish and concludes that English terms are "pejorative," while those in Spanish are "healthy
euphemisms."38 He analyzes the economic, religious, and social factors that motivate racism in the United States and
contrasts them to Puerto Rico, where he minimizes the economic centrality of the sugar plantation; where Catholicism,
unlike Protestantism, allows for racial tolerance;39 and where social integration permits all individuals equal rights and
living conditions.

Dismissing all the historical and analytical flaws of these arguments which Arcadio Daz Quiones lucidly addresses in
his introduction to the 1985 edition Blanco concludes that the little racial prejudice in Puerto Rico is indeed "mimetic" and
"imported" from the United States. This projection of blame is also extended to the Puerto Rican woman, who, he
Page 39

concludes, is "the carrier of Puerto Rican prejudice" [la portadora del prejuicio puertorriqueo]. 40Blanco's strategic
displacement toward his others, in this case the United States and women, appears systematically in the writings of Pedreira
and of Ren Marqus, and it is not surprising to find this strategy in Blanco, who, after all, shares with them the same class
and gender subject position.

Toms Blanco's ambivalence toward race and mestizaje in Puerto Rico is also articulated in "Elogio de la plena," which
displays language and discourse as racially informed social sites.41The ideological discrepancy between what Toms Blanco
says explicitly in "Elogio" and what his choice of metaphors and imagery subtly reveal, the semantic ambiguities and
interstices that surface throughout his writing reaffirm the centrality of language in defining race and gender constructs.
Blanco introduces his essay on the plena as an apology, a defense of this Afro-Puerto Rican form in view of the attacks it
has been subjected to as "savage music of Blacks." Like Salvador Brau before him, Blanco maintains the binary between the
danza and the plena, the central axis on which the author formulates and builds his argument. He sees the plena as the
musical form that will survive the danza, for the latter, limited to a particular social class and "transplanted" from Europe,
will not endure as a dance form. In contrast, the plena, born "in the soul of the people,'' is vigorous enough to withstand
the test of time.

This "organic" metaphor summarized in the image of the danza as a "greenhouse plane" and of the plena as a "wild
flower" subsumes the danza under the rubric of foreign, alien, a European cultural product "transplanted" to the
tropics.42 While Blanco is correct in his allusion to the European origins of the danza and to its transculturation, he actually
inverts the historical tradition of the danza as Puerto Rico's "national music" and the Afro-Puerto Rican forms as the music
of the primitive Other. Blanco's apparently progressive openness toward acknowledging the black racial element in Puerto
Rican culture, emblematized in this initial metaphor, is further developed in his observations regarding the true "mulatto"
constitution of the Puerto Rican:

En general, debe parecer evidente a todo el que tenga ojos y haya considerado el asunto con alguna objetividad,
que Puerto Rico es la ms blanca de todas las Antillas; que casi no tenemos negros puros; y que el nmero de
blancos puros computados a grosso modo pero con mayor fidelidad que en el censo oficial no alcanza a la mitad
de la poblacin. Por lo tanto, la mayora de las gentes del pas es de sangre mezclada; mestizos, morenos, mulatos,
grifos, o blancos con dosis ms o menos homeoptica de pigmento negroide (40).

[In general, it must be evident to those who can see and who have considered this issue with some objectivity, that
Puerto Rico is the whitest of all the Antilles; that here we don't have pure blacks; and that the number of pure
whites grossly cal-
Page 40

culated but with greater fidelity than in the official census does not reach even half of the population. Thus, the
majority of the people in this country are of mixed blood; mestizos, morenos, mulatos, grifos, or whites with a more
or less homeopathic dose of negroid pigmentation.]

This reaffirmation of racial mestizaje, also articulated in El prejuicio racial en Puerto Rico,unfolds, nevertheless, from an
ambivalent ideological stance. The hybrid racial constitution of Puerto Ricans may be read as an argument for the
recognition of the black sector in Puerto Rico. Simultaneously, within a dominant discourse such as that of the generation
of the 1930s, mestizaje is also the sign for whiteness, the rationale for the denial of pure blackness. This ambivalence, or
rather duplicitous logic, is encapsulated in another observation by Blanco: "Tenemos abundante sangre negra, de la que no
hay por qu avergonzarse; empero, haciendo honor a la verdad, no se nos puede clasificar como pueblo negro" [We have
abundant black blood, for which there should be no shame; however, honoring the truth, we cannot be classified as a black
people]. Mestizaje, then, becomes the necessary tool to prove the absence of racial prejudice in Puerto Rico. The mulatto
figure "incarnates . . . reconciliation and convivencia. It is a paradigm of social and racial harmony" 43 in the works of Toms
Blanco, "a reconciliatory paradigm that erases the sexual domination and violence exercised on the bodies of the female
slave."44

Moreover, Blanco's definition of mestizaje is limited to racial miscegenation, excluding and denying any form of cultural
hybridity in Puerto Rico and reinforcing the superiority of white European culture over the transcultural forms. This
position, articulated two years after "Elogio," seems to contradict Blanco's apologetic discourse on the plena and his
reaffirmation of the mulatto character of Puerto Ricans. Yet his Eurocentric and even racist ideology, albeit subtly disguised,
is already inscribed in his essay "Elogio de la plena."

Toms Blanco's veiled racist discourse can only be mediated by gender constructs. He establishes the duality of the danza
and the plena in a langnage that duplicates the rhetorical and aesthetic traditions of each musical form yet is still entrenched
within the patriarchal recourse of feminization. The danza, according to Toms Blanco, leads us to the European romantic
iconography of the woman la Rubens:

A tal hembra convena la sensualidad pamplona que se regodea en los compases de las danzas. Lacrimeo suplicante
y metforas regordetas prestigiaban de romanticismo el falso ambiente en que se acuaba la galantera aristocrtica
de la poca. Y entre floripondio y floripondio de cumplidos banales, eran los merengues de la danza la florinata
pura de aquella galante aristocracia de papel de estao.

[The languid sensuality that revels within the measures of the danzas is agreeable to this female. Pleading tears and
plump metaphors gave a romantic prestige to the
Page 41

false ambiance in which the aristocratic gallantry of the times found itself at home. And between the flowery words
of banal flattery, the merengues of the danza were the pure essence of the gallant tinfoil aristocracy.] 45

In contrast to this parodic reconstruction of the romantic style, the plena is described as "la morena tendinosa, musculosa,
espigada o redonda, tiernecita o madura; pero con jarretes y axilas en vez de pie y de aire" [the dark-skinned, tendinous
woman, muscular, slender or round, tender or mature; but with hocks and underarms instead of feet and of air]. She is

"mulatica de tez dorada como ron aejo; de pelo lacio y ojos pcaros que pueden pasar por andaluces; de parla
castellana, un poco arcaica; y, de gil paso sensitivo, como de bestezuela selvtica. Sinuosa y llena de vigor, tiene
olores de tierra y sabor de marisco"

[a charming mulatta of golden complexion like aged rum; with straight hair and roguish eyes that can pass for
Andalusian; she speaks Castilian, a bit archaic; and, with an agile sensitive step, like that of a small jungle animal.
Sinuous and full of vigor, she smells like the earth and tastes of seafood].46

The subtexts to these opposing portraits comprise a contrastive aesthetics of the danza and the plena that contain the
respective structures and elements indicated by musicologists; in other words, Blanco's verbal iconographies are
translations of the respective musical styles. While the danza is "cursi" (affected), the product of an epoch of "banal flattery"
and "gallantries," allusions that hyperbolize the very rhetorical artifice of nineteenth century taste and romantic discourse,
the plena is "burlona, traviesa y arisca'' (mocking, mischievous, and surly).47 The plena speaks in simple, direct statements.
It tries not to "empalagar cuando acaricia" [overwhelm with its caress] and occasionally is "chocarrera" (coarse).48 Blanco's
stylistic antinomy seems to privilege the more direct, ironic, and humorous perspective of the plena over the artificial and
inflated rhetoric of the danza, an indication in fact of the changing styles and tastes to which the dated danza no longer
responded.

Blanco's portrayal of the danza as a white aristocratic lady from a nineteenth-century salon and his sexually charged images
of the plena as a roguish mulatta are not original. The iconic, visual nature of Blanco's danza and plena is not arbitrary,
given the "function of visual conventions as the primary means by which we perceive and transmit our understanding of
the world about us."49 In other words, the mythification of race, class, and gender identities assumes even more powerful
ideological impact through visually expressed artistic representations. Even though Blanco's descriptions are not directly
visual but verbal translations of musical forms into images, a sort of literary portrait, they still evoke in the reader/viewer
associations between the individual image and the "general qualities ascribed to a class."50
Page 42

in this case, to black, white, and mulatta women. In this context, Toms Blanco's female icons of the danza and the plena
are an integral part of the conventional European iconography of white and black women throughout the nineteenth
century. In particular, the plena articulates the values associated with the African woman, represented throughout Europe
in the figure of the Hottentot Venus. Sander Gilman's influential work on the ways in which the European gaze constructs
the African woman as site of "concupiscence," 51 as an "icon for deviant sexuality," and ultimately, for disease, conforms to
the overarching historical and patriarchal discursive framework within which Toms Blanco's voice and gaze fall.52

The collective fetishizing of the black woman also has been linked to the hegemony of Victorian ideals for the white
European female, thus projecting male desire onto the female Other in order to guarantee the virginity and purity imposed
on the white female. In fact, Gilman's research shows that the anatomical characteristics of the Hottentot Venus associated
with deviant sexuality, primitivism, and disease were eventually also imposed on the white prostitute and representations
of her. This gender construct and its racially informed historical consequences sexual aggression and violence on black
women and mulattas easily extended to the New World, where the imperialist politics of the Conquest facilitated and
justified systematic sexual violence against indigenous and African women.

It is revealing that Blanco's discursive danza is not figured iconically as woman but rather as rhetoric, language, and
gesture, whereas the plena the sensuous, roguish mulatta is figured by a prominent corporeality that exposes Blanco's
own patriarchal and Eurocentric biases: the emphasis on her skin color, her underarms, her feet, her muscles, and most
significantly, her musky odor, unveils a male desire for the mulatta, always already primitivized through her corporeality.
Thus the danzaplena antinomy reflects the decorporalizing of the white woman, desexualizing and effacing of her
physicality, and the concomitant, inverse hypersexualizing and corporalizing of the black and mulatta. As Jos Blanco
suggests, the "less body" of the white upper class may be explained "because they fulfill their personality above all in the
material or symbolic extensions of property, capital, state, commerce, "religion."53 Yet a distinction is in order between
white male bodies and those of white women whose constructed sexuality has been informed and muted by Victorian
ideals since the nineteenth century. In addition, the discursive constructs of bodies of color as hyperbodies, as mere
physicality, responded to various colonizing and hegemonic projects, especially the ways in which the economics of labor
dictated social constructs that would justify the exploitation of subjugated peoples.

Frantz Fanon's analysis of interracial desire in the 1950s as a symptom of

Page 43

internalized colonialism on the part of the black male, as a strategy for deracializing the subject (i.e., for self-whitening),
illuminates the hidden asymmetries of power that Toms Blanco refuses to engage in this essay. 54 By concentrating on a
modern, urban context where mestizaje is blessed by the church through marriage, Blanco dismisses the historical evidence
of sexual violence and rape against indigenous women and African female slaves, the real beginnings of mestizaje
throughout Latin America. Moreover, he locates the mulatta as an erotic axis for mestizaje, around which both the white
male and the mestizo man hover. Yet his choice of relational words (casarsevs. mezclarse) to refer to the location of men and
white women, on the one hand, and men and mulatta women, on the other, maintains the racial boundaries required by a
racist society, that obligatory marginality of the relations between the white man and the mulatta woman:

La mezcla de razas se efecta hoy mayormente a travs de la mujer mulata. Entre las clases mezcladas, la tendencia
del hombre es casarse con mujeres ms claras; pero al mismo tiempo, por lo regular, es con ese mismo tipo de mujer
mulata con la que se mezcla el hombre blanco. El color melado claro de la piel parece tener valor esttico o de
seleccin ertica.55

[The racial mixture takes place today mostly through the mulatta. Among the racially mixed classes, the tendency
of the man is to marry women with lighter skin; at the same time, however, normally the white man mingles
precisely with that same type of mulatta. It seems that the light color of her skin has aesthetic value or is of erotic
choice.]

The white male's desire for the female racial Other the black or mulatta is not seen as a problem by Blanco; it is legitimized
as another example of Puerto Rico's civilized convivencia between whites and blacks that ultimately erases the concept of
whitening underlying the use of mestizaje. Indeed, the historical context of sexual interaction between white males
(the seoritos) and the mulatta women in Cuba in the nineteenth century was precisely in the bailes populares to which
the seoritos went to escape from the decorum and Victorian repression of sexual behavior, a social practice that also
displays the symbolic erotic value that Afro-Cuban music held for the upper classes.56 The marginal relations between
white males and mulattas, usually never made official, have indeed been the structural principle that maintained the
growth of mestizaje in the Caribbean islands.

However, despite the demographic impact of interracial relations, the fact remains that this particular racial and gender
configuration has not transformed the disempowered and subordinated status of the mulatta. Literary characters such as
Luis Rafael Snchez's La China Hereje in La guaracha del Macho Camacho, Rosario Ferr's Isabel la Negra, and count-
Page 44

less mulattas in Latin American soap operas attest to the pervading sublocation of such women within the social strata and
the hierarchies of power. Toms Blanco, then, only succeeds in replicating the already rooted social asymmetry between
the sexes and between the races that has not necessarily improved, as the prevalence of this figure in literature, popular
media, and music attests.

To conclude, I want to underscore the historical continuity of a white male writing subject within this genealogy of
patriarchal discourse in Puerto Rico, beginning with Manuel Alonso's earlier descriptions of the gracious and desirable
beauty of the "daughters of the Tropics," who articulates his own veiled desire for the mulatta or black woman through the
language of music. The universal metaphor of music as woman is a discursive consequence of male hegemony in music as
an institution, as composers, musicologists, and critics within the larger cultural arena have illustrated. In Puerto Rico this
specific discursive construct is doubly informed by processes of racialization. In the case of Manuel Alonso, the Creole
woman becomes an object of desire that supplants and symbolizes the desire to return to his Madre Patria. Salvador Brau
does not articulate any desire for the mulatta or Creole woman but only because he displaces that desire onto a past, to his
youth and the emotional upheavals that characterized it. He thus associates the erotic with the racial otherness of
AfroCaribbean music, situating it in opposition to reason, work, and progress. His misogyny and racism are justified and
thus legitimized in his positivist argument for de-Africanizing the danza.

Toms Blanco's ambivalence toward the African presence in Puerto Rican culture is expressed in the contradictory and
uneven arguments of El prejuicio racial en Puerto Rico. Yet while his "Elogio de la plena" may vindicate him as one of the
most progressive or antiracist writers of his generation, it is in and through gender constructs that his racism surfaces. While
Blanco attempts to undermine the value of the danza as an outdated form in 1935, recognizing the predominance of the
plena as Puerto Rico's authentic music, he can achieve this only by perpetuating the very racism that he so forcefully tries
to fight at the beginning of his essay. This laudatory stance toward the plena could be framed only within a discourse of
primitive otherness and racialized eroticism. By locating the plena in the still functional otherness that Brau successfully
articulated at the end of the past century, Toms Blanco's apology for this Afro-Puerto Rican music can be more readily
accepted by his elite audience. To construe the plena as a mulatta and the mulatta as plena, as music, was a way of asserting
dominance over a racially subordinate female as well as sublimating desire for a racial Other, a desire that proves itself
unfailingly persistent throughout history.
Page 45

Chapter Three
Desiring the Racial Other:
Rosario Ferr's Feminist Reconstructions of Danza and Plena

Nosotras, tu querida y tu mujer, siempre hemos sabido que debajo

de cada dama de sociedad se oculta una prostituta . . . siempre hemos sabido que cada prostituta es una dama en potencia.
Rosario Ferr, "Cuando las mujeres quieren a los hombres"

We, your lover and your wife, have always known that every lady hides a prostitute under her skin. . . . A prostitute, on the
other hand, will go to similar extremes to hide the lady under her skin.
Rosario Ferr, "When Women Love Men"
(translated by Rosario Ferr and Cindy Ventura)

As a woman writing from the same class location as that of Manuel Alonso, Salvador Brau, Antonio Pedreira, and Toms
Blanco, Rosario Ferr appropriates the discursive tradition on music, race, and gender analyzed above, rewriting and
subverting it from her own multiply inflected subject position. This is achieved in her controversial short story, "When
Women Love Men."

"When Women Love Men" is not so much a short story as a portrayal, a dialogic text constituted by two female voices that
have been socially antagonistic and opposed. Isabel Luberza is the literary embodiment of the lady, the dama or seora,
Ambrosio's widow and is a white aristocrat who lives confined within the boundaries of her white mansion and submits
herself wholeheartedly to the social tenets of the perfect wife. As this chapter proposes, Isabel is also, implicitly, a literary
embodiment of the Puerto Rican danza. Isabel la Negra (Isabel the Black), Ambrosio's mujer andcorteja (lover), a fictional
rendering of the well-known prostitute in Ponce, is associated in the text with eroticism, sex, and concupiscence. Isabel La
Negra embodies the Puerto Rican plena, as the epithets used to describe
Page 46

her are evidently generated in the untranslatable puns, sounds, and rhythms of an Afro-Antillean language mediated by
the works of Luis Pals Matos: "la Rumba Macumba Candomb Bbula: Isabel La Tembandumba de la Quimbamba,
contoneando su carne de Guingamb por la encendida calle antiliana" 1 [the Rumba, Macumba, Candomb, Bmbula,
Isabel the Tembandumba de la Quimbamba, swaying her okra hips through the sun-swilled Antillean streets].

Isabel the wife and Isabel the lover exemplify a split of the female subjectivity, according to Hispanic marianista tradition,
into virgin (wife) and whore. These two literary characters bring to the fore the patriarchal gender dynamics at play in
Puerto Rican urban society (although not exclusively there, as patriarchal traditions of "casa chica" in Mexico and other
Latin countries continue to attest) by which men extract sexuality and pleasure from the marital relationship and displace
it onto the affair. In "Respeten, que hay damas" [Be respectful around the ladies], Edgardo Rodrguez Juli probes this
gender construct through verbal recreations of photography:

En el reverso de la seora, la mujer, aquella es mujer de su casa, a veces adorno del santuario puertorriqueo
burgus; sta es mujer de la calle, amenaza del sacro hogar. El hombre puertorriqueo apenas se decide: la seora
es algo as como un testaferro sexual de la madre, la mujer es la negacin de tanta pureza, laberinto de variantes
que en su ltimo extremo conduce al Club Riviera.

Cuando la seora es ms obligacin que sensualidad, se busca la mujer, me echo la corteja, le pongo casa a una
querida, ya me oste.

En esta madeja de inclinaciones y gustos amamantados desde la ms tierna infancia, se debate la sexualidad del
hombre puertorriqueo, casi siempre herida, casi siempre confusa hasta el lmite de la infidelidad o el ridculo. Hay
una fisura fundamental en este inquieto y envanecido varn: una vez edificada la pureza de la esposa como garanta
de fidelidad (los cuernos son el bochorno mximo para ese honor hispnico que confunde la honra con la
obstetricia) desfallecen los ardores del sexo, d amor se amansa en hbito, conveniencia domstica sazonada con la
responsabilidad de educar a los hijos.2

[On the inside of the wife is the woman, the former is the woman of her home, sometimes adorning the burgeois
Puerto Rican sanctuary; the latter is the woman of the street, a threat to the sacred home. The Puerto Rican man
hardly makes up his mind: the wife is something like the sexual container for motherhood, the woman is the
negation of such purity, a labyrinth of variants that in its most extreme form leads to the Club Riviera (the brothel).

[When the wife becomes more of an obligation than sensuality, one looks for the woman, I take on a mistress, I buy
her a home, you heard me.
[Within this web of inclinations and tastes that have been breast-fed since the earliest infancy, the Puerto Rican
male sexuality is being debated, almost always wounded, almost always confused up to the limits of infidelity or
ridicule. There is a fundamental fissure in this agitated and proud male: once the wife's purity has been built as a
warranty of fidelity (to be cheated on is the worst shame for that Hispanic honor that confuses social honor with
obstetrics), sexual passion is di-
Page 47

minished, love is domesticated by habit, a domestic convenience seasoned by the responsibility of educating the
children.]

Rodrguez Juli's social analysis of the wife/whore dichotomy as it is manifested in everyday sexual relations in Puerto
Rico is followed by a verbal translation of two portraits, one of a lady whose pose and elegant background serve to efface
and cover her body; the other, her inverse image, the woman on the street. Proposing a textual and ideological continuity
with Toms Blanco's race and gender icons, the elegant lady reveals a visage that lays bare her class-based objectification:
"El rostro perfectamente ovalado refleja una vaga tristeza, quizs esa inocencia melanclica de la mujer excesivamente
protegida. Todo es suavidad en el porte de esa mujer ms concebida como adorno que como amante." 3 [The perfectly oval-
shaped face reflects a vague sadness, perhaps that melancholy innocence of a woman who has been excessively sheltered.
All is softness in this woman's bearing, a woman who has been conceived more as adornment than as lover.]

The antithesis to the seora, whose oppression is directly proportional to the elegance of her surroundings, is the woman
on the street. Significantly, she is posing outside, on the street, not inside within the domestic sphere accorded to the seora.
Her setting is not an artificial, stiffly elegant arrangement but rather houses that expose their lower-middle-class
background. Her physical description reveals the icons of gesture and dress that accord dignity to her social location as the
female Other:

Esa falda pegada a las carnes acenta su hembrismo. Los zapatos de trabilla, esas uas pintadas de rojo que
ardientemente asoman entre las tiras de cuero, insinan una sensualidad encendida, condicin de hembra leal a
sus encantos. Sostiene en sus brazos a un beb, ese fruto de algn amor prohibido o frustrado.4

[Her skin-tight skirt accentuates her femaleness. Her shoes with straps, those red-painted nails that ardently peek
out between the leather straps, insinuate a fiery sensuality, the condition of a woman faithful to her charms. She
holds a baby in her arms, the fruit of some forbidden or frustrated love.]

This woman, either lover or divorce, is othered precisely because of the unconcealable evidence of her past sexual
experience: her child. No longer admissible for the role of sacred mother (mythified only by marriage) and pure wife, the
divorced woman or the single, unmarried mother has to be content with her marginal role as lover, as la mujer. Juli's
emphasis on this woman's markers of sexuality her bright red nail polish, her strappy shoes, her clinging skirt, and
ultimately, her child characterizes her as analogous to Isabel la Negra, emphasizing the central role of the male gaze in
representations of female sexuality.

The socially visible "respect to the ladies" that Latino men consciously
Page 48

exhibit and articulate serves as a mask for the underlying, profound resentment that the (Puerto Rican) male holds toward
women. The Freudian-based "fundamental fissure" that Edgardo Rodrguez Juli identifies in the Puerto Rican male,
or varn, refers to a lack that converts his wife into an empty vessel of pleasure, a "warranty of fidelity" with which he
himself cannot abide. As such, the wife ends up representing "the patient character custody of the mother's unconditional
love," a projection that justifies his sexual exploits with other women; that is, by identifying his wife with his mother,
the varn minimizes his sense of guilt or infidelity. 5 Elizabeth Grosz summarizes the Freudian-based relations between this
unmediated duality and the contradictory requirements of "symbolic functioning'':

on the one hand, the boy's sexuality is virile, active, predatory; yet, on the other hand, it must be controlled,
repressed, sublimated, and redirected. This split attitude may effect [sic] the man's choice of love-object. For
example, Freud suggests that men may feel split between feelings of tenderness, respect, affection, and sexual
"purity"; and feelings of a highly sexual yet debasing kind. Affection and sexual desire seem to inhabit different
spheres, often being resolved only by splitting his relations between two kinds of women one noble, honourable,
and pure (the virgin figure), the other a sexual profligate (the prostitute figure). He treats the first with asexual
admiration, while he is sexually attracted to, yet morally or socially contemptuous of, the second. Here the male
lover attempts to preserve the contradictory role of the mother (as pure and as seducer), while removing its
contradictions by embodying its elements in separate "types" of women, either virgin or whore, subject or object,
asexual or only sexual, with no possible mediation.6

At best, Juli attempts to delve into the sexual psychology of the Puerto Rican male. At worst, he does not problematize the
asymmetrical relations of power between men and women, as he also fails to integrate race as a factor in these relations.
Thus, his verbal translations of gender roles, as metaphorized through photography, continue to inscribe the dualities of
the eterno femenino virgin/whore onto the consciousness of the reader. By leaving this patriarchal discourse untouched,
by not questioning its role, and by suggesting a unilateral view of the victimized male as a result, "Respeten que hay damas"
becomes yet another repetition, in the 1990s, of the phallocentric discourse that continues to locate the mujer, the lover, and
the whore as an overdetermined site of eroticism, pleasure, and sexuality. The wife, or seora, continues to be emptied of
her own desires and sexual agency, naturalized into a useless appendage only functional at social events, a role that the
author accepts, in his own words, as comme il faut.7

Rosario Ferr, instead, appropriates these patriarchal constructs that are still in active circulation, discursive reaffirmations
of prevailing social relations of power between men and women, and polemicizes them by imbuing both women, Isabel
Luberza and Isabel la Negra, with a mimetic desire for each other, a desire that resolves itself in the final fusion or merging
of
Page 49

both figures. While this "fantastic" ending has been interpreted from a feminist approach, my discussion of this story
integrates the roles of race, class, and otherness articulated through musical intertexts in the social formulation of gender
roles. The plena lyrics and Afro-Antillean voices systematically construct Isabel la Negra, and the European Judeo-Christian
tenets and values articulated through Bible quotations and social tradi-tions comprise the ideology beneath Isabel Luberza's
behavior and repressed desires.

While Isabel la Negra's main subtext, the plena, is suggested explicitly in the first epigraph of the story, Isabel Luberza's
metaphoric embodiment of the danza is only suggested by default, implicit as an antinomy to the plena. It can be identified
only by reading its historical subtexts, particularily Toms Blanco's "Elogio de la plena." The plena is already present in the
story's first epigraph:

la puta que yo conozco [the whore whom I know

no es de la china ni del japn is not from China nor from Japan
la puta viene de ponce The whore is from Ponce
viene del barrio de san antn.8 from the San Antn neighborhood.]

Here Rosario Ferr rewrites the original, traditional anonymous plena, "la plena que yo conozco" (cf. the earlier epigraph),
which speaks to the music's origins, by substituting plena for puta, a strategy that emphasizes the underlying feminization
and erotization of the musical form that we have traced throughout Puerto Rican cultural discourse. In addition, the title
of the short story, "When Women Love Men," is an appropriation of the first line of another traditional plena that narrates
the tricks and strategies used by women in their efforts to control love relations, rituals based on folkloric beliefs of African
origin:

CUANDO LAS MUJERES QUIEREN A LOS HOMBRES

(Plena from the oral tradition, interpreted by Manuel Canario Jimnez and his group.)

[When women
Cuando las mujeres love (want) men
quieren a los hombres they light four candles
prenden cuatro velas and place them in the corners.
y se las ponen por los rincones.
Coro
Compran esos libros
que se llaman de colecciones
van a la cocina They buy those books
y les hacen sus oraciones. which are called collections
Coro they go to the kitchen
Rompen las camisas and they do [to them] their prayers.
los calzoncillos, los pantalones
They rip their shirts
their underpants, their pants
Page 50

Poor men
They don't even prepare their food.

Pobres de los hombres They throw on them bones from the dead
ni las comidas se las componen. flower water they also place on them
Coro Oh dear mother
Les echan huesos de muerto be careful with those men.
agua florida tambin les ponen
ay madre querida
ten cuidado con esos hombres.
Coro
Si son de Guayama If they are from Guayama
hechizos elias les ponen they put spells on men
en un vaso de agua in a glass of water
todo el cuerpo le descomponen. they can make their bodies decay.] 9

These lyrics acquire meaning in the first paragraph of the story, when one of the women addresses Ambrosio and sketches
out the story for the reader: Ambrosio has died and left each Isabel half of his inheritance, a decision that forces both women
to meet and negotiate between them the use of the mansion, which also was divided between the two. The female speaker
then adds that "anyone would say that you did what you did on purpose, just for the pleasure of seeing us light a candle
in each corner of the room, to see which one of us had won."10 Women fighting against each other for the love or property
of a man signals a patriarchal strategy that glorifies the masculine ego while it subjugates women by keeping them
disjointed, divided. Yet what follows in the text suggests that the final fusion or merging of both Isabels is indeed the
actualization of what Ambrosio staged through his will and inheritance, an intention "to melt" them, ''to make [them] fade
into each other like an old picture lovingly placed under its negative, so that [their] own true face would finally come to
the surface."11

Ren Girard's model of triangular desire 12 is effective in deciphering Ambrosio's role as a mediator between the desires of
both women. By coming face to face with each other that is, by dismantling the allegorical binaries that each
represents "their own true face" would finally come to the surface. What surface metaphorically and textually, I propose,
are the racial, class, and gender constructs penned by the patriarchal writers such as Brau, Pedreira, and Blanco. That "own
true face" will be, I hope, not only the "desire for acknowledgement and for knowledge," for the "truth" that has been
traditionally associated with eroticism,13 but the underlying presence of blacks and of women in paradigms of Puerto Rican
culture and identity, silenced throughout official discourse as speaking and acting subjects in their own right.

The musical and cultural intertexts (the plena and its lyrics) also inform the pretextual antagonism already established
between the two protago-
Page 51

nists. The plena song "Cuando las mujeres quieren a los hombres" outlines the alternative ways that women exert power
over men, but it does so by portraying women as witches, brujas. The gender ambivalence that permeates the song "poor
men, / be careful with those men" is even clearer in the short story, where Ferr demonstrates the negative and positive
effects of such positionings. Indeed, the strategies used by women to control the love of their men more dearly reverberate
in the allusion to Isabel Luberza's "ancient wisdom I had inherited from my mother, and my mother from her mother before
her," 14 a wisdom that nevertheless proved futile in keeping Ambrosio's undivided love for herself. Thus, the "wisdom" of
the white European female tradition is rendered impotent, in contrast to the power and strategies used by the African
woman, a differential form of power that will be discussed later. Contrary to what some critics have observed,15 the first
paragraph of the story begins to deconstruct the antinomy of women by foreshadowing the final fusion of the white lady
and the black whore.

The text unfolds into two alternating narrative voices: the voices of Isabel Luberza and Isabel la Negra. In the final
paragraph, the fusion of Self and Other has reached its apex, and the reader can no longer discern who speaks. In addition
to Ambrosio, an obvious point of convergence for both women, a number of motifs anticipate and prefigure the final fusion,
a structure that characterizes the neofantastic story and its detective storylike plot. Most prominently, the motif that serves
as a psychological and structural nexus is the bright red nail polish, "Cherries Jubilee," they both use. The color, alluded to
by Rodrguez Juli in his description of the woman on the street, is equated with lower-class, black aesthetics; it is
appropriated by Isabel Luberza in her desire to become her Other, thus challenging and renouncing the muted and self-
effacing colors of her upperclass repressed sexuality. While the Cherries Jubilee has been explained as an instance of
American capitalism on the island,16 it has also been read by Debra Castillo as an "objective correlative" that suggests the
resistance of both women, "at the textual level," to pleasing men. This is what makeup purportedly does but for
emancipatory purposes,17 thus achieving the "shifting of surfaces and classes and races over one another through the
polishing of nails."

The large white home of Isabel Luberza and her late husband Ambrosio also becomes a space symbolic of the identification
between both women. Ambrosio's will dictates that each woman will own half of the house, thus satisfying Isabel la Negra's
class-based desire that she felt growing up in deprivation:
Page 52

. . . her yearning to live in the house, her dream of sitting out on the balcony behind the silver balustrade, beneath
the baskets of fruit and garlands of flowers, . . . She suffered from a nostalgia that had become incandescent over
the years, burning in her heart like a childhood vision. In this vision, which flashed back to her whenever she
walked past Isabel Luberza's house, she'd see herself again as a young girl, barefoot and dressed in rags, looking
up at a tall, handsome man dressed in white linen and Panama hat, who stood leaning out on the balcony next to a
beautiful blond woman, elegantly dressed in a silver lam gown. 18

Isabel Luberza initially mourns the transformation that the house will inevitably suffer, from decent family home to brothel,
from white-painted wall of purity and decorum to "those gaudy shades that persuade men to relax." Its "shocking pink"
balcony, its "snow-white, garlanded facades" will turn "chartreuse green fused into chrysanthemum orange,"19 changes in
color that Luberza can no longer resist, as they symbolize the metamorphosis of her own upper-class aesthetics into those
bright colors that exude a tropicalized sensuality and sin. This shift signals the metaphoric encroachment of the culture of
the lower class into the spaces of the aristocracy, a displacement that Puerto Ricans experienced as a result of the economic
changes brought forth by the United States and later by Operation Bootstrap and the industrialization program, which
motivated the flux of workers from the rural areas into the city. This phenomenon has been described by Jos Luis Gonzles
as the ''plebeyismo" of Puerto Rican culture, which Juan G. Gelp has identified as a thematic continuity in Ferr's
narratives.20

By the end of the story it is Isabel Luberza who most desires to become her racial Other, Isabel la Negra. She takes off her
attire, exposing her fair skin to the sun, self-flagellating herself in order to purify the Other. She desires the unbridled
sexuality of Isabel la Negra and mimics the freedom never alloted her as a "wife," for "the male is always the one who has
to take the initiative." If desire marks a fundamental absence, the void underlying the white lady's desire for the Other is
what propels her to give up her female role as a passive, dependent wife, as adornment, in order to gain the power that she
finds in the black prostitute. This desire, as Elizabeth Grosz puts it, is "concerned only with its own processes, pleasures
and internal logic, a logic of the signifier":21

but today I've begun to see dearly for the first time. Today I'll confront the perfect beauty of her face to my absolute
sorrow in order to understand. Now that I've drawn nearer to her I can see her as she really is, her hair no longer a
cloud of smoke raging above her head but draped like a soft, golden chain about her neck, her soft skin no longer
dark, but spilled over her shoulders like dawn's milk, a skin of the purest pedigree, without the merest suspicion
of a kinky backlash, now swaying back and forth defiantly before her and feeling the blood flow out of me like a
tide, my treacherous turncoat blood that has even now begun to stain my heels with that glorious, shocking shade
I've always loved so, the shade of Cherries Jubilee.22
Page 53

While Isabel la Negra's skin is whitened at the moment of fusion, the "I" that speaks and that utters the fusion is that of
Isabel Luberza, a singular pronoun that by the end of the story has become doubled. Lost in the English translation, a key
utterance in the original Spanish text marks that psychic and symbolic fusion: "tongonendome yo ahora para atrs" (now
I am swaying back and forth). The "I" here, already marked by doubleness, is accompanied by a noticeably African-derived
verb, tongonear (synomynous with contonear, swaying), a linguistic instance of what gender politics would deem an
ambivalent Afro-Antillean and erotic discourse that constitutes the majority of Isabel la Negra's descriptions. 23 Similarly,
the bright red ''Cherries Jubilee" becomes the red of blood, the hidden African blood that was flowing "out of [her] like a
tide," a gush that can only reveal the repressed, contained conditions of her hidden racial identity.

This fusion of the two women proposes multilayered interpretive possibilities that move beyond the Anglo-centered idea
of Elaine Showalter's common woman's culture.24 First, in the social context of racial conflict and myths, this fantastic
ending is not a metaphor for a facile, reconciliatory paradigm.of racial mestizaje, similar to the one textualized earlier by
Toms Blanco. Instead, it proposes a vision of cultural dialogism by which the central role of African-based culture in
Puerto Rico would be recognized as equally as that of the European-based one. This vision is opposed by many blanquitos in
Puerto Rico. The history of musical syncretism and of transculturation portrayed in the development of both the danza and
the plena suggest this type of reading. Again, the musical intertexts are key here, for they open up Ferr's story to larger
cultural contexts than those previously articulated by feminist approaches. The racial myths prevalent in upper-class Puerto
Rican society are alluded to in the text: "al que tiene raja siempre le sale al final" [black blood always surfaces at the end],
"dicen que eso requinta" [they say that African blood always comes out], myths that articulate the phobia of racial mixture
among the upper class.25 Perhaps Ferr's fusion cannot be read as participation in cultural dialogism without a recognition
and acceptance of racial mixture among and within this class. Toms Blanco himself reminded his readers, in "Elogio de la
plena," that we can no longer deny this racial reality among Puerto Ricans: "no podemos tapar el cielo con las manos" (we
cannot cover the sky with our hands).26

In other words, the cultural exchange between the European and the African-based sectors cannot be proposed before the
systematic whitewashing and discursive erasure of blackness is recognized and stopped. Read within the discursive
domains established by Eurocentric partriarchal writers who created a historical tradition for the gestures of racial erasure,
for whitewashing the "dark" aspects of their family histories and of the cultural
Page 54

productions of the islands, the equitable fusion of Isabel Luberza and Isabel la Negra is not a simplistic call for a glorified
mestizaje that continues to elide racial conflict but instead a radical, positive valuation of the centrality of African-derived
elements in Puerto Rican society and culture. Instead of unilaterally "improving the race" (mejorar la raza) by whitewashing
Puerto Rican society, as interracial marriage and paradigms of mestizaje have been interpreted, Ferr proposes to
"mulattize" (my own expression) upper-class Puerto Rican society in a transcultural gesture that will symbolically darken
and re-Africanize it, as it is embodied in the white lady called Isabel Luberza and her desire for the Other. Given the
masculinist genesis of mestizaje that Vera Kutzinski identifies in Caribbean literary history, 27 Ferr's story can also be
valued as an attempt to place women within that particular discursive tradition. She fictionalized, in 1976, what revisionist
scholars such as Angel Quintero Rivera and Juan Flores are currently achieving in their recovery of the African presence
within the history of a Caribbean island that prided itself on being whiter than its Antillean neighbors.

In addition to Ferr's rewriting of racializing processes in Puerto Rico, to conflate metaphorically the white dama/danza
and the black puta/plena is a critique of class conflicts in Puerto Rico, divisions marked by clear racial boundaries and with
profound implications for women's roles. Financially dependent on her husband, Isabel Luberza desired the relative
financial independence that her Other, "a self-made woman," enjoyed. In Puerto Rico the real Isabel "La Negra" Luberza
was powerful enough to contribute to charity and to the church, developing, as a result, a sort of social status and visibility
rarely or never alloted to prostitutes. Yet it is also a fact that the church did not accept many of Isabel's donations because
of her past and because of the illicit nature of her profession. As Vera Kutzinski has analyzed in the context of nineteenth-
century Cuba, visual representations of the mulatta were consistently associated with prostitution and concubinage, and
the use of ''money obtained from illegal commerce of all sorts" became a "substitute for pedigree and concurrent social
privilege," a phenomenon that marked "major socioeconomic changes in nineteenthcentury Cuba."28 Thus, the image of
women of color and their overdetermined sexuality have been very much accompanied by a concomitant criminalization
that revealed, in more profound ways, the threat of socioeconomic permeability and privilege that emerged from
modernization and urbanization. In the case of Isabel La Negra, however, financial gains did not necessarily translate into
social power or entry into the old lineage of the aristocracy. Ironically, in Ferr's story it is this financial and economic
privilege that Isabel Luberza desires since, in her case, it has been system-
Page 55

atically sabotaged by her own social position as "wife" of the bourgeoisie.

By her ironic treatment of this class boundary, which La Negra proves permeable, Ferr calls into question the social
binaries that subordinate women, both black and white, proletarian and upper-class, into rigid delineations of their sexual
roles. This ensuing process of (de)erotizing women, according to race and class locations, is a cross-cultural class
phenomenon that in the Caribbean is clearly rooted in the economic institution of slavery. 29 Isabel Luberza, sexually
repressed by the patriarchal dictates of her upper-class upbringing, desires to mimic the free sexuality and unbridled
eroticism that define her Other. As a dama and as a wife, she must remain passive in her sexuality since it is the role of the
man to "take the initiative." Yet the sexual knowledge that allows men to lead in sexual interaction is transmitted precisely
by Isabel la Negra. She not only possesses experience and offers total sexual freedom to men: "porque en los brazos de
Isabel la Negra todo est permitido, mijito, no hay nada prohibido" (because in Isabel la Negra's arms everything is allowed,
son, nothing is forbidden''). More significantly, because her racial identity as a black woman is rendered negligible "yo no
soy ms que Isabel la Negra" (I'm just Isabel la Negra) and thus an ensuing inferior status is accorded to her, a social
invisibility, men can open up to her without risk. They can be vulnerable; they can present themselves as inexperienced,
nave, as virgins.

In other words, because of her lack of social power, both recognizable and recognized, Isabel la Negra acquires a kind of
power that other socially visible women are not privy to: she is allowed entry to men's most profound realities their
emotions, their fears, their weaknesses aspects of their identities that are systematically masked from society and from
their own wives. Recalling the traditional plena that informs the short story's title, the power of women in Afro-Caribbean
societies to "possess" men comes not only from the effects of rituals but, in a modern, Ferrerian rereading of that plena,
from a black woman's contradictory social and sexual positionings.30Isabel Luberza, the dama of privileged social status
and economic comfort and luxury, received only "la sabidura antiqusima de su madre"31 [the antiquated wisdom of her
mother], a legacy that proved useless in the erotic/sexual interactions with her husband.

As Mariana Valverde suggests, "where there is strong eroticism there is power."32 Ferr's construction of Isabel la Negra's
sexuality may then be problematic as another instance of eroticizing blacks. Ferr's own vicarious curiosity about Isabel "La
Negra" Luberza and her own sense of victimization by sexual codes, articulated in the story through Isabel Luberza's voice,
are revealed in more detail in her essay "Por qu quiere Isabel a los hombres?":
Mi descubrimiento de las sensaciones erticas en aquel tiempo me llev a sentirme en ms de una ocasin cmplice de
Isabel en mi fantasa. Recuerdo haber pensado que si lo nico que ella haca era iniciar a los amigos que me acompaaban
a los bailes en esos misterios de la sexualidad que tan celosamente nos ocultaban alas alumnas del colegio no era ni la mitad
de lo mala de como la pintaban las monjas. El hecho de que, algunos aos ms tarde, Isabel llegase a convertirse en un
personaje importante del mundo de los negocios dej tambin en m una impresin indeleble. 33

[My own discovery of erotic sensations at the time sometimes made me feel more a wishful accomplice than a
disapproving judge of Isabel's activities. I remember thinking that if all Isabel did was initiate the boys I used to
dance with, under the severe eyes of the chaperones, to those sexual mysteries that were strictly forbidden to us
girls, she wasn't half as bad as the nuns who ranted against her in school would have had us believe. The fact that
Isabel became, a few years later, a woman of means . . . made an even further impression on me.]

Debra Castillo has already observed the privileged position of Ferr and other Latin American women writers that allows
them to express that "romance with the racial Other" and that "longing for a reverse mestizaje" from the subject position of
a white, upper-class female writer.34 Ferr's own vicarious desire for the sexual positioning of a black prostitute could be
deemed as discursive racism if it fails to take into account the racially informed historical oppression that underlies La
Negra's social role as prostitute. It may be another idealized vision of the racial Other, an image that does not truly differ
much from the modes of representation that blacks have been subjected to historically throughout Puerto Rican literature.
Indeed, Ferr's fictional construction of Isabel la Negra is an excellent illustration of the role of black characters as utopian
loci that signal the dismantling of the bourgeois social order, a value that Rafael Falcn has identified in neo-Negrista
literature in the Caribbean and Latin America.35 In literary texts authored by whites, blacks are positioned to serve the
interests of whites as they mediate the latters' liberatory articulations of social change. Despite the ideological dissidence
with social institutions in which many of these authors locate themselves, their deployment of black characters can function
only in relation to a liberal project separate from black agency, authority, and authorship. In other words, it is through the
presence of Isabel la Negra that Isabel Luberza finally encounters her own truth and her own self.

In another of Ferr's less-discussed short stories, "Amalia,"36 a young, white, upper-class girl, literally imprisoned within
her own home by a fatal condition that prohibits her from being out in the sun, finds pleasure and happiness in the figure
of the black chauffeur, Gabriel. His angelic and divine name signals the role of savior that Gabriel plays in the story. Yet
this is not a classical, divine savior, but an angelic cocolo of sorts, reminiscent of
Page 57

Madonna's black saint in "Like a Prayer," a man who is constantly associated with Afro-Caribbean music the conga in
particular and rhythms and who introduces the young girl to erotic pleasure. An inversion of the colonialist paradigm of
rape the white man who possesses the black female slave this coupling is subversive to the bourgeois values that permeate
Ponce's upper-class society. Indeed, any sort of sexual intercourse between a "proper" young lady and a man outside her
class sector and racially darker is still taboo, for it supposedly disrupts the social order and the limpieza de sangre boundaries
necessary to secure class stability. Also, Gabriel is older than the young protagonist, insinuating a sort of sexual interaction
that borders on pedophilia but is, in fact, explicitly disassociated from any form of oppression. Ferr consistently
distinguishes Gabriel from the young girl's uncle who tries to molest her and who, it is implied, was the source of the girl's
illness, a result of the incestuous relationship that her mother and her uncle had had over the years. Thus, Ferr raises the
interracial sexual encounters between Gabriel and the young girl beyond any reproach or any indication of oppressive
relations. The interracial desire is articulated as the only utopian space for the young protagonist, the only instance in which
"Amalia re por vez primera con sus dientes de guayo chiquiquichiqui" [Amalia smiles for the first time with her grating
teethchiquiquichiqui].

By locating erotic pleasure only or mostly in black figures and by structuring these discoveries of erotic pleasure by
victimized, upper-class white women, Ferr corroborates the class-based constructs imposed on the masses and the
populace (in the Caribbean this is the black and the mulatto sectors) as the locus of pleasure and hedonism, while the realm
of desire continues to be contained within the upper class. 37 This pleasure has been located historically within the social
space inhabited by the others, by the marginalized and the powerless, thus establishing a discursive fissure between desire
and erotic pleasure. Here Ferr is definitely articulating a class critique of upper-class mores and its impact on women. She
is not "speaking for" black women or mulattas as much as she is deploying their figures to point out, through a
differentiating discourse, the multiple forms of oppression of those women who are usually regarded as privileged. While
the impact of erotic discourse in Papeles de Pandora has been acknowledged as a central feminist literary strategy, even by
the author herself,38 the question remains as to the double-edged ambivalence that this discourse implies when contained
within the racial boundaries already traced by patriarchy and imperialism. As a white female narrator writing about a black
prostitute, Ferr may have found herself "between identification and disavowal."39
Page 58

The autobiographical subtexts to Papeles de Pandora, yet to be explored, suggest another perspective about this problem of
privilege and of race, of authors and of characters. In an essay tided "Una conciencia musical" 40 [A musical consciousness],
Ferr recounts the meaningful experience she had during her youth in her friendship with Gilda Ventura, a black nanny
who initiated her into the popular music and culture of Puerto Rico and Latin America, an access to these differential
knowledges that was very much denied by the Eurocentric cultural values of her family. Everything Ferr has written, she
states, "has been an attempt to narrate the story of those years in which [she] acquired, thanks to Gilda, a musical awareness
of [her] country."41 Indeed, the dualities in "When Women Love Men" the plenas and the danzas, the white versus the
black, the socioeconomic divisions were viscerally experienced by Ferr during her upbringing in Ponce, where La
Alhambra, her elite neighborhood, came "face to face'' with the Barrio de San Antn, the very poor barrio where Gilda lived
and where the plena was born.

This detail is revealing of the ways in which social binaries and dualities, while undoubtedly social constructs, are not
limited to discursive phenomena but also should be analyzed in terms of the concrete experiences that individuals have
shared regarding class segregation, racial conflict, and the silencing of popular culture. The geophysical proximity and the
disturbing social distance between these two worlds were, in many ways, mediated by Gilda, the "transgressor" who
initiated the young Rosario Ferr into the pleasures of Mexican films and Afro-Caribbean music, plenas and salsa. This
was, to be sure, Ferr's escape from the "silence" imposed by the Eurocentric values upheld by her family. In this sense, the
black characters that Ferr portrays in such an idealistic way are an "homage" to Gilda Ventura, as she candidly explains in
"La conciencia musical." Gilda was the agent for Ferr's transculturation and, perhaps more important, for her
decolonization as an upper-class Puerto Rican woman. Thus, a reading of "When Women Love Men," as well as of "Amalia,"
should certainly take into account the personal experiences that motivate these representations. It also has implications for
reconsidering erotic pleasure in a larger cultural framework. The "pleasure" of decolonization, of discovering and
reconstructing aspects of one's own cultural identity that have been erased through what Ngugi wa Thiong'o has deemed
"colonial alienation,"42 is a plausible political and productive framework for reading these two short stories by Ferr.

Locating pleasure in a racial Other also implies a process of eroticizing language the word and the text. In
"Maquinolandera," the final short story in Papeles de Pandora,43 Ferr experiments with the pleasure of a text
Page 59

imbued with Afro-Caribbean rhythms and language. Virtually ignored by critics and practically untranslatable into
English, "Maqninolandera" consists of an experimental, highly poetic rendering of musical intertexts, subtexts, and
allusions to Afro-Puerto Rican bombas and salsa music. It renders, simultaneously, a denouncement of the marginalized
status of black and mulatto musicians and singers, both male and female, in Puerto Rico. If Ferr's stories have been
characterized by countercanonical textures and ambiguous language as antipatriarchal discourse, "Maquinolandera"
represents her most experimental writing in this context.

More than a narrative, this is a metaliterary text, lacking a conventional plot yet entering the world of the Puerto Rican
musical farndula. The text proposes, for me at least, three levels of reading. The first consists of the description and
canonical vindication of great salsa figures: Willie Coln, Eddie Palmieri, Roberto Rohena, and among the women, Iris
Chacn, Ruth Fernndez, and Lucecita Bentez. The second level is a pilgrimage of sorts, a traveling movement that seems
to end in a concert stage, and at times is transformed into a religious procession. At the third discursive level one listens to
the voice of Ismael Rivera, the sonero mayor, who is imprisoned. His voice embodies the metatextual search for the perfect
word and the ideal sound or note. Thus, the artistic search for language and for music are doubled throughout the text, as
Ferr examines the creative process not only her own as a writer but also that of Ismael Rivera as a sonero (a singer-
improviser) and ultimately as a model for Ferr's nueva narrativa.

The fusion of music and literature (verbal language) is apparent from the beginning of the text, even in the very title, which
refers to a bomba of the same name authored by Doa Margot Rivera, Ismael's mother, and first interpreted by Rafael
Cortijo y su Combo. Afro-Puerto Rican bombas such as "Maquinolandera" are characterized by a strong presence of rhythm
(instead of a melodic line) and as a result a verbal language whose meaning rests more on its phonetic values (sound and
rhythm) than in its denoted meanings. Thus, one finds a predominance of jitanjforas and portmanteau words such as the
title itself. Maquinolandera a neologism that eludes a particular meaning but reproduces, in the context of modernization,
the changing rhythms of urban life (maquino/mquina). I suggest, then, that the text is eroticized through the musicalization
of the word and through repetition: 44 "Chumalacatera, maquinolandera, chumalacatera, maquinolandera . . . " The rhythms
of the plena and the bomba, the African-based accentuation of words on the last syllable45 (Choriz, maquin),
the jitanjforas popularized by Nicols Guilln and Luis Pals Matos, the syncopation felt in the push and pull of phrases,
and the anaphoric structures of the text, among other elements, help construct a
Page 60

musical, sensorial, and even "semiotic" texture. If "significance," as Roland Barthes defines it, is "meaning, insofar as it is
sensually produced," 46 "Maquinolandera" resists being read traditionally as a story; instead it proposes itself as a
performance, an act of utterance and listening, a process of signifying more than a denotative text. This text, consciously
incoherent, fragmented, and syncopated in its multiple levels of discourse, is truly revolutionary in the value of its Poetics.47

The eroticized, musical syntax and rhythmical structures of the text transgress the boundaries of official discourse, that is,
those institutionalized languages such as literature, philosophy, history, and politics that exert power constituting and
legitimating social meaning for others. By subverting the literary norms imposed by a patriarchal order and by a European-
based, scientifically informed realist and naturalist discourse, Ferr's nueva narrativa introduces the discourse and the voices
of Afro-Caribbean popular music those that Edgardo Rodrguez Juli marked as centrifugal into the mainstream of Puerto
Rican high culture and literature, into the canon.

"Maquinolandera" also proposes a revision of the social constructs of the erotic as located in the popular sectors, which in
Puerto Rico, despite claims to the contrary, remain synonyrnous with blacks and mulattoes. In this case, pleasure is located
in the language of popular music, but is not necessarily or automatically transposed to the figure of the musicians and
singers. On the contrary, Ferr's text constantly moves and shifts between the marginalized and socially persecuted vision
of Ismael, Iris, and Lucecita and their representations as cultural heroes, albeit touching on the mythical and divine at times.
The politics of the text, its denunciatiom of the racist cultural boundaries deployed by an elite sector in order to exclude
popular Afro-Caribbean music from its proper place as a central marker of Puerto Rican culture and identity anticipates,
once more and in fictionalized forms, the historical shift of popular music as an expression of plebeyismo to the center of
Puerto Rican urban culture and postmodernity. Juan Flores has creatively termed this "Cortijo's Revenge" in the struggles
for discourse and representation that have characterized Puerto Rican cultural history.

The recent shift of Afro-Puerto Rican music toward the center and into the cultural mainstream in Puerto Rico was
facilitated in part by the intertextual inscriptions of popular music within the radicalizing, polyphonic texts of the nueva
narrativa. Andreas Huyssen reminds us that "it is primarily the visible and public presence of women artists in high art, as
well as the emergence of new kinds of women performers and producers in mass culture, which make the old gendering
device obsolete. The universalizing
Page 61

ascription of femininity to mass culture always depended on the very real exclusion of women from high culture and its
institutions. Such exclusions are, for the time being, a thing of the past. Thus, the old rhetoric has lost its persuasive power
because the realities have changed." 48

Although there are historical reasons to rejoice with Huyssen, salsa music, nonetheless, is still subject to feminizing
constructs. Its centrality in Puerto Rican society and its simultaneous feminized marginality in the United States, as cultural
Other, suggests the need for a postmodern approach to understanding current forms of Afro-Caribbean music, that is, an
analysis that considers salsa in its ideological plurality: as national discourse, international mass culture, and a continuing
double-edged value as a culturally appropriated musical form in the United States.
Page 63

PART TWO
THE PLURAL SITES OF SALSA

Page 65

A Postmodern Preface

Porque la Salsa no existe [there is no such thing as Salsa]

Dmaso Prez Prado

Yo slo conozco una Salsa que venden en botella, llamada catsup.

Yo toco msica cubana [I only know a Salsa sold in a bottle
called ketchup. What I play is Cuban music.]
Tito Puente

Soy cubana, t lo sabes.

Aqu la Salsa . . . Soy yo!
[I am Cuban, as you know.
I am Salsa music!]
Olga Navarro, "Nuestra msica cubana"

Puerto Rico es Salsa [Puerto Rico is Salsa].

Concierto Expo 92, Seville, Spain

Salsa es una suma armnica de toda la cultura latina reunida en Nueva York.
[Salsa is the harmonic sum of all Latin culture that meets in New York].
Willie Coln

"La msica Salsa es un folclor urbano a nivel internacional

[Salsa music is urban folklore at the international level].
Rubn Blades
"Puerto Rico es Salsa," an evening concert at Expo 92 in Seville, Spain, was the culmination of a day of festivities honoring
the National Day of Puerto Rico on June 23, 1992. Yet behind the curtains of a successful stage performance by Alex de
Castro, Tony Vega, Andy Montaez, and El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, the national affirmation of salsa as Puerto Rico's
music had become a controversy well before the show began. Issues of national identity, popular culture, race, and class
were subtexts to this public debate that began once the government revealed that a salsa concert would represent Puerto
Rico in Spain's Expo 92. For many upper-class Puerto Ricans, salsa was not an appropriate and lofty enough symbol of the
island's musical traditions. Either the Puerto Rican Symphony Orchestra or a lyri-
Page 66

cal trio would have been much more acceptable. Other sectors contested that salsa was not Puerto Rican but Cuban music.
Still others felt that jbaro music had been denied its opportunity as a traditional symbol of Puerto Rico's autochthonous
folklore.

Altogether and albeit their conflicting views, these opinions reveal the contested nature of salsa and the difficulties of
defining a music that is syncretic and interethnically Caribbean. They also dramatize the central role of popular music as a
site for the formation and definition of national identity, a process that assumes serious consequences for the Puerto Rican
people because of the island's complex, lagging colonial conditions within an assumed postcolonial world. This complex
and contradictory political location is informed by Puerto Rico's "uneven insertion . . . into the modern industrial
configuration," what Juan Flores and Mara. Milagros Lpez have termed "the post-colonial colony." 1 Yet the symbolic
values of popular music as a locus of national identity are not exclusively expressed by Puerto Ricans; they are also shared
by Cubans, from whose African musical tradition salsa emerged, and other urban Caribbean audiences, such as
Venezuelans and Colombians, who have embraced salsa as an artistic articulation of urban life and a reaffirmation of class
conflict and racial identity in Latin America.

Within the continental United States, salsa music adds to this complexity as a Pan-Latino expression of cultural hybridity
and resistance. Thus, because of its semantic polyvalence contingent on the cultural context in which it is listened to,
produced, and performed, this particular music, fluid in its social values and cultural meanings, eludes a fixed definition.
It shifts meanings among individual receptors, and it also becomes a metaphor for race, class, and gender conflicts within
the diverse Puerto Rican communities (the island and the diasporas), as well as across Latin America, the United States,
and the international scene. While salsa has been identified as the music of the urban, working-class black and mulatto
sectors in Puerto Rico and historically rejected as such by the upper classes on the island, in the United States it has
functioned as a cohesive force among Latinos in general, syncretizing, in fact, an array of Latin American musical styles
into its repertoire, a "harmonic sum" as Willie Coln describes it.

Simultaneously, the history of salsa music in the United States has revealed the mechanisms by which the Anglo
mainstream appropriates and co-opts the cultural productions of less dominant groups. This mainstreaming reproduces,
at a larger social level, strategies of appropriation analogous to those deployed by white writers around the role of the black
figure as a locus of liberation. Salsa music has been received as an oppositional, liberatory music by progressive Anglo
performers like David Byrne, among others, and by Anglo audiences, particularly in major cities with Latina/o pop-
Page 67

ulations. This cross-cultural phenomenon readily lends itself to a continued analysis of intercultural desire as discussed in
the works of Rosario Ferr.

Rather than delimiting salsa to a specific musical form or to a synthesis of structures, I prefer to interpret it as a sociomusical
practice, one claimed by very heterogeneous communities for radically diverse purposes. As Willie Coln observes, more
than a rhythm or a form, salsa music "es una idea, un concepto, una manera de asumir la msica desde una perspectiva
latinoamericana" [is an idea, a concept, a way of doing music from a Latin American perspective]. 2 Its polyvalent
popularity ranges from Orquesta de la Luz's performances in Japan and at Madison Square Garden to its use by the
Reverend Frank Pretto in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who plays salsa with his band, Parranda, as a means of collecting funds
for the poor and as a strategy, sanctioned by his bishop, to attract new members to his parish.3 Salsa is performed in Spain
and Germany, among other European countries. It is danced to in large public dance halls called salsdromos throughout
Lima, Per; it blares through radio stations in Tucson, Arizona, on Sunday night programs once hosted by a young Anglo
miner who is a salsamigo, a salsa fan and expert. This music has been performed in concert halls throughout Latin American
and U.S. cities, on college campuses, on the streets of the Bronx and of East. L.A., and in clubs in Toronto;4 it plays in the
small living room of a Puerto Rican single woman in southwest Detroit and in the elegant living rooms of upperclass
Venezuelans; meanwhile, it subtly serves as background music for a wide array of television commercials in the United
States, from Duracell batteries to NBC-affiliate stations in Detroit.

Thus, to situate salsa ideologically has meant avoiding the restriction of this very heterogeneous musical expression to one
ideological camp. Rather, a postmodern approach that considers the multiple meanings and social values ascribed to it by
particular social and ethnic sectors is needed. In this part I will profile, first, salsa music as a marker of class and race
divisions in Puerto Rico by analyzing the social dichotomy established between salsa and rock music during the 1980s.
Second, I will analyze its contested national origins and its syncretism as Pan-Latina/o music and more recently as
international mass culture, which has brought this Afro-Caribbean music into the foreground as global "urban folklore." It
is true that the commercial label of "salsa" has been detrimental, for it homogenizes the complex history of musical forms,
genres, and practices encompassed in AfroCaribbean music. Yet contrary to Mambo King Dmaso Prez Prado's assertion
and those of many other Cuban musicians who deny the specificity of this music, salsa does exist, characterized by a specific
use of rhythms, instrumentation, themes, and lyrics and by a particular historical development that is informed by Afro-
Cuban music but nonetheless diverges from it.
Page 68

This chapter may be read as a postmodern rendering constituted by diverse and conflicting views about salsa. It is not
music history, for I do not attempt to include a complete narrative of the development of Latin(o) popular music, nor do I
incorporate all of its major musicians and interpreters. Rather, I select specific case studies that illustrate the ways in which
salsa music constitutes a symbolic site for negotiating issues of national identity, class, and race. I discuss this music
simultaneously as mass culture, as marker of national identity, and as tropicalized ethnic expression.

To avoid the most relativist (nihilist) forms of a postmodernist analysis, this chapter refuses to deny salsa's value as a
historically oppositional expression within the larger tradition of Afro-Caribbean music. Moreover, the tensions that arise
from the divergent social constructions ascribed to salsa are articulated. While postmodernist theories have contributed
substantially to our understanding of popular music beyond fixed, static definitions bound by nation, I agree with other
critics that "this approach often seems to depoliticize such studies by emphasizing only the fluidity of boundaries rather
than the actual positions they represent and the actors who constitute them." 5 As an engaged Latina scholar, I am interested
in identifying and denouncing the colonialist constructions of salsa music by Anglo mainstream discourse and its
concomitant othering, a political position that possibly will prove unpopular among those readers who equate crossing
cultural borders with celebrating an assumed equality.

My stance, however, does not aim to defend an already anachronic or inherent concept of "authenticity" but rather to
unmask the material, economic motivations and the power differentials that undergird the discursive strategies by which
intercultural desire is articulated. Most important, I hope to illuminate theories and approaches to popular culture currently
in circulation and to rewrite them as they are newly informed by the sociocultural practices and the perspectives of the
colonized, displaced, and dispossessed cultural community of U.S. Latino/as, a perspective that remains minimally
acknowledged by mainstream scholarship on popular music.

The multiple epigraphs that open this chapter illustrate the highly conflictive definitions that salsa evokes among Latino
musicians and singers. Salsa music does not exist for some; for others it is only an imitation of Cuban music; and still for
others, like Willie Coln and Rubn Blades, salsa is a syncretic cultural expression central to Latina/o urban communities
in the United States and across Latin America, simultaneously traveling beyond borders. This plurality of ideological sites
and discursive locations will illustrate the value of this music as metaphor for national identity, difference, hybridity, and
oppositionality.
Page 69

Chapter Four
Situating Salsa

Music, Race, and Class Conflict in Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico and other Caribbean countries, such as Venezuela, 1 salsa music has emerged as a marker of race and class
differences. The cocolorockero dichotomy based on musical taste permeated youth culture in Puerto Rico during the
1980s. Cocolos, an African-derived term,2 refers to young black men who attend salsa concerts and who drive old Toyotas
with the driver's seat lowered and the loudspeakers playing salsa. The aesthetics of the car and the music, partly analogous
to the Chicano lowrider tradition in the Southwest, associates salsa with this social sector. The rockero, or rock and roller, is
the white middle-and-upper class young Puerto Rican who prefers to listen to Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Queen, and U.S. rock.
While there is no particular car model that characterizes rockeros perhaps the yuppified BMW this audience prevails at
city beaches and attends rock concerts by U.S. groups.

An event emblematic of this social duality occurred on June 12, 1987, when two concerts one by Ratt and Poison, a couple
of commercial heavy metal groups from the United States, and the other a concert in memory of salsa singer Ismael Rivera,
the "sonero mayor" who had passed away recently were planned for the same evening. They took place, respectively, in
the Hiram Bithorn Stadium and in the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, two adjacent structures that share a common parking
lot yet whose very names embody the racial and cultural dualities of Puerto Rican colonial society (Hiram Bithorn was a
white Puerto Rican baseball player, and Clemente was black). There were fears that conflict and violence between the two
groups would emerge before the events, and police were assigned to patrol the area. A few conflicts arose, yet considering
that fifteen thousand fans attended the salsa concert (although the rock fans were not as numerous as expected), the evening
went quite smoothly. The cocolo concert was attended by a racially diverse audience, by old and young peo-
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ple, by families, elders, and politicians; the rock concert was filled with youngsters dressed in the black leather, hard rock
style, with long hair, many of them smoking dope.

I mention this demographic example to comment on the age-marked basis of rock audiences in Latin America and on the
more diverse generational audience of salsa music in Puerto Rico. The fact that even the governor of Puerto Rico attended
the concert in honor of Ismael, the same governor who organized the salsa concert in Seville, Spain, attests to the collective
representativity of this music. The San Juan Star published a double article on the two concerts, with side-by-side pictures
of two singers and two columns of text, one reviewing each event. The gap was reaffirmed in the headlines that read: ''Some
Like It Loud, Others Like It Lively," and the layout played with the opposition and the simultaneity of both kinds of music
in relation to each other. 3 While the audience at the salsa concert booed and hissed at the mention of the next-door event,
some rock fans were quoted as expressing interest in having attended the salsa event, suggesting that perhaps salsa music
possesses much more acceptance and popularity in Puerto Rico than the dichotomy literally suggests.

Like all dichotomies, the cocolo-rockero one articulates a socioeconomic and racial division, yet it is also a social
construct.4 In other words, while it is true that many young men in Puerto Rico would not even dream of listening to or
buying each other's music, there are those who enjoy both salsa and rock, who listen to both, who dance to both, and who
even consume both. As a Puerto Rican teenager growing up in San Juan in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I attended high
school dances that were almost always articulations of a double consciousness in their musical representation. Somehow
we managed always to hire two bands, one that would play U.S. rock and roll and soft popular ballads (the Beatles, the
Beach Boys, etc.) and the indispensable Latin music band that would perform salsa, merengue, and bolero classics. The
bands would alternate shifts so that in the best of a colonized society we enjoyed nonstop live music. Quite significant,
however, were the differing meanings and values of each culturally delineated musical repertoire. While U.S. rock and roll
allowed us to differentiate ourselves generationally from our parents I recall the many vigilant mothers who would sit at
the front row tables as chaperonas the Latin music constantly invited all in the audience to partake in the pleasures of
familiar rhythms, melodies, and intimate romantic ballads to which our parents and grandparents had also sung and
danced during their youth.

Like linguistic hybridity, these cultural practices cannot be explained exclusively as binary oppositions. Rather, it is
essential to remember that
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The San Juan Star published a double article on the salsa concert in honor of Ismael Rivera
and the rock concert featuring Ratt and Poison, two heavy metal groups. Both concerts
took place on Friday, June 12, 1987. Courtesy of the San Juan Star.

throughout an individual's lifetime, these musical choices are not fixed or stagnant. For instance, a very well known salsa
interpreter in Puerto Rico, Tony Vega, was born in Philadelphia and grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. When he moved
back to Puerto Rico, his favorite groups were Chicago and Santana. His first band performed "American" (U.S.) music, and
as journalists interestingly commented, he is white, with green eyes and straight dark hair. 5 He has received Golden and
Silver Record awards for his recordings, he performed at the Sevilla concert, and he is considered one of the most popular
salseros in Puerto Rico today. However, one of Tony Vega's recent numbers, "Busca el ritmo,"6deploys this rockero-co-colo
dichotomy to reaffirm the connection between Afro-Caribbean rhythms and the "competence" and "authenticity'' of
musicians and of the music in a song that reaffirms the African legacy of our cultural identity.

The song begins with a denunciation of many musicians' ignorance of the Afro-Caribbean repertoire, a lack of knowledge
that, as it is implied, resuits from spending too much time listening to "ritmos extranjeros" [foreign rhythms], thus affecting
the quality of salsa performances. The song's refrain posits an imperative both to musicians and their audience. Like an old
Cuban song titled "Cambia el paso," Tony Vega exhorts his listeners
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and fans to give up rock and roll and to "find the rhythm" of Latino music. A tongue-in-cheek mimicry of the penetration
of Anglo musical values as in disco music is evident in the parodically mispronounced English and code switching at the
end of the song. However, the fact that English constitutes part of the surface structure of the text also implies complicity
and an ambiguous self-location on the part of the singing subject. To reject rock and roll as an icon of Anglo culture and of
foreign intervention and to strategically essentialize Afro-Caribbean rhythms and protect their purity seems a nave stance
on the part of the composer or at best an outdated expression of nationalism.

It also elides the multilayered musical and structural influences, including that of rock, on the development of salsa, let
alone the multicultural trajectories of its own interpreters, such as Tony Vega himself. Thus, the ideological values of the
song cannot be located necessarily in the individual, personal subject locations, as the case of Tony Vega and his song
demonstrate, but rather are interpreted as collective, symbolic cultural spaces in which tensions between the national (in
this case, the colonized) and the foreign are articulated as the fear of losing locally produced musical traditions in favor of
musical imports. The contradictory facts that Tony Vega, as a musician, was very much nurtured and influenced by U.S.
and British rock groups and that, moreover, salsa music as a whole has integrated rock musical structures into its diverse
repertoire attest to the symbolic and strategic value of this musical positioning. A strictly musical reading of "Busca el
ritmo" would not convincingly explain this value, for it resides within the larger social framework of Puerto Rican urban
youth culture as well as within the longer colonial history of Puerto Rico's contradictory resistance against anything Anglo.

There are, nevertheless, already molded expectations regarding who plays or listens to salsa and who doesn't, attitudes
formed partly because of the historical origins of salsa in New York's barrios as well as because of the racial and Mass
myths created around the "bohemian" world of Latin popular music. A Claridad article on Tony Vega begins by asking the
reader to put aside expectations of who is a salsero, for in Vega the myth of the black, drug-addict, working-Mass musician
is dismantled. 7 Indeed, younger performers like Tony Vega, Alex D'Castro, and Gilberto Santa Rosa exemplify the recent
professionalizing trend of salsa musicians. In contrast to the generation of Ismael Rivera and Cheo Feliciano, historically
significant Puerto Rican black musicians and cultural heroes yet well known for their lifetime struggles with drug abuse,
this younger generation of salseros exemplifies a group that has studied music in professional settings (e.g., la Escuela Libre
de Msica) and that rejects the myth and
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image of the bohemian, drug-using musician. As Andy Montaez has stated, "That vision has changed. Musicians are now
interested in studying. In salsa orchestras now even the percussionists know how to read music, and this has improved the
quality, thus the field has broadened, and that is why we are being invited to perform not only in Puerto Rico, but in
Seville." 8 This example points out how fluidly these social dualities are negotiated within daily cultural practices and for
the individual musician as well as across generations.

More important, however, these contradictory instances illustrate the shifting value of salsa as a marker of class and race
in Puerto Rico. What are the implications of this shift from salsa as a cultural vehicle of oral tradition to its performance
based on written notations? Will it lead to a higher level of standardization, to a diminution of its complex polyrhythmic
structures, to more fixed arrangements and performances? The selection of salsa music as representative of Puerto Rico in
Spain signaled the growing acceptance of this style among the island's dominant and official sector, an attitude that may
have been nurtured by this racial and class-based shift in its new interpreters. Today's salsa scene is iconized by, among
others, Luis Miguel, "El Prncipe de la Salsa" [The Prince of Salsa], and Gilberto Santa Rosa, "El Caballero de la Salsa" [The
Gentleman of Salsa]. These singers and their bourgeois epithets encapsulate a more recent salsa sound that is not as strident
as the original New York style and whose arrangements, instrumentation, and lyrics lend it a texture of soft, romantic
music; thus, it is informally known as salsa romntica. While salsa musicians are becoming professionalized (read
''whitened"), the musical repertoire shifts toward the individual, romantic relationship, thus diminishing the impact of its
collective and political value. It is no coincidence, then, that official institutions are allowing it to be inscribed within the
space of Puerto Rican official culture.

A simultaneous phenomenon, termed "validation through visibility,"9 also helps to explain salsa's mainstreaming in Puerto
Rico. Given the "globalization" of salsa music, its popularity and presence mostly mediated by the jazz tradition in
Germany, Spain, Africa, and particularly Japan, it is much more acceptable now for the Puerto Rican dominant sector to
validate this musical style as representative of the national culture.10 In other words, once it acquires visibilityaudibility,
we may say among European audiences, then it can be safely embraced locally. This reception, a posteriori, signals a
colonialist structure of cultural circulation: the music is produced locally yet remains in the margins; then it is exported and
mainstreamed by foreign audiences, to return with the endorsement of others, Like the transatlantic circulation of the tango
and the analogous development of jazz, salsa music has been mainstreamed in Puerto Rico because of
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its newly found international and westernized legitimacy, a sort of de-Africanization ascribed to by the gaze/ear of the
dominant Other.

Some of that international visibility has been due to the popularity of salsa in Japan, a truly multicultural phenomenon
represented by Orquesta de la Luz and its performances. Orquesta de la Luz, composed of Japanese musicians who do not
speak Spanish but sing in Spanish and who discovered salsa through the music of Tito Puente and of another Japanese
salsa band, has turned out to be a wonderful exponent of this musical tradition, of its singing styles and its performance
rhythms. While their 1959 performance at the Madison Square Garden Salsa Festival guaranteed them a warm acceptance
on the part of the New York Latina/o community, their most recent recording, "La aventura," has not met with as favorable
a sales record as their first. Initially, many Puerto Ricans on the island and on the mainland did not react favorably to what
was, to them, a Japanese appropriation of their musical tradition. To be sure, I still know many Puerto Ricans who boycott
their CDs for nationalist reasons, notwithstanding the fact that musically Orquesta de la Luz has rendered a most
impressive collection of salsa songs and repertoire. Its large size reproduces the big band sound of 1940s Latin music, and
its main female singer and male instrumentalists elicit as much energy and rhythmic coordination as any Caribbean would
be expected to, singing in a clearly enunciated Spanish that belies the visual markers of their Japanese identities. This is a
group that, by its very presence, has destabilized the value of salsa music as nationalist marker and as product of cultural
essentialism. The experience of watching Orquesta de la Luz perform, particularly in its concert appearance at the Madison
Square Garden, was truly new for most Caribbeans, including myself. Their onstage performance obliges us to recognize
our assumptions about expected submissive Asian gestures, manners, and behavior. That Orquesta de la Luz thrives on
this double-edged destabilizing of national/cultural constructs, on the self-tropicalizing of Japanese musicians, is most
salient in some of their arrangements and lyrics.

"Somos diferentes," from their album of the same title, constitutes a rewriting of a traditional Mexican bolero authored by
Pablo Beltrn Ruiz. 11 The original lyrics, in which the voice addresses the irreconcilable differences that two individuals
cannot bridge despite their love, are repeated by Orquesta de la Luz and indeed sung like a bolero, respecting the original
text:

Ya me convenc que seguir los dos es imposible.

Qu le voy a hacer
si al buscar tu amor me equivoqu.
Debes de saber que ni t ni yo nos comprendemos
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Orquesta de la Luz's group photo included in the album coverfor Somos

diferentes (We are different), released by BMG Victor, Japan, in
1992. Photo by Yukio Yanagi of Drago Artistic Designs, Inc.
Reproduced with permission
of BMG Victor, Japan.

y este es el error que ahora con dolor

pagamos los dos.
Tenemos que olvidarnos de este amor
porque un amor
as no puede ser.
Somos diferentes ya lo ves
esta verdad destroza el corazn.
Hoy te digo adis
me alejo de ti serenamente.
Todo es por dems
no lo quiso Dios
somos diferentes.
[I am now convinced
it is impossible for you and me to continue.
What can I do
if I was mistaken to search for your love.
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You must know that you and I did not understand

each other
and that was the mistake that we both
pay for with pain.
We must forget this love
because such a love cannot be.
We are different, as you can see,
this truth destroys the heart.
Today I say good-bye
I walk away from you serenely.
All is useless
it is not God's will,
we are different.]

Significantly, this lyrical, romantic song of despair, fatalism, and loss becomes, in the arrangements of Orquesta de la Luz,
a pretext anticipating a broader definition of "difference" that allows for a double, allegorical reading: the cultural, racial,
and national differences represented by the group itself. After the initial bolero section, the group adds a montuno
rhythmical section; in other words, the bolero is transformed into a salsa song that articulates an analogous "difference"
deployed to highlight issues of cultural difference and musical authenticity. This second part of the song, in which
difference is marked musically by the change from slow to faster rhythms, replays difference as a social construct. The
lyrics invoke a Latina/o audience that, despite rejection and criticism by others, still follows and embraces the Asian others'
performance and musical production: "Aunque nos critiquen, somos diferentes, cantamos con amor / al pblico que nos
quiere" [Despite criticism, we are different, we sing with love to those who love us].

By placing their own difference in the foreground, explicitly calling Latinas/os to question their own centrality as sole
producers of Latin music, Orquesta de la Luz contributes to the (de)construction of popular music as a site for negotiating
national identity. Their constant articulations of a potential cultural hybridity between the East and the West but most
poignantly between Japan and the Caribbean allow listeners, mostly Caribbean-based, to begin to create new modes of
conceptualizing popular music. These two key ideologemes or culturally charged phrases, "Arroz con Salsa" [Rice with
Salsa] and "Son del Este" [Cuban Son from the East/they are from the East], suggest doubled multicultural readings on the
convergence of East and West in cultural practices. If the mention of rice signals the East, it also simultaneously plays off
the local Caribbean staple; "del Este" tries to orientalize the Cuban son, it doubly remits us to the geographical origins of
the son, Santiago, the "Oriente'' of Cuba, the eastern part of the island. 12

For each musical genre (salsa, boleros, merengues, rancheras, etc.) there
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exists a constellation of undergirding myths; social, racial, and class values; and associations that have been historically
produced by dominant sectors and social institutions. As an integral part of a long tradition of AfroCaribbean rhythms and
music, born in the Latino barrios of New York during the 1960s, salsa music has been simultaneously rejected and embraced
by diverse social sectors in the United States and in Latin America.

Although salsa in the 1990s has become palatable and acceptable to the Latin American bourgeoisie, it was rejected as
vulgar, too sensual, and trivial because of its black working-class origins, just like the plena in the past. The Left at times
has pointed out the hegemonic and repressive aspects of many of its lyrics particularly in the context of gender and in the
perpetuation of violence as a social message. 13 Salsa historian Csar Miguel Rondn has defined it as "a music whose values
are disperse, irregular and contradictory, like its characters, like the reality that produces and nurtures it,"14 thus explicating
salsa's diverse values as the unidirectional effect of realismbased art. As popular culture, John Fiske would add, salsa is
contradictory, positioned between hegemonic interests and expressions of resistance.15

Yet to listen to Ismael Rivera's song "Mi msica" (My music) is to recognize the musicians' attempts to trascend partisan
politics in order to express the human reality common to the marginalized black urban sectors. When Ismael sings these
words by Tite Curet Alonso, one of Puerto Rico's most renowned salsa composers, and asks that his music not be identified
as either right or left, but that it stands at the center of "a very lawful drum," we know we have to resist ideological
categorizations. Here I Want to propose approaching salsa music also as plural ideological sites. Given the sociohistorical
development of this music, its antecedents in folklore and in black counterplantation culture, and its strong contestatory
stance on classism and racism, its ideological value of resistance and oppositionality continues from its origins to the
present. Even when Ismael Rivera refuses to pigeonhole his music as that of the political Right or Left, a whole history of
oppositionality and resistance on the part of the black sector in the Caribbean surfaces through the ironic image of the
"very lawful drum." Even when I recognize salsa as a conglomerate of ideologies, a resuit of the diverse individual subject
positions assumed by composers, producers, and performers, its historical continuity as the sociocultural practice and
production of a marginalized community consistently illustrates this oppositional positioning.

Precisely because of the politics of its liminality, salsa music has become a target for articulation and co-optation on the part
of the industry and of dominant sectors. I have just discussed the whitening of salsa in Puerto Rico, a clear case of
"articulation" as Richard Middleton defines it.16The
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predominance of an idividualizing salsa romntica in the 1990s accords new meanings to Felipe Luciano's words in the
1980s: "There's always a danger. Music is a double-edged sword. It is escapist, it is trendy, it is faddish . . . but it is also
revolutionary, dynamic and progressive." 17 Our role as cultural critics, then, is to identify and trace the shifting ideological
values of popular music. Assuming blanket statements about the contradictory nature of popular music, mostly because it
is situated within the music industry and mass media, leads us to neutralize each music's sociocultural complexities and
specificity, leaving no space for the importance of both musicians' and listeners' agency. The overdetermined use of
"contradiction" in cultural studies has saturated how we read popular music or other texts in popular culture. As a result,
a static binary has been created: hegemony equals mass media, and resistance can be located only in the subaltern
musicians. While this power dynamic continues to be central to salsa music and other postcolonial contexts, particularly in
the 1990s with the increasing monopoly of transnational corporations, it seems that cultural criticism has turned this binary
into a fixed assumption.

By examining salsa music simultaneously as a site for negotiating national identity among Cubans and Puerto Ricans,
where hegemony andresistance are dialectical forces, and where social practices like dancing allow individuals to produce
relevant meanings to their own cultural displacement, I hope to go beyond the facile paradigm of "contradiction" in salsa.
Ultimately, salsa's ideological plurality (not pluralism) and multiple meanings can be located in the multiple texts and
discourses that the music itself produces and provokes and in its circulation as cultural text. Contradiction, then, is not
inherent to the music itself but rather is located in the experience of listening, in audience response, and in the shifting
values of its circulation. Like other forms of popular music, salsa has developed historically and has been subjected to
social, class, race, and gender value transformations, particularly in the past ten years. Its ideological plurality needs to be
examined in relation to its sociohistorical development and in terms of its geocultural location, for salsa's reception practices
and, ultimately, its multiple meanings shift according to the individual musicians, its audience, its modes of production
and dissemination, and its performative context.

Salsa as a Marker of National Identity

The Cuban musicologist Leonardo Acosta argues that to insist on identifying the genesis of salsa music is to erase this music
as historical process. Given this caveat, I have chosen not to engage in a traditional genealogy of salsa, mainly because it
tends to reify or essentialize it.18 Through the dis-
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cussions and voices of critics, writers, and musicians, salsa's contested genesis reveals itself as a site for deploying music as
a marker of national identity. This systematic discursive strategy among Cubans and Puerto Ricans in particular has to be
understood as another instance of the struggle for discourse and cultural authority that underlines the marginality of
colonized subjects. Without attempting to do musical history or to reconstruct the chronological development of salsa in
all of its diverse elements, 19 I will discuss here some of the most salient elements that particularize salsa as a sociomusical
practice. Because of its multilocality (in the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States, and internationally) and because
of both the heterogeneous and homogeneous uses for which the term salsa has been deployed, it is imperative to summarize
what has already been presented on the development of this music.

Indirectly, salsa music is one of those unacknowledged results of the Cuban revolution. As a specific historical-cultural
expression, salsa was first produced during the 1960s in the Latina/o (mostly Puerto Rican) barrios of New York City.
Puerto Rican working-class musicians had been avid listeners and students of the Latin popular music mostly performed
by Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians during the 1950s at the Club Palladium: among others, Arsenio Rodrguez's mambo,
Machito's Cubop, Mario Bauz's wrongly labeled Latin jazz, the Puerto Rican Tito Puente's timbales, and the voice of the
other Tito, Tito Rodrguez. While Latin music in New York during that decade had been heavily Cuban, after 1959, with
the success of the Cuban revolution and with Fidel Castro's taking of Havana, Latin music in New York "would never be
the same."20The embargo on Cuba and the censorship of Cuban music in the United States led to some years of void and
confusion among Latin musicians in New York, creating the need to mix musical forms. It is this syncretic tendency in Latin
popular music that characterizes salsa's historical genesis.21

It is this clearly identified Cuban influence or pretext for the emergence of salsa music that has led most Cuban musicians
and artists and Puerto Ricans like Tito Puente to deny the existence of salsa as a music independent of Cuban rhythms
and genres. Mario Bauz, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Prez Prado, Jarrn, Tata Gines, and Olga Navarro, among others,
define salsa as only an imitation of old Cuban music.22 Moreover, Cuban musicologist Mayra Martnez denounces salsa
music's commercialization as a capitalist strategy that benefits the U.S. musical industry given the isolation and commercial
blockade imposed on Cuban musical products. In other words, salsa was the strategic international marketing of Cuban
rhythms by an industry whose government purposefully obstructed the marketing of Cuban music internationally.23
Page 80

Respectful of the Cuban perspective and sensitive to the harmful economic repercussions of U.S. embargos on the island,
it is important, however, to indicate that these observations by Cubans about salsa tend to conflate this music exclusively
with its original Cuban rhythms. By defining salsa as a marker of Cuban national identity and cultural production, these
voices erase the participation of other Latin American national groups in the historical development of the music. In fact,
if salsa music was born in New York in the early 1960s, then we must also credit a group of second-generation U.S. Puerto
Rican musicians (Willie Coln, Hctor Lavoe, Ray Barretto, the Palmieri brothers) with some innovations and changes to
the Cuban legacy as well as Venezuelan (Oscar De Len), Colombian (Grupo Niche), Dominican (Johnny Pacheco), and
Panamanian (Rubn Blades) musicians who have had a central impact on its development. According to Flix Padilla, the
Puerto Rican musicians from the New York barrios not only continued and developed the legacy left by the Cuban
musicians, they also renovated the old forms to express more adequately the reality of barrio life. 24 In fact, there was a
recontextualization of Latin popular music from spectacle (that of the big band orchestras at the Palladium) to a music
produced on the street corners of New York City's Latino barrios. The musicians as artistic subjects changed, as did the
location of this music and its originally intended and ideal audience.

Salsa has been defined as syncretic music, "an amalgamation of Afro-Caribbean musical traditions centered around the
Cuban son."25 The son, described by Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante as the "phantom that traverses America," has
constituted the musical style with most impact on U.S. Latin(o) music. The son has been traced to a secular musical dance
form that originated in the rural areas of eastern Cuba (Oriente); it is characterized by a vocal melody independent from
the percussive rhythm, and it was usually performed by a tres, a botija, and a marmbula. Cabrera Infante attributes the
first son to a 1560 song by an African woman slave named Ma Teodora, whom he deems "the first female composer in
America," although this original assumption by Alejo Carpentier has been refuted by musicologists.26 Comparable to the
African American blues, the son has served as the basic structure for future developments in Afro-Caribbean music and
salsa. For Cabrera Infante, salsa orginated in the Cuban son; he traces the term salsa to "Echale salsita," an early son by
Ignacio Pieiro,27 thus modifying Rondn's thesis of salsa's origins in New York to that of a ''renaissance."28 However,
Cabrera Infante's reduction of salsa music to the Cuban son is corrected by Willie Coln, who asserts that "while the son
has a specific structure, salsa is all freedom" [mientras el son tiene una estructura especfica la salsa es todo libertad],29 an
observation
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that is more symbolic than descriptive of the particular structures of the son and of salsa music.

Cabrera Infante's disputable proposal in his article "Salsa for a Salad" defines salsa exclusively as the structural presence of
the son, rendering invisible a myriad of other genres that constitute it: other traditional Afro-Cuban dance rhythms (the
guaracha and the rumba), the African musical folklore of Puerto Rico (the bomba and the plena), and the harmonies, the
improvised solos, and the metal instruments borrowed from African American jazz and blues. In contrast, Rondn has
indicated the specific transformations that salsa musicians achieved vis--vis the music of the 1950s, which can be explained
by the addition of the trombones to the salsa band, a change (already in place in Mon Rivera's music) systematized by Eddie
Palmieri in his album La Perfecta. That particular salsa sound, a bitter, aggressive and hoarse texture changed Latin music
from being "ostentatious to being war-like, aguerrida, there was no more pomp but violence; the thing, was definitely
different." 30 In addition, Peter Manuel enumerates other stylistic distinctions, such as the use of the timbales, the "higher
pitch range" of salsa vocal lines, the style of playing congas, and the elasticity of the clave rhythm.31

Unlike earlier Cuban music, the lyrics of salsa have documented the visin de mundo of the Latina/o (mostly Puerto Rican)
working-class sector in New York City in the 1970s.32 In the Caribbean, as Csar Miguel Rondn has documented, salsa
also has functioned as the music of the urban poor, from Cuba to Puerto Rico to Cali and Cartagena, Colombia. That salsa
originated in New York City is evidence that it was a social result of the gradual industrialization and migratory movements
from rural areas to urban centers that have characterized many Latin American countries throughout the second half of the
twentieth century.33 In fact, the upsurge and boom of Latin music in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s would
not have been possible without the configuration of a larger Latina/o audience and market made possible by the largest
migratory wave among Puerto Ricans during World War II. The movement was organized by the U.S. and Puerto Rican
governments to mitigate the economic stagnation of the island at the time and provide cheap labor for U.S. industries and
factories.

Historically, then, salsa is the music of the immigrant and the urban working class. It is also the music produced mostly by
black and mulatto musicians, and this racial definition ties it to the functions of the bomba and the plena in Puerto Rico as
much as to the Afro-Cuban forms from which it also derives. As Rubn Blades has commented, "Salsa is urban folklore,"
for it constitutes itself as the oral tradition of life in the cities. Its
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lyrics continue the traditional role of the Puerto Rican plena, the Cuban son, the Colombian vallenato, and the
Mexican corrido the role of narrating historical events, local situations, and stories from the point of view of the
marginalized. Salsa songs of the 1970s and 1980s documented the social infrahistory of Latinas/os in the United States and
of the poor urban sectors in the Caribbean and throughout Latin America. It is not surprising, then, to find a wide array of
themes and issues in salsa, a diversity that helps ensure its vitality. While much commercialized salsa repertoire has been
influenced by the romantic ballad since the 1980s, and as such it appeals to individual relationships, the most important
salseros El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Willie Coln, Rubn Blades, Celia Cruz, Ismael Rivera, Ismael Miranda, Cheo
Feliciano, Ray Barretto, Hctor Lavoe have consistently responded to historical events and social issues that affect Latina/o
communities. Despite the ideological differences between, for example, Rubn Blades and Celia Cruz, both interpreters
speak to the collective realities of Latinas/os in the United States and in Latin America. Their songs either address race,
gender, and class conflicts or reaffirm cultural practices usually marginalized, such as santera and other African-based
traditions (since religion and music converged as counterhegemonic expressions during the colonial past). 34

In conjunction, the prevalent democratizing cultural role of salsa musicians regarding the marginalized and the urban poor
continues the liberatory practices of the maroon societies during colonial slavery periods in the Caribbean. Thus, salsa's
alternative values are reaffirmed as a music tied to the history of the counterplantation cultures, analogous to Jamaican
reggae and African American jazz and from which the Puerto Rican bomba emerged. Salsa songs such as Eddie Palmieri's
"La libertad: Lgico" (Liberty: Of course) in his album significantly entitled Vmonos pa'l monte (Let's go to the hinterland),
Rubn Blades's and Willie Coln's "Cimarrn" (Maroon), and others reaffirm this historical continuity lucidly proposed by
Angel Quintero Rivera.35
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Chapter Five
Ideological Negotiations:
Between Hegemony and Resistance

Opposition in Form

Puerto Rican historian Angel Quintero Rivera has identified several structural elements of salsa music as symbolic sites of
liberatory values and of freedom. First, the "free and significant combination of forms" 1 that salsa represents, as illustrated
in Ruben Blads's hit "Tiburn." This song is characterized by smooth transitions from a rumba form to harmonic elements
of the seis, a Puerto Rican traditional country music form associated with a strong sense of community and friendship.
Quintero Rivera believes that the diversity of the songs musical forms and the usage of the seis as a subtext for communal
values are the elements that allow a strongly antiimperialist song such as this to have been a popular hit for so long in
Puerto Rico. Second, the descargas (jamming sessions) typical in salsa performances, according to Quintero Rivera, may be
constructed as an instance of freedom. Exemplified in the percussion "bursts" of ''Tiburn," the descarga is followed by the
trombone or brass section and the cuatro, also embracing the other instruments in this manifestation of virtuosity and
creativity.2 In literature, Vctor Hernndez Cruz's poem "Descarga en cueros" articulates the transformative and liberating
potential of a jamming session through the hyperbolic imagery of dancing: "at the bar people's drinks flew out they hands
the vibrations knocked people to the floor / & the lights began to bust / & the floor to crack . . . the floor began to rock
people fell off the balcony / t.p. was smiling / his face ready to rip / o.k. you win / hands in the air ready to fly / heads
outside beyond the buildings."3

Cruz's poem plays with the blurred boundaries between dancing, jamming, and social disturbance or violence. The
perceptions that many cultural outsiders have of this type of music that it is primitive, loud, chaotic, and
Subversive constitute historical repetitions of the same vesti-
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gial fears expressed by the Spanish colonial government about the performance on drums by African slaves in Cuba, also
evidenced in the banning of the merengue in Puerto Rico in the first half of the twentieth century. Thus, jamming sessions
in urban centers around the Americas concretized spaces of opposition and counterculture, simultaneously connecting
contemporary Latinas/os and African Americans to the liberatory practices of their slave antecedents and to the
cimarrones's state of mind, a maroon conscience about their own contradictory freedom and bondage found in marginality.

The soneo, the long section of improvisation in any salsa song, also exemplifies "liberty and spontaneity." 4 The soneo is
characterized by a call-and-response structure between singer and chorus (the instrumentalists), and as such it is a trait that
represents continuity with older forms of Afro-Caribbean musical folklore and with West African music. It allows salsa
music to articulate a collective voice in its chorus section and to establish a dialogic texture in its montuno section. When
the singer improvises on the main theme of the song (the art of the soneo) he or she creates new utterances and also
rearticulates and culls phrases from other songs of various traditions. The singer opens up a sonorous space of freedom,
improvisation, and innovation, clinging simultaneously to musical tradition and reaffirming collective memory. This
structure, perhaps the most creative aspect of salsa music, also allows the lead singer, or sonero, to intersperse political
commentary or social criticism in a less blatant mode.

Contesting Theodor Adorno's earlier dismissal of the liberatory value of improvisation (accusing jazz improvisation of
being normalized),5 Roberta Singers analysis of the role of improvisation in Latin popular music vindicates this practice.
Improvisation for Latina/o musicians is a complex process, although not necessarily innovative, since it lies at the roots of
Afro-Caribbean musical traditions. According to the Latin musicians interviewed by Singer, improvisation implies "an
incorporation of all that one knows musically" and thus the quality of improvising is a function of the musician's repertoire.
The more one knows, the more freedom he or she enjoys in choosing musical selections in their potential for combination.
Improvisation also implies a sensitivity to nuances, for "if you know the nuances then even repetition is not repetitive."6 As
in other forms of popular music, improvisation in salsa contests the institutionalizing processes of musical education in the
Western mind and world. Music educators have generally fostered and trained students to read music, insisting that such
training is the only valid method for becoming a musician, but improvisation skills also require training and practice. This
"differential'' expertise, rarely valued and in fact repressed in conservatories and music programs,
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requires a different kind of training based on practice, ear, pitch, acuity in rhythm, and most important, a true sense of
dialogue with other members of the group. A collective sound emerges from the dialectic balance of improvisatory freedom
and formulaic entrenchment.

Ana Lydia Vega's feminist short story, "Letra para salsa y tres soneos por encargo" (Lyrics for a salsa song and three soneos
by demand) 7 deploys the soneo as a liberatory literary structure that allows readers to "improvise" the ending of the story
to best fit their own needs. The story is prefaced by "La vida te da sorpresas," the refrain of a Rubn Blades song, ''Pedro
Navaja," a refrain that signals a commitment on the part of musicians and writers alike to deconstruct social conventions
reified by class, race, and gender boundaries.8 "La vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da la vida" (Life is full of surprises,
surprises make up life) is not merely humorous, as the performance of the song partly suggests, but stands as an articulation
of Blades's commitment to raise the consciousness of his audience (both theatrical and musical) about the need to break
away from social molds. In the dramatic production of "Pedro Navaja" (a cocolo version of The Threepenny Opera) that broke
a record as the longest-running musical comedy in Puerto Rico, the actor/narrator walks down the aisle in a Brechtian
mode singing the refrain.9 Suddenly, he points at any individual in the audience and comments: "Your wife took off with
the gardener" or "Your son turned out to be gay," examples of life circumstances that oblige individuals to reflect on and
perhaps destabilize fixed gender identities, class divisions, and racial boundaries. They particularize the shock value of life.

"La vida te da sorpresas" prepares the reader for an analogous feminist deconstructive strategy by Ana Lydia Vega. In her
short story, a Tipa [Gal] picks up a Tipo [Guy] in one of the best-known cruising areas in Santurce, Puerto Rico. After
arriving at a motel room, he freaks out in the bathroom and is thus "indisposed," unable to perform or, in musical
terms, salsear. Given the historical sexualization of Afro-Caribbean music, Vega's own strategic use of salsear as a musical
metaphor for sexual relations points up the masculinist centrality of salsa as a marker of gender relations in Puerto Rican
urban popular culture, while it simultaneously critiques and attempts to dismantle this privileged discursive gender
positioning.

In this open-ended text, Vega offers the reader three alternative endings to the narrative situation, which she labels in the
title as soneos. As in its musical development, in this literary appropriation and feminist rewriting of the soneo, the
structural choice emphasizes the dialogic nature of the open text as well as the need for the free, improvisational, and active
role of the reader in the resolution of the story. This implies, of course, that the discursive gendering underlying the
characters' sexual expectations can
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only begin to be dismantled through linguistic acts themselves. Indeed, the first two soneos suggest a narrative closure
through two parodic articulations of institutionalized rhetoric: the first, a Marxist discursive framework; the second, a
feminist discourse through which "el acto queda equitativamente consumado" 10 (the act was consumed with equity). The
third soneo, however, suggests an open and demythifying, deconstructive ending. In it the couple gets dressed and the
Tipa drives the Tipo back to the streets, a masculine space yet also an open locus for negotiating modern urban
identities.11 Back on the street, the Tipo resumes his ritual of piropos (catcalls), the same phallocentric discourse that the Tipo
used to pick up the Tipa at the beginning of the story (apparently, since it was she who took the initiative).

This last alternative ending, which proposes a circular structure, is key to Vega's feminist poetics of parody and irony. In
contrast to the first two soneos, with their utopian view and highly rhetoricilzed language, the last soneo proposes a sort
of liberation from discourse itself and from narrative closure. This freedom, however, rests on the readers awareness, of
the Tipo's discursive and physiological impotence, now a deconstructed one that was previously masked and falsified by
his male codes, his piropos. The Tipo now returns to his routine, yet this circular structure allows for the new awareness
that female readers now possess: a consciousness of the ironic discrepancy between the Tipo's preliminary discourse, his
pretext, and his actual incapacity to perform. The call-and-response structures of the soneo have afforded feminist literature
a dialogic tool by which authors like Ana Lydia Vega can democratize, culturally speaking, the literary canon while
simultaneously critiquing the rigid sexual roles articulated through salsa music itself.

Yet another oppositional dement in salsa's texture both musical and textual is its dialogism, which extends itself beyond
the innovation tradition axis. As Bakhtin has defined it, dialogism occurs when one voice, a signifier, evokes its alien,
opposite term, thus suggesting a multilayered reading of reality and of opposing meanings within one text. The
heteroglossia that complements dialogism, the socially stratified multiple voices that constitute any society, are very much
present in salsa music.12 A wide array of social issues race, poverty, drugs, sexual roles, class differences, religion, politics,
and most recently, AIDS are among some of the most common themes in contemporary salsa. Yet these issues are not
limited to a singular perspective. For example, Rubn Blades's "Ligia Elena," an incisive social commentary on class and
race prejudice in Latin America, as clearly oppositional as it is, allows the voices of the establishment to be expressed
although in parodic tone:
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Solo: Ligia Elena, la cndida nia de la sociedad,

se ha fugado con un trompetista de la vecindad,
El padre la busca afanosamente,
lo est comentando toda la gente
y la madre pregunta angustiada en dnde estar.

De nada sirvieron regaos, ni viajes ni monjas,

Ni las promesas de amor que le hicieran los nios de bien.
Fue tan buena la nota que dio aquella humilde trompeta
Que entre acordes de cario eterno se fue ella con l.

Coro: Se han mudado a un cuarto chiquito con muy pocos muebles

y all viven contentos y llenos de felicidad.
Mientras tristes los padres preguntan en dnde fallamos
Ligia Elena con su trompetista amndose estn.

Solo: Dulcemente se escurren los das en aquel cuartito,

mientras que en las mansiones lujosas de la sociedad,
otras nias que saben del cuento al dormir se preguntan
Ay, Seor, y mi trompetista cundo llegar?

Coro: Ligia Elena est contenta y su familia est asfixi.

Solo: Se escap con un trompeta de la vecindad (coro)

Se llevaron la nia del ojo del pap (coro)
En dnde fallamos pregunta mam (coro)
Se colaron niches en la blanca sociedad (coro)
Pudo ms el amor que el dinero, seor (coro)
Qu buena la nota que dio aquel [la] trompeta (coro)
Eso de racismo, brother, no est en na' (coro)
Deja que la agarre, nos jura el pap (coro)
Ligia Elena est llena de felicidad.

Voz pap: Le voy a ensear. Yo la voy a agarrar. Yo la voy a agarrar.

Voz mam: Mire, doa Gertrudis, le digo que estoy . . . , a m lo que
ms me . . . a m lo que ms me . . . a m lo que ms me choca es que esa
malagradecida, yo pensaba que me iba a dar un nietecito con los cabellos
rubios, as como Troy Donahue, y viene y se marcha con ese tuza
[gentuza]. Ay, la juventud!
(coro)

[Solo: Ligia Elena, the innocent little society girl,

has run off with the neighborhood trumpet player.
Her father looks for her zealously,
everyone's talking about it,
and her mother asks anxiously where could she be.

Scoldings aren't good for anything, neither trips nor nuns

Nor the love promises that the little rich boys made her.
The note was so good that that humble trumpet made
That between agreements of eternal endearments she took off with
him.

Chorus: They have moved to a small room with little furniture,

and there they live content and full of happiness.
Meanwhile her sad parents ask where they failed
Ligia Elena and her trumpet player are loving each other.
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Solo: Sweetly fly the days in that small room,

while in the luxurious mansions of high society,
other girls that know the bedtime story ask themselves
Oh, God, and when will my trumpet player arrive?

Chorus. Ligia Elena is content and her family is asphyxiated.

Solo: She took off with a neighborhood trumpet player (chorus)

They carried the little girl off in front of her father's eyes (chorus)
Where did we go wrong asks her mother (chorus)
Blacks are invading our white society (chorus)
Love made possible what money could not, sir (chorus)
What a good note it was that sounded that trumpet (chorus)
That racism thing, brother, is not cool (chorus)
Let me get her, her father swears to us (chorus)
Ligia Elena is full of happiness.

Voice of the father. I'll teach her. I'm going to go get her. I'm going to
go get her.

Voice of the mother: Look, doa Gertrudis, I tell you that I am . . . to me

what most . . . to me what most . . . what most chokes me is that that
ungrateful, I thought that she was going to give me a little grandson
with a blond little head, like Troy Donahue, and yet she comes and
goes with that crowd. Ay, youth!
(chorus)]

The montuno part of "Ligia Elena" becomes a musical space in which singers evoke and reproduce the conflicting voices of
Latin American society, whether they are sexual, racial, or class-based. In "Ligia Elena," indeed, the song narrates the story
of a young white girl from the upper class who falls in love with a poor black trumpet player. She elopes with him, while
her parents suffer the shock of such events. The bourgeois logic of the racial inferiority of blacks underlies the colonized
and colonizing ideal expressed by her parents, the deferred dream of having blonde, blue-eyed grandchildren just like Troy
Donahue, and the expectations regarding a white, racially exclusive upper-class sector (''Se colaron niches en la alta
sociedad"). Yet these very voices of the dominant sector are interspersed with antiracist utterances that construct a utopian,
integrated society symbolized visually by the progeny of this interracial couple. Rubn Blades's early productions, of which
"Ligia Elena" is part, have correctly been deemed as oppositional and radical in their critiques of Latin American society,
but "Ligia Elena" also indicates the important role that salsa's call-and-response structure plays in a dialogic text. This plural
ideological voicing allows for a reception and acceptance that crosses Class and racial lines.
In contrast to Blades's overt oppositional stance in Ligia Elena, Willie Coln's famous song about AIDS, "El gran varn"
(The great male) employs an ambiguous refrain concerning homosexuality: "No se puede co-
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rregir a la naturaleza" [Nature cannot be corrected]. This refrain reaffirms, simultaneously, divergent ideological stances
regarding sexual orientation, contingent on how one defines "nature." The song narrates the tragedy of a young Puerto
Rican man who endures a rigid upbringing by his father. He later moves to New York, where he lives as a homosexual and
transvestite. This "gran varn'' dies of AIDS in a hospital, alone and rejected by his father, who had different expectations
for him. While the song as a narrative text clearly expresses compassion and sympathy for the gay man, the refrain suggests
plural ideologies. The semantic polyvalence of the term nature leads to a potential multiple axis around the definition of
homosexuality. On one hand, it establishes a counterpoint with the narrative song: the refrain could very well be voiced by
the father; the patriarchal stance is expressed in the rigidity (imagery of a tree trunk) of its perspective. Males should obey
the nature of their biologically male bodies and should function as males. According to patriarchal rule, the nature of man
is to embody maleness, the phallocentric function, and to follow the rules of religion and society in its heterosexual path.
Thus, according to the father's design for his son, AIDS is interpreted as the punishment for ignoring nature's (read
patriarchal) sexual dictates.

A second reading would imply that homosexuality is an expression of our sexual nature, and therfore, any attempts to
change or "correct" it are doomed to fail. This reading would reaffirm the sympathy and compassion of the poetic voice
toward the AIDS victim, but most important is the ambiguity saturating the term nature, which invites the listeners to
rethink and to deconstruct social values as such. It literally denaturalizes the concept of nature from itself, exhorting us to
redefine sexuality and our bodies as social constructs ideologically constituted. The two musical examples shown illustrate
the profound connections between the dialogism of salsa's lyrics and its diverse ideological voicings, a trait that has allowed
salsa to be acceptable also within the dominant sector.

In addition to the eclectic syncretism of salsa, its soneo and call-and-response structure, I propose that the polyrhythmic
basis of Afro-Caribbean music embodied in the clave a rhythmic pattern of 32 or 23 set against a 4-beat measure and
performed by the clave sticks is an equally oppositional and dialogic element in salsa. 13
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First, the clave rhythm offsets and displaces, creating a tension between the basic beat and the clave sound, a sort of
syncopated push and pull that proves surprisingly difficult to perform. Said tension, I argue, resists what Theodor Adorno
has labeled the "rhythmic-obedient" behavior on the part of listeners, whose "response to music immediately expresses
their desire to obey." Adorno's response analysis and his tenets regarding popular music in his essay "On Popular Music"
are motivated by a preoccupation about individual freedom highly threatened by Nazism. Thus, for him, following a song's
rhythm and marking its basic time units created associations with ''coordinated battalions of a mechanical collectivity,"
with obedience, repression, and ultimately, dehumanization in the age of the machine. 14

While salsa simultaneously represents the age of technology and machine-produced music (by its integration of
synthesizers, electric pianos, and bass), its clave rhythm and its polyrhythmia a resist the unidimensional reproduction of
the basic time unit. This polyrhythmia forms the basis for a musical dialogism among the various instruments of the combo,
the type of band usually associated with salsa music and Latin popular music. In contrast to the harmonization patterns of
the orchestra, to its centripetal convergence in the instrumentation, and to the dominance of the melody line the material
and symbolic embodiment of musical expectations in the Western world and the bourgeois ego15 the combo or salsa band
thrives on a simultaneous diversity of rhythms; on a melody line that is shared by the singer, the instrumentalists (as
chorus), and the audience; and on arrangements that protect the independent creativity of each instrument.

It is true that much of salsa, like any genre of popular music, is based on certain melodic and harmonic formulas,
a standardization of musical structures that, according to Adorno, leads to a false sense of familiarity in the audience and that
ultimately, homogenizes and massifies their individuality into a set, standard response.16 Yet within the context of Puerto
Rican migration and cultural displacement experienced by U.S. Latinas/os, formulas and standardization represent very
different, in fact, distinguishing values. The repeated melodies, rhythms, riffs, and instrumentation provide a sense of
familiarity to the displaced community of listeners and an auditive, sensorial instance for reconstructing the cultural self
and collective memory (as George Lipsitz has already documented in U.S. popular music17). As transitory as this experience
may be, it counteracts the colonialist fragrnentations with the past, with nation and homeland.

A Puerto Rican woman in southeastern Michigan who has felt very isolated from her island culture expressed the comfort
triggered by the mnemonic elements of salsa music. After listening to a song by Willie Coln
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that reproduces many lyrical structures of the bolero, she reacted by saying that she had not really paid attention to the
lyrics of the song, which dealt with a man asking of a woman total remembrance of his role as her sexual teacher, but that
the listening experience the musical sounds, notes, instrumentation, and melodic repetitions had evoked in her a chain of
sensorial associations and memories of her childhood in Puerto Rico: "No el significado, pero la msica me recuerda a
Puerto Rico. Tan pronto o eso, poda oir las sbanas tendidas al viento. Y poda oler las flores en la noche en la isla, y poda
ver a mi mam. Me recuerda a Puerto Rico" [Not the meaning, but the music reminds me of Puerto Rico. As soon as I started
listening, I could hear the sheets swaying in the wind. And I could smell the flowers at night on the island, and I could see
my mother. This song reminds me of Puerto Rico].

These phrases, most revealing of the multisensorial associations that the act of listening provokes (listening, smelling,
seeing) stand as a compelling testimony to the role of salsa music as a bridge between a trans- or dislocated present and a
past home. Thus, the sense of familiarity that these formulas evoke for colonized peoples, such as Puerto Ricans and
Latinas/os in the United States, should be valued differently from what Adorno's negative analysis presupposes. Adorno
considered the enjoyment of repetition as "psychotic and infantile," an association clearly informed by his "pseudo-
primitivist view of African American-derived music," 18 but all music, as an art in and of time, is structured in repetition.
Moving beyond Richard Middleton's own revisiting of repetition "Why do listeners find interest and pleasure in hearing
the same thing over again, and what kind of interest and pleasure are they?''19 the role of repetition in salsa music for U.S.
Latinas/os needs to be framed within postcolonialism. These repetitions, both musematic and discursive,20 cushion the
break with a past erased by the colonizers and offer a sense of self and collective knowledge that allows an inside listener
to establish a meaningful sense of the self in the world, as well as accumulated instances of cultural reaffirmation that
wholly constitute cultural resistance. This important function of salsa is seen particularly in the U.S. Puerto Rican and
Latina/o diaspora, as interpreted in continuity with the historical past of liberatory struggles that Angel Quintero Rivera
has proposed.

Politically, then, the musematic repetition in call-and-response structures, the discursive repetition in salsa's intertextuality
throughout the improvisatory soneos, and the performative expectations and values of the combo constitute the material
embodiment of a plural, nonindividualist (read anticapitalist), yet free site of artistic expression, a multivoiced locus,
musically speaking. The case of salsa music, then, invites music scholars to
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rethink theories of repetition, not just as structures that trigger individual pleasure or ego building but as a convergence of
politics and pleasure the pleasure of cultural mnemonics, of reconstructing the past and reconnecting it to the present
through musical signifiers.

Mass Media and Salsa

The tensions between hegemony and resistance in salsa music stem basically from its modes of production and
dissemination. For better or for worse and unlike its folkloric antecedents transmitted orally, salsa, like all contemporary
popular music, is a part of mass culture. 21 The term itself illustrates the close relationship between the music and the
recording industry. The labelsalsa, applied by Fania Records to Latin popular music in the United States, literally translates
as "sauce" and suggests the spicy, hot elements needed for good Latin cooking and dancing. Tracing the trajectory of the
term is a discursive process worth the effort, for it clearly reveals the underpinnings of salsa music as a tool for imagining
social identity. Cubans and Puerto Ricans alike have disagreed with the commercial label employed by Fania All Stars. Yet
while Guillermo Cabrera Infante traces the controversial and elusive term to Ignacio Pieiro's authorship, Rafael Ithier, an
original member as well as director and pianist of El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, suggests that it is analogous to "soul" in
the U.S. context. Izzy Sanabria, a Puerto Rican musical promoter in New York and founder of Latin New York, has been
credited by many for coining the term in 1973 during his TV show, Salsa. He in turn credits the people who were using it
to refer to the music and its rhythms. In addition, Max Salazar recognizes Cal Tjader for employing the term in his 1964
recording "Soul Sauce."

Rafael Cortijo in the past and many progressive Latinas/os nowadays have rejected this term for its colonizing and
capitalist associations. As Jorge Duany has observed, the fact that the salsa label "has even been extended to the music of
any 'Latin' country" is evidence of its homogenizing effects.22 That salsa emerges as an umbrella term for an undifferentiated
view of a diverse gamut of Latin musical genres unveils the capitalist efforts to erase Latin cultural specificity and to
depoliticize much of its social and historical opposition.

Fania's attempts to create a larger market for salsa music was, ironically, the reason for its demise. The earlier film produced
by Fania, Nuestra Cosa (Our Thing), portrays salsa as a music born from the jamming sessions on the street corners of the
barrios in New York and reaffirms the close connections between the music and audience participation. Later, however, in
Page 93

order to sell this ethnic music to a mainstream market, Fania produced the film Salsa, problematic in its explanation of
salsa's genesis as stemming from Africa via Hollywood. When CBS bought Fania's international distribution and
production rights in 1976, Fania decided to "shift the tonic"23 and produced two albums Delicate and Jumpy (1976)
and Rhythm Machine (1977) that were total failures in sales. This attempt to "Americanize" salsa included taping the Latin
musicians and then adding a set of drums, electric guitar, and the metals, muting the strident and aggressive sounds of
salsa to gratify the different, softer tastes of a general population. The decline of Fania had already begun, despite their
attempts to recover immediately afterward by hiring Rubn Blades as a singer. And while it is obvious that the music
industry in the United States has benefited tremendously from the production and commercialization of Latin music, the
relationship between the recording industry and the salseros' musical creativity is much more complex than a Manichaean
view.

Cubans have systematically denounced salsa as a politically motivated commercialization and thus a dilution of Cuban
rhythms and musical forms. However, it is also true that, as John Shepherd observes, "discourses constructed around the
opposed notions of authenticity and commercialism have posed a considerable problem in understanding musical
signification."24 To reify salsa music as merely a victim or object of hegemony is virtually to preempt its powers for
creativity, cultural resistance and reaffirmation, and possibly social change. And to sort salsa music as either "commercial"
or "sociopolitical" is, again, another reifying practice that takes into account only the moment of initial production or the
isolated text and that fails to consider listening practices and the larger sociopolitical context within which a musical
performance is embedded.25 As subsequent chapters will show, the production of meaning, the process of signification in
cultural acts, cannot be traced uniquely to a fixed text but will vary according to an array of extra- and intratextual factors.
Moreover, to identify one particular song as ''commercial" and another one (usually Rubn Blades's) as "sociopolitical" is
also to create a politically correct canon of "good" and "bad" music out of a complex and diverse sociomusical practice that
resists such categorization. A Rubn Blades song may be a "good" song politically, but it is as much a commercial specimen
of salsa as "Rhythm Machine," produced by Fania, or any of Eddie Santiago's pieces of erotic salsa.

Flix Padilla (1990) has proposed that "salsa music represents a social process mediated by forms of domination and
resistance that is, a process through which human agents constantly interact with, shape, and respond to objective forces
which represent aspects of the broader social structure of
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the Latin music recording business." 26 He explains that while the "persisting competition that existed among recording
companies contesting for the Latin music market" led to innovations in Latin music, simultaneously "the rise of a new class
of Puerto Rican musicians . . . recognized the need to produce an alternative style to the popular Latin music of earlier
periods which they perceived as being out of touch with the Puerto Rican barrio reality."27 Thus, for Padilla, the dialectic
between the hegemonic interests of the recording industry and the expression of resistance motivated by the social
conditions of Puerto Ricans in New York explains the genesis of salsa. Ironically, the hegemonic interests of the music
industry dovetailed then with the innovations necessary to voice the social unrest of the historical moment and the
emerging ethnic awareness of Puerto Ricans in New York.

This does not suggest, however, that the strategies of the recording industry have not adversely affected salsa. As composer
Willie Coln has noted, certain "cdigos del mercado" [market codes] limit his creativity and experimentation. For instance,
according to these market codes, many of which can be traced back to those established by Tin Pan Alley in the earlier part
of the century, a song can last only four minutes, and this boundary, for Coln, seriously limits the possibilities of
composing longer pieces and songs through which social issues could be portrayed in more profound and complex ways.
In fact, Coln mentions the difference in popularity of certain of his songs based on this length criterion. Some of his long
songs have been hits in Latin America, yet in the United States they have been basically ignored.28

Peter Manuel has convincingly shown that majors (major recording companies) and corporate conglomerates, such as Coca-
Cola (previous owner of Columbia Records) and CBS, have exerted considerable pressure on New York City radio stations
to devote more time to easy-listening and romantic pop ballads to the detriment of salsa's and merengue's
popularity.29 Singers like Julio Iglesias and Jos Feliciano "were given more airplay."30 "Plugging" mechanisms that Adorno
denounced in the 1940s are alive and well, as well as the payola practice: paying off disc jockeys for playing specific
interpreters or songs. The political control of radio listening is effective when one considers that "98 percent of Hispanics
in the United States listen to more than thirty hours of radio a week."31 The monopoly of Anglo-owned corporations and
the increasing trends toward "networkization'' have facilitated this shift from salsa and merengue to easy listening and pop
romantic ballads. The oligopolistic power of corporations and Anglo ownership of radio stations has successfully shifted
the dissemination of Latin popular music, thus determining listening practices for Hispanic audiences.
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Ironically, Manuel also documents the unflagging popularity of salsa and merengue in New York City's dancing clubs, in
contrast to the pop romantic ballad of the manipulated radio formats. The centripetal, unifying, and homogenizing
tendencies of the capitalist music industry are evident in these attempts to subvert and erase the centrifugal, plural, and
oppositional textures and voices of salsa. An executive quoted by Peter Manuel was on target when he exclaimed that "the
romantic ballad unifies the market, and salsa divides it." 32 It is clear, then, that salsa holds a socially "divisive/disruptive"
potential (read oppositional) that the recording industry has not erased or neutralized yet, despite its best attempts. The
fact that a corporate executive publicly attests to this power suggests that the oppositionality of salsa is neither a popular
generalization nor a utopian desire on the part of progressive cultural critics.

Dancing to Salsa

Salsa is dancing music, and as such it escapes being disseminated only through the radio or the CD. Thus, while
commercialization has definitely resulted in the production of trivial lyrics and in part has allowed salsa to become an
object of passive listening or mere distraction, this music transcends reification by maintaining direct interaction with its
audience and with the Latina/o community. The economic marginalization of salsa musicians, local groups, and younger
bands obliges them to perform at private events such as weddings and family celebrations and in smaller Latin dancing
clubs, thus maintaining a more direct contact with their local communities and audiences. Even big names such as Tito
Puente and Willie Coln accept local gigs and perform for free at barrio street festivals. Celia Cruz also observes that most
salsa gigs are limited to the weekends, since the Latina/o community, as a predominantly working-class sector, does not
always enjoy the luxury of engaging in entertainment activities during the week.33

Like other forms of popular dancing, dancing to salsa may be analyzed by using Iaian Chambers's observations, such as:
"the fundamental connection between the pleasures of the sound and their social realization in the libidinal movement of
bodies, styles and sensual forms. It represents a social encounter, which can be a dance hall, a club, or a party, where bodies
are permitted to respond to physical rhythms that elsewhere would not be tolerated; the moment when romanticism
brushes against reality, and a transitory step out of the everyday can be enjoyed."34

Dancing to salsa music fulfills the roles outlined above, but these are informed by a very specific sociopolitical context. The
observations of Lati-
Page 96

nas and Latinos interviewed for this study definitely support the escapist or cathartic function of dancing, yet this role is
underlined by the class-based realities of this disenfranchised sector within the United States. Dancing to salsa music is,
needless to say, a sensual experience; however, this sensuality is mediated constantly in various ways, whether defined
and articulated by Latinas/os themselves or by cultural others. Finally, Chambers's observation of dancing as a "social
encounter" is doubly significant given the socioeconomic and colonial situation of Latinas/os in the United States.

Edgardo Daz Daz's ethnographic study of a dance club in Austin, Texas, constitutes the most systematic study focused
on the social meanings of dancing to an Afro-Caribbean musical repertoire. 35 Daz's study "El repertorio de salsa en dos
perspectivas genricas" (The repertoire of salsa according to two gender perspectives) provides two important approaches
to this sociocultural event. First, it analyzes the social values and meanings of the repertoire through a transcription of the
musical selections that are codified according to issues of national identity, race, gender, class, and ethnicity. Daz shows
how musicians structure the order of songs performed, the flexibility of that order contingent on audience response, and
the predominant role of salsa songs in that structuring, informed, in turn, by the various rhythmic speeds that each musical
form represents. Thus, salsa songs begin and close each set, and merengues and boleros are interspersed throughout.36 The
musical transcript of the dance club reveals how dancing to Latin music constitutes a social event in Which certain
traditional values are reaffirmed and simultaneously inverted. For instance, musicians constantly reaffirm the various
national identities of a panLatina/o audience, as particular songs from Puerto Rico, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, the
Dominican Republic, and Venezuela evoke expressions of national pride among individuals. Issues of racial affirmation of
blackness and mulatto identity also come to the fore through songs such as "Moreno soy" (I am dark). Most visible, however,
is the role of dances in creating a social space for negotiating gender roles and expectations. Daz's analysis, for instance, of
how women are objectified and represented in songs such as "La faldita" (The tiny skirt) and publicly alluded to
as traidoras (traitors) by the MC is unique and central to our understanding of gender constructs dominated by a patriarchal
society.

Most interesting in this regard are Daz's observations about the double standards underlying the expected behavior of
men and of women within the social space of the club. While going dancing has been defined as a cultural space where
freedom and pleasure37 are enjoyed beyond the social dictates of everyday life, Latino men enjoy a higher degree of freedom
in publicly expressing sexual desire and erotic behavior than that accorded to
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women. In fact, men are expected to engage in drinking and to act out of control, whereas women have to behave in
acceptable and contained ways, particularly when dancing. Thus, while going dancing establishes a space outside social
dictates, normative and naturalized gender expectations still inform the different ways men and women engage in such
pleasure and freedom and in the movement of their bodies.

Jos Limn's unique ethnographic approach to dancing to Tex-Mex music in a working-class night club called El Cielo Azul
also reveals the power differentials that position men and women as they enter the space of the dance club. While Beatriz,
Limn's key informant, revealed that she liked to dance and attended dances quite frequently, she also confessed that she
doesn't "enjoy dances" because of the sexual expectations that men establish after dancing with women. "Usually she doesn't
even get dinner, and they all want something," summarizes Limn. 38 Limn's key male informant, in contrast, asserts that
"me cae chingos bailar" [I like dancing a fuck of a lot] (Limn's translation) and that he tries not to miss any weekend dances,
an attitudinal discrepancy that suggests the ongoing objectification of women's bodies despite the carnavalesque, potential
freeing of bodies that has been idealistically ascribed to dancing by cultural critics.39

Echoing the same dialectics between containment and freedom of women's bodies, in a larger, cultural context, salsa's
polyrhythmia directly stimulates the centrifugal movement of our bodies. Despite articulatory efforts by producers and the
entertainment industry to recontextualize salsa into concert music, to contain it into music to be only listened to,
unidirectionally consumed as another commodity, salsa concertgoers will notice that whenever a Latina/o audience is
present, there is dancing in the aisles and in any available open space within the confines of the theater or auditorium. This
practice, consistently repressed by security guards for supposed reasons of safety codes, reveals, on the one hand, the
profound relationship between salsa music, the cultural collectivity of dancing, and our bodies as social sites. On the other,
it attests to Latinas/os' resistance to salsa's commodification through its strategic, physical insertion and cultural
containment within the dominant spaces of concert halls and auditoriums.

Many Latinas and Latinos, particularly those in the United States, ascribe a social, cultural, and political value to dancing
to Latin popular music. As Jos Limn asks himself in his ethnographic notes on dancing to Tex-Mex music, at this point I
also ask "why pure dancing is political."40 Yet unlike Limn's theoretical incursion, partly based on Randy Martin's analysis
of art dance in New York and partly on his own rewriting of Jamesonian definitions of postmodernism from the vantage
point of working-class Chicanas/os in South Texas, I choose to draw on the testi-
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monies of Latinas in the United States as they accord their own meanings to this sociocultural practice within the framework
of colonization and migration. While, in Dancing with the Devil, Limn more systematically discusses dancing to polkas in
relation to "dance form as politics," he quotes Randy Martin when he asserts that dance "is a decidedly non-symbolic and
non-signifying politics" and that dance acts as the artful and deeply satisfying production of a desire that, Martin says, is
present but usually not acted on in society, "the desire to act politically." 41 In view of his previous discussion of
postmodernity as it affects the personal, everyday lives of working-class Chicanas/os, Limn suggests that "this artful
control over the effects of a negating, postmodernist climate is what Mexicanos achieve in their dancing.''42 For him, dancing
to a polka is a "residual" element of Chicana/o culture culled from past traditions that offsets the dehumanizing effects of
a late capitalism postmodernity.

Unlike Limn's ethnographic subjects, somehow muted by the overarching discourse of Jamesonian theory and by Limn's
self-reflexive personal narrative, the voice of a working-class U.S. Puerto Rican woman from Detroit expresses the clearly
conscious desire to act politically through dancing to Latin music: "I like to go to dances, yes, I like music at dances. The
last dance that I went to was The Gran Combo's, and I liked it. . . . Yeah, it was nice! I was raised, yes . . . here in the U.S.
But I was raised in a Latino environment. The food I eat is Latin, my music is Latin, my surroundings are Latin. So . . . I am
Latina and since I was small I always loved that environment . . . and I won't give it up now nor when I get older. . . .
dancing is part of my identity."43

Also revealing is the testimony of a middle-aged Mexican-American woman who viewed dancing as a cultural practice
that differentiated her from her husband, an Anglo man who did not like to dance: "Cuando tengo un chance me escapo al
Diamante Azul y ah bailo. Antes de mudarme . . . Oh! s . . . iba ms seguido a los bailes. Sin mi marido, porque l es
americano y no baila. Cuando voy a bailes me siento muy alegre" [When I have a chance, I escape to the Blue Diamond
club and there I dance. Before I moved . . . oh, yes . . . I used to go more frequently to dances. Without my husband, because
he is Anglo and he doesn't dance. When I go to dances I feel very happy]. For her, going dancing at El Diamante Azul in
Detroit was meaningful not only as a practice that reaffirmed her cultural difference from that of her husband but as a
gesture that simultaneously destabilized her gender-based dependence as a married woman, as the choice of the verb "me
escapo" [I escape] clearly reveals. Moreover, this woman also commented on one occasion, when she went dancing with
fifteen other women to celebrate her daughter's birthday: "Fuimos a un lugar
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donde haba msica . . . y ramos como quince mujeres. Estbamos bailando con una y otra, como locas . . . pero estbamos
bailando [We went to this place where they played music . . . and we were about fifteen women. We were dancing with
each other, like crazies . . . but we were dancing]. As Leslie Gotfrit observes regarding the contestatory value of women
"dancing back," that is, dancing with each other on the dance floor of a systemic masculine and hegemonic space the
dancing club this space is "appropriated for women's use," "exclusively for women's pleasure, control, and solidarity." 44 It
is revealing, as well, that the Mexican-American mother refers to this experience as being "como locas" (like crazies), indeed
locating themselves outside the boundaries of social rules and expectations, within a Bakhtinian carnavalesque space. The
freedom afforded to these women by music and by the dancing space, although temporary, is profoundly meaningful as
another strategy for gender survival and, even more, for an instance of gender bending in the absence of men.

The cultural self-consciousness and reflexivity about the value of music and rhythm among working-class Latinas/os
threads through Willie Coln's testimony about the important emotional associations that he established through music
and rhythms while growing up in a Puerto Rican barrio in New York. The rhythms and the presence of musical instruments
at night and even during the day reaffirmed, in a most nurturing way, his sense of cultural identity. "The rhythms protected
us," he observed in regard to the continuity of a collective sensorial experience articulated through the drumming on the
streets every night.45 In many cases, this political awareness cuts across class lines. Most of my Latina/o students in courses
on popular music have reaffirmed the serious political value and cultural urgency underlying their identification with salsa
music. This process of signifying, of producing meaning and reaffirming cultural identity and boundaries through the
music, stands in sharp contrast to the controversial and much discussed "intoxicating" effects that some Anglo students
have described to me in their intercultural experience of dancing to salsa music.

For many working-poor Latinos and Latinas, going dancing on a weekend night to the music of El Gran Combo de Puerto
Rico or Las Chicas del Can or Eddie Santiago or Andy Montaez is not a limited or limiting form of "distraction"46 or
entertainment, as Adorno sees it but more clearly proposes a space liberated from the harsh realities of work and social
injustice, that "transitory step out of the everyday" that Iain Chambers described. Four working-class Latinas in
southeastern Michigan asserted in the interviews that dancing and music, together, allowed them to "forget" their worries,
the "present," and any ''problems." In fact, one woman clearly
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summarized this phenomenon by stating that when she was younger, in Latin America, she would go dancing "to escape
from the poverty of every day" [para escaparme de la pobreza de cada da]. This need was so strong that, as she recounted,
she was willing to be punished by her mother for attending dances without her permission. "Tres horas bailando para
media hora de castigo" [half an hour of punishment for three hours of dancing] was worth her while.

Of course, neither this class-based motivation for musical entertainment, nor the young woman's defiance of family mores
in order to socialize is exclusive to the Latina/o culture. Yet as a collective activity, for many Latinos and Latinas in the
United States dancing symbolizes the recuperation of a national space and locus lost in the historical disseminations that
migrations have represented. Within the social frame of cultural displacement and migration, dancing represents a time
and a space for reaffirming culture through reenactments of those elements "lost" to the dominant culture: the use of
Spanish lyrics, the racial familiarity, and the familiar sounds of a combo consisting of traditional instruments such as the
giro, bongos, tumbadora and maracas, instruments that take the audience back to their countries of origin and to the
sounds of past social celebrations and daily life. Even for young upper- and middle-class Puerto Rican women who did not
identify with this music while growing up in Puerto Rico, salsa becomes a cultural symbol once they "migrate," mostly to
college life in the United States or as part of the "brain drain" phenomenon, crossing class and racial lines as they become
"ethnified" or minority subjects within U.S. culture.

Thus, the dialectics between modernism and postmodernism that Jos Limn deploys in his analysis of popular dancing
among Texas Mexicans are a dynamic force among the Puerto Rican women interviewed, for whom dancing is a clearly
articulated political act. In fact, the modernist stance of unifying the past and the present, the "residual" tradition that Limn
evokes, may be read in this context as a strategy of cultural survival and resistance and quite a creative one at that. The
political value of dancing for Latinas/os may be connected to the strong, historical association of Afro-Caribbean music
with dance. The collective significance of dancing, both in secular contexts and in religious rituals, has not been disrupted
by migration nor colonization but rather reaffirmed. In light of the dwindling public spaces in major U.S. cities, pistas de
baile (dance floors) surely serve as a substitute, even when the clubs themselves are privately owned.

While the practice of dancing to Latin popular music presupposes a phenomenology and a politics that need to be further
explored, the desires and pleasures of the body as social site cannot be divorced from the colo-
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nial displacements that migration has created for many U.S. Latinas/os. For white women, as Leslie Gotfrit proposes,
dancing to rock music at a dub in Toronto is a contradictory cultural practice that can signify opposition to the systematic
social repression of women's bodies and sensuality while it simultaneously signals a consent to hegemonic, heterosexist
objectification of women's bodies. Comparatively speaking, in salsa the presence of the heterosexual couple on the dance
floor marks a clear complicity with the social structures that perpetuate inequities in gender politics. For Latinas, however,
while a soft bolero allows for erotic play and "the pleasure of unknown possibilities," 47 this intimacy is established within
the culturally significant larger space of the dance floor, which maps the ideal space of a cohesive cultural praxis, of
solidarity.

Thus, two dialectic forces simultaneously characterize the bolero or other dance forms in which the independent
heterosexual couple are intimately embraced or intertwined. If there is a sense of cultural solidarity created vis--vis outside
forces, there is also, despite the surface appearance of the unity of the couple in Jos Limn's poetic phrase, "como si fueran
uno"48 an underlying gender conflict fueled by the gender-inflected domination of the male who "leads" and controls the
woman's body. The centripetal bodily tension invoked by the Latin American romantic ballad, the bolero, may not signal
resistance overtly; yet the musical sounds, the melodies and instruments together, activate, in Gotfrit's words, an "incredible
longing" that is not only metaphysical or individually based, as Gotfrit deploys it here, but clearly political, as the Latinas'
testimonies recorded above have affirmed.49

In contrast to the slow rhythms of the bolero, the centrifugal movements of a fast guaracha rhythm may serve as a liberating
form of release, as a polymorphous sense of being in space, an experience of movement that is not exclusive to salsa dances
(as Gotfrit states in her reference to dancing to rock music).50 In a most poetic passage from La importancia de llamarse Daniel
Santos, Luis Rafael Snchez has described this contrast between the bolero and the guaracha, the two basic rhythms
alternately performed by salsa groups. They encapsulate, in a musically symbolic way, the Bakhtinian tensions between
the centrifugal and centripetal forces of cultural and discursive processes.

Opuestos que se armonizan las diferencias son el bolero y la guaracha. Y en el dinamismo de esa oposicin el Caribe
instituye su bandera el Caribe suena, suena. Curvceo pronunciamiento o teora y prctica del barroco es la
guaracha. Inquieta por definicin, incisiones prontas a las vueltas, acumulaciones erticas que se esfuman mientras
se formalizan: ah est la guaracha. Lineal combinacin que envasa su clasicismo y lo practica es el bolero. Quieto
por definicin, de ocurrencia bailable en la cuadrada eternidad de una loseta, sincrnica la tensin que lo embellece,
acu-
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mulaciones erticas que se concretan en una suspensin de fragilidades: ah est el bolero. La guaracha es la cacera
trepidante. El bolero es el festn del cazador y la presa. La guaracha abre el cuerpo, autoriza el desplazamiento,
muestra en diligentes remeneos las partes ms deseables, los tramos a humedecer, los estrechos a despulpar. El
bolero cierra el cuerpo, prohibe el desplazamiento, reduce la rotacin a la tentativa de una muerte vivificante. En
la guaracha se extravierten las felicidades, las pasiones se ajotan de un bando y otro, se aleluyan el placer y el amor.
En el bolero se recluyen las felicidades, los cuerpos se atesan y se atizan, se aleluyan el placer y el amor. 51

[Opposites that harmonize their differences are the bolero and the guaracha. And within the dynamics of this
opposition, the Caribbean hoists its flag the Caribbean sings, it sings. Curved pronouncement of the baroque,
theory and practice of the baroque, that is the guaracha. Restless by definition, elusive when persecuted like the
will-of-the-wisp, incisions quick to turn around, erotic accumulations that disappear while they take on a form, that
is the guaracha. Lineal combination that contains its own classicism and puts it into practice, that is the bolero. Still
by definition, it can be danced within the eternity of a floor tile, with a synchronic tension that beautifies it, erotic
accumulations concretized by suspended fragilities: that is the bolero. The guaracha is the vibrating hunt. The
bolero is the feast of the hunter and hunted. The guaracha opens our bodies, it authorizes displacement; through
diligent wiggling, it exhibits the most desirable parts, the sections to be wet, the straits to be pulped. The bolero
encloses the body, prohibits displacement, reduces rotations to the intent of a life-giving death. In the guaracha,
joys are extroverted, passions fly from one side to another, pleasure and love become aleluyas. In the bolero, joys
are confined, the bodies are smoothed yet aroused, pleasure and love become aleluyas.]

The multiple pleasures of the text reside in the sensorial and rhythmical pleasure of Luis Rafael Snchez's inverse images
of the guaracha and the bolero, a pleasure parallel to the nonsignifying pleasures of the rhythms and sounds of the music
itself and of the act of dancing. Snchez revels in the erotic descriptions of both rhythms: the guaracha is the prelude, the
hunt, and the bolero is the erotic consummation, the feast of the senses (although by itself it is also a prelude to sexual
encounter). Yet within this glorified discourse of a heterosexual practice such as the bolero, Luis Rafael Snchez
subversively rewrites the heterosexuality of these dances with the word ajota, which suggests the underlying presence
of joto, a derogatory word in Spanish that refers to gay men. This reappropriation of the heterosexual pleasures that salsa
music offers suggests how writers like Snchez and Vega, analyzed above, are appropriating popular cultural practices like
dancing, and rewriting them with oppositional values that radicalize gender politics and the hegemony of heterosexual
paradigms.

A scene in Mara Novaro's film Danzn (1991) elicits a differential rewriting of this dance from heterosexist dominant
paradigms when Suzy, Julia's transvestite friend, asks her to teach her(him) how to dance the danzn. After rehearsing the
basic steps, Julia teaches Suzy how to hold
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her, using the traditional heterosexual language of "la pareja." Julia asks Suzy to hold her "like a man"; "agrrame como
hombre, que con los dedos yo me sienta que t me mandes, me ordenas." [hold me like a man, so that your fingers make
me feel that you are the one in charge, that you tell me what to do]. Yet Suzy cannot identify with the male role and asks
Julia to teach her "like a woman" so that (s)he can understand. The aesthetics of the heterosexual couple, a code that Julia
respects and in which she finds meaning, becomes, in this scene, null and meaningless. Julia's heterosexist discourse ''la
pareja," "la dama," "como hombre," "lo bonito, lo sublime de la pareja" is ironically juxtaposed to the visual markers of a
man and a woman dancing, yet given Suzy's transvestism, it becomes a destabilized and doubly ironic image of a "couple."
This ironic displacement is even more meaningful when we consider that it is only through dancing the danzn that Julia,
throughout her life, had been able to express her own sexuality and desires as a heterosexual woman. Her observations to
Suzy about the role of subtle eye contact during the dancing act, of that indirect, oblique eroticism that characterizes sexual
dialogue and the aesthetics of the danzn, reveal Julia's agency and mastery in the erotics of the dance, a role exclusively
activated in the parenthetical space of dancing with Carmelo Bentez, her dancing partner for six years, who mysteriously
disappears at the beginning of the movie. 52

In his poetry, Vctor Hernndez Cruz has also explored the empowerment suggested in centrifugal dancing movements,
from the recognition and acknowledgment of one's own power to the subversive sense of rhythm as "ammunition," as a
disturbing transgression to the social order, analogous to what boom boxes, cocolos, and rappers have represented to the
peace-loving middle-class.53 As I have analyzed in a previous piece, the centrifugal movements of salsa dancing imply a
going out of oneself, the creation of an alternative space, a state of mind that may function as therapeutic or political
liberation. In the past, authorities were very well aware of these potentials, as the rumba, the drumming, and the merengue
were prohibited in the colonial societies of the Caribbean.

Through the readings and rewritings of music by literary writers, the testimonies of Latinas and Latinos, and the
deployment of a postmodern analysis of popular dancing as cultural practice, this interdisciplinary incursion reveals that
to limit the values of dancing, as Adorno did, to a parenthetical space of nothingness or to a trivializing function of
entertainment, is to elide the potential power of a social and collective praxis that creates "multiple pleasures" and that,
depending on its subjects, may be profoundly meaningful or rather insignificant.
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Chapter Six
Cultural (Mis) Translations and Crossover Nightmares

In her lucid analysis of "Women Dancing Back," Leslie Gotfrit refers us to dance as an activity that contests the split between
"body and mind" that has ensued from the binary logic of Western culture. Unlike the mind, the body is ''crucial to any
oppositional politics," and dance allows for the possibility of "a re-integration of mind and body." 1 However, the general
human and collective value of dancing, of course, is not exclusive to salsa music nor to Latin culture. I have stressed the
importance of Latin dancing as cultural resistance and, following Vctor Hernndez Cruz's poems, cultural
acknowledgment; these functions are activated, for Latinas/os, within the complex colonial conditions under which they
produce and consume culture.

Yet it seems that this "state of disembodiment," this radical fissure between body and mind that Gotfrit analyzes, informs
Anglo constructs of salsa music. Perceptions by Anglos of Latin musical culture in the United States reveal an eroticized
reading, a sort of tropicalization, that is not limited to the field of music but significantly recognizes the "human" aspect of
Latina/o dancing vis--vis the presupposed technologizing and dehumanizing practices of contemporary Anglo popular
music and of the Western world. A November 4, 1991, Newsweek article titled "Crossover Dreamers" concludes With such
a view: "That is the sanctuary Latin music offers U.S. audiences it is still played by human hands and danced by couples
who can look into each other's eyes when they do it. Whether you like salsa or not, artists like Guerra have preserved more
than just the mambo tradition. They've held onto a way of making music that the world is fast losing and would be much
worse without."2

Fraught with historical confusion (Juan Luis Guerra performs more merengues and bachatas than salsa or even mambo)
and conflating musical
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forms, nonetheless these observations identify a nostalgic, pretechnology stage of music that assumedly redeems salsa from
the depersonalized musical practices of industrialized societies. This primitivist othering relies on strategies of depicting
Latinas/os as figures that embody emotions, sentiment ("heart"), and magic (the article describes Juan Luis Guerra's erotic
song "Burbujas de amor" as "magical realism"), thus continuing the discursive tradition of Anglo-constructed stereotypes
and tropicalized representations of the regions and cultures south of the border.

Cultural (Mis) Translations

This discursive construct is not an isolated incident but emerges laden with historical instances of rewritings on the part of
dominant institutions. U.S. adaptations of Latin American music erase, literally speaking, the political and cultural values
of music and songs, replacing them with messages and themes that fulfill the needs of an Other, a culturally located listener
or audience. A clear instance of this process is the English mistranslation and "adaptation" of one of Cuba's most famous
exemplars of Afro-Cuban music, "Mama Ins," popularized as a son that expresses the collective subjectivity of black
Cubans since the times of slavery. Issued as an "American adaptation" of ''the greatest of all Cuban Rumbas," the 1931
English translation by L. Wolfe Gilbert clearly illustrates the conflation rightly denounced by Leonardo Acosta of diverse
forms of Cuban music into "rumbas" (which later becomes the mambo and the cha-cha-cha), although the term was also
used in Cuban teatro bufo to refer generally to all Afro-Cuban music. 3 It also stands as an instance of the systematic
erasure of culturally and racially different voices:

Aqu estamos to' los negros [Here we are all blacks]

Que venimos a rogar [who come to ask]
Que nos concedan permiso [that you permit us]
para cantar y bailar [to sing and dance]

Yo 'taba en casa de madrina [I was at godmother's house]

Que ella me mand a buscar [Cause she asked me to come]
Que de doblar de la esquina [Right around the corner]
Que ella vive en el manglar [She lives on the swamps]

Ay mama Ins, Ay mama Ins, [Oh, Mama Ines, Oh, Mama Ines]
todos los negros tomamos caf[we blacks drink coffee]
[Repeat]

Nos vamos para el solar [We go to the land]

donde estn los negritos [where blacks live]
a bailar el cangrejito [to dance a "cangrejito"]
Te invito, vamo' a bailar [I invite you, let's go dance]
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Ay mama Ins, ay mama Ins [Oh, Mama Ines, Oh, Mama Ines]
todos los negros tomamos caf [we blacks drink coffee]

English version:
In Sloppy Joe's in Havana
I lingered quenching my thirst
I saw a dancer there
That was really where
I saw her first.

Such graceful beauty and rhythm

Had never come to my sight
She made me want to stay
Danced my heart away
Most every night.

Oh Mome Enez
Oh Mome Enez
They hum and strum that LA RUMBA for you

Oh Mome Enez
Oh Mome Enez
Though others come,
their LA RUMBA won't do

When I first saw this she-bango

I fell so hard for the tango
But now this brand new fandango's
got me like nothing got me before
Oh Mome Enez (repeat)
No Cuban rum like LA RUMBA for me

I'm deaf and dumb when LA RUMBA I see

Oh Mome Enez
My limbs get numb, oh LA RUMBA for me
Hawaiians dance in a crude way
 The Africans in a lewd way
And though you dance in a nude way
Everyone loves your wonderful style
Oh Mome Enez
I'm blue and glum, dance LA RUMBA for me.
Oh Mome Enez,
They pay some sum, for LA RUMBA delight.
At first they think it's outrageous
And then they find it contagious
They spend their income and wages
Just to be in the spell of your charm.
Oh Mome Enez
And still they come for LA RUMBA and you. 4

The voice of "todos los negros" that initiates this son establishes from the beginning a collective subjectivity immediately
heard in the "we" of "Aqu estamos." Cuban blacks, slaves, emit a collective plea, the song itself, to create a space in which
to articulate their social and racial collective sub-
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jectivity and their presence and agency in Cuban social history through their rhythms, songs, and dance.

This voicing, ironically, is exactly that: a constructed voice by Cuban composer Eliseo Grenet. This song is a tango-congo,
according to Cristbal Daz Ayala, rather than a Cuban son, although in fact the former was heavily influenced by
the son and by other Afro-Cuban musical forms. It developed in the 1920s, typifying blackness within Cuba's lyrical or
musical theater, the zarzuela. "Mama Ins," indeed, was first performed by Rita Montaner in 1927's zarzuela titled Nia
Rita; Montaner was a famous mulatta singer and actress whose performance was called "a scandal." 5

This already mediated version of Afro-Cuban musical traditions, itself a rewriting of the Cubanson, assumes an additional
layering in the "American" version that completely erases the presence of Afro-Cuban matriarchal culture iconized in the
figure of Mother Ins. The song shifts from representing a culture of agency and reaffirmation in history, a collective subject,
to becoming an eroticized female Other ("I saw her first / such graceful beauty and rhythm"), an object, who seduces the
male, Anglo singing/writing subject. Allegorically speaking, Cuba, like other countries south of the border, can be
integrated into the U.S. mainstream only as politically neutralized difference and as a gendered, passive object at the service
of U.S. needs and interests: the insistence of the dative in "play LA RUMBA for me" repeatedly reveals this hegemonic
positioning on the part of the male Anglo subject. The fact that Desi Arnaz popularized this particular Cuban song
throughout the United States in the 1940s and 1950s is partially explained, then, by the presence and dissemination of this
earlier version in English, a text that in many ways may have justifiably invited many U.S. tourists to enjoy Havana as a
space for tropicalized lust and pleasure.

In this light, the anglified "Mama Inez" embodies the ways in which popular music, as text, practice, and performance,
produces ideology that has justified cultural and military imperialism. "And still they come," as the Anglo text summarizes
in its closing, displaces the male I onto a plural presence that is inevitably allegorical of U.S. military interventions and
invasions, not only of Cuba but of other Caribbean islands and Latin American countries. However, the Cuban influx of
migrants in 1994, coupled with the Mariel exodus in 1980, may ironically be described as an inversion of that imperialistic
phrase. Today's Cuban refugee crisis has transformed that "they" into a most heterogeneous and destabilized signifier.

The English translation, then, feminizes Afro-Caribbean popular music; that is, it erases the political, cultural, and racial
collective subjectivities articulated in these songs and replaces them with an individualized expression of heterosexual
desire that objectifies women as well as Cuba if read as
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political allegory. Anglo mistranslations such as this mute and render invisible the subaltern voices that speak through the
music; these texts of resistance and articulations of cultural difference become politically innocuous texts as well as scripts
for U.S. hegemonic desire.

Crossover Nightmares

The intercultural desire revealed in "Mama Inez" continues today, as the Newsweek article "Crossover Dreamers" suggests,
regarding the power of Latin music to establish a strong following of Anglo listeners analogous to the Mambo "craze"
during the 1950s. The attraction that some Anglos feel for Latin music, as Paul Emerson's case illustrates, still needs to be
explored and explained in systematic ways. Emerson, a computer salesman in Detroit, was hailed in "Crossover Dreamers"
as Juan Luis Guerra's ultimate fan. Rather than seducer, Emerson has been seduced by Latin American subculture and the
rhythms of the Caribbean. He has learned Spanish as a result of his predilection for Latin popular music, and he has since
moved to the Dominican Republic. Yet the tropicalization of salsa, its irrational embracing by cultural others, is also a result
of mainstreaming efforts and co-optation on the part of the dominant sector. Is it a coincidence, for example, that the salsa
of the 1960s and 1970s, a music performed mostly by working-class black musicians, was never really mainstreamed
(Fania's commercial efforts came to a halt in the mid-1980s), but in the 1980s and 1990s names like Juan Luis Guerra, Rubn
Blades, and Gloria Estefan, all white, middle- and upper-class, educated musicians, fill the headlines of Newsweek? The
canon is revealing in and of itself, but even more meaningful is the fact that singers and groups that have had a major
historical impact on Afro-Caribbean music Patato, El Gran Combo, Andy Montaez, Ismael Rivera, Rafael Cortijo are still
strange names among the Anglo audience.

Don Michael Randel initiates his article "Crossing Over with Rubn Blades" with these same canonical issues, yet his
conclusions are, at best, problematic. Billboard reported in 1987 that while El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico had been the
"undisputed tropical leader in popularity, record sales, and world geographical musical diffusion," it "has never been a
Grammy nominee." 6 Randel justifies this discrepancy by concluding that Rubn Blades's music offers innovation in its
rhythms, lyrics, and arrangements, and thus the public recognition, rewards, and following among non-Hispanic and up-
and-coming Hispanic audiences can be justified. In contrast, he analyzes one song by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, titled
"Lrica borinquea," from their 1986 album Y su pueblo(And their people).
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He concludes that while this is a "very, very good" piece, it is also "very very familiar. And, indeed, this piece is in a way
about its own familiarity. The singer sings that he writes typically Puerto Rican verse, Caribbean music from the land in
which he was born, pretty music from his country. . . . This song evokes tradition, not novelty or modernity. It simplifies
rather than complicates. It appeals to its largely urban audience in terms utterly foreign to that audience's daily experience
but in terms of a familiar and comfortable tradition." 7

I will not argue against Randel's positive assessment of Rubn Blades's innovative techniques in salsa's arrangements,
accentual texts, and narrative songs. And while he is careful enough to recognize that Blades's songs "would not exist
without El Gran Combo,"8 the overarching effect of his analysis is to reduce the historical value of El Gran Combo's
repertoire and musical contributions to salsa to one song (out of thousands that they have composed or interpreted). "Lrica
borinquea" may be deemed too traditional and pastoral for an urban audience, yet this song functions precisely to fulfill
Rubn Blades's nostalgic refrain of his theme song in the filmCrossover Dreams, one that evokes the inevitable return,
whether physical or symbolic, to one's native country. This is a line that Randel himself quotes in his article.

The repetition of certain idyllic visions of Puerto Rico, as nostalgic or retrograde as they may be deemed by postmodernist
standards, activates a specific need among colonized groups who have been displaced geographically and who have
experienced the social traumas of shifting from rural to urban life or from one cultural space to another. In this view,
Randel's article participates in the logic of the music industry, which has canonized Rubn Blades and dismissed other
groups such as El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico. Yet the latter was the principal performer at Seville's Expo 92, and among
Puerto Ricans it is not a traditional group but musical tradition itself (the group most representative of the changes that
Puerto Rican urban popular music has witnessed throughout thirty years [19621992]). This counteracts Randel's
simplification and undermining of the historical importance of El Gran Combo. Indeed, if one were familiar with El Gran
Combo's concert tours throughout Latin American cities, U.S. cities, and Europe, one would evaluate their international
renown differently.

Randel invokes a conversation with a Hispanic woman student at Cornell University who prefers Rubn Blades to El Gran
Combo de Puerto Rico in support of his own analysis. Yet the author does not take into consideration factors of class
positioning, racial attitudes, or gender awareness in his discussion of listener preferences and audience response.

Randel's article is a clear example of how scholarship has failed salsa

Page 110

Members of El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico are shown on the back cover of
their double album, De ayer, hoy, maana y siempre, released by Combo
Records Productions in 1982 on the occasion of their twentieth anniversary.
Rafael Ithier, leader of the group, stands in the middle dressed in white.
Courtesy of Combo Records.

music. It dismisses and ignores the real-life responses to music by its Latino and Latina audiences. It fails to account for
issues of race, class, and gender in arriving at conclusions regarding reception and degrees of popularity. It homogenizes
the multilayered and plural ideologies that constitute listener response to salsa, and it blatantly ignores the voices of
working-class Latinos and Latinas in their own sociomusical practices. Randel does invoke the "reader or listener" 9 in a
short discussion of how audiences use music "to construct meaning and their own identifies,"10 a discussion that is built on
by Hayden White's theory of code-shifting in reception: "a dynamic process of overt and covert code shifting by which a
specific subjectivity is called up and established in the reader, who is supposed to entertain this representa-
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tion of the world as a realistic one in virtue of its congeniality to the imaginary relationship the subject bears to his own
social and cultural situation." 11 While this Althusserian explanation of the importance of form in the constitution of
subjectivities is extremely helpful in the study of popular culture's polysemic nature, it is also revealing that White's
authority overshadows any need for further ethnographic surveying or for methods of study that would document the
ways in which Latina/o audiences construct meaning and identity through music. By failing to take into account the
historical and cultural specificities of popular music, its complex ideological sites, and the voices of those audiences that
have sustained the music economically, Randel's scholarship becomes another problematic instance of the colonizing
erasures that "Mama Inez" embodied earlier.

Thus, to speak about salsa as crossover music, as Randel's and other journalistic pieces do, is to monologize the complex
ideological webs that such a music articulates in its production, composition, performing, and reception. It is more helpful,
I believe, to think of crossover music in terms of audience configurations, needs, and reception practices associated with
cross-cultural dynamics, or more accurately, with intercultural desire. "Crossing over" needs to be redefined beyond the
validation of a musical performance by and to a hegemonic cultural sector as a gauge for judging musical popularity or
"success." It becomes, for me at least, a result of the needs of an outside (Anglo) audience to reconcile Latina/o music with
its own desires and values, as the tropicalizing phenomenon attests. In salsa and Latin music, only certain figures have
been allowed to "cross over."

According to Randel, in the case of Rubn Blades, crossing over has been made possible by a new, emerging Hispanic
audience "increasingly imbued with Anglo culture and energized by its very own political and economic
aspirations,"12 rather than "from an appeal to some new, largely Anglo audience."13 While I agree that the sector of
Latinas/os in the United States and throughout Latin America who prefer Rubn Blades is a young, upwardly mobile,
professional audience, Blades's reception among Latinas/os has shifted throughout his career. However, he remains very
popular among all class sectors, a factor that Randel fails to consider.

Additionally, Randel dismisses the fact that El Gran Combo is not the only salsa group popular among working-class
Latinas/os; indeed, other artists, such Andy Montaez, the late Hctor Lavoe, and Oscar de Len, dismissed by mainstream
musical critics and the establishment, actually enjoy great popularity. Class and race boundaries, however, have limited
their access to general Anglo audiences. El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico was formed as a branching out of Rafael Cortijo y
su Combo, the all-black musical group that vindicated the bomba and the plena as popular music
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during the decades of the 1940s and 1950s and indisputably contributed to the formation of salsa music in New York. El
Gran Combo, like its predecessors, gives voice to the needs, realities, and social experiences of the black urban working
class, whether in New York or in other Caribbean cities. As such, the nasality of the singing, its diction, its themes, its
humor, and its worldview may not necessarily coincide with middle- and upper-class Anglo values. Most Anglos, indeed,
would enjoy the rhythms, as Randel's Latina student did, but would not engage with the narrative modes of the lyrics.

It is no coincidence, then, that Randel's sample, a Hispanic not a self-named Latina student at Cornell University, would
dismiss El Gran Combo as insignificant in her life but would embrace Rubn Blades's "Decisiones." I would dare to
hypothesize that for upper-class and aspiring middle-class young Hispanics, Blades's repertoire represents a safe, clean,
white way of being political, as Blades himself has been an icon, through-out his own life, of the up-and-coming white
Hispanic in the United States. His law degree from Harvard, his English last name (that could read in either Spanish or
English), his growing fame as an actor in Hollywood, and his failed attempts at composing salsa in English ("Nothing but
the Truth") already position Blades as an ideal musician for particular class sectors.

Manuel Cachn's analysis of Rubn Blades's ideological plurality is helpful in this discussion. While I have already
expressed reservations about Cachn's rigid paradigms for salsa as commercial and as sociopolitical he acknowledges,
nonetheless, the complex issues of reception that Blades illustrates. In his view, Blades's repertoire removes salsa music
from the folkloric, tropical, and exotic view of "commercial" salsa, while his musical compositions and arrangements
continue the oral traditions of popular culture in New York's barrios, as the song "Pedro Navaja" best exemplifies. Yet
Rubn Blades's rewritings of oral tradition have been accepted and have achieved legitimacy precisely because he has
conformed his literary discourse and style to elite literary criteria (his use of alexandrine verses, his rhyme patterns, and
other stylistic nuances), thus achieving validation by the Latin American upper-class listener and/or reader. Ironically,
Blades has played both fields, for he radically politicized the content of salsa songs while gaining stylistic acceptance by
the social sectors he so ardently denounces in his music.

It is not surprising, then, that at a presentation during a Viva Chicago Festival in 1989, Blades apologized to the mostly
working-class Latina/o audience for supposedly abandoning "el pueblo" in search of Hollywood fame. Such a stance
reveals the tenuous and ambiguous role that he has
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held among working-class Latinas/os as a result of his real-life crossing over and his growing fame within the
establishment and Hollywood. His two most recent collections, Antecedentes (1989) andCaminando (1991), were produced
at a time when Blades's power was waning among his Latina/o audiences. They attempt to recover the Panamanian singer's
earlier role as the political and oppositional voice among salseros, vindicating himself in the eyes and ears of the working-
class U.S. Latino/a community.

U.S. journalism like the "Crossover Dreamers" article presents Rubn Blades side by side with Cuban-born musician
Gloria Estefan, yet their respective successes among Anglo audiences stem from very diverse motivations and cultural
positions. In contrast to Blades's ambivalence and double play with his audiences, Gloria Estefan has addressed from the
beginning the expectations of a large, mainstreaming public. Her music is undoubtedly based on Afro-Caribbean rhythms,
but the softer texture of her arrangements and sound and the English lyrics in her songs have brought Latin popular music
to new levels of popularity among non-Latinas/os. Gloria Estefan, however, has never been labeled nor considered a salsa
musician. She is a Latin pop singer and as such belongs within the tradition of pop ballads and soft rock, not under the
rubric of salsa as it has been defined historically. Thus, comparisons between Estefan and Rubn Blades, for instance, seem
rather forced, given the very different musical genres that they have performed.

Estefan's bilingual lyrics and her predominant use of English bring forth the value of language in delineating Latin(o)
popular music and its role in drawing cultural boundaries. While Estefan's decision to sing in English and bilingually
coincide with her views on the so-called universality of music and with her resistance to politicized music, her strategic
move to produce Mi tierra totally in Spanish and in collaboration with important musicians such as Israel "Cachao" Lpez
and Tito Puente inserts her now into a larger tradition of salsa music that, with some particular exceptions (like "Pennies
from Heaven"), has maintained its Spanish lyrics throughout a whole century. (The first Hispanic songs began to be
recorded in the United States around 1906.)

The linguistic maintenance of Spanish in the production of salsa is quite impressive, given the pressures of a music industry
interested in appealing to larger audiences. This persistent presence of Spanish, a subordinate language in any other social
context in the United States, is not surprising in light of the demographic growth of Latinas/os in the United States and as
another indicator of the oppositionality of salsa and its strong connections to the working-class Latina/o communities
throughout the United States and Latin America. That the Japanese salsa band Orquesta de la Luz sings
Page 114

in Spanish reveals the profound connection of salsa to the Spanish language and its strong value as a marker of cultural
identity, resistance, and affirmation.

Estefan's incursion into Spanish, like Rubn Blades's experiment with salsa in English, represent strategic linguistic shifts
for marketing drives more than instances of an exclusively postmodern linguistic hybridity. Estefan's musical
trajectory particularly her production of Mi tierra reveals the inverse pattern of the crossover performers who begin
singing in Spanish to their own communities and then move on to mainstream audiences in English. During televised
interviews and publicity regarding the production of Mi tierra, she candidly admitted that had she produced this type of
traditional Afro-Cuban music earlier in her career, it would not have been that successful. Timing, of course, is significant,
given the mainstreaming tendencies of salsa music in the United States since the 1980s.

Spanish in salsa brings to the foreground issues of cultural authenticity, a concept that has been blacklisted by many cultural
critics and scholars in favor of the transnational and multicultural aspects of cultural productions. Any reference to
authenticity reifies culture and fixes boundaries, so it may be relevant to bring up the fact that this term is too closely
associated with nationalism and as such can only be rejected by our generation of scholars, particularly those of us in
cultural studies. Yet this rejection, as Cuban musicologist Leonardo Acosta reminds us, may be another instance of
colonization on the part of the metropolis. For years, the metropolis has critiqued the nationalism emerging from the
colonized countries, yet it simultaneously appropriates these very nationalist-informed cultural expressions. 14 Thus, when
authenticity is synonymous with nationalism, it is shunned from discussions of cultural studies and postmodernism.
However, if we reconfigure this concept as a dialectical one rather than unilaterally that is, as verb rather than noun,15 as
a process rather than as an inherent quality of a cultural product or artistic subject then not only colonized groups can be
deemed authentic or practice authenticity. The colonizer also is highly complicit in this process of social construction by
attempting, from an outside location, to authenticate particular musical traditions, to give them validity, establishing them
as true and genuine within the ideologies that can contain them. Thus, to authenticate from a hegemonic location is to give
Latin popular music, or musicians, a constructed meaning that is inevitably different from those of the inside community.
In other words, authentication can be understood as another instance of the discursive struggles over cultural meanings,
identities, and power.

As academicians, it is too easy for us to reaffirm theoretically the values

Page 115

of multiculturalism and the collective nature of cultural authorship from the comfort and luxury of our daily lives as very
well and not so very well paid professors. Nevertheless, these concepts are not just words but realities that hold material
repercussions, strongly vital and central to Latina/o musicians who struggle everyday for a gig, yet whose music is now
being performed by a David Byrne, a Paul Simon, or a Linda Ronstadt, who received ''megabucks" for their multicultural
productions. Willie Coln denounces the co-optation of salsa and Latin music by Anglo performers, and he points to the
economic marginalization of Latina/o musicians and the highlighting of the mainstream musician as the "promoter of the
culture." Indeed, he indicates the historical continuity of this phenomenon as he refers to the "Beatles redoing race music,
Pat Boone covering Little Richard songs, and Elvis singing the blues." 16 Coln recognizes the fluidity of cultural
productions and also acknowledges that in most cases appropriations did take place; as a result, "isn't it a shame that all
these black musics were accepted only in a white disguise?"17 The historical phenomenon of the acceptance of vernacular
or ethnic musics, such as the blues, jazz, or salsa, contingent on their Anglo representations and performances, has been
already probed and elucidated.18 Yet by reaffirming the multicultural and collective authorship of popular culture, as
Mackey has also observed, cultural critics can assuage these economic differentials and gaps in cultural authority, thus
constructing, naively yet politically safely I believe, an ideal, egalitarian vision of multiculturalism and of cross-cultural
communication in this society.19

Willie Coln, then, has rewritten the concept of crossover dreams (the title of Rubn Blades's first movie) into
crossover nightmares. In a very brief but powerful note he denounces the negative economic repercussions of musical
appropriations and the ensuing marginalization of Latina/o musicians. To theorize about multicultural authorship without
including the economics of production and without taking into account the colonial status of Latina/o communities
worldwide would mean failing to recognize the pervading colonization that these musical practices evoke. Postmodern
theories stressing collectivity and shifting boundaries ironically also elide the principle of articulation, intricately bound to
class differenrials and central to the study of any form of music. Music itself is not a fixed object, mere content, but a series
of patterns that are combined into new patterns and structures, semantically transvalorated. This mediation, as Richard
Middleton describes it, always occurs in struggle.20 Thus, class and race differentials must be embedded in discussions of
popular music. If not, we reduce music to an idea, an abstract symbolism or metaphor, which it undeniably is; yet it is also
intimately linked to a materiality, a po-
Page 116

litical economy, and physical survival for real-life musicians. In this context, Willie Coln's concern about salsa's
mainstreaming becomes significant: "What will we do when Anglo-Salsa becomes bigger than the music we have lived and
liked for so long? When Latin America swings to Ronstadt and Simon in English and the Salsa Festival at Madison Square
Garden is headlined by Byrne? When America says: Salsa? Oh, you mean like Paul Simon? How will it affect the Salsa
genre when all its biggest stars are white and singing in English? Another way of not being able to love ourselves for what
we are. Sour grapes or dj-vu?" 21

In the post-civil rights era, Latinas/os, African Americans, and other minority groups have reached a certain degree of
access to cultural production and authorship, an access that, although limited, has carried financial remuneration and
national visibility to some. Yet the value of cultural authority has been undermined simultaneously by the same intellectual
projects that were meant to defend multiculturalism in the national sphere. Although the scenario that Coln portrays in
the quote above is quite improbable because of the influx of immigration, the demographic growth, and the cultural pride
of Latinas/os in the United States, the reality of cultural co-optation must be articulated for what it is, instead of being
veiled and assuaged by well-intentioned cultural critics willing to ignore the material and economic realities that Latina/o
musicians have confronted. In this last section, I have attempted to differentiate between a Rubn Blades and a Gloria
Estefan for, indeed, each has crossed over (or has been crossed over, embraced) from very different sociomusical locations.
Both have been conflated as "crossover" dreamers although, in fact, their respective receptions and audience configurations,
their political positionings, and the kinds of music they compose are distinct from each other.

Yet Gloria Estefan and Rubn Blades share a symbolic value; they represent the whitening of salsa music that Anglo
America desires to have racially, which is also part and parcel of its internationalization. Discussions of their music, such
as Randel's and Newsweek's, have failed to consider class and race factors as they affect the inclusion of certain musicians to
the exclusion of others, perpetuating the tendencies of the mainstream to conflate all Latin(o) popular music as one
homogeneous, tropicalized cultural expression. Through this postmodern, politicized, and decolonizing reading of salsa
music as an appropriation, as object of intercultural desire, I hope to have brought to the foreground, as Nathaniel Mackey
has observed about blackface minstrelsy, "a great deal regarding the obstacles in the way of genuine multiculturality or
cross-culturality, a genuine, nonexploitative cultural exchange."22 Like African-American music in the United States, salsa
music has been transformed from "verb to noun," fem-
Page 117

inized and made passive, depoliticized in order to render innocuous its power for cultural differentiation.

This view about othering should not be read as a unilateral rejection of transnational exchanges; neither should it render
null the internal power differentials and contradictions that salsa incorporates and exteriorizes within the Latino and Latina
communities. Gender politics, in particular, have remained virtually unexamined in salsa; whereas salsa itself is feminized
and rendered passive by the dominant Anglo forces, its privileging of the masculine at various intratextual levels and
intraculturally must be deconstructed as well.
Page 119

PART THREE
DISSONANT MELODIES:
SINGING GENDER, DESIRE, AND CONFLICT
Page 121

Theoretical Pretexts:
Listening (as) Woman

What follows here and in the fourth part of this book is an exercise both in Listening Woman and inlistening as women,
concepts based on critical discussions of women as readers informed by the convergence of feminist studies with reader-
response theories. 1 In the context of popular music, however, reception does not embrace visual or verbal reading practices
only but partakes in signifying practices through both individual and collective acts of listening, singing, and dancing. Any
approach, then, to the Ways in which salsa music textualizes the feminine through song lyrics cannot remain divorced
either from real audience responses nor from other aspects of this music as sociocultural praxes. While "reading Woman"
provides an initial conceptual framework for this study, it proves insufficient in its exclusively verbal dimension. Thus, it
is imperative to translate this term, which emphasizes the verbal and the literary over the sonorous and aural, into a
sociomusical act. The conscious, ambiguous ungrammaticalness of Listening Woman it should read
"listening to women" suggests subtexts not only of previous scholarly discussions of issues of representation and
textualizing practices but, moreover, about women as receptors and producers of meaning(s).

At first sight Listen (Read)ing Woman evokes the "images of women" methodology, a "resolutely thematical" criticism that,
during the 1970s, proved "most forceful as a critique of the phallocentric assumptions that govern literary works."2 Yet
many analyses of this sort were, in practice, based on the simplistic assumption that texts "reflect" reality, thus leading to
merely psychological or descriptive commentaries on female characters. In their attempts to uncover women's treatment
as literary objects, many feminist critics implicitly reproduced this treatment, a flaw that was also, unfortunately, quite
common in the context of Latin American scholarship
Page 122

on women. 3 As recently as 1988, Neyssa Palmer's analysis of female characters in the Puerto Rican narrative of the 1940s
and 1950s exemplifies the dangers of this approach:

Todas estas vidas son trgicas, responden al mundo brutal e injusto que encuentran a su paso, sin otra alternativa
que la resignacin, pero no hay en ellas degradacin moral alguna. Por el contrario, el dolor las enaltece. A travs del
proceder que develan como personajes, percibimos el profundo conocimiento que posee Gonzlez de la conducta y
reacciones que observa la mujer puertorriquea frente a la adversidad.

[All of these women's lives are tragic; they respond to the brutal and unjust world around them; they have no other
choice but to resign themselves, although there is no moral degradation. On the contrary, pain exalts them. Through
their behavior as characters, we perceive Gonzlez's (the author's) profound knowledge of the behavior and reactions
of Puerto Rican women in the midst of adversity.] (my emphasis)4

The emphasized statements above illustrate the ways in which the hermeneutic practice elides the text as a literary construct
and insists on a direct correspondence between fiction and reality, exercising what Toril Moi has termed "excessive
referentialism."5 Indeed, what Palmer does not take into account is that female representation and by and large any
representation results from textualizing a myriad of factors such as gender, race, class, and ideology. She does not find a
problem in defining a fixed gender identity for women as well as for men; she participates, in fact, in fixing women's
identity, notably by naturalizing women's emotions and even ascribing patriarchal values to those emotions (e.g. "Pain
exalts them").

Yet as a critical strategy, Listening Woman can supersede the simplistic representational assumptions that the above
quotation illustrates. In reading women's representation in Latin popular music, Listening Woman entails "both the ways in
which women are figured . . . and the ways in which such figuring gives representation its force by repressing female
desire."6 As Pamela Caughie implies, "Reading Woman" is synonymous with "reading what is not known in literature or
theory,"7 that is, reading the silences and filling in the gaps created by a male-centered perspective and phallocentric
discourse. Thus, Reading Woman, as critical tool, always already implies an active agent within the (female) reader or listener
who constructs meaning out of a text in differential ways; this dialectical relationship surfaces in the possible double
readings of this signifier (woman as object, as in reading representations of women, and woman as subject, as in woman
who reads).

While it is a given that gender makes a difference in reading as in listening, I am interested here in some of those differences
but most interested in the ways in which those differences are produced in the text as well as through the process of the
receptor(s) engaging the text (i.e., the song).
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Moreover, to think of gender as sexual difference tends to duplicate essentializing, fixed definitions of the feminine as
structurally differential (what is nonmasculine) or opposite to the masculine. Rather, as Cathy Schwichtenberg poses in
"Reconceptualizing Gender: New Sites for Feminist Audience Research," gender must be posed "as a process of negotiation
with culture rather than as the assumption of necessarily feminine qualities, attributes, or identifications." 8 While earlier
in my work I had proposed a clearer distinction between Listening Woman and listening as women, a distinction that served
me in structuring this interdisciplinary incursion,9 I now doubt its phenomenological validity and thus have decided to
merge both concepts with the use of the parenthesis, signaling the dialectics between both processes and their
phenomenological indivisibility.

Although Listening Woman still serves to frame my discussion of women's representation by male salsa singers and
composers, the meanings of and ultimately the power of those discursive constructions are not activated, nor do they
assume force except at the moment of reception, through the very act of listening. Most thematic readings of popular music
document songs and particular lyrics as unilateral expressions or simplistic, unmediated reflections of certain themes,
ideas, or attitudes.10 In contrast, this chapter strives to reproduce the tensions, conflicts, and multiple voices underlying the
dialogic space of (hetero)sexual politics in salsa music. In this part of the book the analysis is limited to the voices we listen
to in songs, but I ask the reader not to separate this textual analysis from the heterogeneous responses of both Latina and
Latino listeners that will be presented in the next section. "As Somos, As Son," as I have titled Part Four, exemplifies the
tension between the male-authored song "As son" by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico and the responses of Latinas who
appropriate patriarchal lyrics to reconstitute themselves as active subjects of their own identity. The phrase "as somos,"
countered by a working-class Latina from Detroit after listening to this song, suggests that listening, like consumption, is
not merely a passive behavior, an ideological consent but rather constitutes a potential instance Of rewriting culture.

As a product of a male-dominated music industry and positioned as a commodity of a capitalist superstructure, salsa has
led to women's exclusion from its arenas of production and composition. Salsa's repertoire is clearly marked by male voices
that systematically privilege a masculinist perspective, a patriarchal ideology, and thus a phallocentric discourse. And
while some female interpreters have been key figures in the development and popularity of salsa (e.g., La Lupe and Celia
Cruz) and recently in that of the merengue (e.g., Sonia Lpez; Milly y los Vecinos; Mayra, Celins y Flor de Caa; Chantelle;
and Las Chicas del Can), the younger women
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musicians who perform mostly texts written by men seem to enjoy the most visibility in the industry, thus reinforcing the
music's monopolization by patriarchal perspectives and the male as writing subject. In spite of the fact that women singers
invert the object of sexism as they sing patriarchal love songs and in doing so become acting subjects in control of their
bodies, the seducers rather than the seduced; empower other women with specific visual cues as articulations of female
subjectivity; and function as role models for their female audience, it is clear that female desire and female subjectivity are
ultimately repressed in salsa intratextually and at times are outright invisible as well.

The locus, then, in which gender dialogism and sexual politics are played out is not only in women's songs but also in
extratextual elements. Women's songs are the most self-evident arena for the articulation of female subjectivity, but we
must also locate oppositionality and resistance in performative dimensions (as the figure of La Lupe clearly demands) and
in women's responses to and rewritings of male utterances, whether literary texts (such as Luis Rafael Snchez's hybrid
literary rendering of Daniel Santos or Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo Filippi's stories) or the liberatory and alternative
rewritings that Latinas themselves engage through the act of listening. These plural discursive sites destabilize, dialogize,
and deconstruct the privileged male voices in Latin popular music. However, when we listen to lyrics, we listen to multiple
articulations of desire and conflict that must be documented as well. This section brings together, in a sort of musicocritical
medley, diverse lyrics and musical traditions separated in many cases by either national boundaries or decades of historical
distance by which male and female voices have represented gender, conflict, and desire on our sentimental or affective
culture.

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Chapter Seven
Woman as Absence:
Hetero(homo)sexual Desire in the Bolero

Amor es un algo sin nombre que obsesiona

a un hombre por una mujer . . .
[Love is a nameless something that makes
a man obsessed with a woman . . .]
Pedro Flores, "Obsesin"

A working-class Latina from Detroit acknowledged during my interview with her that "cuando estoy en un bailey escucho
salsa, no le presto mucha atencin alas palabras . . . pero cuando es un bolero s le pongo atencin" [when I go dancing, I
don't pay much attention to the lyrics of salsa music . . . but when a bolero plays I do listen carefully to the lyrics]. This
observation reveals her awareness that, as a member of a musical audience, she engages different listening strategies
depending on the musical form she is hearing. Her musical competence leads her to listen more carefully to the lyrics of a
bolero, the quintessential romantic ballad in Latin America, than to salsa songs. While she well enjoys the fast rhythms of
the latter, it is the slow tempo of the bolero and the importance of both its lyrics and the voice of the singer that seduces her
into listening closely.
Given the highly literary nature of this musical form, I will focus first on reading and analyzing bolero lyrics as a musical
space in which Woman (or the feminine) is constructed mostly as absence, an absence that stimulates the expression and
articulation of male desire through the text/song and through the act of singing. Despite the predominance of the male
singing subject in this musical tradition, recent scholarship and postmodern fiction have successfully regendered the
discourse of the bolero. Iris Zavala's essay "De hroes y heronas en lo imaginario social: El discurso amoroso del bolero"
and Luis Rafael Snchez's La importancia de llamarse Daniel San-
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tos, an original rendering of the male icon of guarachas and boleros both capitalize on the bolero's sublimated erotic
discourse, subversively reinterpreting it as homoerotic rewriting. Although the bolero implies a different listening mode
from that evoked by salsa, this romantic musical genre has been a central subtext of heterosexual love and an influential
tradition that informs the discourse of desire and sexual politics in salsa music.

The origins of the bolero have been traced to Cuba at the turn of the century, more specifically to around 1885 and 1886.
These years coincide with the historical emergence of the danzn, characterized by the habanera rhythm, which constitutes
the rhythmical foundation for the bolero. 1The late 1880s also mark the emergence of modernismo in Latin America, the
neo-romantic revolution in poetic language and literature that represents the early stages of literary modernity. And as Iris
Zavala has suggested, the idealizing, preciosista, abstract yet sensual and refined imagery and lexicon of modernismo
informs the discourse of love embodied in the bolero.2Agustn Lara's composition "Mujer" illustrates the ethereal, idealizing
and mythifying textualization of Woman as divine seductress, echoing Spanish romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo
Bcquer's Rimas and the modernista leader Rubn Daro's poetic imagery of the feminine, a language that systematically
renders woman as dematerialized, not real:

Mujer, mujer divina,

tienes d veneno que fascina en tu mirar.
Mujer alabastrina,
tienes vibracin de sonatina pasional,
tienes el perfume de un naranjo en flor,
el altivo porte de una majestad.
Sabes de los filtros que hay en el amor,
tienes el hechizo de la liviandad,
la divina magia de un atardecer,
y la maravilla de la inspiracin.
Tienes en el ritmo de tu ser
todo el palpitar de una cancin.
Eres la razn de mi existir, mujer.

[Woman, woman divine

in your look you hold the poison that seduces,
Alabaster-like woman,
you hold the vibrations of a passionate sonatina,
you hold the scent of an orange blossom,
the royal pose of a queen.
You know about the filters of love,
you hold a spell with your lightness,
The divine magic of a sunset,
and the marvel of inspiration.
You hold in the rhythms of your being
all the palpitations of a song.
You are the reason for my existence, woman.]3
Page 127

In this text the male singing subject is, at once, creator of woman and her receptor as well. He constructs her as an ideal, a
divine being superior to him and thus unattainable. The theme of unrequited love constitutes the central obsession in the
bolero. She is goddess, witch, and fatal seductress (poison). She is, after all, the object of his unquenchable desire. And el
deseo is, indeed, the main ideologeme of the bolero in Latin America, a desire that is played out musically and embodied in
the ''systolic-diastolic" movement of this musical form. 4 This tension musically emerges from the habanera rhythm and the
syncopated double beat, suspending any resolution of sound and sentiment, prohibiting any pleasure in the sense of
musical closure or endings and thus reflecting at the sonorous level the discourse of unrequited or unconsummated love
that underlies the bolero. Desire is never fulfilled, always remaining as absence, never actualized into sexual or erotic
pleasure. The interstitial location of language and the intermittence of presence and absence, then, continually inscribe
desire both for singer and audience. The "absence" that becomes a "presence," as Iris Zavala argues, is mostly Woman, who
becomes evoked and discursively present through the voice of the male interpreter.5 Woman as sign of absence becomes
present through language, through the act of singing, and through the bolero as performative act. The sensual evocation of
the lyrics allows the heterosexual couple to give meaning to dancing and intimacy "in the squared eternity of a floor tile"
as foreplay and anticipation of sexual pleasure.6 As Agustn Lara's song "Mujer" suggests in its closing lines, woman holds
in her own "rhythm" the "palpitations" of the song; that is, her body is always already the text for the male, as much as the
song becomes the discursive space in which woman's body is inscribed.

The bolero, as constructed by Luis Rafael Snchez in his rendering of Daniel Santos is, metaphorically speaking, the body
of Latin America, in its transnational circulation and popularity. It is the music of "la Amrica amarga, la Amrica descalza,
la Amrica en espaol," of the masses who seduce, love, and desire in the midst of sweeping social changes, such as
industrialization, urbanization, and transnationalism.7 The bolero is the language of "exquisiteces" sung by all Latin
Americans, a musical language that traverses social classes, generations, genders, and race boundaries, as Iris Zavala also
proposes.8

Thus, the body of the bolero has been mythified as eternal, for its discourse of love transcends historical periods and crosses
generational lines. In this sense, younger generations continually rediscover the traditional boleros of the 1930s, 1940s, and
1950s because those same lyrics and confessions of pain, love, solitude, and desire that their parents sang to each other
while dancing continue to act as foreplay to their passion and as seduction
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itself. In the same way that my parents' generation sought meaning and intimacy in the voices of Tito Rodrguez, Daniel
Santos, and Gilberto Monroig, young people today consume Luis Miguel's recent release, Romance, which includes a
number of master love songs, from Roberto Cantoral's "La barca" to Gabriel Ruiz's "Usted." The popularity of Miguel's
recording among young people exemplifies the continuous rediscovery of this music of love by younger generations of
singers and interpreters. 9 Likewise, music critics have noted the ubiquitous presence and influence of the bolero in
contemporary slow rock ballads and popular romantic ballads. Although many critics stress the qualitative difference
among these musical forms, they value the traditional bolero over the contemporary love renderings, which they have
deemed diluted and commercialized versions of the authentic bolero a la Agustn Lara or Tito Rodrguez.

The continental, eternal, and ubiquitous body of the bolero as sociomusical practice is closely linked to patriarchy and to
its male-gendered voices and lyrics. Heir to the Western tradition of courtly love, boleros continue to articulate masculine
constructs of the feminine, from the ideal and impossible woman to more universal archetypes, such as the woman
seductress and witch, the femme fatale, the ungrateful woman who betrays the man's love, and the "lost woman," the latter
image containing multiple meanings. For the Mexican singer Agustn Lara, known as the flaco de oro (the golden thin man)
and mythified as the prototype of the bolero composer and bohemian interpreter, the prostitute, the sinner, and the "lost
woman" constituted the inspirational muse for his boleros after 1930.10 Indeed, titles such as ''Perdida," "Amor de la calle,"
"Callejera," "Flor deshojada," "Arrabalera," "Cabaretera," "Si fuera una cualquiera," "Flor de arrabal," "Trotacalles," "Amor
vendido," "T y tu vida," and others, systematically prove the centrality of the mujer de la calle as source of inspiration and
object of desire for the male composer. The marginal location of the figure of the prostitute explains also the marginality of
these love relationships, liaisons that usually reside outside legality, marriage, and family. While Mexican critics identify
these titles as boleros specifically inspired by "las muchachas de la vida galante" [the girls of a licentious life] the image of
the "lost woman" [la perdida] is not only informed by autobiographical circumstances and experiences but also branches
out to any relationship in which the woman leaves the man. Moreover, this central structuring motif sheds historical light
on the threatening values that urbanization brought forth to a Latin American patriarchal system in which wives, mothers,
and daughters who worked outside the home literally became mujeres de la calle as they enjoyed increased access to the
public sphere and to public spaces. These negative depictions of women represent, then, a defensive
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stance by men against the new public spaces inhabited by women who, as a result of urban migration, modernization, and
their new role in the workplace, subverted the social values that restricted them within the household.

This patriarchal resistance also has been articulated in jbaro music, as Chuto el de Bayamn sings to men in "La mujer en
Nueva York," 11 admonishing them against migrating to the big city in the north where they risk losing their women to
modernizing values and an increased degree of freedom:

Singer, if you do not want

To lose your woman
Don't, don't sell your house
To bring her to New York.
Because even if things are worse there
Here she'll take on bad ways
She'll deceive you with another
Maybe even your own friend
And that's why I'm telling you
That women go bad here.12

The male caveat against migration is seen as the descent from the purity of the rural homeland to the corrupting influences
of the big city, modernization, and industrialization. Not exclusive to the bolero, this antiurban sentiment was voiced
throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s in various forms of popular music, as well as in the literature about migration
emerging from island writers. As late as 1963, Ren Marqus' drama La carreta epitomized this discourse about the tragic
consequences of migration and urbanization on the family unit. Most important, the playwright locates the progressive
moral degradation of urban life, moving from the countryside to San Juan to New York, in the figure of the virginal
daughter-become-prostitute. This larger discourse on women, migration, and urban life, not coincidentally produced
during the most important decades of the bolero, allows us to read between the lines those lyrics that have been mostly
rendered as individual voicings of love, desire, and loss.

Pedro Flores's bolero titled "Se fue" (She left) encapsulates the centrality of woman's absence for the heterosexual male
subjectivity, an absence that might also be read as the result of social displacements:

Se fue para no volver [She left never to return

Y mi pobre corazn And my poor heart
Se enferm de ausencia. Fell ill from her absence.
Ahora que estoy convencido Now that I am convinced
Que nunca jams volver that she will never return Now
Ahora yo s lo que sufre I know the suffering
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of those who lose their joy.

quien pierde su felicidad. She left never to return.
Se fue para no volver.

She left not to forget me

Se fue para no olvidarme For she could not hate me
Como no poda odiarme She left never to return.
Se fue para no volver. (Repeat)
[Repeat] Now that I shall suffer
Ahora que he de padecer Because of this absent love
Por la ausencia de ese amor I don't know what I will do
Yo no s qu voy a hacer With my poor heart. 13
Con mi pobre corazn. (Repeat last stanza)]

This beautiful and highly emotional bolero, interpreted by Daniel Santos through the unique modulations of his sensual,
deep voice, represents the lyrical simplicity by which the "words about absence seduce us into a presence," as Iris Zavala
suggests regarding the motif of absence, of unrequited and frustrated love. Here the male singing subject expresses what
were once the requirements of courtly love: the suffering caused by the beloved's indifference or outright rejection manifests
itself as physical illness, fever, corazn enfermo (ill heart), and so on. This metaphorical malaise, however, should be
explained beyond the individual realm and recontexualized within the conditions of modernization in which the absence
and abandonment of women of the domestic sphere distances and diminishes men's patriarchal power and control. This
"illness," indeed, bemoans the ways in which urban migration destabilizes patriarchal power, as Chuto's refrain suggests
when he concludes that in New York, "aqu la mujer se daa.''

Dialogically singing/speaking, women boleristas have presented their propia versin (own version) of love relationships
and of gender politics. Sylvia Rexach, the renowned Puerto Rican composer of boleros, responds to separation with a
movement away from the man and from the relationship, toward the freedom of the open space:

Es tarde ya [It is late already

por qu has venido t ahora . . . Why have you come now . . .
Es tarde ya, It is late already,
pues ya han pasado varias horas. too many hours have gone by.

Es tarde para comprender It is too late

qu es lo que yo siento, to understand what I feel,
Ya no se puede jugar You can no longer play
con mis sentimientos. with my emotions.
Es tarde ya pues hace rato It is too late since
que te fuiste. you left long ago.
Fjate bien que fuiste t Remember, you wanted it this way, dear.
quien lo quisiste, vida.
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It is too late
and I will not again
Es tarde y yo no vuelvo bring you treasures.
a brindarte tesoros a ti. It is late
Es tarde y me esperan and they are waiting for me
me voy por ah. I will walk around.] 14

This feminist text expresses the desire of the woman subject to be liberated from a past relationship. It is too late, she says,
for her to accept either his love or his return. This implies that the male lover has come to her asking for her continued love.
She rejects this proposal, answering that it is too late, a "tarde" that not only refers to their failed relationship but also to the
night, the nocturnal environment of boleros. Her willed exit from his life is expressed in the line "yo no vuelvo a brindarte
tesoros a ti" and is even more defiantly uttered in the last line, where she exits his life and his feelings in order to enter the
life of others: "me esperan." ''Me voy por ah" expresses her will to enter that open social space, transgressing the enclosed
limits placed on women in Latin American society. She expressly leaves at night for an undefined destination, to a space
("por ah") of unknown others, despite the social repercussions she implicitly will suffer; that is, she will become a "perdida"
according to male social dictates.15

Even in this purest and most sentimental of musical forms, the fact that love is structured around conflict, vengeance,
accusations, and metaphors for war should not be surprising given the struggles for power in which men and women have
engaged. In "Ahora no," Lolita de la Colina reaffirms that the separation between lovers is not necessarily destiny, as many
boleros would see it, but rather willed by women.16 The young Dominican singer Sonia Silvestre's own "Yo quiero andar"
(I want to walk) voices the need for women to define their own path in life through the motif of walking. For her, life is like
the night, a long voyage of experiences that she wants to embark on, while the implicitly male t, the beloved, prefers the
stagnant relationship based on possession and oppression. The refrain, which states that the man wants to sleep and the
woman wants to walk, additionally suggests sexual intercourse and the female singing subject's reversal of the missionary
position, which signifies female passivity and male activity and domination. The predominance of metaphors of
mobility open spaces, exits, and doors signals women's need to articulate independence and freedom from oppressive
(hetero)sexual relationships.

This emphasis on free movement also contests, in a larger social domain, not only the boundaries of the domestic sphere
imposed on women but also the rigid disciplines and limitations of bodily movements, gestures, and comportment imposed
on a feminine body by society's stan-
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dards. Acceptable feminine movements, in contrast to men's, are systematically more centripetal and rigid, unwittingly
expressing a sense of closure. A loose woman, in contrast, is constructed as such precisely because her "looseness is manifest
not only in [her] morals, but in [her] manner of speech, and quite literally, in the free and easy way she moves." 17 The
expression "loose woman" itself Suggests a violation of those societal and patriarchal norms of movement that women
across diverse cultures have internalized to one degree or another.

It is also apparent that women boleristas have appropriated negative constructs of the feminine and deployed them against
men through their songs. A good example of this is Mara Greever's "Maldicin Gitana" (Gypsy curse) which in many
respects rewrites the woman-as-witch construct that permeates the male bolero, as in "Infortunio" by Don Fabin.18 In
"Malaguea salerosa" (Charming Malaga woman) the male singer repeats: "Que eres linda y hechicera"19 [You are beautiful
and bewitching]. Maria Greever mimics the male-defined discourse of female brujera, and transforms the male subject into
the object of women's purported destructive energy.20

The separation motif is central to most boleros. A common narrative figure is that of the abandoned male singer/interpreter
who drinks and sings alone to forget his romantic misfortunes. Gilberto Monroig's interpretations and performances
likewise were visually constructed around the bohemian male subject who drinks and smokes while singing about the
absence of his beloved. Daniel Santos's album cover for El inigualable (A man unequaled) depicts the bohemian, masculine
space of a bar with such signifiers as a bar table covered with drinks and a lone male figure smoking a cigarette (see
illustration on page 134).

This ubiquitous smoke, like references to shadows, rain, and fog, suggests a metaphysicality that transcends the material
world. These interstitial, blurred, and even ethereal signifiers visually remind us of the passage of time, the past and the
present, which the discourse of love itself attempts to mediate through a carpe diem philosophy. For instance, Tito
Rodrguez's interpretation of Alberto Cortez's song, "Un cigarrillo, la lluvia y t" (A cigarette, the rain, and you)
significantly locates the lover, the t, within those spaces of ambiguity.21 This "estar/no estar" cannot be resolved; the
singing subject revels in the dialectic tension between absence and presence, and it is, according to Zavala, through the
"palabras sobre la ausencia" [words about absence] that we are seduced into presence.22 The absolute promises of "siempre"
and of eternal love, the negative and painful recognitions of that "nunca'' accompanying unrequited love and the loss of
the beloved, are reaffirmed by the smoke enveloping us all in the nocturnal, chiaroscuro spaces of bohemian life.
Page 133

It has been said that the bolero says it all. The overwhelming affective intensity and absoluteness of its lexicon, the cathartic
nature of its songs, the pain and the nostalgic desire underlying these musical utterances have been constructed as a
totalizing text. Yet we must question who speaks through boleros or perhaps most important, whose voices have been
heard or rather "filtered" through the discourse of love. The following discussion embraces an aperture in regendering the
bolero proposed by both Iris Zavala and Luis Rafael Snchez in two provocative readings that subversively rewrite the
bolero as discourse of homosexual desire.

Ren Campos clearly indicts the bolero as an exclusively male cultural territory, a denouncement that is at once true and
not totally so. Indeed, we may speak of the discurso boleril as predominantly masculine in the ways in which it articulates
the desires and experiences of a particular heterosexual male subjectivity. However, a blanket statement such as Campos's
renders invisible the central contributions of women as composers of boleros. Popular pieces such as "Bsame mucho" by
Consuelo Vzquez, "Esta noche la paso contigo" by Laura Gmez Llanos, Monna Bell's "Recuerdos de Ipacara,'' Emma
Elena Valdelamar's "Mucho corazn," and Mara Greever's "Cuando vuelva a tu lado" are just a few samples of the great
popularity and dissemination of women-authored boleros, however consistently they have been articulated by male
singers.

If it is true that men, for more than a hundred years now, have been able to articulate their desire for women through the
language of boleros and through their rhythms, 23 then it is precisely through this discourse of desire and love that the
masculine becomes destabilized. Its boundaries, like the iconic cigarrette smoke of bolero performances, are blurred with
the sentimental, affective language that has been ascribed to women historically. The singer of "Fichas negras" (Black chips)
sings to woman's "perversity,"24 and in "Infortunio," woman is deemed "fatal," leading the lover/singer to an eventual,
symbolic death of his emotions.25 Ren Touzet, in "Conversacin en tiempo de bolero," (Conversation to the bolero beat)
suggests that indeed the male appropriation of the language of sentimentality is based on the prerequisite silencing of
woman. The singing subject explains that the bolero is a dialogue that men have to sing only because women cannot be
spoken to.26 Jos Alfredo Jimnez's boleros rancheros, (in)famous precisely for their misogynist and patriarchal stance, also
reveal the maculinist strategies of men in silencing the woman through seduction and eroticism.27 This overt articulation
of power differentials during sexual interaction reveals the dominance of the male over the female in songs generally
considered liberatory because of their erotic content. It also points out the underlying violence that informs male desire
even within presumed consensual relationships.
Page 134

Album cover for Daniel Santos's El inigualable, released by Discolando Records,

Venezuela, illustrates the typical pose of a man, represented by boleros, sitting
alone and sad at a bar or table and smoking a cigarette. The hand on the left
suggests a woman singer as well as a shooting gesture. Designed by Drago
Artistic Designs. Courtesy of Orlando Bru.

"Amanec en tus brazos" partly illustrates the strategic synecdoche produced by male desire to which the female, the
beloved, is subjected. Beyond the absolute yet ambiguous and open-genderedt, the beloved, or the object of desire, is
systematically alluded to mostly through her parts, yet very infrequently, if at all, as a whole subject who thinks and
feels. 28 Like the canonical Petrarchan love lyrics, male desire focuses on the woman's lips, eyes, and mouth.29 Similarly,
Agustn Lara's "Arrncame la vida" (Tear out my life): "porque al fin tus ojos / me los llevo yo"30[because, at the end, I steal
your eyes] constantly provides the listener with a fragmented vision of the human being. Indeed, the most central metaphor
for love, corazn (heart), suggests the compartmentalization of the woman or the beloved into one of her bodily organs or
parts as a prerequisite for
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its possession. "To say 'heart' has meant to say everything," Ren Campos reminds us. 31Ironically, it is the totalizing
metaphor for possessing the female emotional and affective life. Yet this patriarchal synecdoche is not mere rhetoric but
rather an articulation of a form of "psychic alienation" or "psychological oppression" to which women have been subjected.

Sandra Lee Bartky reviews three categories of oppression by colonialist regimes as identified by Frantz Fanon: stereotyping,
cultural domination, and sexual objectification. A central process in both sexual objectification and racial denigration is
fragmentation, or "the splitting of the whole person into parts of a person which, in stereotyping, may take the form of a
war between a 'true' and 'false' self or, in sexual objectification, the form of an often coerced and degrading identification
of a person with her body."32 Bodily parts become representative of the whole or "reduced to the status of mere instruments"
for the satisfaction of male desires and fantasies. Most poignantly, though, it is the pervasive degree to which women are
represented synecdochally in popular music that gives these patriarchal discursive strategies such immense social power.
While it may be argued that the close-ups of the mouth, the eyes, the hands, and the body in general in the tradition of the
bolero constitute a central element of its sensuality and become the iconic core of its eroticizing force, the overarching
presence of the fragmentation of the female in other musical forms across cultures attests to this transnational patriarchal
power. Moreover, it continues to represent the female as mere body, as physicality, constructs that have been deployed
historically to justify economic exploitation of women and of peoples of color as well.

In this "libidinal economy" articulated by the bolero, male desire seems to have the upper hand. However, the fissure lies
in the act of singing, of uttering a language that has been ascribed socially to the feminine. Sentimentality, emotion, pain,
love, and loss remain circumscribed to the space of the feminine, to the domestic and personal, intimate sphere. In that
sense, perhaps, the bolero has been inherently feminine, although this does not imply that it is a cultural production that
belongs to women. Ren Campos observes that, within the conventions of the bolero, "the man can reveal himself as
sensitive and emotional in a sanctioned form that does not threaten his masculinity."33The fact that men can assume the
feminized language of the affective realm without being cast as feminine themselves attests to a most central patriarchal
function of this musical form. These lyrics obviously provide a safe locus for male catharsis and for the male grito (scream)
repressed in the public sphere; as Tito Rodrguez sings in "Nuestro balance" (Our Balance), the singing male screams
unwillingly, opening up his heart.34
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To confess that his heart has been "opened," implying not only catharsis but also a wound, vulnerability, and pain, socially
goes against the grain of masculinity in Latin American societies. Octavio Paz identified this gendering of the masculine
through the image of the Mexican mask, that is, in the hermetic nature and contained self-disclosure of the affective realm
expected from men.35 As Daniel Santos sings about singing, "porque el que canta, dice mucho y sufre poco, porque el que
canta olvida su dolor"36 [for he who sings says much and suffers little, for he who sings forgets his pain]. Singing boleros,
then, is an alternative discourse to masculinity in Latin America. It has served, in public performances as well as in the
intimacy of living rooms and bedrooms, as a language for self-disclosure and emotional healing that can be uttered only in
the fictive space of the stage or in the intimate space circumscribed by the (hetero)sexual couple. This explains, partly, the
privileged place that the bolero holds in the opinion of some Latino men interviewed.

This romantic sensibility, as Lawrence Grossberg defines it,37 is mostly valued by Latinas/os as a positive discourse about
heterosexual relations in which women are held in high esteem and respected, in contrast to the disrespectful and machista
language of salsa. For instance, a twenty-eight-year-old Puerto Rican male interviewed for this study preferred Gilberto
Santa Rosa's romantic salsa songs to salsa ertica because Santa Rosa's songs "present it [desire and sexuality] in very nice
ways," "eliminating some of the negative erotic themes and putting eroticism in a more positive way." This male listener
makes a valid distinction between salsa romnfica, sentimental songs and love ballads informed by the lyrical discourse of
the bolero, and salsa ertica. The latter emerged during the 1980s as a commercial attempt to revitalize salsa in face of the
growing popularity of the merengue. It is characterized by open, erotic references to sex, orgasms, and lovemaking. One of
its major interpreters and early representatives is Eddie Santiago.

Salsa ertica has had a significant following, and it opened the doors for speaking "the erotic" in a culture that has
traditionally deemed this a taboo. However, salsa ertica has been created mostly by male composers and interpreters,
except for the recent incursions of Cuban-American Albita Rodrguez, who in fact sings to homoerotic desire. In addition,
a twenty-five-year-old Puerto Rican mentioned his predilection for "la msica de los tros y los boleros viejos" [music by
trios and old boleros]. He equates, in fact, the discourse of desire of the bolero with Latin masculinity: "Nosotros los
latinoamericanos somos locos hablando del amor y de estar enamorados y de sufrir por el amor y el amor es el pan de la
vida, y sufrir por una mujer, eso es parte de nosotros" [We, Latin Americans (men) go
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crazy talking about love and about being in love and about suffering for love and "love is the bread of life," and to suffer
for a woman, that is part of us].

This male predilection for the bolero, obvious in the intertextuality with boleros that underlie his description, 38 reveal
boleros as "marked writing," what Hlne Cixous has defined as phallologocentrism "hidden or adorned with the
mystifying charms of fiction" of lyrical melodies and idealizing language in this case.39 Thus, male listeners identify this
affective language as theirs, as a sort of gender capital, simultaneously evincing that this language of the bolero actively
constructs masculinity in Latin America. Moreover, they express a predilection for such a discourse on love on the basis of
what they consider positive images of women and of erotic desire. This preference testifies to the seductive power of the
lyrical tone that the bolero deploys, the "marked writing" that feminists have identified. The observation above also reveals
the naturalization of the male as victim, "both used and abused by the female," as Ren Campos also comments in
vindicating the bolero as an inversion "of the male-female relationship in its traditional, patriarchal context.''40 Two
contradictory values in gender politics dovetail here. While the affective and emotional language of the bolero allows men
to communicate and express themselves in the affective domain, becoming a liberatory value in the context of social
boundaries, the construction of the male as woman's victim dangerously positions women as the object of male aggression,
revenge, or violence, converging, in fact, with the more overtly misogynist discourse of salsa and other forms of popular
music.

The particular case of a Latina from Detroit exemplifies this double-edged potential:

y mi novio se pasaba cantndome esa cancin. . . . El me cantaba esa cancin a m como si l la hubiera escrito para
m. Es segn l, como el refrn "el que tiene una mujer que la atienda, si no que la venda," Que significa el que tiene
una mujer que la atienda sino que busque otra. Y yo le digo, Pero coo! Yo soy la mujer que t ests atendiendo
o soy la otra? Qu t quieres decir con eso? Qu es lo que est pasando? Y l me dice, no pero si yo no quise decir
eso. Y yo le digo que por qu me dice eso con tanto empeo si yo voy a m misma y yo s que puedo seguir pa'lante
muy bien.

[my boyfriend used to sing that song to me. . . . He sang it as though he had written it for me. According to him,
the song is like the proverb "he who has a woman needs to take care of her, if not he should sell her," which means
that if man doesn't take care of his woman, he should find another one. And I say to him, shit! Am I the woman
that you are taking care of or am I the other one? What do you mean by this? What's going on? And he says to me,
no but I did not mean to say that. And I say to him, then why do you sing that to me with so much insistence if I
am my own person and I can very well continue to move on independently?]
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As this Latina reminds us, although boleros represent an alternative, liberatory space for Latin American men, it is also
deployed by these men as a strategy for possessing and controlling the women in their lives and for maintaining their
socially invested power in (hetero)sexual relationships.

The simultaneous and multiple gender forces at work in the bolero as sociomusical practice are not bound to masculinity.
Like any other sociomusical practice, the bolero, as cultural text, is also open to regenderings and productions of meaning
that move well beyond the heterosexist boundaries implicit in their authorship and lyrics. In her provocative and central
piece on the bolero, "De hroes y heronas en lo imaginario social: El discurso amoroso del bolero" (About heroes and
heroines in the social imaginary: The discourse of love in the bolero) Iris Zavala stresses throughout her analysis the
structural discursive apertures that characterize the bolero's central signifiers, the yo and the t. Depending on the
receptor's own sexual identity and that of the singer or interpreter, the poetic I or "semiotic subject" constantly shifts sexual
identity and is internally "plural" and exchangeable in its gender value. The ambiguity and open-ended gender of the yo and
the t (particularly in Spanish, where the system of inflections makes it easy to change the gender of adjectives, verbs, and
subjects) allows for a regendering or a rearticulation of the utterance.

For Zavala the communicative triangle emisor/mensaje/receptor (speaker/message/receptor) is continuously destabilized as

to gender inflections. This discursive analysis has vast implications, for it would render invalid or at least incomplete an
analysis of women-authored boleros in contrast to male-authored ones. Zavala, however, is prompt to indicate that whereas
male-authored boleros are clearly inflected as masculine given the references to women as "perdidas," "hechiceras," and so
on, she finds in women-authored boleros a larger degree of gender "aperture" (ambiguity) than in men's texts. Thus, I have
refrained from engaging in any analysis of male versus female boleros except for positioning them in dialogue and
contestation with/against each other as I did above. What is significant is the centrality of the singer's sexual identity and
of the act of singing through which the text is gendered with his/her voice and body. The presence of the audience, the
listener or receptor, in this semiotic triangle further complicates fixing gender values on to these texts. How does a
heterosexual female listen to a bolero authored by Mara Greever but inflected in the masculine (as they mostly are) and
sung by Tito Rodrguez? What about Agustn Lara's sentimental tirades about his perdidas, who become perdidos in the voice
of Toa La Negra, who interpreted most if not all of his compositions? What meanings are produced among lesbian and
gay interpretive communities that continue to consume boleros as texts that ar-
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ticulate desire between homoerotic lovers? Gender, then, is always already destabilized in this particular musical sensibility
given the open-gendered nature of the yo and the t, a linguistic recourse that has characterized love poetry throughout the
Hispanic tradition.

If Zavala's article hints at the structural possibilities for homosexual rewritings of boleros, Luis Rafael Snchez places the
figure of Daniel Santos the Don Juan of Latin America, the icon of masculinity and Latin machismo within a sexual
discourse of ambiguity that rewrites boleros (as well as guarachas) as articulations of homosexual desire. La importancia de
llamarse Daniel Santos (The importance of being called Daniel Santos) (1988) is a consciously crafted, ambiguous, and
ambivalent text that explores sexuality, power, class, masculinity, and machismo through the eponymous figure of Daniel
Santos and through the intertextual presence of bolero and guaracha lyrics, both of which constitute a most heteroglossic
and polyphonic text in Puerto Rican literary tradition. The music destabilizes the ideal positioning of the bourgeois, elite
reader, proposing instead a more democratic act of reading popular cultural texts in their juxtaposition with references and
allusions to high culture Shakespeare, Homer, Daro, Neruda.

A truly postmodern instance of cultural and discursive hybridity, La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos deploys bolero
lyrics as cultural utterances that allow exploration of gender identity and sexual politics in the Caribbean, in Mexico, and
throughout Latin America. There is a constant tension between the commonality of boleros and guarachas and their
singular value as a class-based cultural production that emerged among the urban proletariat. Since the 1930s, bolero lyrics
in particular have appealed both to the romantic sentimentality of "the bourgeois macho of Garden Hills," the "Crema," as
"to the male from Barrio Obrero and the lumpen, the "Mierda." In the words of Luis Rafael Snchez, "Daniel Santos postula
una genitalia interracial, transnacional" [Daniel Santos proposes an interracial, transnational genitalia]. Bolero and
guaracha lyrics function as a link to the macho sensibility, the vivir en varn (living as a male) that informs, like a unifying
thread, the textual totality of the book. The ''impossible dialogue" among social classes in Latin America is achieved within
the locus of bolero lyrics, for these have a common attitude toward women. Resentment and dependency, idealization and
accusations, love and hate are but some of the contradictory and ambivalent attitudes that unify Latin American men from
diverse and opposing social origins in a discourse of genderbased solidarity. In other words, the bolero and Daniel Santos
discursively and thematically map a continental geography of male desire throughout Latin America.
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La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos also finds a major subtext in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, a dramatic
work that similarly explores the ambivalence of identity, the possibilities of double identities, and the mask that destabilizes
the concept of a unitary, coherent identity. This Wildean subtext invites a rereading of the Latin American male as an
embodied text defined by an inner tension, the estar/no estar no longer framed between man and woman but between two
gender identities, the masculine and the feminine, a blurring of gender that we have already located in the bolero's internal
possibilities for discursive regendering.

While La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos proposes itself as a fictional biography of the (in)famous Puerto Rican singer
Daniel Santos, who died on November 28, 1992, the text itself is not only fictional dialogue and stories nor invented
ethnography. It also includes one of the most radical critiques of machismo penned by a Latin American writer. Luis Rafael
Snchez indicts "el macho, machera y machismo" and subversively rereads the figure of Daniel Santos and his repertoire
as a locus of decentered sexual identity. Daniel Santos is ubiquituous and eternal, like the boleros that he sings, and these
characteristics are indeed informed and mediated through the subtextual figure of Don Juan, who, in his attempt to seduce
numerous women, escapes unicity and incarnates multiplicity. 41 Thus, Daniel Santos is not only a singer but an
embodiment of the macho's polyphonic condition per se, a decentralized ego that traversed Latin America, multiplying his
seed, his image, and his name literally disseminating himself throughout the continent.

The eponymous patriarch of Latin American sentiment and desire, pleasure and love, Daniel Santos also becomes the object
of desire and the enunciative locus of a male homosexual gaze/voice. As icon of desire and of pleasure realized, Daniel
Santos serves as a locus of a free erotic play that Luis Rafael Snchez surreptitiously associates with homosexual desire.
The dialogue among Cuban "locas" (queens), which concludes with references to "Lgrimas negras" ("Black tears"), allows
us to see Daniel Santos and his musical pleasures from the perspective of an ideal gay audience. The author's monologue
on gayness, or locura, in New York City and the erotic description of a male body in "Los mil y un tic del macho" ("The
thousand and one ties of a man''), a discourse that evokes pleasure in the hetero(homo)sexual gaze of the reader, whether
man, woman, or both, suggest this Wildean hidden identity at play.

"Los mil y un tic del macho" is an ambiguous description, a double discourse on the male body. It is a critique of the macho
physique, of hard bodies, of the male body as performance and of machismo as performative act. The ambiguity of this
performance is linguistically constructed in the
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anaphoric patterns of the phrase parecer varn (to look like a male), an utterance that signifies both machismo as
performance and an articulation of homosexuality as a histrionic act. The description also revels in the pleasure of the
narrator's gaze as he meticulously describes the body parts of thisvarn, gazing down the male body like a gradual,
eroticizing striptease that concludes with a gastronomical discourse on the gevo (testicles). The final passages of this
second section, "Vivir en varn," which demythifies machismo, are framed by the song "Somos diferentes" (We are
different), the bolero that originally sang to heterosexual relations and that Orquesta de la Luz has appropriated to sing to
cultural difference. Here, Luis Rafael Snchez rewrites these lyrics within the context of difference in sexual orientation.
Lines such as "tenemos que olvidarnos de este amor / porque un amor as no puede ser" [we have to forget about this love
/ became a love such as this cannot be] are no longer bound to heterosexual relations but now suggest, after the homoerotic
discourse that precedes it, the articulation of homosexual desire as restricted by dominant morals and values.

The final section of this hybrid book concludes with a scene reminiscent of the Garden of Delights yet localized in the
outskirts of San Juan, Puerto Rico, in a mountainous area called El Verde, to which a number of young people escape,
playing "hookey" from their schoolday routine. The voyeur/narrator revels in witnessing, without being seen, a moment
of lovemaking between a girl and her young male lover, a scene framed by popular music, including the pop version of
Beethoven's Fifth and some boleros sung by Santos. The glorifying reaffirmation of free sensuality, pleasure, and
eroticism coded in the mountains where cimarrones (maroons) found liberty on the margins of the city becomes a sort of
erotic utopia outside the boundaries of social etiquette, sexual mores, and rules. "Todo lo llenas t, sexualidad, todo lo
llenas" 42 [Sexuality, you fulfill everything, you fulfill everything] closes this text of pleasure, indeed of multiple pleasures,
desires, and decentralized eroticism that proposes a re-writing of Daniel Santos as the ultimate icon of machismo, into a
figure who embodies and incarnates (homo)sexual desire (or at least who evokes it). The gay saber (gay knowledge) or gaya
sciencia (gay science, poetry) that Iris Zavala mentions as a set of historical knowledges involved in the emergence of the
bolero43 has been fictionalized in Luis Rafael Snchez's text of sensual and (homo)erotic liberation. In the words of Puerto
Rican poet Jorge A. Morales, "cada cual tiene su bolero" [to each his or her bolero].44
Page 142

Chapter Eight
Patriarchal Synecdoches:
Of Women's Butts and Feminist Rebuttals

La Sonora Matancera, Cuba's most famous septeto (septet) whose singers included Daniel Santos, Celio Gonzlez and Celia
Cruz, popularized a hit called "Las muchachas" (The girls) during the 1940s and 1950s. 1 Analogous to the Beach Boys' hit
"California Girls," "Las muchachas" maps women's bodies as national or continental geography. Whereas in ''California
Girls" the Beach Boys celebrate the free-spirited, outdoor character of West Coast Anglo women, the Sonora Matancera
expresses a male predilection, not without its own alternative nationalist overtones, for the Cuban woman from Havana,
Matanzas, or Santiago.

The enumerative structure of these lyrics presents an ideal (national) body that is a composite of the various best "parts" of
the female types from various Latin American countries. Illustrating the pervasiveness of the synecdoche in musical
textualizations of the female, the ideal woman in "Las muchachas" represents the continental body of Latin America,
embraced by the polyphonic subjectivity of a Don Juan or a Daniel Santos "I love them all." Indeed, after naming a
preference for Cuban women "No, no, pero cuando veo a una habanera toda la sangre se me alborota. Y si yo veo a una
matancera entonces s que boto la pelota" [No, no, but when I see a woman from Havana, I get agitated. And if I see a
woman from Matanzas, then I really get excited] the male singing subjects conclude that they want to "dance" with them
all. This pluralizing of Woman (Woman as multiplicity) not only maps the geography of a Latin male gaze and desire, but
most centrally, it delineates a Don Juan subjectivity whose desire and libidinal economy are never static nor totally satisfied.

"Las muchachas" illustrates the predominance of the male gaze and masculine desire in Afro-Caribbean music and in salsa,
one that fetishizes the woman's caderas (hips) as a signifying locus of (often political) plea-
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sure. The mulatta, in particular, has been constructed as an antinomy to the Beach Boys' ideal of a blonde, thin California
girl. Certainly, as Puerto Rican writer Edgardo Rodrguez Juli exemplifies in his beach chronicle titled "El veranazo en que
mangaron a Junior" (The great summer when Junior was arrested), the aesthetics of the ideal body in Latin America is
culturally and racially marked. 2 In a narrative voice that resonates with salsa's phallocentric language, Juli chronicles a
beach festival in Punta Salinas, Puerto Rico, and establishes el gufeo (humorous signifying) as a communal ritual based on
a culture of male pleasure, gaze, and desire. Both observer and participant, the narrating subject, a journalist, positions
himself as a voyeur in the utopian and carnavalesque space of a salsa festival at the beach. The underlying mirada
definidora (defining gaze) structures and constructs this text as a sexual performative act, contiguously relating musical and
erotic performance. In one passage the author describes the musical performance by Junior Moonshadow as a series of
gestures of phallic penetration, ejaculation, and aggression that equate sex and music as performance (not unlike Eddie
Santiago's provocative movements of penetration staged throughout his singing appearances). The text itself traces the
male desire through gaze into an erection and an orgasmic discourse that concludes in an almost postorgasmic descent. As
the narrator's defining gaze identifies "tres ricuras de hembras con buenos muslos y mejores nalgas" [three tasty females
with good thighs and even better butts],3 the sounds and discourse of Cuban rumbas serve as intertext to the male
experience.

Edgardo Rodrguez Juli's fixation with the female "butt," inscribed throughout his work in narratives like "Una noche con
Iris Chacn,"4 is reaffirmed in the lyrics of salsa and Afro-Caribbean musical traditions, whose songs and cuts continue to
position the Caribbean mulatta as the embodiment of rhythm, movement, and erotic pleasure. Orquesta Aragn's ''Tan
Sabrosona," authored by Rafael Lay and Richard Erges, is structured around a male voice/gaze that addresses the mulatta
woman: "mi negra no te molestes si te dicen sabrosona / por ese andar que t tienes / tan tremendo y retozn" [my black
woman, don't get upset if they call you tasty / because of the way you walk / so tremendous and playful].5 Clearly, this
visual erotic fixation on the hip and pelvic movements of the mulatta woman is phallocentric. Yet the historical and political
implications of this discursive, patriarchal gaze have not been examined systematically. When Cuban male singers cry out,
"mira prieta sabrosona / conmigo vas a acabar" [look, tasty dark-skinned woman / you are destroying me], they do so not
only because of a male vagina dentata anxiety nor because their hypererotization of the dark female body poses a threat to
their own
Page 144

The album cover for Latinissimo: The New Xavier Cugat Orchestra, released
in 1994 by the Madacy Music Groups, Quebec, Canada, shows three women's
butts painted with tropicalized motifs, illustrating the ongoing representation
of Afro-Caribbean and Latin American music as women and the prevalence
of patriarchal synecdoches in the discourse about music.

sexual power. Such male utterances suggest that the mulatta not only threatens masculine psychosexuality but also disrupts
the ordered masculine political and national body. As Vera Kutzinski intimates in her analysis of the mulatta figure in
Cuban poetry,

For what the mulatta, unlike the ideology of mestizaje, represents is not a stable synthesis but a precarious and
tenuous multiplicity, "a concentration of differences," of "insoluble differential equations." The mulatta indexes
areas of structural instability and ideological volatility in Cuban society, areas that have to be hidden from view to
maintain the political fiction of cultural cohesion and synthesis. The key signifier of such instability and volatility
is the nonwhite woman's body conceived as the site of troubling sexual and racial differences. As much as this site
has
Page 145

One of the opening photos in Umberto Valverde and Rafael Quintero's book about women salseras in
Cali, Colombia, Abran paso: Historia de las orquestas femeninas de Cali (Centro editorial Universidad
del Valle, 1995) provide an example of patriarchal synecdoches in men's discourse about women and
music. Photo by Fernell Franco. Courtesy of Umberto Valverde.

all the attractions of a mythic place of intellectual and psychological refuge and "epistemological consolation" in a
society like Cuba, it is simultaneously feared as the locus of potential change, disruption, and complication. 6

As Kutzimski also observes, the literati of Cuban white male poets have represented the mulatta as "pure rhythm," thus
commodifying blackness and erasing issues of race and racist social practices from their political and social implications.
What Kutzimski is suggesting, then, is that by fixating on the mulatta body and particularly on her hips as a locus of desire
and pleasure for the Cuban male subject, poets and musicians systematically detract attention from racist practices in Cuban
society. However, what is ironic in this synecdochal erasure is that it is precisely the black woman's hips, her pelvis, and
her genitalia, her vagina, that have been subjected historically to racism through rape and sexual violence. This
displacement, then, is one of signifieds: by trivializing her hips only as a rhythmical and musical pleasurable entity, then
Caribbean patriarchy can erase from the body of the mulatta any traces of violence and racist practices for which it has been
responsible throughout history.

It is also true that during colonial times black music and rhythms were considered, by the colonialist regime, a sign of racial
inferiority. Indeed, Afro-Caribbean music was seen as an infantilizing practice, a sign of puerility, according to Fernando
Ortiz.7 In this light, then, depictions of mulatta women dancing, engaging in rhythmical movements, continue to inscribe
a gender- and race-based inferiority, an infantilization of women and an emptying out of their rational power. Also evident
in the title "Las muchachas," it has a particular impact on women of color in the Caribbean, a construct that continues to be
embedded in our contemporary social relations.
Page 146

As a painful reminder of the historical continuity of these patriarchal constructs, in one of my short escapes to bookstores
in Ann Arbor I ran into one of the many new anthologies on the cultures of Latinos and Latinas. Entitled Currents from the
Dancing River and edited by Ray Gonzlez, well known for his previous editorial ventures, this anthology opens with a
piece by Enrique Fernndez, a cultural essay rifled "Salsa 2," powerfully located as the opening pages to the rest of the
anthology. 8 Like Antonio Bentez Rojo's The Repeating Island, Fernndez's essay illustrates the contemporary utility of
discursive patriarchal tendencies.9 Spanishborn Cuban-American writer and journalist Fernndez, who has become the
Latino spokesperson for the New York Times, proposes food and sexual pleasure as the essential icons and motifs that
distinguish Latinos from non-Latinos. He invites the (Anglo) reader to "hear my music, eat my food, you are mine, you are
me."10 This highly charged utterance reduces the complex history of U.S. Latinas/os and of Latin America to the sensorial
realm of sound and taste, thus displacing the cultural agency and historical variability of our social complex. By
emphasizing sounds and tastes, cultural pleasures in which Latinas/os undoubtedly engage as much as any other cultural
sector does as part of its traditions, the author depoliticizes and neutralizes the oppositional and heterogeneous community
values that both music and food represent for us.

The intercultural desire that Fernndez plays with in this cultural "come on" eat my food, you are mine implies a masculine
voice whose desires are to "possess" the Other (the female Anglo, of course) through the seductive power of Latin popular
music, of salsa picante, and of course, of his own words. The depoliticizing, deracializing, and dehistoricizing effects of this
cultural incursion are evident in his reading of the famous Dominican merengue "El negrito del batey." He accents the male
voice that expresses the pleasure of dancing with a tasty, black woman ''me gusta bailar medio apretao / con una negra
bien sabrosa" [I like to dance a bit tightly with a very tasty black woman] as an illustration of the intense pleasure of music
and food central to Latina/o culture as Fernndez constructs it here. Significant, however, is the author's erasure of, and
neglect to engage in, the politics of slavery to which the song alludes from the beginning: the black male voice complains
about hard physical labor and humorously suggests that work was invented by God for the ox and the animals, not for
human beings, a contestatory utterance against the exploitations of slavery and the dehumanizing and animal-like practices
to which slaves were subjected. In this context, dancing as a signifying cultural practice reveals the spaces of resistance and
pleasure that the slaves carved for themselves as rituals for survival.
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The affirmation of dancing, then, needs to be framed within the larger history of slavery in the Caribbean rather than as a
mystified, essentialized expression of a Latina/o erotics. Echoing Toms Blanco, Enrique Fernndez goes on to explain the
use of the word negrita among Caribbean Latinos as a term of endearment, in contrast to the "ugly violence" of the
word nigger in the United States, even when the latter is uttered by AfricanAmericans themselves. And "what about the
'negra bien sabrosa,'" Fernndez continues, "the yummy Negress the singer wants to dance the sideways step of the
merengue, holding her good and tight?" 11 In response, the male writing subject continues to perpetuate the phallocentric
language about Latinas that has historically objectified black and mulatta women as objects to be cannibalized, ingested,
totally possessed, and intellectually invalidated. An ironic twist is that the discourse of ''gastronomic sexuality" that
Fernndez reproduces contains a measure of sadism as a language of devouring, a violence that he denies in Latin American
racial relations. Fernndez's paraphrase of what he incorrectly considers essentially Latina/o the erotic "comerte"
culminates in a Spanish interjection, "Ay, qu rico!" which suggests that sexual climax is intimately linked to its articulation
in Spanish.

Spanish, then, is rendered as a language "unabashed in lovemaking" and also truly immersed in violence and conquest in
Latin America, not in the United States. Fernndez proposes, in a sort of erotic cultural utopia, that it be considered "our
finest Hispanic heritage."12 In his view the intensity of love and sensorial pleasure that marks all Latino experience (notice
that I did not inflect Latino as female) is the answer to that Anglo Other's "sensory vacuum," which he also constructs in an
essentializing way. Fernndez, then, strategically essentializes Latino culture as a utopian, eroticized alternative to Anglo
America's puritanism-based repression of the sensual and the disciplining of the bodies. Many of his assumptions remain
questionable: the discursive repetitions of a masculinist and phallocentric subject that favors male gaze and desire while
eliding the experience of black, mulatta, and Latina women the discursive tradition of an eroticized Latin America that
"feeds emotionally" her Male Other, the United States, and the first world countries in exchange for economic dependency,
a macrocosm of the husband-wife domestic relationship.13

This "gastronomic sexuality" contaminates the verbal discourse of writers like Enrique Fernndez and Edgardo Rodrguez
Juli and continues to be deployed in Latin popular music, particularly in that icon of the negra sabrosa from which a
constellation of male desires emanate within Latin American cultural history. The discursive referent of woman
as sabrosa (tasty) is coupled with the essentializing references to her rhythmic skills.
Page 148

In the case of Orquesta Aragn's song mentioned above, the textual power of the adjective is multiplied by the suffix ona,
as in sabrosona, thus hyperbolizing the value of woman as an object to be consumed, possessed, and cannibalized.

This particular construct is systematically deployed in the Dominican merengue and continues to be activated in the
Dominican bachata, Latino rap, as well as in salsa music. 14 In the merengue the strategy of the double entendre, the
linguistic pun, continues to veil this gender-based discursive violence as humor and play to avoid censorship. In an early
article on the merengue, Catherine Guzmn mentions "Caa brava," composed by Too Abreu in 1918, as a cut that "broke
all records of popularity." "Caa brava" illustrates the strategy of masking sexual desire through metaphors of food, taste,
and appetite: Caa dulce / caa brava / dame un gajo / de tu caa" [Sweet cane / brave cane / give me a piece / of your
cane], a metonymic language in which the sugar cane stands for the woman's body.15 Despite the phallic shape of the sugar
cane, the caa contains a multiplicity of social and historical allusions the plantation system, the exploitation of women
slaves, the sweetness of the cane, and the hard physical labor entailed in its harvesting that serve to create a text open to
various interpretations and associations.

In one of the most popular merengues in history, "El sancocho prieto" (The dark stew), the hungry male singing subject
addresses an implied female t, asking her to serve him some savory dark stew. The "sancocho prieto" is openly equated
with the color of the woman's skin, thus suggesting not only that a mulatta or black woman is the object of his desire but
in the economy of gender, that it is the dark-skinned woman who serves the male his food as she also becomes the food to
be served: "El sancocho prieto / color de tu carne / t tendrs que darme / porque estoy hambriento" [The dark stew / the
color of your skin / you will have to give me / because I am hungry]. Moreover, these lyrics reaffirm the expected role of
women as the ``emotional feeders" of the rest of the family, a role that, as Sandra Lee Bartky has pointed out, continues to
indicate women's oppression within the domestic role despite advances in the workplace.

Gerardo's rap hit "Rico Suave" (Tasty soft) consistently plays with the metonymic relations between woman and food this
time "sushi." El General's hits "Te ves buena" and "Las mujeres de San Diego" and even Juan Luis Guerra's "Woman del
callao'' textualize this male oral desire for consuming woman.16 However, in the context of the Dominican Republic,
Deborah Pacini argues that the popularity of bachatas "de doble sentido" [double entendres] during the 1970s and 1980s
also needs to be explained in socioeconomic terms. While there were ``economic rewards for
Page 149

producing this type of song," these bachatas were heavily criticized "as immoral and indecent" by the dominant sector.
Thus, the bourgeoisie censored working-class texts while sanctioning other forms of sexually explicit materials. 17

This systematic continuity has contributed to naturalizing male desire for race- and gender-based synecdoches and to the
tacit acceptance of representations of women as sale and commodity. When Edgardo Rodrguez Juli states that Puerto
Rican men have been "programado[s] atvicamente para la apreciacin, distincin y metafsica del trasero"18 [programmed,
like atavars, toward the appreciation and distinction and metaphysics of the butt], he is indeed justifying this process of
naturalizing a fixation that is ultimately a convergence of racism and misogyny. He is explaining it as an atavism, the traces
of an ancestral characteristic that fixes sexist behavior and practices throughout history and that precludes and denies any
value to women's historical cultural agency or to the impact of feminism in Latin America. In this regard, Edgardo
Rodrguez Juli's proposal of the beach festival as a utopian, carnavalesque space in which erotic freedom is coupled with
musical performance and with dancing, fails to create a more democratically gendered text. To the contrary, it offers a
highly phallocentric discourse that naturalizes the power of the male subject to construct the female according to his own
needs and desires. To reduce the complexity of women as human beings and social entities to the image of the cadera, of
the butt, is to perpetuate, textually speaking, the history of economic and sexual exploitation of women of color in the
Caribbean, as well as their metonymic subordination to a mere corporeal part.

African-American women rappers, like Queen Latifah and Salt'n Pepa in "Shake Your Thang" "assert their right to express
sexual desire and to control their own bodies" in the production of their feminist videos.19 By reappropriating female bodies
as signifiers of resistance to oppression (I say reappropriating because women are appropriating the male appropriation of
their own bodies), they are able to imbue different, feminist meanings to the female body, meanings produced by women
themselves that present women in control of their own bodies. In this light, Fransheska's merenrap entitled "Menalo"
(Shake it or move it) is also addressed as a woman's contestatory response to objectifications of the female body.20 She
deploys her own body's erotic movements and rhythmic modulations, as she says, to consciously fuel the eroticizing
discourse about Fransheska that colors reviews about her music and her performances. In other words,by inverting the
agency of said eroticization, Fransheska assumes more control of her body as a signifier as well as displacing the control of
the journalists to represent her as a locus of pleasure and desire.
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Given the demonizing process by which Latin American women were chastised for dancing during colonial times "Nias
que vais bailando / Al infierno vais saltando" [Girls who dance / jump directly to hell] 21 that is, for being the objects of a
patriarchal repression of the sensual, Fransheska's "re-buttals" of these social constructs of the feminine are as historically
significant as they are contemporaneously relevant. When Fransheska associates her eroticized movements as a prelude to
sexual intercourse, a decision made by the woman herself, she also suggests the power of the female eroticized body over
the male. She moves, she says, so that she can overpower the male gaze that continually objectifies her as mere corporality.
The power of the female body over masculine will is indeed the origin of that consistent ambivalence that men express
about women in the bolero, a fear that as "seductresses" women, with the ''charms" of their bodies, will eventually destroy
the masculine ego, displacing the power of the phallus as central signifier.

Much like Fransheska's reappropriations, Latina rapper Lisa M's "Flavor of the Latin" also culls cultural constructs of
Latinas/os as erotic, sensorial beings in order to reaffirm her presence as a Latina rapper.22 This interlingual song serves as
her introduction to audiences both in Puerto Rico and on the mainland. She identifies herself as 100% Latina, evoking the
trope of women as food as well. Verging on self-advertising, however, this cut is constituted by the constant refrain that
echoes throughout: "Flavor of the Latin," always sung in English by a male voice in the background and asserted by a
subsequent "S." The song concludes with a political affirmation of Lisa M's ethnicity: "I'm Puerto Rican and proud." Again,
this particular song illustrates the blurred ideological boundaries of this type of discursive strategy: by appropriating,
deploying, and repeating these cultural formulas the Latina con sabor the text takes on multiple possibilities for signifying.
Lisa M locates herself and her music as centrally Latina, thus inviting a particular audience. Simultaneously, however, the
text leaves open fissures through which intercultural assumptions about gender may be reaffirmed, utterances that in fact
may have been consciously deployed as marketing strategies.

This gesture of reappropriation, much like Las Chicas del Can's minimal dress on stage, introduces, nonetheless, an
ideological and gender-based ambiguity as to the possibilities of the readings and reactions it evokes. As Sylvia Walby
summarizes in Theorizing Patriarchy, there has been substantial disagreement as to whether it's a "sign of resistance for
women to display and exert their sexuality or incorporation into a patriarchal system or whether it's both
simultaneously."23 This point brings home, to Latin American culture, even deeper implications, given the highly contested
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aesthetics of the feminine among Latina and Latin American women who choose to use bright colors, high-heel shoes, and
tight dresses. The self-eroticizing impulse assumes for Latinas a cross-cultural meaning, for it conscientiously diverges from
the Anglo feminist paradigm of effacing female sexuality from their own bodies by resisting the dictates of the fashion
industry and of society, by choosing not to wear makeup or dresses and indeed by creating an androgynous style that
would blur the boundaries between the feminine and the masculine as social constructions and impositions on individuals.

Latinas who have chosen to self-eroticize their bodies through the prominence of makeup should be interpreted in the
context of cultural resistance and affirmation as well as in the larger framework of gender relations in Latina/o societies.
For many Latinas, the poetics and politics of self-erotics is a material, physical, and clearly visual way of opposing the
sexual repression of the female, which is heavily inflected by a Catholic patriarchy. To "look" like a puta, to perform in this
sense, should not be read, as many Anglo feminists have done, as an assimilation of the social dictates of what it takes to
be feminine but rather as a repossession of one's own body away from the higher social powers, such as parents, church,
and society. Anglo feminists like Sandra Lee Bartky, for instance, argue against the idea that "the preservation of a woman's
femininity is quite compatible with her struggle for liberation," finding such feminism "incoherent." In a convincing
discussion on the ways that modern patriarchy has created "subjected and practiced" bodies out of women's made-up, thin,
beautiful, and sexy bodies that are unattainable except through denying one's own needs what she also calls "the female
body as spectacle'' 24 she argues that these patriarchal strategies cut across race and class differences and that the
overarching influence of the media and advertising affects women from all groups and racial sectors.

However, Bartky does not consider that patriarchal structures and cultural histories are not identical everywhere and what
for Anglo America is the ideal beauty the thin, tall bodies for the Latin gaze, both male and female, signals deficiency, not
beauty. Indeed, wider hips and fuller bodies have been generally established as ideal aesthetic standards for women,
although the influence of U.S. media also has had its impact throughout Latin America and within U.S. Latina/o
communities. As in Judith Ortiz Cofer's poem "So Much for Maana," the voice of a Puerto Rican mother admonishes her
daughter, who has been living too long in the United States, to gain some weight because "men here like their women with
some weight."25 The rap song tided "La gordita" (Dear little fat one) by Santi y sus Duendes, also illustrates the different
cultural values circulating among
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Latin American societies regarding the female body, although once again the dominant male perspective continues to focus
on the female body as source of pleasure. At the beginning the singer wants to praise "gorditas," who have been excluded
from praise and attention in media and popular culture. But then the text becomes another instance of the objectification of
women, as the singer alludes to the pleasure he derives from touching his "gordita's" rolls and folds. 26

In some ways, then, the "tyranny of slenderness" is not necessarily deployable among Latinas, although the use of makeup,
as we have seen, definitely marks femininity in our culture. What may be sexual subordination in Anglo America's
obsession with the female body, in Latin America takes on different forms of repression and "disciplining"; thus, the self-
eroticizing of many Latinas and Latin American women may not indicate exclusively an internalization of patriarchal codes
and expectations nor a false consciousness among Latinas but strategies of reappropriations that symbolically allow women
to be in control of their own bodies.

However, it is important also to acknowledge the fissures of such performances which, like other forms of cultural texts,
may be read in multiple ways. While reappropriating one's sexuality becomes a significant political practice at the
individual level, within the larger, public space of the stage it may assume double-edged ideological repercussions. It could
signal even stronger displacements of phallocentric power and of the power of the male to control the female body, given
the physical distance, the hierarchies of the higher stage over the audience, and the already contested yet at times still
functional dichotomy of the performer (producer) versus the audience (receptor). Simultaneously, it may systematize,
formalize, make public, and unwittingly naturalize the objectification of the female body in the eyes of a misogynist
audience.

Toa La Negra's interpretation of "La Negrita Concepcin" is an interesting performance in this regard.27 While the song
may have been written by a man Cuates Castilla Toa's own vocal rendering of the mulatta or the negra suggests a self-
ironic appropriation of her own body as a mulatta in Mexico. That Toa sings "La Negrita Concepcin," in contrast to a
male rendering of that same text, imbues the lyrics with a potential feminist revisioning. La Negrita Concepcin is described
as a famous rumbera who moves in extraordinary ways: "Hay que ver cmo se mueve . . . Ay mam qu tembladera . . .
Cmo mueve la cintura" [You have to see how she moves . . . Oh, woman, what shaking . . . How she moves her waistline].
The centrality of her body as the locus for centrifugal movements and the fixation of the male gaze on that movement
reaffirm Kutzinski's analysis of the instability and volatility that the mulatta body brings to harmonious
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paradigms of nation. Yet Toa's interpretation also emphasizes the refrain "Esta negra es una fiera / que no tiene domador"
[This black woman is a beast / without a tamer]. If read literally, this is clearly problematic as a primitivist construct of
black women as beasts, a construct historicized in and through the institution of slavery. Yet from a feminist perspective
and as sung by Toa La Negra, this refrain simultaneously alludes to the independence of the black woman, to her
oppositionality and resistance as a "fiera" without a "domador," a tamer, or one who controls her.

Within the strong, brassy sounds of the mambo rhythms that frame the lyrics, the name Concepcin is meaningful, directing
us to the female black body as the origin of mestizaje and mulatismo in the Caribbean and ironically to the figure of the
Virgin. It becomes a reaffirmation of the power of the mulatta to control her own life and her own body, to be the sole agent
of her rhythmical movements, and to reject any possibilities of being owned by the masculine other, as the references in the
song to the marinero and the cocinero clearly reveal. In the voice of Toa La Negra, whose very name marks the racial
centrality of her figure in Mexico, "La Negrita Concepcin" possibly becomes, in the eyes and ears of women and blacks,
both a feminist contestation to the male gaze and a racial vindication of blackness as historicized gestures of resistance,
oppositionality, and liberation.
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Chapter Nine
Singing the Gender Wars

Yo la mato o pide perdn [Either I kill her or she apologizes].

Daniel Santos, "Yo la mato"

The increased mobility and integration of Latin American and Puerto Rican women into the work force and their growing
access to the public spheres has had a destabilizing impact on the power of patriarchy in Latin America. New gender values
and subjectivities among women have indeed resulted from their massive incorporation into the labor force. It is these new
attitudes that conflict and dash with the traditional values that continue to instill "an ideology of inequality." 1 In fact,
contemporary sociological studies in Puerto Rico have shown that the longer a woman works outside the home, the more
likely that her attitudes will change.2 Concomitantly, as women's gender expectations change and become more profound
and long-lasting, the attitudes and practices of traditional males and of patriarchal society become more resentful and
reactionary

Such resentment can be traced through the historical development of Latin music. The bolero, for instance, gained much
popularity during the 1930s, precisely at the moment when industrialization and urbanization in Latin America drew large
numbers of women to work outside the home. In response to such changes, the discurso boleril, with its euphemistic and
elegantly veiled expressions of courtly love and ill hearts, accused women of men's problems: "Usted es la culpable."3 Yet
this type of accusation simultaneously revealed male dependency on women's love and presence, that ubiquituous "no
puedo vivir sin ti" [I can't live without you] that permeates this musicolyrical tradition. Thus, through a centripetal language
of refinement, harmony, idealization, and nostalgia, the bolero continues to articulate those conflicts between men and
women that have followed social and economic changes since the turn of the century.
Page 155

Following the tradition of the guaracha in Afro-Caribbean music, with its popular diction, masculine and phallocentric
perspectives, and a burlesque, parodic tone articulated from marginalized positions, salsa music emerged in New York
City's Latin barrios during the 1960s and 1970S. It then shifted toward a more aggressive, warlike articulation of
(hetero)sexual relations in Latin(o) American societies than the bolero had sung about. As a syncretic sociomusical practice,
salsa exhibits a heterogeneous array of conceptions of the feminine. While centrally integrating the amorous discourse of
the bolero and its obsession with the absent or lost woman, salsa presents more heterogeneous subject positions regarding
women. For instance, it draws from the merengue's puns about woman as object to be consumed and cannibalized, as well
as its idealized images of mothers, young women, and daughters and its passionate confessions of love. Also prominent in
salsa's lyrics is the dualistic construct of the promiscuous, sexually superendowed black woman or mulatta, on the one
hand, and the pure, sexually unattainable virgin/mother figure, on the other.

These configurations are not exclusive to salsa, for they abound in the literature of Hispanic countries as well as in the
folklore and literature of other Western cultures. 4 As Sander Gilman has pointed out, the building of stereotypes
"perpetuate[s] a needed sense of difference between the 'Self' and the 'object,' which becomes the 'Other.' Because there is
no real line between the Self and the Other, an imaginary line must be drawn; and so that the illusion of an absolute
difference between self and Other is never troubled, this line is as dynamic in its ability to alter itself as is the self."5 This
basic need, Gilman argues, leads to the construction of what Stephen Pepper has called "root metaphors," that is, "a set of
categories which result from our attempt to understand other areas in terms of one commonsense fact."6 By establishing
analogical values between real life experiences and the world of myths, stereotypes establish associations that may entail
either "negative images" or ''positive idealizations."7 It is at these two poles, indeed, that women are positioned and
represented within Hispanic culture.

Yet during the 1970s and 1980s, salsa music was characterized by quite disturbing articulations of violence against women
and of (hetero)sexual conflict consistently framed as metaphors of war and physical struggle. In part, this is not suprising,
given the poetics and politics of a musical movement born in the war zones of Anglo society and whose aesthetic harsh
brass sounds, loud volume, polyrhythmia reproduced the noises, the harsh realities, and the environment of life in the
urban barrios.8 In this light, salsa music has constituted a cultural public space for voicing gender
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conflict among Latin men and women, establishing a sort of (hetero)sexual politics in the ways in which "the discourses
which comprise it [reproduce] a struggle equivalent to that experienced socially by its readers." 9 Yet while an ideal
"equivalent" articulation of sexual politics would necessarily be dialogic in its formulation, salsa music remained mostly
male-dominated and patriarchal in its perspectives during those years. In this sense, salsa seemingly has precluded any
apertures for gender dialogism or plurality. Yet the 1980s and 1990s have witnessed a gradual growth in the participation
of women in this musical culture, accompanied by shifting practices not only in composition but also in reception and in
signifying acts.

Thus, throughout this analysis, male articulations of violence and gender conflict will be consistently dialogized by those
voices of women singers who utter both male- and female-authored lyrics and who engage in a musical war against males
by inverting sexist textualizations about women and "singing back" to men as objects of their diatribes. These women's
lyrics are constituted by the same metaphors of war and violence that men have deployed against women throughout
history. This musical stance, however, does not necessarily entail constituting a female subjectivity through music; rather,
it suggests a more reactive position that duplicates the fixed binaries of gender roles imposed by Western systems of
patriarchy.10 While Anglo American feminism may dismiss these songs as sites of gender oppression, in my opinion they
must be understood and appredated within the cultural, social, and historical contexts of heterosexual relations in Puerto
Rican society. These lyrics are valuable insofar as they eloquently articulate the struggles of Puerto Rican women and
Latinas in the process of empowering themselves by contesting the dictates of a strong patriarchal system. Moreover, they
collectively constitute musical spaces for oppositionality and contestation by recognizing, addressing, and appropriating
masculine and misogynist discourse in popular music.

The problematic issue has not been so much the content of female songs but the fact that women's music has remained
marginalized and invisible from the musical industry. Accordingly, my intent in this section is to bring together, and against
each other, songs and lyrics that have been part of our cultural repertoire but that in isolation have not been read or listened
to as a dialogic discourse on gender. By creating a critical collage of both male and female voices, we may be better able to
identify gender conflict as a distinct social and cultural issue that has, in many ways and in many societies, been veiled or
repressed, both in the name of feminist and social liberation and by the forces of patriarchy. The value of popular music in
this respect is tremendous, for collectively it has carved a public as well as personal space in which to argue about male-
female relations in Latina/o societies.
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While violence in salsa music has been identified as two types the arbitrary violence of the barrio and the more productive
and sanctioned revolutionary violence of political revolutions in Latin America violence against women has been excluded
from most discussions of this music. A couple of isolated scholarly articles and journalistic incursions into gender issues
have remained, at best, marginal in systematic analyses of this sociomusical practice. 11 Yet like many other forms of
popular music country western, rap, and rock and roll come to mind salsa's negative textualizations of women should not
be exclusively seen as an overarching indictment of Latina/o culture nor of Latin(o) men but as one of many forms of
patriarchy that cross cultural boundaries. In fact, analyses of other forms of U.S. popular music since the 1930s reveal
analogous female prototypes in their lyrics: women are goddesses, virgins, witches, and gold diggers.12 Scholarly studies
of gender representations in African American music also have identified these systematic figurations of the female, which
rap music has intensified in the politics and poetics of the postindustrial ghetto.13 What gives meaning, then, to these
blanket representations are the specific sociohistorical, cultural, and racial contexts in which these are deployed and
activated by and for particular audiences.

A tension exists for me, as a Latina scholar, regarding the implications of this particular analysis. To present this internal
gender critique of salsa music to outside audiences has meant taking the risk of reaffirming stereotypes of Latin(o)
machismo and thus of Latin(o) men's putative primitive and violent ways. Given the danger of the crosscultural
implications of this analysis, I feel compelled to argue that misogynist violence and gender conflict in salsa must be part of
an examination of larger structures of patriarchy and of phallocentric discourse that cross national and cultural lines. At
the same time, salsa must be understood within the particular social experiences of disenfranchisement, oppression, and
marginalization to which many Latinas/os and Latin Americans have been subjected. It is evident, as I write, that some of
the most aggressive expressions against women in salsa are by now receding. Historically, then, salsa documents some
shifts in gender conflict and sexual politics, shifts particularly seen in the language and in the forms that patriarchy takes,
although this does not imply that salsa is not misogynist nor patriarchal any longer, as many Latino men have told me.

Robin Kelley's piece on gangsta rap has been helpful in thinking through this tension. As a feminist scholar, I am committed
to denouncing violence against women in all contexts, and clearly this has been a central motivation in this book. Yet by
exclusively focusing on Latino male misogyny, as Robin Kelley argues about black males, it would "deflect attention
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away from the larger crisis, thus serving to soften the blow of patriarchal backlash and separate black youth [Latinos] from
dominant discourses which is precisely one of the functions of 'Othering.' 14 Indeed, the social tragedy of domestic violence
is not the exclusive domain of peoples of color nor of the proletariat, as many have constructed it in a displacing logic, but
reflects the human victimization that ensues from capitalism in its most dehumanizing modes. As bell hooks has eloquently
stated, in the context of an advanced capitalist society, men, disempowered and controlled by "the economic needs of
capitalism,"

are fed daily a fantasy diet of male supremacy and power. In actuality, they have very little power and they know
it. Yet they do not rebel against the economic order nor make revolution. They are socialized by ruling powers to
accept their dehumanization and exploitation in the public world of work and they are taught to expect that the
private world, the world of home and intimate relationships, will restore to them their sense of power which they
equate with masculinity. They are taught that they will be able to rule in the home, to control and dominate, that
this is the big pay-off for their acceptance of an exploitative economic social order. By condoning and perpetuating
male domination of women to prevent rebellion on the job, ruling male capitalists ensure that male violence will
be expressed in the home and not in the work force.15

Thus, hooks concludes, men find that the home and the family can function as a "control situation" where they can retaliate
and not suffer the consequences of acting violently. This cycle of violence is systematically condoned and celebrated by
U.S. society, in the media, in parenting practices that equate punishment with love, and in the global context of militarism,
war, and foreign interventions. Thus, late capitalism's impact on U.S. patriarchy, doubly felt in Puerto Rico's economically
dependent society, frames and explains violence against women as another instance of how violence permeates a society
based on "the Western philosophical notion of hierarchical rule and coercive authority."16 In colonized Latino societies such
as Puerto Rico's, the male becomes a mediating representative of the same oppression as that represented by the colonialist
regime.17 In this context, misogyny and violence against women in salsa music during the 1970s and 1980s is not altogether
surprising. It cannot be used as evidence of the primitivism or machismo of working-class Latino males in the barrio.
Rather, gender violence in salsa music must be read as an articulation of the multilayered and contradictory relations of
power and marginalization experienced by Latinos and Latinas whose daily lives were marked by under- and
unemployment, economic disenfranchisement, racism, cultural marginalization, and violence on the part of social
institutions, government, and the judicial system.

A clear historical antecedent to the gender wars in salsa music is the

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Cuban son. Ignacio Pieiro's original cut, titled "Castigador," a son habanero interpreted by the Septeto Nacional, illustrates
the transhistorical and overarching dimensions of this warlike, heterosexual discourse. 18 While the song begins with a
dialogue between the poetic I, the singer, and the so-called castigador (castigator), later the two voices merge into an
undifferentiated voicing of misogyny. Initially, the singer addresses the castigator, asking him to be more humane, to have
a child's heart for her and to "tener piedad" [have pity] on those females who ask him for his love. Yet the castigator replies,
"Que se muera" [Let her die], and his gendered violence becomes the dominant voice throughout the rest of the song. The
refrain and chorus of male voices repeat, "castgala, castgala" [punish her, punish her], and the song closes with a male
voice that asks, "Entonces yo qu debo hacer'' [Then, what should I do?]. The castigator and singer's voice responds with a
call to punish the woman with physical domination and violence: "la cojo por el pelo, le doy . . . la maltrato mucho [I grab
her by the hair, I hit her . . . I mistreat her a lot]. The song finally closes with a male scream of victory over his subordinated
and destroyed victim.

Sixty years later, the Puerto Rican conga player Sonia Lpez recorded the song "Castgalo" (Punish him), a feminist
inversion or reversal of the misogynist violence of Pieiro's earlier son.19 She begins the song by reiterating the female's
subordinate affective position in relation to the man, who smiles at her and delights in her suffering. The female singer asks
the male to look at her trembling lips, as she confesses that she is "dying" for him. But then she invokes the power of the
saints and of the Virgin in particular and asks them to punish him so that he will return to her, "llorando y suplicando"
[crying and pleading] in an ideal fantasy that he will submit to her and ask her for her forgiveness. Illustrating the
contradictory and multilayered roles that religion affords women in Latin American culture, this invocation to the divine
realm is constituted as the state of romantic utopia whose verbs and signifiers remain the realm of the future and the
subjunctive, as hypothesized reality.

Most powerful in this song, as in Pieiro's gender attack, is the repetitive nature of the refrain. Sonia Lpez's reiteration of
the imperative utterance, "Castgalo, castigador," reminiscent of the ideology behind the literary Don Juan's eventual
damnation in hell, makes up most of the song. It has the potential for becoming an empowering refrain for women listeners
by articulating the anger and resentment against the men in their lives. In a feminist ironic turn, Lpez's rendition inverts
the subject/object dichotomy that songs like "Castigador" had already inscribed in the collective unconscious of Caribbean
audiences. "Castgalo, castigador" is a clearly gendered utterance against men who practice violence, domination,
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and even emotional abuse of women. Although contained within the linguistic domain of an ideal, it strongly pronounces
a female desire for revenge. Indeed, like the epigraphs selected for this section, the hypothetical nature of these utterances
seems to characterize women's discourse in this context. Their revenge against men, particularly the physical violence
articulated as a strategy against misogyny, are usually uttered as desire, as possibility, as hypothetical reality, rather than
as fact. While a Daniel Santos naturalizes the male will to destroy woman in "Yo la mato" (I (will) kill her) by adding popular
speech codes such as "Oye, qu cosas tiene la vida" [That's life], women's songs, like Lisa M's "Ingrato," close with
reaffirming female desire, doubly deferred by two verbs of desire, to kill him back. She swears she wishes she could kill
him. 20

Las Chicas del Can is a female merengue group well known for controversial dress codes and performance gestures (one
of their album covers contains the group dressed in black leather bikinis around a motorcycle) and the high-pitched voices
that purportedly infantilize them. One of their songs, "Celoso" ("Jealous man"), is a feminist cut that presents physical
violence as a form of revenge against the jealous male. Like most songs on the album Explosivo, "Celoso" was written for
the group by their producer, Wilfrido Vargas, a factor that makes it difficult to trace gender ideology only through
authorship.21 In this case, the lyrics clearly present a female subject who denounces the repressive behavior of an extremely
jealous male to whom she has lost her freedom. The song tells the story of a love relationship that goes sour after the man
physically abuses the woman. Now, the singer says, it is her turn. Since he mistreated her, she now explodes full of anger
and takes on the offensive in beating up the man. As if responding to Johnny Ventura's old merengue ''Dale un palo," Las
Chicas del Can deploy the same metaphor of "dar palos," one that is eroticized in the Dominican Republic but seemingly
used in this song as physical revenge against oppressive men. The singer states that the jealous man needs to be beaten on
the head, his ribs, and on his knees. The double reading of this metaphor, "dar palo," nevertheless accords a certain
ambiguity to its signifiers, which may undermine the readings of the song as a feminist revenge. In other words, there is a
simultaneous play between the desire to take physical vengeance on the male oppressor and the erotic suggestion of the
female placating his erotic needs and desires.

"Esta noche o nunca," a popular song throughout Latin America, reveals the relationship between male sexual desire and
woman's submission to his needs. By equating male needs with the will of God, the singing subject assumes the
omnipotence of a divine being that women obligatorily have to obey. Tonight or never, "esta noche o nunca," is his final
ultima-
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tum. 22 And indeed, this ultimatum, which belongs to a vast repertoire of popular songs throughout Latin America, is
tragically echoed in an estimated 60 percent of heterosexual couples in Puerto Rico who fall victims to domestic violence
or sexual abuse.23 Whether due to alcohol, drugs, jealousy, or violent tempers reasons cited for male-induced violence on
their female partners24 the tragic proportions of patriarchal violence against women cannot but suggest that lyrics such as
Daniel Santos's "Yo la mato" or Ignacio Pieiro's "Castgala" have had powerful effects on both male and female listeners.

Psychoanalytically, the tendency for men to need to differentiate and individuate themselves from their mothers by
objectifying an Other and by emphasizing rigid boundaries between Self and Other has led to their denial of the Other as
subject. Yet their violence against their subordinated Others only intensifies the contradictions of their dependency. As the
song "La crcel de Sing Sing" articulates: "yo tuve que matar a un ser que quise amar / y que an estando muerta yo la
quiero / al verla con su amante a los dos los mat /por culpa de esa infame morir" [I had to kill the being I wanted to love
/ even dead I still love her / when I saw her with her lover I killed them both / because of that vile woman I will die].25 In
this master-slave relationship, the male subject, the master, discovers that "if it completely devours the other . . . or controls
the other . . . it can no longer get what it wanted from the other," that is, the recognition of the self on which we
depend.26 The male subject negates the objects own subjectivity by trying to control her, thus failing to sustain the source
of his much-needed social recognition. This contradiction, embedded in any Hegelian master-slave relationship, has been
the underlying tragedy in the convergence of passion and violence, of crimes of passion. Indeed, given the culturally
sanctioned macho behaviors that have continued to characterize male-female relations in Puerto Rico, it is not surprising
that domestic violence was only recently, as of 1989, considered a crime punishable by law. And not coincidentally, the
music industry continues to plug songs that naturalize violence against women, whether physical, sexual, or psychological.

A central form of violence against women in popular music is the very basic speech act of name-calling, of insults and
vituperative language, what we may deem as discursive terrorism or violence through words.27 This strategy of offense,
quite commonplace in popular songs, powerfully fixes negative perceptions of women as traitors, dishonest, pretentious,
vain, gossipy, and liars and as bandoleras, dishonest golddiggers who love men only as a means to economic survival.
Again, I would argue that the destructive impact of this type of discursive terrorism on women's self-perceptions cannot
be denied, given the substantial amounts of time Lati-
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nos and Latinas spend listening to music and to the radio in particular. Moreover, studies have shown a major discrepancy
between the way that Puerto Rican women practice their autonomy and gender values versus their condemnation of other
Puerto Rican women as "passive," a gap that may be explained by the internalization of patriarchal discourse on women's
perceptions of other women. 28

An older Latin American man once commented to me, in a sort of nostalgic tone, that he was disappointed at the way that
contemporary music, including salsa and pop romantic ballads, sang to love relationships. He was seduced by the old
language of the traditional bolero, and in many ways he was mourning that loss. He was right in perceiving a shift. In salsa
music, particularly, the language of love has changed its tone from a lyrical, idealizing one about separations, conflicts,
eternity, and unrequited passions to a more aggressive, material, and cynical attitude toward heterosexual relations.

In stark contrast to the "simple" lyrics of the above-mentioned bolero "Se fue," the salsa song, "Oprobio," composed by
Rafael Hernndez and interpreted by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, reveals the different tone and perspective that the
male singing subject assumes with respect to the woman's absence and the breaking up of the relationship.29 While both
texts open with almost identical lines "Ya se fue, ya se fue;" [She already left] and "Se fue'' [She left] the lyrics of "Oprobio"
unfold into a diatribe against the woman and a concatenation of insults justified by the act of her leaving, by her abandono.
It is a farewell to woman, yet one not colored by the bolero's nostalgia, love, nor even painful acceptance but rather marked
by an almost self-parodic attitude toward love and the particular relationship in question. The male singing subject begins
by thanking God that she left, since after all, "ya ella no me [le] serva" [she was of no use to me], thus poking fun at the
traditional heart-breaking and affective discourse that the bolero opened up to the male subject. More poignantly, these
opening lines define the woman's absence as relief rather than loss. She is constructed as an object of consumption, as a
commodity for the male, a value that has overarchingly been recorded in advertisements, media, religion, and social
institutions. By objectifying her and reducing her to mere function of service, pragmatism, the male singer feels no need to
mourn his loss.

The song "Oprobio" then continues to say good-bye to the woman through an enumerative structure of insulting and
negative adjectives and epithets. She is bandolera, pretenciosa, saco de trampa, bochinchera, orgullosa, lengetera,
caprichosa, vanidosa, buchipluma, zalamera. These are all epithets that construct woman as dishonest, vain, cruel,
treacherous,
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a sack of tricks, gossipy, and easy-tongued. Collectively, the common tenor is that of woman as a treacherous signifier, a
slippery, shifting sign impossible to decode, a social and discursive image that permeates men's perceptions of women. Yet
these accusations against women are conditional, contingent on women's submissions to their needs and desires. Women
are treacherous golddiggers and plain bad when they do not satisfy men's sexual desires and needs.

Hctor Lavoe's song "Bandolera," composed by Victor Cavalli, epitomizes discursive violence against women. 30 This cut
lasts nine minutes, thirty-two seconds (quite extensive for a recorded version), and can be considered problematic if we
take into account the fact that its misogyny is expressed the minute the song begins. "Bandolera" is entirely an ennumeration
of derogatory comments about women, finished off with an expression of physical abuse. The male singer warns her: ''te
voy a dar una pela / pa que aprendas a querer" [I will beat you up / so that you learn to love], followed by a piano solo
and the brass instruments, followed in turn by the onomatopoeia of physical abuse: pow, pow, pow . . . Te vuelvo a dar, te
voy a dar pa' que aprendas" [pow, pow, pow . . . I hit you again, I'll hit you so that you learn]. Again, the bandolera title
reinforces the image of woman as dishonest, a liar who was "born to fool others." In fact, love is described early on in the
song as a social construct that has failed because of the lack of trust between men and women: "Por eso yo no creo en el
amor, yo creo en m, yo s de m, yo s vivir" [That is why I do not believe in love, I believe in myself, I know about myself,
I know how to live].

These lines establish a male egocentric subject location that precludes any possibility for emotional reciprocity or
communion with others. The male singing subject cynically deconstructs love as another social gimmick, another act of
treason and lies, another form of oppression. The only sort of consistency and reliability that he can imagine is in solipsistic
self-knowledge. The rest of the song, like "Oprobio," constitutes a defensive concatenation of insults and a series of
utterances of physical violence and abuse against the bandit-woman, othered and objectified.

The Bandolera and the Economics of Love

Me buscaste en los bolsillos, [You searched my pockets,

me tumbaste la cartera you emptied my wallet
Y esa va a ser la razn And that is why
Porque te voy a pegar . . . I will beat you up . . .]

The final stanza of Hctor Lavoe's "Bandolera," above, reveals the economic and material motivations behind this discursive
violence. The female is deemed as a bandit woman, a Latina version of the golddigger, because
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throughout the relationship she has depleted the man of his financial possessions. "Me buscaste en los bolsillos," sings
Lavoe to his beloved bandolera. This figure, commonplace in salsa music, is drawn from a topical repertoire rooted in old
Hispanic and European legendry. The emergence of this female figuration significantly marks sociohistorical periods of
men's preoccupation with economic and material survival. In the United States of the 1930s the golddigger emerged
precisely as a musical symbol that allowed men to reconcile the economic hardships of their period with the threatening
values and competition that "the feminization of American culture, particularly in the sphere of work"
constituted. 31 Similarly, in African American rap "welfare queens making babies or golddiggers who use their sexuality to
take black men's meager earnings" are common prototypes of the black woman, given the dismantling of the black male as
the main family provider.32 Thus, for the Latino male subject who has experienced the economic marginalization of New
York barrios during the 1970s and 1980s in particular, the bandolera construct functions as a symbol or icon that allows
men to reconcile these shifts in economics and the deflation and undermining of the traditional Hispanic values of
masculinity and of the macho as the honorable father who always and unconditionally provides for his wife and his
children.

Much more revealing, however, is the resemantization of the figure of the bandolera since its early historical emergence.
The phenomenon of banditry has been common to Europe since the medieval times, and there exists a particular legend in
Galicia, Spain, about a bandolera named Pepa La Loba. Orphaned from a very young age, Pepa is a female version of the
Spanish pcaro, or rogue, throughout her youth, a subject marginalized in mainstream society and thus a locus of resistance
in many ways. She is unjustly imprisoned for the murder of her protector, and she eventually escapes jail dressed in the
clothes of the priest who came to her cell to confess her. She takes revenge on the real murderer by killing him and allowing
him to be devoured by wild dogs. Later, her life is that of a runaway, an outcast, a woman on the margins of society. She
robs and steals with the help of her bando, all men. It is said that she would dress up as a man and paint a mustache on her
face. She became an object of terror throughout the whole county. In another version, she became the lover of an older male
who later abandoned her for a younger woman. Pepa leaves his house without any resistance. Later she returns and kills
him, his new lover, and all of their children.33

A legendary figure like Pepa La Loba and other bandoleras merit a new reading as protofeminist characters. Pepa
transgressed the social norms of femininity in quite radical ways: she cross-dressed, thus blurring the fixed
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gender boundaries of her own female body and of her sexuality; she killed men, thus assuming behaviors and
actions violence, aggression that have been socially relegated to the order of the masculine; and she avenged herself on
the man in her life who was responsible for her unjust imprisonment in one version and for her betrayal in the other.
Contemporary salsa songs and Latin popular music reconstruct this bandolera figure from the masculine perspective, that
is, from the subject position of the male who has loved a woman and who is afraid of becoming the object of her anger and
retaliation. This figure clearly articulates male fear of women's agency, anger, and strategies for survival. It allows men to
express the fear of their own vulnerability in the face of changing gender roles and, concomitantly, to displace this fear onto
women, accusing them of these shifts and of the uncomfortable position of men as potential victims and objects of
aggression or violence.

The threat of the bandolera is not exclusively economic but affective as well. The bandolera in salsa not only steals money
but also steals the man's heart, his love. In a poem entitled "El bandido robado" from Galician folklore, the male bandit
himself is the object of a robbery: a woman has stolen his heart! 34 Salsa songs such as Pedro Conga's "Ladrona de amor"
(Thief of love) and Rubn Blades's "Ella se esconde" (She hides) express man's double-edged fear and desire for female
seduction: "Qu bandolera que eres t !Qu raquetera en el amor! Me has enredado en tu revul y me has robado el
corazn!''35 [What a bandit you are! What a liar in love! You have involved me in your mess and you have stolen my heart!].
The bandolera myth, then, unfolds and branches out into various other textualizations. First, the man accuses the woman
of stealing his property during the love relationship, the most literal rendering of this figuration; second, the woman is
accused of stealing the man's heart; and third, an inversion of the previous constructs is that of women defined as
merchandise or property to be acquired, as commodities and value for men, either through marriage or through sexual
intercourse. Clearly illustrated in Rubn Blades's recent cut, "Ella se esconde," again the common tenor in all of the above
discursive constructs of the feminine is the lack of trust, man's vulnerability, and woman as slippery signifier, difficult if
not impossible to decode. The treacherous woman, a product of the romantic construct of Woman as Mystery, ramifies into
metaphors of witches and witchcraft. Bandits, traitors, and witches, women in Latin popular music, as in other musical
traditions, are sexual objects and treacherous signifiers, "hiding behind the corners of her smile," as Rubn Blades's song
consistently reiterates.

Latina singers have not remained passive nor mute with respect to these characterizations. Son de Azcar, an all-women's
Latin music band, sings
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back to the male fear of the female. In "Devoradora," the female singing subject appropriates the construct of the woman as
"devoradora," a beast ready to devour man, to castrate him and ultimately consume him. 36 With humor and self-irony,
these lyrics reaffirm those gender-based fears: ''Me dicen que soy piraa / que soy mujer araa / porque todo lo que veo /
sin excepcin lo devoro" [They tell me I am a piranha / a woman spider / because I devour without exception / everything
I see]. Yet as the song develops, that irony unfolds onto a feminist reaffirmation of women's strategies for seducing men
and thus for disempowering them: "Devoro con la mirada / soy mujer muy liberada / los atrapo con besitos / y aqu me
caen rendiditos" [I devour with my gaze / I am a most liberated woman / I trap them with kisses / and they fall here all
subdued] or "Y no es que yo sea coqueta / sino una mujer completa" [It's not that I am flirtatious / but a complete woman],
in fact correcting the negative prototype of animal-like powers "Y no es que sea una piraa / y no es que sea mujer araa"
[And it's not that I am a piranha / nor a woman spider] and transforming it into a positive power as a woman: "pero s s
que conmigo / todos los hombres se amaan . . . todos los hombres me adoran" [but I know that with me / all men settle
down . . . all men adore me].

In other words, this text attempts to correct and revalorize the negatively laden seductive powers of women from a fear-
founded image of irrational, destructive potential the masculine version to that of a "complete" woman who, by her own
virtues as thinking, feeling, and developed human being, is then attractive to men. While the text continuously deploys
signifiers that evoke the negative prototypes she speaks of her poison and of herself as a "domadora" the concluding
question leaves the song open to multiple readings: "Devoradora yo?" [I, devourer?]. Again, female oppositionality in
these songs seems to be structured in double discourses that allow multiple, ambiguous readings. Simultaneously,
however, this open-ended text also allows for the possibility of couples to engage in discussing whether woman
is devoradora or not. The ironic final question, in other words, may ignite potential discussions around this gender-based
discourse.

While I have not identified any songs that specifically appropriate the figure of the bandolera from a feminist perspective,
a number of Latinas have definitely contested men's discursive terrorism against women, singing back analogous strategies
of psychological oppression. Milly y los Vecinos, a merengue group, sings to/against men's own strategies for masking
their patriarchy and oppressive behavior with women. In "Ese hombre," they denounce the Latin(o) macho who has
fathered numerous children, comparing him to a "viento" (wind) that blows away flowers and
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that kills "ilusiones" (illusions) with pain. 37 Analogous to Ana Lydia Vega's story "Letra para salsa y tres soneos por
encargo" (Lyrics for salsa and three endings ordered), this song deflates and dismantles the masculine discourse of a Don
Juan who seduces women and later abandons them. The repetitive refrain compares the man to "las chicharras" (cicadas)
who make a lot of noise but ultimately offer nothing. In addition, the song enumerates other accusations that unveil the
falsity of the image of a man as provider in the reality of financial need. While the song serves as a caveat for other women,
it also deconstructs the masks, strategies, and discourse used by men to seduce women into satisfying their own needs and
desires. In other words, men are also treacherous, slippery signifiers.

La India, the Puerto Rican salsa singer from the Bronx who combines the singing styles of a Celia Cruz and an Ella
Fitzgerald, a sort of R&B sonera, also performs a song entitled "Ese hombre" on her CD Dicen que soy (They say I am).38 Also
a song that serves as a caveat for other women, the text begins by bursting the bubble. The man who appears "gallant"
becomes a plurality of negative traits: he is really a fool, selfish, capricious, vain, insensitive, arrogant, and a host of other
epithets. The enumerative strategy, that "enumeracin catica" that served too well the democratizing and human poetics
of a Pablo Neruda, has been deployed in popular music as the central structural recourse for singing the gender wars.
Indeed, women singers have been inverting the object of men's discursive terrorism as an initial strategy of resistance
against misogyny and patriarchy.

Nonetheless, this recourse fails to elucidate or to articulate a discourse that illuminates the multiple modes of constituting
female subjectivity. It is a recourse that is limited insofar as it duplicates the dualist, binary oppositions of gender identity
that have plagued women with the inferior end of the axis. It leaves no aperture for new and radical ways of being female
and of being male, that is, for blurring those rigid boundaries and for discussion of not only gender roles but also multiple
forms of sexuality and sexual orientation. By enumerating the negative characteristics of either men or women, coupled
with the mnemonic value of repetition and refrains as well as of music itself as a temporal art, Latino and Latina singers
nonetheless have articulated the conflicts between men and women that continue to characterize heterosexual interactions
in our societies.

Celia Cruz's defense of women, such as in "Las divorciadas" and "Que le den candela" (in her more recent
recording, Irrepetible),39 Milly y los Vecinos's "Ese hombre" (1991), and Sonia Lpez's "Castgalo" are examples of cuts that
speak in defense of women within heterosexual relations. Yet the lyrics of these songs establish gender in dualistic,
oppositional terms male versus female that clearly denote the traditional "battle between the
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sexes." While Anglo American feminists may dismiss these songs as samples of gender oppression, in my opinion they
must be understood within the cultural, social, and historical contexts of (hetero)sexual relations in Puerto Rican society.
These songs are valuable insofar as they eloquently articulate the struggles of Puerto Rican women and Latinas to empower
themselves by contesting the dictates of a strong patriarchal system. Although in the United States feminist scholars have
moved beyond this paradigm of male-female interaction, for many U.S. Latinas and Latin American women their reality
with men is beleaguered by outright conflict and even physical violence. The fact that Lorena Bobbitt became a popular
heroine overnight among Puerto Rican women and that a new word bobitazo began circulating with innuendos of potential
female revenge, indicates that (hetero)sexual interactions are very much associated, culturally and socially at least, with
images of conflict and metaphors of war.

Songs such as the ones mentioned above partially allow women to name their desire for the recognition of their own power
as subjects. By rejecting this "battle between the sexes" as a paradigm that fixes identity, Anglo feminism elides the very
real social tensions between men and women, in any culture or society, whose personal interactions may be embedded in
conflict and even violence. It may be a coincidence, for instance, that in the past ten years Puerto Ricans have listened to
these women's songs as well as mobilized to create laws against domestic violence and physical abuse by men, yet this
coincidence is a significant one indeed.

An alternative to these monologic strategies of inversion is that proposed by Lisa M and other rappers who perform dialogic
lyrics in which both men and women speak to heterosexual relations. In "Tu Pum Pum," both Lisa M and Santy articulate
a sort of dialogue that partly constitutes a parody of gender stereotypes and partly enunciates an alternative to heterosexual
relations. 40 The text begins with a reference to "el pum pum," the onomatopoeic utterance that alludes to the woman's hip
movements, in the voice of the man. He asserts that her sensuality and her body are not going to kill him, a parody itself of
earlier traditional discourse of love and of erotic hips. Santy also makes a self-reference to his height he is "chiquito,"
short which goes against the grain of an ideal masculinity as determined by mass media but which in fact reevaluates this
masculinity from a more Latino-centered reality, that is, that Latino men tend to be shorter than the Anglo media portrays.

The song then becomes a "battle of love" (batalla de amor) between these two voices. While Lisa M refuses to be seduced by
him, Santy continues to try to convince her that short men are good and honest and that he is indeed "a general." She replies
that if he is a general, she is a captain, and
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that her strategy of war is to invert his own discourse of power. She then does precisely that by calling on the subtexts of
the Don Juan discourse and that of "Las muchachas": she says she will marry any man, regardless of his Latin American
nationality, as long as he is big and speaks Spanish.

These musical gender wars also have signaled certain shifts in patriarchal strategies for dominating women. While the
discourse of the 1970s and 1980s was characterized by discursive battles of love in which physical violence, anger, revenge,
and vituperation framed male-female interaction, more recent songs indicate a shift in the modes in which patriarchy is
articulated. El Gran Combo's song "Psicologa" 41 encapsules what Sandra Lee Bartky, in her Foucaultian reading of modern
forms of female repression, has called the "modernization of patriarchal power."42 According to Bartky, "Foucault has
argued that the transition from traditional to modern societies has been characterized by a profound transformation in the
exercise of power." In contrast to the deployment of older forms of power, centrally embodied in "the person of the
monarch,"43 in modern society "power has now become anonymous,''44 yet by its very own diffusion away from the
monarch or the church it has been relocated in the process of the formation of the individual subject, that is, into subjectivity
itself. Modern power, then, is exercised through "faceless, centralized, and pervasive" ways, through new institutions, such
as bureaucracy, welfare, correction, production, and education.

For women in particular, these shifts in power have translated into a subsiding of traditional forms of regulation, such as
the traditional family role (the Husband and Father) and the church's (the Divine Individual, the priest), thus giving way
to the modern forms of patriarchal power, those values of femininity and of the female body as spectacle, as a certain "style
of the flesh," that are internalized by women across class, culture, and racial lines. "Normative femininity is coming more
and more to be centered on woman's body not its duties and obligations or even its capacity to bear children, but its
sexuality, more precisely, its presumed heterosexuality and its appearance."45 Foucault's image of the Panopticon, then, is
doubly significant for women in modern times; as they internalize values of beauty and of femininity, they become the self-
policing gaze of their own bodies.

Yet most significant is the emergence of psychology as a cultural and individual terrain in which patriarchal power is
articulated. Foucault in fact exemplifies the modernization of power in the historic institutionalization of modern
psychology and sociology as a "new knowledge of the individual" is required. Shifting from traditional forms of coercion
such as physical abuse and what could be deemed domination through the domestic, El Gran Combo's song "Psicologa"
traces how Latino men have been forced
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to rethink, adapt to, and negotiate women's new social roles, not altogether surprising given the fact that one can trace
shifts in Puerto Rican social and cultural values in the past thirty years through their repertoire.

The male singing voice begins addressing the social myth that "women are difficult": "Muchos dicen que la mujer es un ser
difcil de manejar," an opening line that reiterates the social function of popular songs as interventions in the production of
cultural myths, assumptions, and values. The reiterative use of "dicen que" [it is said, people say] in many salsa songs frame
these texts as such, as cultural interventions that actively function to reaffirm and reevaluate traditional ways of thinking.
In this particular case, El Gran Combo's male singer, through a text composed by Chico Alejandro, responds to this
particular patriarchal assumption of a female character essentialized as "difficult." In response to this social construct, the
song articulates a "recipe'' of course, created by men that offers more efficient ways of dealing with women. Addressing
his male counterparts, the singer shares this recipe, in an inversion of the feminine discourse of cooking and domesticity,
with his male listeners. This is a recipe that has been successful, "siempre ha funcionado," thus revealing the modern and
more efficient, cleaner ways of holding control over women.

The male singer then gives numerous caveats to other men. Since domination through machismo is no longer viable nor
socially acceptable "en vez de usted bregar a lo macho / le da mejor resultado bregar con psicologa" [instead of dealing a
lo macho / dealing with psychology gives better results] men need to strategically use psychology, that new, modern
knowledge of the self, to maintain control over their female partners. Indeed, the song presents alternatives to explicit
conflictive situations, such as taking her out to a restaurant when she burns the beans or speaking softly to her, uttering
"sweet words," or taking her out to the movies; but ultimately there is no aperture toward an equality of power between
both. What "Psicologa" reveals is a shift in the signifiers of patriarchal power, not a profound equalization of men and
women in their personal relations. For the male singer and composer of "Psicologa," this newfound knowledge of women
and their ensuing shift in behavior toward them is their only alternative to maintaining superiority, ultimately a tactic for
patriarchal survival.

When the singer advises the use of psychology "para que puedas vivir bien cmodo" [in order to live comfortably] or says
that the man needs to convince his woman "con un ardor sensual" [by sensual passion], unequal power relations remain
untouched, and the song is as patriarchal and repressive of female desire as the previous salsa songs about bandoleras and
even the boleros that silenced women with a kiss. While many Latinos have
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informally argued with me that salsa music is no longer as misogynist and patriarchal as it was during the 1970s, this
reading of "Psicologa" proves otherwise. Any shift toward more humane and less violent modes of gender interaction is a
positive development in itself. Yet the unfortunate fact remains regarding the subject position of the male: he is in control
of the musical discourse and of its production, composition, and distribution. By virtue of this inequality within the music
industry, music interventions still perpetuate a masculinist discourse of the female and the feminine.
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Chapter Ten
Singing Female Subjectivities

Postmodern critics and feminists have identified a new era of women's participation in high and low cultures. This is clearly
evident, for instance, in the emergence of "women-identified music" recording studios in the United States, a
countermovement that arose against the misogynist lyrics of rock and roll. 1 However, the creative and political presence
of women composers, producers, and performers in the terrain of Latin popular music is not as evident as their
transformative role in other arts like film production, theory and criticism, narrative, and poetry. This is not to say, however,
that women have not participated in the composition or performance of Latin music. To be rendered invisible is not
synonymous with a lack of agency. A closer look at histories of Latin American popular music, particularly in Cuba, Puerto
Rico, and Mexico, attest to the pervading presence and agency of women not only as singers but also as
composers.2 "Babal," the Cuban song interpreted by Miguelito Valdez and later popularized on television by Desi Arnaz
in the 1950s, was composed by Margarita Lecuona.3 The bomba titled "Maquinolandera,'' deployed by Rosario Ferr in the
short story of the same title, was composed by Margarita Rivera, Ismael Rivera's mother, more familiarly known in Puerto
Rico as Doa Margot. As seen earlier, the textual female subjectivity in the plena "Mamita, lleg el Obispo" possibly
indicates a woman's authorship veiled under the anonymity imposed by the institution of folklore. These few examples
only begin to tell the story of women's agency and authorial power in popular culture, an issue that claims urgent historical
documentation.

This historical veiling, moreover, has been coupled with the discriminatory practice of restricting women's participation to
that of mostly vocalists, rather than opening up other roles such as instrumentalists, composers, arrangers, and most
important, directors of groups. The major exception to this pattern is the emergence of eleven all-female salsa bands in Cali,
Colombia, since 1990. According to Umberto Valverde and Rafael
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Quintero, 4 this phenomenon was made possible by the central importance of dancing in Cali's urban culture, which
historically has offered women access to music and has created a demand for musicians. Most important, I believe, is the
presence of institutions of training in musical and popular cultural arts such as the Instituto Popular de Cultura, the
University of Valle, Bellas Artes, and the Academia de Msica Valdiri. In addition, the success of these performers has been
attributed to their keen sense of discipline and professionalism, a result, in turn, of their position as women in a male-
dominated industry. Lise Waxer, currently living in Cali, is completing ethnographic work on Cali's women salseras and
is playing in an all-female Latin jazz band called Magenta.

Rayda Cotto, a black Puerto Rican musical director, performer, and composer, argues that these boundaries are racially
marked as she calls into question the persistent whitened images of women in musical events and televised
performances.5 As Cotto notes, black Puerto Rican women have less access to these roles than do their white counterparts.
Generally speaking, women's absence from the stage is also a result of their lack of access to the public space of the street,
where younger musicians receive their training by participating in informal jam sessions. A "decent woman," says Latin
society, does not belong in jam sessions nor in the masculine spaces of nightclubs, touring, and cast parties. The fact that
Latinas have historically achieved more prominence as vocalists than in other musical roles suggests a process of
containment in their professional development and opportunities. Women singers are allowed to perform onstage as long
as they sing the words of others and as long as, in some cases, they play to the desires and fantasies of a male audience
whose gaze continues to objectify female bodies. Such is the case of Las Chicas del Can, a female merengue group whose
repertoire is wholly penned by men and whose stage presence and dress also seem to be defined according to masculine
dictates of female objectification. While it is true that this group has had some impact on Latina fans, mostly by serving as
role models for those younger women who aspire to sing and perform, I find no ideological ambivalence in the ways that
they invite their audience to objectify their bodies.

Yet authorship by women, as essential as it is for the articulation of female subjectivity in popular music, should not by
itself mark an exclusive space for the transformation of sexual politics. Celia Cruz's ever popular performance of "Usted
abus" (You abused me), the bossa nova Brazilian theme she interpreted with Willie Coln, possibly had a more profound
liberatory impact on Latinas than many women-authored pieces. "Usted abus" articulates, from the abused victim's point
of view, an accusation or indictment against the abuser in the heterosexual couple; the open-ended
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use of the second-person singular usted allows for either male or female performances and for the indictment of either sex.
The performance of a song, despite the sexual identity of its author, can indeed be "gendered," both by performer and
audience, depending on the performer's own sexual identity and voicing. Celia Cruz's performance of "Usted abus"
changed the original message of the song from that of a male diatribe against a woman to that of a feminist anthem against
sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Many young women's groups, particularly in the merengue tradition, appear rather bland in their potential to divest
patriarchal lyrics. Their songs, characterized by the oppositional stance between the sexes, either reproduce patriarchal and
misogynist textualizations of women or instead refrain from engaging female subjectivities. In fact, the strongest presence
of Latinas in popular music Ana Gabriel, Yolandita Monge, Lisette and Ednita Nazario is in the romantic pop ballad, a
genre informed by the traditional bolero. This constitutes a historical extension of the patriarchal practice of containing
women within the generic boundaries of "lyrical" forms of artistic expression. To sing to and about love from an individual
viewpoint is much more socially acceptable and politically innocuous than to sing about those social issues that characterize
salsa's thematic repertoire, such as migration, national identity, class, race, and gender itself. And while it would be
essential to document the possible apertures and fissures through which these women singers resist and subvert their own
location as enunciators of the "romantic," the weight of tradition, formulas, and standardization within the genre of the
romantic pop ballad undermine the potential for women to radicalize gender constructs in more systematic ways.

However, emerging salsa singers such as La India, Olga Tan, and Albita are gaining popularity fast, appearing in major
events, and receiving important national recognition. 6 A substantial portion of their repertoire is composed by them or by
other women, although they also perform traditional cuts in Afro-Caribbean music. What distinguishes their performances
from those of other groups is the highly oppositional content of many of their songs, their control over the production and
composition, and the degree of performativity, mostly in the case of La India and Albita, which destabilize fixed notions of
gender. These emerging figures indicate an important shift toward a growing female visibility in U.S. and Puerto Rican
salsa scenes.

Yet this is not altogether new. A generation of women mostly Cuban, Puerto Rican and Mexican whose own compositions,
performances, and bodies together have powerfully contested the patriarchal dictates within
Page 175

Latino and Latin American culture has hardly received any scholarly attention. Singers who emerged in the 1950s and
1960s, such as Toa La Negra in Mexico, Ruth Fernndez and Mirta Silva in Puerto Rico, and Celia Cruz and La Lupe in
Cuba and the United States, represent women who in diverse ways opposed, resisted, and transformed Afro-Caribbean
music into a space from which female subjectivities could emerge. Most of these women, whose racial identifies
significantly were either black or racially mixed, appropriated the musical theatrical stages as well as the radio and
television airwaves as public spaces for articulating the historical visibility and agency of Caribbean women in Latina/o
culture. Lake Rafael Cortijo y su Combo in Puerto Rico, Ruth, Celia, Toa, Mirta, and Lupe contested, by their racially
marked presence, the predominance of whiteness in the media. They also served as role models and pathbreakers for more
contemporary performers. While these women's performance styles, musical repertoires, and artistic personalities were
unique and very different from one another, together they constitute an important generation of women singers and
musicians whose historical impact is yet to be examined and whose histories, both personal and musical, are yet to be
written.

Toa La Negra, born Mara Antonia Peregrino, Veracruz's most salient woman performer, specialized in interpreting
boleros written by such male composers as Agustn Lara, Pedro Flores, and Rafael Hernndez, among others; and although
she did perform boleros authored by women, such as Mexican composer Mara Greever's "Cenizas," she could quite easily
be seen as an interpreter of men's words. However, the modulations of her voice and her almost matriarchal presence
contributed to the inclusion of the Caribbean cultural heritage among Mexican listeners. The popularity of tropical music
in Mexico was not only because of the presence of a Mambo King like Prez Prado nor the recordings of Benny Mor but
also because of Negra's vindication of Afro-Caribbean compositions, rhythms, and textures. Her stage name La Negra [The
Black Woman] reveals her strategic racial self-objectification or essentialization, a racializing gesture that exhorted Mexican
audiences to accept the African heritage of the Caribbean coast as a central element of their culture. Some of her most
famous hits"Oracin Caribe," "Noche Criolla," and "Veracruz" sing to the geocultural spaces of an Afro-Caribbean Mexico
that has remained marginal to a historical social imaginary invested in its indigenous, pre-Columbian past and in its very
rigid European mestizaje. Moreover, the impact of one of her most popular songs, ''Angelitos negros" (Black angels)
(composed by Andrs Eloy Blanco) was felt all over Latin America. Its text denounced the colonialist, Eurocentric, and
whitened paradigms in the visual arts that have prevailed throughout Latin American high culture:
Page 176

Pintor nacido en mi tierra [Painter, born on my land

con el pincel extranjero holding a foreign brush
Pintor sigues el rumbo Painter, you follow the path
de tantos pintores viejos. of so many painters in the past.

Aunque la Virgen sea bianca Even though the Virgin is white

pntame angelitos negros. please paint little black angels for me.
Que tambin se van al cielo For all the good blacks
todos los negritos buenos. also go to heaven.

Pintor, si pintas con amor Painter, if you paint with love

por qu desprecias su color? why do you reject their color?
Si sabes queen el cielo If you know that in heaven
tambin los quiere Dios? God also loves them?

Pintor de santos de alcoba You, who paint saint figures

si fienes alma en el cuerpo if you have a soul
por qu al pintar tus cuadros why is it that in your paintings
te olvidaste de los negros? you forgot the black ones?

Siempre que pintas iglesias Whenever you paint churches

pintas angelitos bellos you paint beautiful angels
pero nunca te acordaste but you never remembered
de pintar un ngel negro. 7 to paint a black angel.]

Through Toa la Negra's voice, the urgency of examining the arts from the perspective of racial exclusion took on a strong
personal tone. Throughout the song she exhorts listeners to recognize the black cultural and historical legacy in Latin
American culture. Much before the emergence of multiculturalism in the United States, although simultaneous to the civil
rights movements and the nationalist Chicano and Nuyorican movements on the mainland, the circulation of this song
denounced the Eurocentric underpinnings of religious icons and of the visual arts throughout Latin America and the
exclusion of the nonwhite elements from the representations of the divine. The contradictions of colonization and the
systematic erasure of the colonized from representation itself, both of which have marked the history of Latin American
arts, literature, and music in its relational dialectics with Europe, are expressed in the opening verse: "Pintor nacido en mi
tierra / con el pincel extranjero" [Artist born on my land / holding the foreign brush]. The potential impact of this song on
race relations throughout Latin America is evident in the fact that even the Argentine Libertad Lamarque popularized it as
the theme song for a movie of the same title.
Mirta Silva, on the other hand, began her career in the 1930s in Harlem, where she began composing songs when she was
sixteen. She recorded in New York and was a member of Grupo Victoria, directed by Rafael Hernndez, whose many
compositions she also interpreted and recorded.
Page 177

It is believed that she composed more than one thousand songs, although most music journalists stress the fact that "she
interpreted guarachas and composed boleros." This emphasis signifies a naturalized dichotomy between the genre of the
guaracha as a nonfemale text and the bolero as the quintessential expression of sentimentality and thus
femaleness. 8 Notwithstanding these discursive associations that have framed women's contributions to popular music,
Mirta Silva irreverently contested the particular image of the sentimental female. In the 1950s she hosted and produced a
TV musical program, "Una hora con nosotros," which featured the contemporary musicians and artists with whom she
shared the stage. She appeared in radio shows and frequently traveled to New York to perform for the Puerto Rican
community. In 1953, for instance, she performed alongside Felipe Rodrguez in New York, and in 1957 she appeared with
Lucho Gatica and others in the Teatro Metropolitan.

The publicity for these shows reveals another aspect of Mirta's public persona, one that was constructed by popular
epithets. She was warmly known as La Gorda de Oro (The Golden Fat Woman) because of her weight and large body
structure; La Bomba Atmica Puertorriquea (the Puerto Rican Atomic Bomb) was also deployed to advertise her
performances as well as La Vedette Que Arrolla (The Sweeping Vedette).9 All these epithets play on her body size (gorda,
which translates into a potential and explosive, subversive power of her performances; bomba; andarrolla), her comedy, and
her singing. This combination of physical presence and performance style created a unique effect for her audiences. Mirta
Silva was not the sensual, sleek vedette that Latin America saw in Tongolele, nor was she a motherly, tender figure. Through
her irreverent humor, singing style, and physical overendowment, she self-parodically subverted popular expectations of
the delicate, fragile, and even sexy female singer. Although matronly, she was not at all a maternal figure but rather more
of an androgynous image on television, her body and voice a social space of conflicting gender expectations.

Among this group of women singers, La Lupe represents, for me, the most feminist and radical as a performer of Afro-
Caribbean music. Born Lupe Victoria Yoli in Santiago, Cuba, the young Lupe worked as a teacher and also sang as member
of a trio called Los Tropicuba.10 Interestingly, critics writing about this early period of her career have chosen to stress the
ways in which her musical performances radically departed from the expected behaviors for a female singer. It has been
said that her then-husband, also a member of Los Tropicuba, commented after her first performance that he "thought she
was having an epileptic fit,"11 a parodic comment that indicates the transgressive style that has characterized her singing
and stage
Page 178

presence since those beginnings. She was indeed fired from the trio, and she did indeed divorce her first husband. She then
went on to sing in La Red, a club where she polarized the audience into those who were "addicted" to La Lupe and those
others who could not stand her. 12 Most revealing, however, is the possible symbolic value that her defiant and unique style
of body movements and gestures posed during the late 1950s, when Cuban society was experiencing its transition into
socialism:

. . . adems de que es una inteligente y sensible cantante, cuando quiere, hace en pblico lo que inconscientemente
casi toda Cuba tiene ganas de hacer en aquellos momentos: gritar, llorar, araarse, morderse, quitarse los zapatos,
decir malas palabras, en fin romper de alguna forma la terrible tensin que la transicin de revolucin a socialismo
exige da a da y hora a hora, de cada ciudadano. La Lupe es un espejo de los tiempos y como tal, triunfa, y un buen
da del ao 1961 se va tambin de Cuba

[ . . . besides being an intelligent and sensible singer, when she wants, she achieves in public what almost all of
Cuba unconsciously felt like doing at that time: screaming, crying, scratching and biting themselves, taking off their
shoes, swearing, that is, releasing in some way the terrible tension that the transition from the revolution into
socialism had demanded day by day, hour by hour, from each citizen. La Lupe is a mirror of those times and as
such, she triumphs, and one day in 1961 she also leaves Cuba].13

If musicologist Daz Ayala explains her success in the cathartic role she may have played in Cuba during the beginnings of
socialism, Csar Miguel Rondn defines her role in Afro-Caribbean music as the singer who made Tite Curet Alonso's
compositions famous. Thus, La Lupe's value can be defined only in relation to male musicians, in this case, the Puerto Rican
composer of salsa, Catalino "Tite" Curet Alonso, whose "La Tirana" (The tyrant woman) became equated with La Lupe as
its interpreter.14 According to Rondn, ''a partir de 'La Tirana,' Curet Alonso se convertira en el ms extraordinario de
todos los cantores de la circunstancia amorosa en el mundo de la salsa" [after "La Tirana," Curet Alonso would become the
most extraordinary of all singers (composers) of love in the world of salsa].15 This is yet another instance of the strategies
of gender exclusion exerted by otherwise progressive critics and writers.

Nevertheless, Rondn also recognizes the historical importance of La Lupe in the initial stages of the development of salsa
as a musical tradition in New York. Indeed, her particular and unique style of singing, her voice, "gritona, desordenada y
falta de respeto" [screaming, disorderly, and disrespectful], marked the emerging differentiations between traditional
Cuban music and the new sound of New York salsa. La Lupe embodied and voiced the "otro elemento, el del canto
marginal, hiriente, algo descuidado, lleno de esas maas y esos trucos que jams soport el ortodoxo del canto
Page 179

caribe" [other element, that of the marginal song, wounded, somehow disheveled, full of tricks and habits that the orthodox
Caribbean song never assumed]. 16 She represents the bridge between the big band sound and the barrio, inscribing in her
performances as well as in her modulations that "grito de guerra" that salsa has represented as the music of marginalized
sectors.17

Despite her genealogical importance in salsa, La Lupe (also known as La Yiyiyi) found herself by the 1970s on the margins
of this already emerging salsa industry. Rondn explains this invisibility as a result of the fact that her role in that transition
had already taken place,18 confirming a patriarchal assumption that women's role in music is to pave the way for male
singers. It is essential, however, to indicate that the galvanizing force of the male presence in the development of salsa as a
musical tradition and its insertion into the music industry must have had tremendous repercussions in La Lupe's own
trajectory as a salsa singer. The systematic ways in which La Lupe has been constructed as a singer in relation to a man to
Tite Curet Alonso and particularly to Tito Puente, with whom she recorded and sang are quite evident in our perusal of
reviews, histories of salsa, and newspaper clippings. Unlike Celia Cruz, whose musical success has multiplied in the United
States as a symbol of the transnational latinization of this country, when La Lupe died in 1992 at the age of fifty-three, she
was virtually ignored by her past audiences. After her career dwindled in the 1970s, she moved to Puerto Rico and later
returned to New York, where she experienced a series of personal tragedies and later became an active Christian. While
her obituary note in the New York Times traces and details the personal tragedies that beset La Lupe until her death in 1992,
there is no acknowledgment of the feminist impact of her lyrics on salsa music nor of the subversive, radical performances
of this woman who, ironically, gave voice to the urban, warlike, and male-gendered modulations of salsa.

Theatrical scripts and dramatic performances already are recovering La Lupe's life and work, signals of Puerto Rican and
feminist attempts to recover untold history.19 Yet it is also important to examine how, in fact, some of her key songs
contributed to a female subjectivity that differed radically from the binarisms and dualistic discourses that have prevailed
in salsa music concerning heterosexual relations. If "La Tirana" is the textual product of a male composer, it nevertheless
describes the persona of a woman who sings to a man, contesting historically negative textualizations of the feminine. The
song begins by underlining the perspective that informs these social constructs via an irony masterfully uttered in the
sarcastic smirks and laughter that La Lupe interjects at precise instances:
Page 180

La Lupe: En Algo Nuevo was released in 1980 by Msica Latina International. It

includes"Soul Salsa," in which La Lupe raps in Spanish. Photo courtesy of
Vctor Gallo and Sonido Inc.

Segn tu punto de vista

Yo soy la mala. [According to your point of view
I am the wicked one. I am the wicked one.
Vampiresa en m novela A vampiress in your novel
La gran tirana. 20 The great tyrant.]

The deconstructive stance, already at play in the first line, suggests that the equation woman equals evil is a construct
motivated by the man's subjective point of view, by his situatedness. This bolero continues to reflect on and develop the
centrality of perspective in social interaction, thus proposing an ironic reading and tone to the reiterative refrains: "Segn
tu punto de vista / Yo soy la mala / La que te lleg hasta d alma / La gran tirana" [According to your point of view / I am
the wicked one / The one who penetrated your soul / The great tyrant]. While the antagonic discourse of love is ever
present in this song "el da en que te dej / fui yo
Page 181

quien sal ganando" [the day I left you / I won the battle], a line to which the crescendo effect reaffirms the strength and
power of the woman's victory the text ultimately proposes a deconstructive reading of gender constructs, a feminist and
progressive stance that is consistent with Tite Curet Alonso's other salsa compositions. 21

Presenting reality as subjective perception rather than as a rationally based, monologic representation, "Puro teatro" (Pure
drama), also composed by Curer Alonso, became one of La Lupe's most popular hits.22 Indeed, many of us may remember
this song as the closing musical number in Pedro Almodvar's film, Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the
verge of a nervous breakdown), not an arbitrary selection given precisely the poetics of parody and performance that both
the film and the song articulate. The well-known opening line of the refrain "Teatro . . . lo tuyo es puro teatro" [Drama . . .
you are pure drama] may have spoken to many women listeners who have deployed similar tactics in their affective
interactions with cheating men. If life is a stage, as the first line of the song proposes, the woman subject reasserts her
own des-engao (disillusion) regarding her man's performative strategies to keep her from knowing the truth about him.
Thus, the song suggests that the man does not have to resort to drama, to perform, since he is the embodiment of a
performance all lies and drama, a shifting signifier that the woman cannot read. She speaks of his "dolor barato" [cheap
pain] and how lying is the perfect role for the man, since, after all, "esa es tu forma de ser'' [that is your way of being]. By
blurring the boundaries between performance and personality, the woman singer dismantles, as Ana Lydia Vega and
Carmen Lugo Filippi do in their story, the performative tactics of men that assure them a power differential in their affective
relationships with women.

That the woman is well aware of these performances is clear from the beginning of the song: "Ya conozco ese teatro,"
"Mentiste serenamente / Y el teln cay por eso;" "Perdona que no te crea / Me parece que es teatro" ["I already know that
drama," / "You serenely lied / And thus the curtain fell," / "Forgive me for not believing you / I believe it is all drama"].
The text's deconstructive process becomes doubled within the tradition of intertextuality that has characterized salsa music.
In "Puro teatro," La Lupe refers to her own songs. In indicting the male for his lies, she reminds him by speaking with a
highly charged sarcasm, "Y acurdate que segn tu punto de vista yo soy la mala" [and remember that according to your
point of view, I am the evil one], referring the audience to her other hit, "La tirana." Coupled with the nondiscursive yet
highly emotional interjections and gestures characteristic of her style, these types of seemingly marginal utterances are
central to the reading and signifying processes that the song
Page 182

provokes. Indeed, it is in the performance aspects of La Lupe's singing, not merely in the text, that a different female
subjectivity is presented and simultaneously articulated. Throughout her career, La Lupe defied gender stereotypes and
expectations. Onstage, she would take off her shoes and would throw them at the audience, she would play with the
boundaries of so-called decency and indecency in her body movements, she would dress "to kill" with an accentuated style
of makeup usually associated with "putas," and she would voice the physical sounds of sexual desire and erotic energy
through the moans and groans invested with the sexual politics of the private and the public. It is in this radical and
aggressive performance that we can fully understand and locate the transgressive and radical importance of La Lupe in the
process of ascribing gender in salsa music.

In fact, while it is true that Curet Alonso's texts do not articulate the misogyny and patriarchal discourse that other salsa
songs may exhibit, it is in one of La Lupe's own compositions in which one finds one of her most transgressive performances
(at least aurally). In "Canta bajo," 23 she combines English and Spanish to articulate erotic desire and sexually explicit
gestures through a dialogue with the bass instrument. While she begins urging the bass to sing for her, she augments the
degree of explicitness of her desire by alluding to touching the bass and putting her fingers in it. This quite particular song
is, again, accompanied by moans, kisses, and oral gestures that create a very erotic and highly suggestive experience for
the audience.

In view of her marginalization from the salsa industry, La Lupe asserted her authority as a central voice in the making of
salsa as Latina/o music. In another of her original cuts, "Duea del cantar," the Cuban singer wastes no time acknowledging
the centrality of her figure and voice in salsa.24 In the world of el sabor, that is, of salsa music, she is the owner of salsa, she
asserts. Utilizing poetic enumeration, La Lupe reasserts the centrality, ownership, and authority that the industry itself
failed to recognize and capitalize on. It is ironic or perhaps consciously orchestrated that in the opening commentaries to
the song, La Lupe reminds listeners that "estamos en la familia de Masucci," thus explaining her own location as a member
of one of Fania's "family" of major salsa interpreters and instrumentalists. Thus, the song can be read as an oppositional
response to that particular economic relationship with Fania that eventually pushed La Lupe out of circulation as a major
salsa star. When she sings that she is the voice and the owner of song, and the chorus repeats ''duea del cantar" to her in
the son montuno section, she is in fact symbolically asserting the right of women singers and of female voices to be equally
heard and integrated into the salsa canon.
Page 183

Much like the unacknowledged economic contributions of women's domestic work and mothering, La Lupe's style of
singing, her repertoires, her performances, and her presence have been sorely neglected by the industry and critics alike.
That she transgressively eroticized herself as a feminist act of resistance possibly remains one of the most central
motivations behind the masculine silencing to which she was subjected.

Page 185

PART FOUR
AS SOMOS, AS SON:
REWRITING SALSA

Page 187

Listening to the Listeners:

An Introduction

As son, as son las mujeres. As son, as son cuando se quieren.

[Such, such are women. Such are women when we love them.]
El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico,"As son"

As somos. Somos atrevidas, ya no somos tan cohibidas, tan dejadas.

Ahora ya hacemos lo que queremos . . . podemos dejar a los hombres.
[Such are we. We women are daring, we are no longer inhibited, submissive.
Now we do what we want . . . we can leave men.]
A Latina after listening to "As son"

El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, the very institution of salsa music [la institucin de la salsa] as a Puerto Rican man reminded
me, released their record album entitled "Aqu no se sienta nadie" in 1979. 1 Out of the hundreds of albums they have
recorded in their thirty years of existence, this particular record, released during the group's golden age, contained many
songs that would mark their privileged role in molding the salsa canon. Cuts such as "Brujera," "Ms feo que yo,'' and "As
son" became musical staples in everyday life on the island during the late 1970s and early 1980s. These songs were played
on the radio and "en las patronales yen fiestas y en vivo" [at the patron saints' festivities, at parties and at live concerts].2 As
one young Puerto Rican man observed, "todos los nmeros de ese disco pegaron, todo el mundo los cantaba, en la radio
todava se escuchan de vez en cuando" [all the songs became hits, everybody sang them, still today we can listen to them
on the radio]. Moreover, he insisted that "cualquier cosa. que esta gente toque le gusta a la gente" [whatever El Gran Combo
would play, people would love it].
El Gran Combo's tremendous popularity, evidenced in the pervasive social circulation of their songs, is particularly
illustrated in the cuts from
Page 188

Aqu no se sienta nadie. "As son" serves as an ideal case study of the articulation between the local and the transnational,
marking the shifts through which popular culture the aural, the visual, and mass media have become the central markers
of cultural literacy in Latin America. As Jean Franco has noted, in these times of postmodernist globalization, "the small
scale and the local are the places of greatest intensity." 3

"As son" embodies the processes of signifying, the semiotic circulation and the multidirectional flow of signifieds that
characterize the life story of any cultural text. The song was an immediate hit after its release; both men and women have
sung its lyrics and danced to its rhythms and musical arrangements. The open-ended nature of its refrain as son has
allowed multiple interpretations to be constructed throughout the years and across diverse interpretive communities
within Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Indeed, the phrase "as son," although uttered and developed throughout the song as
a male diatribe against women, was appropriated by Puerto Rican feminist writers Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo
Filippi in their short story "Cuatro selecciones por una peseta" as a vindictive parody of men as listeners and consumers of
popular music.

From a different structural location, across the stage perhaps, Latinas who are active listeners and consumers of salsa music
continuously rewrite patriarchal and misogynist salsa texts. They engage in "productive pleasure," which allows them as
culturally bound receptors the opportunity to produce meanings and significations that are relevant to their everyday
lives.4 As the second epigraph of this section shows, a cultural text like "As son" does not embody semantic closure, nor is
it limited to its gendered genesis. Rather, it becomes, by means of its circulation across plural contexts, a cultural text that
triggers diverse and even contradictory and conflicting meanings in and among its receptors.

Many scholarly readings of popular music silence listeners by assuming how they will or will not react, and in doing so,
they impose on the "masses" the most "correct" or "liberatory" interpretations of cultural texts. In contrast, my intent here
is to integrate the voices of Latinas and Latinos in a collage of significations, memories, desires, disagreements, affect, and
pleasures what Lawrence Grossberg has termed ''affective economies"5 that partly constitute the cultural and gender
semiotic space of salsa music. As a recent incursion into audience research suggests, "any critical theory of audiences within
democracy must address the monopolization of communications and the cultural strategies necessary to ensure audiences
the right to move from being listeners to being speakers."6 Indeed, this silencing of the so-called masses still characterizes
most analyses of popular culture, even some framed under a cultural studies rubric.
Page 189

Moreover, female desire and will within the terrain of salsa music are multiply repressed by scholarship (as well as by
other institutions) as they emerge from the masses, from women, and in this case, from a subordinate cultural minority in
the United States, Latinas. Scholars such as Andreas Huyssen assume that the "gendering of mass culture as feminine and
inferior," a social, political, and aesthetic project that originated in the late nineteenth century, has become obsolete with
the decline of modernism and with the increasingly "visible and public presence of women artists in high art, as well as the
emergence of new kinds of women performers and producers in mass culture." 7 In reality, the public presence of Latinas
in salsa has been minimal, their voices, meanings, and impact on cultural thought marginalized at best. This silencing and
systematic erasure pertains not only to performers, who indeed enjoy a certain degree of visibility in the media, but mostly
to consumers, who are perhaps the most central subjects in the constellation of signifying agents that populate the locus of
meaning.8 It is not a coincidence, as Tania Modleski argues, that philosophers and thinkers have historically rendered the
masses feminine because of ''the mute acquiescence of the masses to the system the silence of the majority." lust as women
have been equated with a lack of articulation and language, the feminized masses have been located "outside of meaning,
outside of language and of representation."9 Doubling this historical phenomenon, scholarship has also trivialized the role
of popular music and popular culture, constructing the nature and texture of its texts as not sophisticated enough, too
simple, too facile. This "disgust at the facile" is analogous to societal aversion toward the social construct of the "easy
woman."10

With women and popular song lyrics, as signifiers, thus trivialized and reduced to univalent objects of consumerism, salsa
songs are multiply precluded from assuming a major role as oppositional cultural and social voices. Condescending
attitudes toward popular music and the concomitant superficial readings of it are signs of the persistence of the modernist
"great divide" between high art and mass culture. Moreover, this trivializing actualizes class prejudices. By equating
popular music with "easy listening," elitist scholars undervalue the economic and cultural realities of the working class
from which this music arises. In these multilayered marginalizations, Latina listeners, particularly those from the working
class, remain muted not because they have nothing to say about salsa music (which they love and with Which many
identify as strongly as men do) but rather because of the elitist scholarly disdain that has not recognized the central role
that Latinas play in the longevity of this particular musical tradition.

In this light, Part Four strives to vindicate the everyday practice of lis-
Page 190

tening to salsa music as an active process of struggle over discourse and meaning. Within the context of Latina/o migration,
listening to salsa music becomes a reaffirmation of a minority culture within the United States, and as such it may inspire
a sense of stable identity and "home" for Latinas/os, however temporarily experienced. Salsa music as a sociocultural praxis
also serves to create a space in which to articulate conflicts, constructs, and attitudes toward gender and (hetero)sexual
relations. This multiplicity of roles, constantly shifting according to class, race, generation and age, migration, location,
values, and personal experiences that is, according to the listening subjects own positioning suggests that music as a
cultural text always already moves beyond its written signs and that, like the act of reading, it can never be listened to twice
in the same manner. To judge salsa music only from the point of view of gender politics, that is, to reject it as msica
machista (sexist music) is to ignore the complex semiotic directions that any musical text may travel and thus embody. It
also assumes that Latinas are passive listeners or compliant consumers of the music, an Adornian-constructed audience
that placidly accepts these antifemale messages. The ethnographic work in the following chapters tells a very different
story, even a story about differentiating as a social act. It illustrates the very real role of women as "cultural producers"
insofar as they activate the "circulation of meanings" that constitutes popular music as cultural praxis.
Page 191

Chapter Eleven
As Son:
Constructing Woman

The male-centered discourse of the song "As son" originates from the conjunction of two musical traditions: the bolero and
the salsa. As in the bolero, in many salsa songs the woman's absence functions as the pretext for the expression of man's
desire. 1 El Gran Combo's song, "As son," clearly fits within this discursive tradition:

Tintineo de copas, chocar de besos

humo de cigarrillos en el saln
El Gran Combo que toca sus melodas
y gente que se embriaga con whisky y ron.

Yo que me desvelo por tu cario

T que me desprecias, ay, sin compasin.
Andas como una loca por las cantinas
Brindando a todo d mundo tu corazn.

Coro: As son, as son las mujeres

As son, as son cuando se quieren.

T me dejaste a m
Pero pensando que yo era pobre
Y te pasas por ah
pero cambiando oro por cobre.

Coro: As son, as son las mujeres

As son, as son cuando se quieren.

Alc mi copa de vino

Para brindar por tu ausencia
 S que nunca me quisiste
y ya qued amor, ya no tiene esencia.

Coro: As son, as son las mujeres

As son, as son cuando se quieren.

Pero eso mira yo no creo ms en quereres

por eso mira no te quiero que mira Mara Mercedes, no no no
Pero cuando se quiere de veras, seor,

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Mira yo quiero quererte, pero que ahora a mi manera

Pero que mira, pero que a m me pasa lo mismo que a lasted
Pero que mira cmo son, que mira cmo son. . . .

Coro: As son, as son las mujeres

As son, as son cuando se quieren.

[Cups clinking and the sounds of kissing

cigarrette smoke inside the room
El Gran Combo playing its songs
and people getting drunk on whisky and rum.

I am sleepless for your love

You reject me, mercilessly
You go around the bars like a fool
Offering your love to all.

(Chorus): That's the way, that's the way women are

that's the way they are when we love them.

You abandoned me
thinking that I was poor
 and now you go around
exchanging gold for copper;
(Chorus)

I raised my cup of wine

to toast to your absence
I know you never loved me
since love has no essence
(Chorus)

That is why, look, I don't believe anymore in loves

that is why, look, I don't love you, look, Maria Mercedes, no no no,
For when one really loves,
Look, I want to love you, but my way now
But look, I'm going through the same as you
But look at the way they are, look at the way they are. . . .
(Chorus)]

The song's opening references to drinking, music, and sexuality occur within the male locus of a bar or nightclub, a space
in which the male singer/subject can cathartically enunciate his accusations against "his" woman, who has left him and is
acting loca (crazy), offering her love to others. Moreover, the metatextual allusion in the first stanza to El Gran Combo itself
"playing their songs" underlines the masculinity of the singing space as well as of the songs lyrics and voice. The space of
the nightclub is framed by a marginal hypersensuality in which women can participate only as "prostitutes," "offering
[their] love to all." Not coincidentally, this is the same figuration accorded by the male singer to his exlover. Thus, the man's
first characterization of the woman he loves is a negative one; she is a traitor to his love, whereas he is her victim. The
syntactic
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contiguity between the reference to drinking and the male singer's suffering after having been abandoned signals, again,
the multiple cathartic functions of the various textual spaces evoked: the nightclub, the acts of drinking and singing, and
the song itself. The first stanza implicitly refers its listeners to the figure of the bandolera. The economics of love once more
become the male rationale for female abandonment. In the eyes of the male singer it is obvious that she left him "thinking
that [he] was poor," but ironically, she has gone on to other men of less financial resources ("pero cambiando oro por cobre").

This affective ambiguity appears in the final stanza of the song as well as in the montuno section, the improvisatory verses
in which the singer culls previous bolero verses "a m me pasa lo mismo que a usted" [I suffer like you] to inform the
present text. While the singer expresses cynicism toward love and relationships, he still insists that there is a real way of
loving, that it is possible to have an ideal, productive relationship, although that ideal is molded and defined "his way,"
which is also clearly articulated in Willie Coln's "Cuando fuiste mujer." In light of his failure to maintain his will,
the montuno closes with the reiteration of the chorus line, that openended utterance that allows listeners to construct "the
way women are."

A Literary Rewriting

The refrain to "As son" is the epigraph and subtext to Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo Filippi's short story "Cuatro
selecciones por una peseta." 2 The story's ironic subtitle identifies the bolero as the subtext to both "As Son" and the story
itself: "Bolero a dos votes para machos en pena, una sentida interpretacin del do Scaldada-Cuervo" [Bolero in two voices
for suffering males, a sincere interpretation by the duo Scaldada-Cuervo]. While this statement takes its rhetoric from the
bolero tradition, it also subverts the rhetoric by using it to contest that tradition. The ''two voices" allude to the collective
authorship of Vega and Filippi, as well as to the opposition between male and female voices. The reader is introduced to
two female writing subjects who speak and who speak doubly. On one level the story is about four Puerto Rican men,
Eddie, Angelito, Monchn, and Puruco, who meet at a bar to express their anger at the women who have either abandoned
or betrayed them. On another, the "sentida interpretacin" [sincere interpretation] of the subtitle suggests a hidden
perspective, a double talk through which the reader is alerted to alternative meanings and subversive interpretive
strategies. Sentida would be literally translated as "felt" and only derivatively as "sincere," "honest," or "sentimental."
However, it is clearly related to estar sentido (to be hurt or angry),
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a phrase that at first glance would seem to apply exclusively to the male protagonists. Yet in the context of a piece of writing
by two female subjects, this phrase suggests an angry or spiteful motivation for the writing itself. We could thus read the
subtitle and the story as an expression of vindictiveness toward men or at least as an attempt by these authors to see and
define men from a woman-centered perspective.

The "four selections" correspond to the diatribes uttered by the four protagonists against "their" women as well as to the
songs they select on the jukebox. A closer analysis reveals, however, that the men's words and the songs' lyrics continually
contaminate each other. The men do not always speak in their own words but sometimes in those of song lyrics like the
famous Latin American bolero "Usted" by Gabriel Ruiz "Usted es la culpable de todas mis angustias, de todos mis
quebrantos" [You are to blame for all of my suffering, for all of my pain] in addition to lyrics from salsa, tangos, and
rancheras. Notably, all of these musical genres articulate a patriarchal ideology in which women acquire value as women
only when they love a man or allow themselves to be loved by a man. As El Gran Combo repeatedly sings in "As son:''
"Qu buenas son las mujeres, qu buenas son cuando quieren," which doubly translates to "women are so good, so good
when they want to" as well as to "women are so good, so good when they love [you]." Its corollary, "Qu buenas son cuando
se quieren" [Women are so good when you love them], clearly reaffirms the hegemonic masculine definition of a woman's
value contingent on her affective relational position to the male.

The words men use to construct women are the semantic and ideological link between the popular songs quoted in the
short story and the quejas (complaints) of the story's four male protagonists. Eddie wanted his wife to be a nurse/slave to
his mother; when she left the house for an hour, he beat her up. Because Monchn allowed his wife to go out to work, he
"lost" her to unions and politics. Puruco was sensitive enough not to go out to bars frequently but instead had his friends
over every night and expected his wife to serve him dinner and to wait on his friends. As for Angelito, well, he never
married at all. Their misogynist diatribes reflect a discrepancy between male perceptions of women's roles and how their
wives may have perceived themselves (not explicitly present in the story but suggested in their decisions to leave). These
men were threatened not by so-called inherent female traits but by the economic and emotional independence that these
women were gaining through work or through the consciousness of their own conditions as women within an abusive
marriage.

Is this short story and the popular music it draws on, a realistic gauge of social reality in Puerto Rico? According to statistics,
Puerto Rican women
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are abandoning men. During the 1980s, almost 50 percent of marriages ended in divorce. This rate is rising, not always
because women are being unfaithful or treacherous, as the songs suggest, but because they are no longer tolerating men's
double standards. While 71.6 percent of divorces in Puerto Rico have been filed by women, 41.9 percent of divorced women
interviewed in a study revealed that they had petitioned for divorce because of their husbands' extreme authoritarianism
or infidelities. 3 Thus, it would not be unfounded to argue that one of the strategies of gender discourse in salsa is to invert
reality, turning it upside down and accusing women of men's resistance to adapt to women's changing social roles. As a
group, Puruco, Monchn, Eddie, and Angelito constitute a symbolic microcosm of Puerto Rican men's entrenchment in
traditional gender roles within the context of social change.

The four diatribes of these men may be read as textualized forms of "productive pleasure." Their respective quejas are
interspersed with snatches of lyrics from salsa, boleros, tangos, and rancheras: "Qu buenas son las mujeres qu buena [sic]
son cuando quieren"; "Tuuuuu, slo tuuuu"; "Usted es la culpable de todas mis angustias."4 References to tangos and
rancheras complete the repertoire of patriarchal lyrics: ''no hav como un tango pa olvidal" [there is nothing like a tango to
help me forget] and "Los acordes de una ranchera matahembra sobrepoblaron el aire" [the chords of a female-killer rancher
overpopulated the air].5 Such song lyrics and musical references offer these four working-class Puerto Rican males a form
of catharsis and a patriarchal paradigm with which to reconstruct and give meaning to their own life experiences. The men
actually produce meanings from the songs but only from those lyrics that are relevant to their position as men who have
been abandoned by their wives or lovers. In "Cuatro selecciones por una peseta," the four characters iconize a gendered
interpretive community constituted by working-class Puerto Rican males who listen to certain popular songs that reaffirm
and naturalize their socially mandated masculine behavior.

Viewed in this light, Latin popular music serves as a code or a language for those who lack one. Eddie, Angelito, Monchn,
and Puruco consistently depend on the codes of popular music to define their otherwise repressed affective experiences as
well as to construct women in relation to their feelings. As mass media products, these lyrics (in this case, disseminated by
the vellonera), provide the men with a language for catharsis, for expressing and relieving their emotions. As "emotional
type listeners," they react to sentimental music by attaining a "temporary . . . awareness that [they] have missed fulfillment."
This music "permits its listeners the confession of their unhappiness," yet their catharsis is illusory. The music is not
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truly liberating since it actually "reconciles them by means of this release, to their social dependence." 6 Ironically, the
emotional type of listener believes that he or she is escaping an unhappy reality by means of this music, as in the story's
last line: "No hay como un tango pa olvidar" [there is nothing like a tango to help me forget].7 However, these listeners are
participating in a pattern of social dependence by indiscriminately accepting this musical discourse as personally relevant.
While they may pose as authors of their own gender discourse, these four men are, as the story seems to suggest through
an Adornian stance, passive receptors who internalize and mimic these ideological messages. Their position may, in fact,
be read as analogous to the colonial situation of Puerto Rico, in which U.S. capitalist hegemony continues to control mass
media programming and advertising,8

Through irony, parody, and strategies of inversion, "Cuatro selecciones por una peseta" dismantles the constructions of
women in Latin popular music, particularly in salsa. Here, the representation of the feminine as absence, as in Willie Coln's
"Cuando fuiste mujer," becomes superimposed on a representation of the Puerto Rican male as one who lacks a language
of his own and the necessary cultural and gender codes to deal with his repressed emotions: "Cuando call Jaramillo el
silencio era un bache de lgrimas machamente contenidas" [When Jaramillo stopped talking, silence was a puddle of tears
restrained in a macho way].9 In addition, the story's ironic positioning of these four men inversely reconstructs the
discursive image of the muted, passive masses as masculine rather than feminine. The double discourse of the title further
suggests that the ''selecciones" to be listened to, or consumed, are not only the musical ones but the four men's diatribes.
The cumulative effect of the ironic, tongue-in-cheek tone of the feminist narrative voice and the parodic distortions of male
discourse at the level of the signifier, indicate that this short story is not about women, as the epigraph seems to suggest,
but ironically about men. By the end of the story, the reader has gathered that (1) Eddie, Puruco, Monchn, and Angelito
have been unfaithful to their wives and/or are still dependent on their mothers, (2) are not politically savvy, and (3) are
quite nave about each other as friends. "As son, as son los hombres cuando no los quieren" [such, such are men when
they are not loved] summarizes what the story is really all about: two women writers (and readers) deconstructing male
discourse and behavior.

Toward a Feminist Politics of Listening

A traditional incursion into music and literature would have ended here. Yet after examining Vega and Filippi's story,
many questions and contradic-
Page 197

tions remain regarding the complex dialectics of ideology and pleasure that this particular song, and salsa as a sociocultural
practice, bring to the foreground. For instance, where are the feminist listeners in salsa music? Why do Latina listeners like
Vega and Filippi, and I, enjoy salsa as much as we despise and oppose its misogyny and patriarchal constructs of women?
Are those of us Latinas who are consumers of salsa "to be regarded as aberrant 'feminine' readers or participants in
'masculine' culture," to quote Cathy Swichtenberger, because of our complicity and participation in a misogynist and
patriarchal cultural production? 10 Can this "consumption of even 'incorrect' content have a progressive political effect at
some level, under some circumstances, to some end," as Wahneema Lubiano also proposes?11 How do Latinas in various
class locations listen to salsa, and what does this music mean in their lives? How does salsa acquire meaning for Latinas in
the United States, and how is gender dissonance negotiated vis--vis salsa's central role as a marker of culture within our
postcolonial conditions?

Wary of essentializing gender as opposing difference, I am not so much interested in contrasting women's listening
practices against men's. However, a larger view of the complexities of the listening process is possible when the
ethnographic work embraces a diversity of socially and genderlocated subjects. Thus, interviews with Latino men, while
not as extensive as those with women, have helped to identify certain differences in listening to two songs "Cuando fuiste
mujer" and "As son" differences that I hope will not lead to generalizations about both men and women but will indicate
divergent approaches to these songs and to salsa in particular. To examine the (hetero)sexual politics of salsa, the ways in
which the "discourses which comprise it reproduce a struggle equivalent to that experienced socially by its readers,"12 we
must consider the dialogic textures and cross-disciplinary spaces of feminist responses to the masculine monologism of
most of these lyrics. Simultaneously, we must consider the ways in which many Latinas/os may reaffirm the gender
politics, the power differentials between men and women, that the songs themselves enunciate.

Ethnographic interviews with eighteen Latinas and eight Latinos in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, reveal the active
role of both men and women listeners in giving meaning to salsa.13These interviews clearly show that despite the minimal
participation of Latinas in the music industry, Latinas, as a specific audience, have learned to appropriate this masculinist
music for various purposes in their own lives. The sense of "productive pleasure" that they enjoy as a result of their listening
practices allows them to invest salsa with liberatory meanings for them as workingclass women or as women of color. It
allows Latinas to negotiate power differentials with the men in their lives, whether they come from upper-
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class professional families or from a working-class background. In addition, Puerto Rican men who have grown up on the
island clearly articulated a high level of literacy about the music, the groups and interpreters, and the historical evolution
of salsa that was absent in the women's responses. For instance, they commented on specific musical arrangements,
rhythms, instrumentation, the historical impact of certain songs, and the development of salsa music. This suggests, in fact,
that Puerto Rican men identify at a higher degree with salsa music as a masculine tradition, as a musical repertoire that
mirrors their own experiences, their language, and their values and perceptions as men. It also reaffirms the greater access
to knowledge about the music industry itself, about thefarndula (singers and musicians), and about the processes of music
production that men tend to enjoy more than women do. In the words of a Puerto Rican male, growing up in Puerto Rico
meant playing the trombone and emulating the trombonist of El Gran Combo, among others, as his role model. For women,
this was hardly the case.

Of the eighteen women interviewed, nine were born in Puerto Rico; two in Mexico; one each in Colombia, El Salvador, and
Venezuela; two in Chicago; and one in Detroit. All, however, were raised in the United States or have spent more than five
years in this country Four Latinos were born in Puerto Rico, one in El Salvador, one in Colombia, and one in Venezuela.
Three of them have lived in the United States for more than five years. The others came to the United States within the past
three or four years to study. Besides the experience of migration, what is common to all of these Latinas and Latinos is that
they are familiar with salsa and have identified themselves as listeners and consumers of this music.

On the new bases of their social location and degree of engagement with salsa, I identified two groups among the women
interviewees: the University of Michigan (UM) group, which consisted of ten Latina students (two graduate students and
eight undergraduates) and the Detroit group (eight working-class Latinas). The UM group was definitely younger in
median age represented (twenty-one years), as opposed to the Detroit group's median age of thirty-five, a difference that
in some cases accounted for more literal readings of the songs on the part of the younger group. Five of the eighteen women
were married and thirteen single, an important factor that allows for a higher frequency of musical practices, particularly
going dancing, among the latter group.

Among the Latinos, the median age represented was twenty-nine. Four were single and three married. This group consisted
mostly of Puerto Rican and Latin American young men who have come to the United States to study. Only one respondent,
age fifty-one, was not a student.
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A clear division arises when looking at class variables among Latinas. While the UM group consisted of two students from
working-class backgrounds (the two graduate students), the other eight Latina students came from families with two
professional parents. These class differences, I argue, account for some clear contrasts in terms of their valoration of salsa,
that is, their acceptance or rejection of the songs that we played for them. Class divisions definitely informed the different
responses of these two groups to our question: Who is your favorite salsa group or singer? Four of eight working-class
women mentioned El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico as one of their favorite musical groups, or even the favorite, whereas
none of the UM group even mentioned this all-black, all-male band. Rubn Blades, Juan Luis Guerra, and Luis Enrique
competed for first place in the young UM women's hearts. While Rubn Blades was singled out for his political songs and
profound lyrics, both by upper-class Latinas and by many of the Latino respondents from various class origins, Juan Luis
Guerra was equally lauded for his "very poetic songs and [for being] very sexy" as well as for his "danceable rhythms."
However, the women in the Detroit group seemed to add more qualifters to their musical choices. As a Rubn Blades fan
said, "His songs are based on reality." And an Eddie Santiago fan added that although she liked his songs, she wasn't happy
with the images of women they portrayed. A fan of El Gran Combo immediately mentioned this group because its language
and words were very much what she had grown up with in Puerto Rico; she identified them as ''more folkloric."

I mention these examples to anticipate some very clear class divisions that emerged from the interviews more prominently
among the women than among the men, thus informing the degree with which working-class women feel much more
engaged in this music than do the UM students. These brief examples begin to point to a process of naturalizing song lyrics
that seems more prevalent among the younger upper-class Latinas. Their working-class counterparts told me that while
they may identify very closely with salsa music, this cultural identification does not preclude their critique of gender
representations. The UM group, as I will discuss later, also rejects the masculinist discourse of salsa but with very different
motivations.

For the Latinos interviewed, as a group, their position on salsa music seemed much stronger than that of the group of
Latinas. "La escuchar por siempre porque es parte de mi vida" [I will always listen to it because it is part of my life]
concluded a twenty-five-year-old puertorriqueo, not coincidentally the most musically literate of all interviewees. The
apparent omniscient presence of salsa in their lives also illustrates the higher degree
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of exposure, access, and participation of males in this musical culture: "As far back as I can remember, it was always there,"
commented another Puerto Rican young man. Some remembered listening to salsa since they were babies or since they
were quite young, either six or eight years old, at parties. One remembered first listening to salsa "on a bus in Cali" when
he was about seven years old, thus attesting to the prevalence of this music in everyday life and as an overarching cultural
signifier throughout public spaces. Another Puerto Rican man remembered becoming a salsa fan when he entered high
school, a case analogous to the Venezuelan student who entered this culture through school parties and dances as his
upperclass professional parents did not listen to salsa music in their home. Yet, as the following comment reaffirms, salsa
music was everywhere, permeating the lives, values, and emotions of men and women in Puerto Rico: "Salsa is part of the
culture; one grows up listening and dancing to salsa and merengue. If it's not playing on the radio, it plays on the neighbor's
radio; if not, somebody plays it on the streets, or it plays in the stores as part of their advertisement."

One twenty-eight-year-old puertorriqueo confessed becoming "addicted to this stuff" after he arrived in the United States.
Growing up in Puerto Rico he was more of a rockero, although he did listen to salsa with political content. When he
migrated to the United States as a student and met his present wife, he "started to miss the music" and began to buy it,
influenced by his wife's avid interest in salsa. While salsa was "ever present" in Puerto Rico and one could take it for granted
as it were, in the United States it was compelling for him to become a conscious consumer of this music in order to be able
to listen to it. On the island, inversely, he would listen to salsa in public spaces the beach festivals, las patronales, public
events and would "have to" buy tickets to attend rock concerts.

Most Latino men articulated "an ideology of authenticity" as fans of salsa music. Like rock fans who distinguish between
authentic and coopted rock music, these middle-class cocolos repeatedly constructed a difference between "good" and "bad"
salsa, which, in their words, refers to political, progressive songs, on the one hand, and commercial cuts on the
other. 14 While many of them included El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico as one of their favorite groups, this acknowledgment
was qualified by characterizing El Gran Combo as "fun," "graciosos,'' a humorous musical group whose "social" messages
were differently valued from the larger, more serious political messages of Rubn Blades or Willie Coln. These men
accentuated the revolutionary nature of Rubn Blades's lyrics because they find in his music "un llamado, una invitacin a
que escuches el mensaje" [a call, an exhortation to listen to the message]. In addition, for a Colombian male
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who used to be a rockero, Rubn Blades became the symbol of a Pan-Latino "internationalist latinoamericano message," his
repertoire speaking to the heterogeneous cultural locations of latinoamericanas/os as they become ethnified, become U.S.
Latinas/os.

Indeed, these observations among the men indicate a preference for Blades's anticolonial songs without rejecting El Gran
Combo's importance in popular culture. Indeed, the underlying dichotomy constructed by these men is not so much based
on class or race identities, as it is among the women, but rather on the diverse modes of listening that these different
repertoires trigger in the consumers. It was interesting that the men identified two types of salsa music: first, danceable
music; then, songs for listening. El Gran Combo's repertoire has been systematically categorized as danceable music, and
thus the listening quotient has been reduced. Consequently, the lyrics of their songs are "lost" or diluted by the listening
context in which they are played. Blades's songs, on the other hand, exhort the listeners to pay attention to the words of the
song, to the "message," as much as to the musical arrangements, the rhythms, and the harmonies. While historically Blades
vindicated and enhanced the literary quality of salsa songs, it is not arbitrary to state that El Gran Combo's repertoire has
been trivialized as entertainment, as light music to be danced to but not taken seriously. Perhaps this reveals not so much
an inherent inferior value in their songs and music, as Randel attempts to convince us, but rather a class and racial
displacement by which the black working-class group constitutes the buffoon figure, the comic role that is merely
entertaining and does not need to be taken seriously. Scholarship, however, should address the need to document not only
the historical development of salsa music through El Gran Combo's musical repertoire but also the social changes in Puerto
Rico that are definitely articulated in their lyrics.

While most of the women from both groups first listened to salsa as young children or adolescents, the working-class
women very clearly traced their first memories of salsa to their mothers. One woman observed the following:

Yo me recuerdo que nosotros visitbamos mucho a la familia y ellos eran mayores, y la ponan y entonces yo la
escuchaba . . . la oa tambin y me gust. Pero no me recuerdo . . . tena que ser desde que era bien chiquita . . . como
desde que era baby. La escuch desde que nac. S, la escucho mucho, todas las maanas, en mi casa, es que como
mi mam lo pone al amanecer de Dios, yo lo escucho. Y . . . s, a mi mam le gusta mucho la salsa.

[I remember that we often used to visit our relatives and they were older and they would play it and thus I would
hear it. I would also listen to it and I liked it. But I don't remember . . . it must have been when I was real little . . .
like since I was a baby. I listened to it since I was born. Yes, I listen to it often, every morning in my
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house; since my mother plays it in the early mornings, I listen to it. And . . . yes, my mother likes salsa very much.]

Another woman recalled how she and her family would drive to church listening to salsa music in the car. "My mother,"
she added, was a "vieja salsera" [an old female salsa fan]. A third woman also associated salsa with her mother, as she
remembered that although she was not allowed to go to dances, her mother transmitted her love of salsa to her: "S, mis
padres eran muy estrictos. No haba razones religiosas envueltas . . . mi mam, le voy a decir: mi mam ella siempre cuando
cocinaba se poma a bailar. Siempre estaba cocinando y bailando y cocinando y bailando. Yeah! I know, like you say, that
when you are having kids waiting for you . . . it is the only way to survive" [Yes, my parents were very strict. Not for
religious reasons . . . my mother, I'll tell you: whenever my mother was cooking, she would always start to dance. She was
always cooking and dancing and cooking and dancing]. These voices reaffirm the central importance that mothers have in
the passing on of cultural and national traditions. They simultaneously reveal, however, that a male-produced, strident
urban music such as salsa can function as a source of relief and catharsis for housewives and mothers. Salsa is distraction,
entertainment, escape, but it has also been appropriated as a tool of survival for many Latinas confined to housework and
child rearing. Indeed, an interviewee once mentioned that the fast rhythms of salsa were a wonderful way to get her in the
mood to clean her house.

While the university women also began to listen to salsa at a relatively young age, none of them associated the music
specifically with their mothers, a significant difference that marks a particular identification with salsa as a racially and
class-marked cultural possession. While 60 percent (6 of 10) of the UM group responded that they had first listened to salsa
in preadolescence and adolescence (possibly by attending social events and dances and as participants in youth culture),
three other women mentioned that they had been initiated as salsa listeners during early childhood; one non-Puerto Rican
woman discovered salsa when she moved to Ann Arbor to study. There is, in fact, a substantial difference between the
responses from the Detroit group, which showed a stronger degree of engagement and identification with the music, and
the UM interviewees, who as a group tended to feel more detached from it.

The frequency with which Latinas listen to salsa seems also to be marked by class location. Seven of the ten UM women
listen to salsa "de vez en cuando" [sometimes], "casi nunca" [almost never], or "muy poco" [very seldom], in sharp contrast
to the responses from the Detroit group: "In the mornings when I clean,'' "almost every day," "every day," "when
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my Cuban boyfriend comes to see me," and "at home while I cook to get inspired and feel more relaxed." This quantitative
and qualitative difference suggests thinking about these groups as different interpretive communities. If, as Janice Radway
postulates, an interpretive community can be defined as "larger collections of people who, by virtue of a common social
position and demographic character, unconsciously share certain assumptions about reading (listening) as well as
preferences for reading material," 15 the responses to two particular salsa songs will reaffirm that class differences produce
separate interpretive communities. As their responses suggest, what working-class Latinas "do'' with salsa music seems to
be much more active engagement, with more social significance, compared to their upper-class counterparts.

Key questions that signaled the different degrees of engagement with the music between the groups were whether they
had listened to the two songs before and whether the songs reminded them of anything. None of the UM Latinas had ever
listened to Willie Coln's "Cuando fuiste mujer," and only one, not coincidentally from a working-class background,
attested to having had listened to "As son" before. It is true that two songs should not be used exclusively to gauge levels
of familiarity with such a diverse and broad musical canon. However, such responses do suggest, in general ways, that
upper- and middle-class Latinas are not fans of salsa in the same ways as Puerto Rican men (regardless of class
background), who spoke of their high degree of engagement with the music, its performers, and its repertoire; nor do they
experience the affective engagements that the Detroit women expressed throughout their interviews. This gap in salsa
literacy reaffirms the strong sense of identification that exists between certain social sectors and this music of black,
working-class origins. While Puerto Rican men seem to exhibit the strongest identification with salsa as "their" culture,
working-class Latinas also claim it as a cultural product that emerges from their class location.

The tendency of postmodern approaches to salsa would be to highlight the plural locations and the transnational impact
of this music its internationalization and multicultural performance and productions perhaps diminishing its local
meanings, the value of having a particular music identified or associated with a specific social sector. From that perspective,
salsa nowadays would be definitely losing value and meaning among the Puerto Rican working class. In contrast, what the
ethnographic data suggest here is that although salsa continues to move toward multiaudiences and multilocations (in
terms of race, class, gender, and national and transnational boundaries), that movement has not undermined the strong
sense of cultural identity that salsa provokes among working-class individuals. This
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distinction also has class-based implications that contest prevalent ideas about salsa's universal values and its power to
integrate listeners from all class and racial locations. I have previously spoken to salsa's value as a marker of pan-Latinity
in the United States; it is essential to examine the different processes and structured locations from which diverse
individuals give meaning to this music.

Class-based differences among the Latinos seemed to emerge in less salient ways than among the women, partly because
the class origins among the men were more homogeneous. Four of the men came from professional, middle-class families,
but only one, from Venezuela, grew up in an upper-class environment. That Latino commented that his family "never
played salsa music" at home, illustrating the efforts at racial and class differentiation that are still prevalent among a large
part of the Latin American bourgeoisie. In fact, my own upbringing on the island was characterized by my parent's denial
of salsa's social or cultural value. They never played it at home, instead spending Sunday afternoons listening to albums
from Broadway shows such as Oklahoma, Annie Get Your Gun, and Showboat and to classical music, repertoires that allowed
them to distinguish themselves from the more "vulgar" tastes of el pueblo in the service of social mobility. The Colombian
male who identified himself as having grown up in the upper-class sector in Mexico commented that he had learned to
appreciate salsa in the process of his own deterritorialization. While in high school in Mexico, he did not listen to this music
because it was considered a tropical, working-class music. Instead, the ideal in that youth sector was the U.S. rock and disco
music that was emulated by Mexico's white youth, the professional middle-class and bourgeoisie already socialized into
colonialist patterns of consuming culture. However, it would be a simplistic generalization to state that all upper-class
families reject salsa. As a young Venezuelan woman from upper-class origins observed: "desde siempre en mi casa ponan
salsa" [since always in my home we played salsa]. It is essential to note the diverse individual tastes and pleasures that are
represented within any particular class.

The ethnographic discourse among the eight males is further characterized by a persistent effort to distinguish diverse
listening practices based on "education." As young Puerto Rican men socialized in traditional gender roles, some of them
explicitly recognized that their formal education, both at the University of Puerto Rico and at University of Michigan, had
transformed the values and attitudes they brought to the music as male listeners. Six of the eight respondents clearly
disagreed with the way that Willie Coln portrayed women in his song "Cuando fuiste mujer," and they all saw the
patriarchal tenets of El Gran Combo's "As son" as a problematic
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representation of women. Yet the differentiations constructed around these readings and around their own subject
positions as "educated," "politically correct" Latinos have interesting and significant implications.

This marked tendency among the male UM students from Puerto Rico branched out into particular distinctions: (1) the past
forms of traditional listening and their present listening practices as sensitive, educated males; (2) their disagreement with
and opposition to machismo in the music versus the complicity of other, less educated Puerto Rican or Latino men who
may participate in these misogynist ideologies; (3) locating salsa songs such as Willie Coln's and El Gran Combo's
historically as the prevalent mode during the 1970s and as examples of "erotic salsa," thus displacing machismo in salsa
from contemporary repertoires such as Gilberto Santa Rosa's songs and romantic salsa (versus erotic salsa). Such strategies
of displacement and projection may be motivated by the negotiations of class identity with which they may be
experimenting as they shift their social status from that of their parents toward a more privileged position as young U.S.-
trained intellectuals and professionals, that is, their need to create boundaries between their family's socioeconomic origins
and their newly constituted social status. As some of them commented, the construction of salsa music only as machista
music also has affected the ways that Anglo women unfairly perceive them as Latinos. Thus, they expressed a constant
desire to displace, diachronically and synchronically, salsa's phallocentric repertoire onto cultural, social, and historical
spaces separate from their own present location as "educated Latinos."

Moreover, as ethnographer, I need to ask myself to what extent is the respondent's critical attitude merely a function of the
fact that the ethnographer places them in a situation where they are required to be critical? 16 The fact that one respondent
kept asking the interviewer, "What do you want me to say?" suggests, at least overtly in his case, a self-consciousness as
interviewee that undoubtedly affected his conscious responses during the process of the interview. Comments such as
"These songs are not really good examples of salsa" or "I hope that these songs are not all that will be used in this research"
indicate, in fact, a preoccupation with the study's cultural and gender repercussions for the men.

Constructing Woman as Text

To textualize the female, that is, to construct gender identity and the feminine through language, is partly established
through the deployment of a cultural symbolic economy, that is, a collection of multiple signs that trigger desire, fear,
aggression, and love.17 We have already analyzed, in
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Part Three, some figurations of the feminine, such as the inscription of woman as absence, the synecdochal violence of
patriarchal language, and the discursive terrorism that projects gendered social constructs based on anger, fear, and a
defensive sort of aggression. Yet, salsa songs, as cultural and social texts, also constitute the linguistic and discursive space
in which the male writing/singing subject can concretely articulate the nature of womanliness, of the feminine. This power
to represent the female Other, to speak for her as it were, within a lyrical, musical text that masks any sort of overt violence
and that indeed projects itself as an expression of love and desire, needs to be examined and deconstructed as well.

A discourse analysis of a song by Vilma Planas and Hctor Garrido and interpreted by Willie Coln titled "Cuando fuiste
mujer" better illustrates this most subtle form of gender construction.18 How does the singing/ writing subject construct
Woman as song, as text? The lyrical melody and harmonies informed by the bolero and its apparently "romantic" words
establish its condition as "marked writing," what Hlne Cixous has defined as phallologocentrism "hidden or adorned
with the mystifying charms of fiction [in this case, of lyricism].''19 This is precisely why I chose this text as an object of
analysis. Not only do its lyrics exemplify gender construction at its best, but also its musicality, the slow tempo, and its
lyrical tone created a catchy melody for me. I found myself humming this song over and over again, indeed having been
wonderfully and dangerously "seduced" by this patriarchal musical text.

CUANDO FUISTE MUJER

Conmigo aprendiste a querer y a saber de la vida

Y a fuerzas de tantas caricias tu cuerpo form.
Tu rostro de plida seda cambi sus matices
Se ti de rubor cuando fuiste mujer, fuiste mujer.

Senta tu cuerpo temblar sin la noche estar fra

Senta tu cuerpo vibrar en la noche que arda.
Sintiendo el gemir de tu amor que me dio su tibieza
Hice mo tu amor cuando fuiste mujer, fuiste mujer.

Quiero que t sigas siendo nia

aunque en tu alma seas toda mujer
quiero que tu alma y la ma
se unan por amor formando un nuevo ser.

Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

de tus sentimientos, de tu forma de ser
Quiero que recuerdes para siempre
el momento aquel en que te hice mujer
y fuiste mujer y eres mujer.

Coro: Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

Solo: No te olvides del amor que compartimos debajo de la

Page 207

luna cuando dije entre m como esa mami no hay una

Coro: Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

Que conmigo aprendiste las cosas de la vida esa noche te

Solo: juro nunca se me olvida

Coro: Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

Quiero que t sigas siendo nia aunque en tu alma seas

Solo: toda una mujer

Coro: Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

Solo: que tu alma y la ma se unan por amor formando un solo ser

Coro: Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

Mi recuerdo te desvela, soy el ansia que te llega nunca

Solo: podrs olvidar lo que te ense

Coro: Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

Solo: Pregunta por ah quin es el que te ama siempre he sido
yo, en la vida hay amores que no pueden olvidarse, como
nuestro amor

Coro: Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

En una noche encendida t me entregaste tu cuerpo yo

Solo: te di todo miser . . .

Coro: Quiero que t nunca ms te olvides

Solo: Cmo temblamos de alegra, yo jams me olvidar

WHEN YOU BECAME WOMAN

With me you learned to love and to know about life

And I molded your body with the power of my caresses
Your pale silk face changed its hues
You blushed when you became a woman, a woman.

I felt your body trembling when the night was not cold.
I felt your body vibrating in the ardent night.
Feeling your moaning love that offered me warmth
I made your love mine when you became a woman, a woman.

I want you to remain a little girl

even though in your soul you are all woman
I want your soul and mine
to fuse in love and form a new being.
 I don't want you to ever forget
your feelings, your way of being.
I want you to always remember
that moment when I made you a woman
and you were woman and you are woman.

Chorus: I don't want you to ever forget

Don't forget the love we shared in the moonlight

Solo: when I told myself there's no other woman like you

Chorus: I don't want you to ever forget

That I taught you about life that night I swear I'll

Solo: never forget

Chorus: I don't want you to ever forget

I want you to remain being a girl, even though you

Solo: are a woman in your soul

Page 208

Chorus: I don't want you to ever forget

I want your soul and mine to fuse in love and to form

Solo: a new being

Chorus: I don't want you to ever forget

 Solo: You cannot sleep thinking of me, I am the anxiety that
you feel, you could never forget what I taught you

Chorus: I don't want you to ever forget

Ask others who could love you, I have always loved

you, in life there are certain unforgettable loves, just
Solo: like our love

Chorus: I don't want you to ever forget

In this ardent night you surrendered your body, I gave

Solo: you my whole being

Chorus: I don't want you to ever forget

Solo: How we both tremble with joy, I will never forget . . .

The male singing subject addresses t (you), the implied woman and lover, from the position of master. She acquires her
knowledge of love and of life, and indeed, her life itself, only through him. The syntactic position of "conmigo" [with me]
as the first word of the song establishes the foundational position of the male subject as her first and primary teacher:
"conmigo aprendiste a querer y a saber de la vida" [with me you learned to love and to know about life]. She is like the
blank page on which his pen(is) inscribes his desire. She is text; he is author. The reference in the third and fourth lines to
her blushing face, full of desire, underscores this interpretation of woman as lack, as absence. Her desire fills a gap due to
lack of knowledge and inexperience. Sexual intercourse with the master is the bridge between her emptiness and her
presence, however imperfect this presence may be for her (however tinged with shame, ''rubor"). The male singer further
articulates his desire for possession and appropriation when he confesses that "hice mo tu amor" [I made your love mine],
thus reinforcing the masculine Yo as the agent that possesses.

In the recurring theme of remembrance and the memory of her first sexual experience ("quiero que recuerdes para siempre"
[I want you to always remember]), he ascribes eternity to the transitory nature of the encounter. Through the romantic
construction of "nunca ms te olvides" [don't forget me], the male subject appropriates for himself not only her love and
her selfhood, which are also defined by him, but their effects on her, his traces that will endure throughout her whole life.

Sexual intercourse and phallic penetration are equated with his formation of her: both symbolize her initiation into
womanhood and being. A causal logic underlies the polysyndeton: "el momento aquel en que te hice mujer y fuiste mujer
y eres mujer" [that moment when I made you into a woman and you were woman and you are woman]. This gender
contour-
Page 209

ing, reminiscent of the myth of Adam's rib, is earlier revealed in the second line when he suggests that her body was shaped
by his caresses. Yet the contradictions of his love surface in the opening phrase of that line: "Y a fuerzas de tantas caricias
tu cuerpo form" [And I molded your body with the power of my caresses]. Although clearly meant to be read figuratively,
these fuerzas relate tocaricias, with caricias forzadas (forced caresses) reemphasizing the male's power over the female body,
his authority to shape it and thus to mold her. The power relations suggested in this line reflect the underlying violence
and the suppression of female desire on which the (hetero)sexual politics of salsa are based.

Woman's desire in this song is far from being hers. It is a sexuality imposed from the outside, from the man's sense of power
over her body, identity, and life. While female desire is alluded to once by the male voice, it is never self-defined but rather
marked precisely by the absence of any female voice. Masculine desire, in contrast, is overdetermined in the anaphoric
structure of the verses, notably the "quiero" that continuously reiterates itself behind the mask of "eternal love." The
dialectics of oblivion and remembrance also allow male power to be reiterated. The structure of the refrain, the estribillo,
reflexively articulates the song itself as a memory of the male singer/composers agency and of his powerful role in the
woman's development.

Yet the master's desire entails a central contradiction. While he expects eternal remembrance as her master and the author
of her womanhood, he does not truly desire her to be a woman. He will eventually be made expendable as her master if
and when she achieves maturity as a woman. Thus, the male singer/subject qualifies female potential: it is only her "soul"
that develops into womanhood, not her body. He needs her to remain childlike, although he aspires to a spiritual union
between souls. The metonymic duster of body/child/soul/woman is repeated at the end of the song during
the montuno section, in which the singer improvises on the preceding verses. Because of the improvisatory freedom of this
section, the montuno may be read metaphorically as the sexual unconscious of the male singing subject. In Coln's montuno,
he sings "t me entregaste tu cuerpo / yo te di todo miser" [you surrendered your body / I gave you my whole self],
illustrating the phallic reduction of the woman to the female body, a sexual metonymy that objectifies women as Woman
and is counter-posed by the male subject to his own self-hood as totality or wholeness. The last line of the song, "jams yo
me olvidar'' [I will never forget] turns the male subject into an agent of memory. However, the mutuality between the man
and the woman suggested by this last utterance has already been undermined and rendered untenable throughout the song
by the previous
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assertions and reiterations of his will. This last line perhaps unveils the underlying motivation of his will to be remembered
by his lover forever as a possible displacement of his own need to remember himself in the role of master. The text of the
song, as musical and sonorous repetition through time, serves as a vehicle for such remembrance, eternalizing indeed a
specific moment that is no longer real.

Listening to Willie Coln

As a Latina remarked in an interview, any of these salsa songs or boleros that deal with male-female interactions can indeed
evoke discussions and dialogues that allow listeners to reflect on and reimagine their own realities and their own
relationships. The role of popular songs in constituting a cultural and social locus or space in which gender roles, gender
identity, sexuality, and conflict can be signified and articulated dialogically becomes perhaps the most positive contribution
of popular music to everyday life and to social issues. Thus, the political correctness or incorrectness of popular culture
does not reside in its texts nor in the industry or conglomerates that produce them but, most important, in the active cultural
praxis of listening and rewriting in which the "masses" or audiences, despite the Adornian insistence on their passivity,
constantly engage. Structured interviews may represent an artificial medium by which to gauge listening practices but they
also may be strategically deployed by the ethnographer as a carefully constructed locus in which listeners may speak to
these practices.

None of the ten UM Latinas liked Willie Coln's rendition of "Cuando fuiste mujer." A number of them liked its rhythm,
clearly distinguishing between the rhythm, the music, and the singing on the one hand and the problematic lyrics on the
other. Likewise, for all except one of the Latinos interviewed, the lyrics of the song were rejected and the rhythms and
musical arrangements were mentioned as their only source of listening pleasure. However, unlike the women, Latinos
reaffirmed the unique value of the song's musical arrangements, to which they spoke in much more musically specific
ways:

Musically, its great, great trumpets.

Tiene mucho cuero y tiene una parte al final en que se calla, no hay coro y hay mucha msica [there's a lot of conga
and there's a part at the end in which the singer stops, there is no chorus, and there's a lot of instrumental music].

La combinacin de piano y los trombones es bien caracterstico de Willie Coln [the combination of the piano and
the trombones is very characteristic of Willie Coln].
The song did not evoke many personal memories among the UM Latina group. For four of the ten interviewees, Coln's
song did not trig-
Page 211

ger any associations or memories and when it did, these were related to the sexist attitudes they had personally
encountered. The song reminded one woman of Latina/o dances at the university, and two others were reminded of how
men only think of themselves and never of women's needs. A Mexican American woman compared this song to Mexican
music "pues es increblemente machista y sexista" [because it is incredibly machista and sexist]. She continued: "Tambin,
cuando [ella] conoca a algn muchacho pues [ella] no quera a alguien que fuera as La cancin trata a la mujer de una
manera muy anticuada que la mujer es virgen y l se siente orgulloso de eso. Le da mucha importancia a la virginidad de
la mujer" [Also, when I would meet some guy, I knew that I didn't want someone like that. The song treats the woman in
a very antiquated way, that the woman was a virgin and that he is really proud of that. It gives too much importance to the
woman's virginity].

A Puerto Rican graduate student commented that this song reminds her of "power relations in Puerto Rico, since the singer
treats the woman like an object or like his property." While all the women rejected this song for its obviously phallocentric
discourse, their responses also revealed class conflict among them. Some women in this group associated the songs
machismo with working-class males:

Porque Willie Coln le da un enfoque muy machista. El no es estpido, porque qu se l? Se cree superior en todo
sentido de la palabra. . . . Me acuerda que los salseros tienen generalmente una mente sucia y enferma. Siempre
tienen que cantar del sexo y de cosas erticas, como todas las palabras usadas eran muy erticas.

[Willie Coln gives this song a focus that is too machista. He is not stupid, what does he think he is? He thinks that
he is superior in all senses of the word. . . . I remember that salseros generally have a dirty and sick mind. They
always have to sing about sex and erotics, like all the words that they use are very erotic].

When asked if she thought that this song reflected the way men perceive women, she replied, "Algunos hombres, no todos
tienen la mentalidad antes mencionada" [Some men, although not all think this way.]

Another female respondent distinguished between "algunos hombres" [some men] who are machistas and her father and
husband, who are not: "Ni mi pap ni mi esposo son as" [Neither my father nor husband are like that]. These responses
suggest the women's desire to erase themselves as victims of machismo (as daughter and wife), their othering of machismo
onto those outside their affective domain, and their hesitance to analyze their own participation in this structured behavior.
Correspondingly, these comments reflect a classism veiled under a feminist stance. While ascribing misogyny to the
working class, these women elevate themselves and the men around them above the reality of gender oppression. They are
not vic-
Page 212

tims, possibly because they assume that education has freed them from these behaviors and attitudes that they can only
define as a result of "ignorance" and "disease." These responses are analogous, in many ways, to the strategies of
displacement that characterized Latinos' responses to salsa music in general.

Of the eight Latinos interviewed, the song evoked memories for only two. For these two puertorriqueos the song triggered
associations with other salsa cuts dealing with the same theme a man constructing a woman, molding her into a sexually
knowledgeable person. Yet, despite these associations, they consciously questioned the validity of this discourse: "Although
I like the song, I have a problem with the message that she was not a woman until she met him . . . this is the type of song
that I won't pay much attention to, I'll keep going." "Hace unos aos yo ira por la calle cantando esa cancin. Pero ahora
no" [Some years ago I would have walked down the street singing that song. But not now].

While the first respondent explained that his political disagreement with the song would motivate him to engage in
discriminatory listening that ignored cultural texts that do not validate his conscious values, the second subject
distinguished between his assumed active participation in the masculinist discourse of the song in the past and his present
disavowal of it, a differentiating logic that characterized many other male responses.

Most Latinos rejected the masculinist and patriarchal perspectives and language associated with salsa ertica; however,
one male felt an unqualified pleasure in listening to Willie Coln's song: "la letra es muy bonita y el acompaamiento
musical es de un msico . . . muy bailable . . . puedes escuchar todos los instrumentos que acompaan" [the lyrics are very
beautiful and the musical accompaniment is that of an artist. . . . very danceable. One can hear all the instruments that
accompany this song]. Unlike the rest of his male counterparts, this respondent characterized it as "a beautiful song," "a
romantic song'' that in fact he "would dedicate to [his] wife." A reading of this sort may be categorized as nave, given the
absence of a discursive deconstruction or questioning on his part. That he does not identify the song as an illustration of
"marked writing" is not surprising, given the overall male predilection for the bolero tradition that has been identified
earlier. As another Latino remarked, "Slo en un bolero o en un vals, en las canciones romnticas, no se ve ese menosprecio
hacia la mujer" [Only in a bolero or in a waltz, in the romantic songs, one does not see this devaluing of women].

If these men tended to characterize the discourse of (hetero)sexual love in the romantic ballad as less patriarchal, it is
because they have not unveiled the subtleties of this form of marked writing. Thus, the first respon-
Page 213

dent's reading is not necessarily naive or politically contradictory but consistent with a masculine predilection for the
romantic ballad. In fact, he defined this song as "romantic," whereas most other men categorized it as an example of the
salsa ertica songs of the late 1980s. In this sense, this respondent demonstrates an accurate perception of the bolero-like,
lyrical, and romantic musical discourse, structures, and arrangements of "Cuando fuiste mujer," the same elements in the
vocalizing, instrumentation, and lyrics that seduced me into humming it and playing it repeatedly in my car and at home.
Revealing a most sensitive reading of the song's language, another male respondent added that in fact the song would have
been much more seductive had the impositivequiero [I want] been replaced by the "more romantic use of quisiera'' [I would
like to], which is "una peticin, un deseo" [a wish, a petition]. For him, the quiero seemed too intransigent, forcing the man's
will on the woman and thus not allowing the song to project itself as a romantic text.

What the first respondent explains, then, is that given the positive homage that this song pays women, it does not reflect
men's attitudes at all. Moreover, he calls for men to assume a more romantic attitude toward love and toward women. He
identifies the positive value of the song in its poetic language; thus he observes that "la lrica es ms depurada" [the lyrics
are more stylized] in this text than in many other salsa songs. However, a final comment reveals a different perspective: "la
letra no es tan politically correct ya uno estando en Michigan" [the lyrics are not so politically correct now that I'm in
Michigan], he reminds himself parenthetically after responding to the song. This last comment about other possible ways
of reading the song is a partial acknowledgment that his dominant discourse, however, remains within the patriarchal logic
of men constructing women, of valuing their virginity and sexual lack relationally and inversely proportionate to their own
sense of superiority over the female. His experience of migration, of cultural displacement, and of education have perhaps
afforded him new possibilities of reading cultural texts, as most of the men reaffirmed throughout their interviews. 20

Another interviewee also acknowledged certain contradictions in his reception to "Cuando fuiste mujer." His identificatory
stance was the strongest among the men, for he felt the song was "close to home, that's how I used to feel" and it reminded
him of "one relationship in the past." In fact, "trying to capture that moment makes it a great songthat energy" and adds to
the value afforded to the song itself. Simultaneously, though, he recognized the problem of sexism in the lyrics, yet he also
acknowledged the complex processes of consuming popular music in which we all participate: "It's sexist, but that doesn't
mean I won't buy it or I can
Page 214

see myself saying those words 'te entregu todo mi ser'" [I gave you my whole self]. Unlike other Latinos who tried to
disassociate themselves from machista music, he recognized his affective engagement and participation in this patriarchal
discourse in spite of his ideological dissidence toward its semantic aspects and gender politics. Thus, he envisioned himself
enjoying the pleasures of the song, its music and rhythms, without paying much attention to the words: "I imagined myself
dancing to this song. I could block out the words. I can see it being part of a good night." Despite the limitations of the
interview format, the song triggered in him fantasies about a romantic evening during which he would establish some sort
of intimacy with his partner. When he adds that he could "block out the words" in order to assert his difference in gender
politics, he is enunciating a traditional romantic fantasy produced by the numerous images of heterosexual love and
seduction that bombard us in our everyday lives.

Unlike both the UM Latina and Latino groups, the Detroit women afforded this song a myriad of meanings and values. Of
seven who responded to this particular question, four stated that they had listened to this song before, either at somebody
else's home or as part of their musical collection. Moreover, the song reminded some of them of people and places associated
with the specific instance when they had first listened to the song: "me recuerda la casa de mi hermana porque ah fue que
la o" [it reminds me of my sister's house because that's where I heard it] or "me recuerda a mi hermano que le gustaba
mucho salsa y era muy alegre" [it reminds me of my brother who liked salsa a lot and was very lively]. Only one respondent
did not experience any memories; most found that it evoked some meaningful person, place, or event (including Puerto
Rico, the island) as they listened to this song.

For one young Puerto Rican woman, this song tells her life story. She was involved with an older man for eleven years, and
as she put it, "he was the one who made me a woman." "It hit home," she concluded as she explained why she liked the
song:

Me gusta . . . porque dice de cmo yo me cri. . . .Yo estuve con un puertorro por once aos, en fin . . . l fue el que
me hizo mujer. So, si . . . esa cancin me llega a m. Hasta el extremo porque yo era una nia y l me hizo mujer.
Ahora no estamos juntos pero que . . . it hits home. Bsicamente dice, t sabes . . . qu es amor. Y hay sentido detrs
de la msica.

[I like it . . . because it talks about how I grew up. . . . I was involved with a Puerto Rican man for eleven years, in
fact . . . he made me a woman. So, yes . . . this song reaches me. Extremely so because I was a little girl and he made
me a woman. We are no longer together but . . . it hits home. Basically it says, you know . . . what love is. There's
meaning behind the music.]
Page 215

This quotation illustrates how musical discourse "me hizo mujer" [he made me a woman] contaminates the choices of
words and the ways that listeners speak about their own life experiences. The comments also suggest that in fact men are
not the only ones that may identify with this masculine experience and that, as another Latino suggested, it depends on
whether the memory of the relationship was a pleasurable, positive one for the woman or a negative one. 21The memories
of this woman in particular are positive as she reaffirms the structures of patriarchal dependency in which she developed.
Yet it is interesting to note that what seems valuable to her, as a migrant Latina, is that this man "que [la] hizo mujer" was
a "puertorro" [a Puerto Rican], a subtle comment that illuminates the political, national, and cultural value that she ascribes
to this past relationship. While I did not probe further into this, perhaps her reference to being "made a woman" involved
not only sexual knowledge but also political awareness of herself as a colonized subject. I dare to suggest this because
throughout her interview she exhibited the strongest degree of political awareness of all the Detroit women, and the
language and personal discourse she used to speak about her choices were systematically linked to her cultural identity as
a Puerto Rican woman, as her earlier comments about the politics of dancing showed.

Other readings revealed more oppositional rewritings that fulfilled the needs of the female subject. The song reminded
another respondent of the differences between living in the United States and in Puerto Rico. She alluded to perceiving
Latinas on the mainland as much more independent of men, mostly because they were financially independent. She thus
related the end of the relationship, which the male singer continues to resist through his insistence on el recuerdo, to women's
new status and options. Listening to the song allowed this woman to reflect on how women, particularly herself, negotiate
their dependence and independence and their sense of autonomy in relationships:

porque en mi situacin si . . . ellos se quieren hacer los ms grandes. Qu se creen ellos? We have a mind too.
Aunque all en Puerto Rico eso es ms o menos verdad porque los hombres son los que trabajan y las mujeres se
quedan en la casa haciendo lo que sea. Pero aqu es diferente. La mujer . . . se atiende sola. Como yo, que vivo sola
y me atiendo sola. S, mi novio piensa as. En el principio yo no deca nada pero yo estaba viviendo antes que l y
me estaba ganando la vida sola. Y esto es una ventaja. Es verdad que yo estoy enchulada de l y no puedo vivir sin
l pero yo no estoy para estar detrs de l porque l hizo todo conmigo. It's not like that. Financially, I was single
before I met him. Y si l te echa a la calle, yo ya tengo de qu vivir.

[because in my experience, yes . . . [men] want to make themselves the most important. Who do they think they
are? We have a mind too. Although, over there in
Page 216

Puerto Rico that is somewhat the truth because men are the ones who work and women stay at home doing
whatever they may do. But here it is different. The woman . . . takes care of herself. Like me, I live by myself and
take care of myself. Yes, my boyfriend thinks this way. At the beginning I didn't say anything, but I had a life before
he came along and I was earning my own living. And this is an advantage. It is true that I love him and that I can't
live without him, but I'm not about to place myself beneath him just because he's done everything with me. It's not
like that. Financially, I was single before I met him. And if he throws me out on the street, I already have a way to
take care of myself.]

For this woman, Willie Coln's song is not about virginity nor about becoming a woman sexually. It is about differentials
of power between men and women; it helps her clarify how she can balance two contradictory aspects of her own
relationship, the emotional dependence that she feels toward him "no puedo vivir sin l" [I can't live without him] and the
autonomy that she enjoys as a woman who works to earn her own money. This financial independence allows her the
possibility of leaving him if the relationship becomes perverted by his dominance or abuse and provides a personal vision
that she can survive with or without him. Most revealing, however, is her self-construction as an independent woman in
contrast to the women on the island who, according to her, remain at home and are too dependent on their men. The
island/mainland dichotomy, a differentiating gesture analogous to the one seen in Latinos' responses about male values,
allows her a sense of empowerment not possible for those Other women whom she perceives as more "traditional" than
she is.

In a wonderfully feminist response to "Cuando fuiste mujer," a young Latina thought about her sister growing up to be a
woman and her own process of also becoming a woman. Yet in her evocations she never alluded to the mediating presence
of any man. She changed the status of woman as object in the song to her sister and herself as subjects of their own lives:
"It reminds me of my sister . . . you know, just watching her grow up. And both of us. You know, just seeing her grow up
and then seeing myself as she grows up and then wanting to be just like her. Yes, she is older than me and I've seen her
grow into a woman . . . and I'm doing that right now." In this response, she replaces the Male as Master with her older sister
as a role model for her own female development. At a later point she established the difference between a male subject
position and that of a Woman singing subject, although her final observations reveal the residual traditional values that
still contain or modify her thinking: "He is just thinking about how he saw it, and not just what we went through when we
were growing up. If a woman was singing this, she should get into a lot more sniff. Explain what goes on . . . like her
personal story. When she grew up, she did
Page 217

this and that. She should talk about her sister, how she was in school, what was every day like. And when she got older,
she met somebody, she got involved with him, and became a woman . . . and how she realized that."

Although this response initially strives to establish the possibility for salsa songs to sing to female subjectivity and confirms
the need for women to participate actively in popular music as composers and producers, the final details about this
imagined female experience very similar to her own life conclude with the same discourse and images borrowed from
Coln's song: "she got involved with him and became a woman." The systematic degree, among both male and female
listeners, to which the words of the interviewees were contaminated by the musical lyrics is not surprising, given the
temporal immediacy between song and response that characterized these utterances. However, it also reveals the power,
ideologically marked by each song, of popular music to inform the very words that we deploy in speaking about our own
lives. Thus, salsa music accords a particular discourse about gender identity, (hetero)sexual relations, sexual politics, and
sexuality that is unconsciously internalized by both male and female listeners. However, while the above comment
proposes a female perspective that may suggest a "feminist" stance, it is also true that a Latino man also commented on that
very possibility. One male respondent stated that, "si quizs debi haber sido cantado por una mujer y hubiese sido
expuesta en distinta manera" [perhaps if it had been sung by a woman . . . it would have been performed in a different
way], showing that both men and women listeners are aware of the gender positioning that informs musical performances
and texts. However, the young Latina managed to replace the dominant male subjectivity with two female subjects who
look to each other as role models and to displace any masculine presence in the constitution of her and her sisters bodies
and minds. 22

Another Latina pointed to the contradictions in the messages that society gives young women: at the same time that sex is
a taboo subject within Latina/o culture, it permeates the popular songs that Latinas listen to everyday. Other feminist
rewritings of the song include sporadic observations on the mujer/nia (woman/girl) binary that the song establishes. Even
if a woman is no longer a virgin, one Latina argued, she should still be able to behave like a little girl if she wants to. In her
response, she strategically chose the subordinate element of the mujer/nia dyad, her infantilization, as a metaphor for a
desired autonomy. While she agreed with the way that the song speaks about women "Me gust . . . el ritmo y lo que dice
de una mujer', [I liked . . . the rhythm and what it says about a woman] she qualifies her reading by explaining that
behaving like a little girl can represent a form of rebellion against social norms:
Page 218

Pues lo que yo o es que algunas muchachas despus que sean mujeres, no pueden actuar como una nena chiquita,
t sabes, it's still hard. . . . Y despus que uno . . . you know . . . el que dice que despus que un hombre y una mujer
hacen el amor, que la mujer entonces es una mujer. Pero I don't think that it is true. Because . . . yo ahora mismo
tengo veintids aos, pero I'm a little girl. T sabes, y eso es lo que la cancin dice, no es que a uno la van a mirar
diferente . . . eso es as y tiene que respetarla. Y puede ser una nia whenever she feels like it. You know . . . eso me
gust.

[Well, what I've heard is that once girls become women, they can no longer act like little girls, you know, it's still
hard. And after you . . . you know . . . that saying that after a man and a woman make love, the woman becomes a
woman. But I don't think that it is true. Because . . . I am twenty-two years old, but I'm a little girl. You know, and
that is what the song says, it's not that people will look at her differently . . . that's the way it is and they need to
respect her. And she can be a girl whenever she feels like it. You know . . . I liked that.]

These spontaneous comments again constitute a discursive space in which this particular listener reflects on the impact that
female development has on the code of behaviors imposed on women. Like Judith Ortiz Cofer's writing on how young
women are more societally repressed once they've begun to menstruate, 23 this Latina reaffirms the possibility of continuing
to enjoy the freedom that they were allowed as children, particularly in the movement of their bodies. In contrast to the
Latinos and UM Latinas, who underscored the gender politics of this song by focusing on the man's power to mold women's
sexuality, most Latinas from Detroit minimized the power of the male singer and rewrote the meaning of these lyrics from
their own perspectives and their own life experiences. This feminist recourse, which I have earlier called listening as women,
balances out the power differentials between the dominant presence of male singing and writing subjects in popular music
and the multiple women listeners whose life experiences and gender locations are being systematically repressed and
excluded in the texts they receive.
Page 219

Chapter Twelve
As Somos:
Rewriting Patriarchy

Patterns of listening to El Gran Combo's song "As son" show different ways of producing meaning, not only between men
and women but also between the Latinas from the University of Michigan and those from Detroit. These differences in
listening practices, as individual engagements in cultural semiotics, do not by any means reveal essential differences
between how men and women listen to popular music. In fact, there are a number of strategies for reading and producing
meaning that overlap all three interpretive communities. The significant difference between men and women in their
qualitative responses to the musicality of such songs, to music as an industry, and to its processes of production signal the
"structured secondariness" in which women are located in the cultural space of salsa music, that is, the existence of "a whole
alternative network of responses and activities through which [women] negotiate their relation to the sub-cultures [in this
case salsa] or even make positive moves away from the sub-cultural option." 1 That is, while working class Latinas may
speak about salsa music as a central part of their everyday lives, they do so through tactics of appropriation, rewriting, and
countervaluation. Indeed, they recontextualize the music and transform its social value to best fit their own needs and
desires.2 They did not share the Puerto Rican male fans' detailed knowledge of the music's social impact nor of each musical
group's development nor of the particular song's historicity. (I suspect that had I interviewed the wife of one of the Puerto
Rican students in Ann Arbor, she might have proved an exception to this. Also, I have not included in these samples the
numbers of individual women who are musicians themselves and whose knowledge and participation in producing salsa
would offset these results). I am not trying to suggest here that Latinas are not active participants in sociocultural praxes
nor that they do not belong in or to
Page 220

salsa. Rather, I am suggesting that their political, gender-based location as women does indeed exclude them from
developing a musical competence in the fullest sense of the word.

In contrast to Willie Coln's relatively monologic voice in "Cuando fuiste mujer," El Gran Combo's "As son" combines a
patriarchal ideology, voiced through the persona of the singing, abandoned male, with a polyvalent, open refrain, "as son,"
which opens the text to a myriad of readings, valorations, and rewritings. Indeed, the open-ended nature of the refrain, in
conjunction with the rest of the text, which is quite specific about heterosexual relations, allows listeners to negotiate
between the textual hegemony of the stanzas and the freedom accorded by its potentially polyvalent refrain. Interestingly,
one Puerto Rican man identified the social situation framed within "As son" as directly mimetic of social reality in Puerto
Rico. His comments suggest that this song could well serve as a mirror of individual experience for men, as a text by, for,
and about men's repressed affective domain. The song reminded this interviewee of his father's restaurant: ''[H]e had a
jukebox, and I remember when he would serve alcohol in the restaurant men would come to drink after having fights with
their girlfriends, play this same type of song, feel sorry for themselves in a corner, and then leave. . . . I know specifically
my cousin, who would go to the restaurant, he would get drunk and complain, 'Women, look how they are, look how they
pay you back." This same cousin is now happily married today and is a loving father and husband, so his views possibly
changed."

This observation semantically links this particular salsa song, Vega's and Filippi's short story, and the tremendous
popularity of the song in Puerto Rico throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. The above image is not merely an image
but a real historical and personal event that marks gender identity in terms of the space (the restaurant with the jukebox),
the discourse (diatribes against women), and the affective and emotional states experienced (anger, loss, and depression)
as a result of (hetero)sexual conflicts. That the interviewee even identified a particular individual, his cousin, as a participant
in that socially gendered practice, suggests the commonality of that masculine ritual. However, in contrast to Vega and
Filippi's story, where four men suffer in each other's company, the event described above is a solitary one. The solidarity
central to the fictional version is foremost a narrative recourse that allows multiple masculine discourses to be
deconstructed simultaneously. However, it may constitute a form of negotiation between the individualist ritual of men
and the more feminine forms of catharsis in which women engage, such as talking to friends. However, given the social
value of el viernes social among Puerto Rican men, the collective dialogues of Eddie, Puruco, Monchn, and Angelito are
Page 221

not far from the socially engendered rituals that mark the beginning of the weekend on the island.

Furthermore, what this continuum reveals is the powerful discursive role that music plays in inscribing a particular
ideology among its listeners. The theme of this song was indeed identified as "very prevalent" on the island. Another Puerto
Rican man recalls: "y yo recuerdo que como todo el mundo lo cantaba, despus decan 's, es verdad, as son las mujeres'
pero yo no estoy tan seguro que quien dijera eso lo crean, no creo, 'pero muchacho, es verdad, as son las mujeres, como la
cancin de El Gran Combo,' as decan" [. . . And I remember how everyone would sing it, then they would say, 'yes it's
true, that's how women are,' but I am not so sure that those who said it believed it, I don't think so, "but brother, it's true,
that's how women are, like the Gran Combo song," they would say]. He later qualifies this observation by adding that they
did not sing all of the lyrics seriously, yet they quoted the title and the refrain. To separate, as he did, the song from the
refrain, could be a response to the textual dichotomy of the particular versus the general, of the closed text and the open-
ended utterance. Yet this signals an important listening strategy that separates and accentuates the parts of the complete
song that are socially and historically relevant, those lyrics indeed from which larger social meanings can be produced,
from less significant ones. While the repetitive and brief nature of refrains indicates that these are the elements of a song
most remembered and repeated, rearticulated in the collective unconscious of a particular cultural sector, the refrain "as
son'' offered both male and female Puerto Rican listeners a musical utterance from which emerged a multiplicity of
responses that would construct and complete its ideology. When asked whether this song in any way reflected the
perceptions that men have of women, and vice versa, another male interviewee reaffirmed that gender differences in
popular culture are in fact inscribed within this type of generalizing discourse: "s, en general escuchars que las mujeres
son as, no especficamente como l [the singer] lo dice, pero s en general que las mujeres hacen esto y esto por esto y lo
otro" [Yes, in general you will hear that women are this way, not exactly as the singer says it, but yes in general that women
do this and this for this and the other reason].

The ideological and discursive contiguity and continuity between the refrain and the social language about gender identity,
again evinces the circulation of popular songs and of their language within and among (male) listeners. Notwithstanding
the circularity of this relationship the "as" in the song is in fact a reflection of the popular behavior, of the "folklore" the
open utterance ideally lends itself to its popular deployment as language about gender relations:
Page 222

Pues la gente dice as son las mujeres y los hombres dicen as son las mujeres y las mujeres dicen as son los hombres,
los hombres son de tal manera, los hombres son locos, y los hombres dicen las mujeres son locas, yo no las entiendo,
y en ese sentido, cuando se dice "as son las mujeres," ya se entiende, hay una cuestin en la cultura popular que
las mujeres son de cierta manera, y uno no se puede dejar llevar, tiene un marco de referencia de cmo las mujeres
actan en ciertas situaciones, pero de nuevo no me estoy refiriendo especficamente a esta cancin.

[Well, people say that that's how women are and men say that that's how women are, and women say that that's
how men are, men are this way, men are crazy, and men say that women are crazy, I don't understand them. And
in this sense, when one says, "that's how women are," it's already understood. In popular culture women are
assumed to be a certain way, and one cannot allow oneself to be carried away by them, there's a frame of reference
about how women behave in certain situations, but again, I am not referring specifically to this song.]

Notwithstanding the final statement, in which the interviewee distances himself from the ideology of the song, the fact is
that he reaffirms the cautionary function of this salsa song and of its masculinist discourse for male listeners. "Ya se
entiende" [It's already understood], he asserts, establishing complicity between the patriarchal message that the refrain
articulates and the needs of male listeners to understand that refrain as a very specific caveat against making assumptions
about the women in their lives. The "ya se entiende" unveils the communicative circuit or process by which patriarchy
continues to reassert itself, by which consent is effected. 3 Essentializing gender difference is very much part of this
interviewee's discourse when he concludes that "pero obviamente son de una manera al igual que los hombres son de otra
manera" [but obviously they are the same in the same way that men are the same], a statement that he qualifies with caveats
about the dangers of generalizing and about the need for statistical data that will reaffirm these assumptions. As a student
in the social sciences, his discourse fluctuates between the rational discourse of his academic discipline (and the recognition
that these differences are products of diverse processes of socialization in men and in women) and the values and visions
that he articulates throughout, which represent an ideological continuity with that patriarchal ''popular thinking."

An altogether different semantic route was taken by a non-Puerto Rican Latino who valued the open-ended nature of the
refrain as an expression of men's and women's vulnerability in relationships and of those aspects that one cannot control,
a sort of determinism that somehow participates in the essentializing mode of defining gender as difference: "As son . . . is
an open thing. There's always some thing different, I like that . . . many people share that they cannot control a relationship,
they can try, but . . . that's how women are, and that's how men are, and you move on, as
Page 223

son cuando se quieren, that's the way it is, it's miserable, it's good." What is common, then, among these male responses is
the overarching role that the song plays in allowing Latinos to work out and reconcile themselves to the affective dissonance
that they may experience when a relationship fails and, most particularly, when a woman leaves them, a circumstance that
destabilizes the socially sanctioned centrality of the male ego. Most dangerous, however, the listening process activates an
essentializing logic with respect to gender that undergirds the song, the language about gender, and the social assumptions
about a fixed identity or way of being that remain at best unchallenged.

Nevertheless, the consent to this patriarchal logic articulated among these Latinos is not as clearly unilateral as the
"orthodox version" of this concept portrays. Rather, the men's engagement in listening and responding to this song
illustrates a process of "partly negotiating their adaptation and place within the dominant culture." Consent is practiced as
a "negotiated complicity'' rather than a direct, unquestioning compliance with the values of the dominant
system. 4 Although from very different socially structured positions than those of Latinas, these men also experience
ambiguities in their engagement with salsa, contradictions between the semantic aspects of the music, its ideology and
gender-related messages, and the affective realm, the pleasures that they derive from it as a cultural and masculine
reaffirmation of their historic selves.

As a result of this gap or contradiction, many Latinos engage in a process of displacing the patriarchal or "traditional"
gender values of these songs onto other social sectors or cultural spaces. As some of the above responses suggest, the Puerto
Rican students recognize a shift in the ways that they define gender and locate themselves in relation to women. One, for
instance, mentions that "nuestra educacin nos lleva a entender y prestar atencin a los mensajes" [our education leads us
to understand and pay more attention to the messages], an observation that reveals a process of differentiation concomitant
with the achievement of higher educational levels and social status. In this sense, he believes that his attention to Rubn
Blades's political messages are a direct result of the critical skills that he has developed through schooling, problematically
implying that those listeners who are not "educated" will enjoy Blades's songs only because his "cancin es linda" [song is
pretty]. To the contrary, the interview with the Latino who has not undergone formal education in the United States shows
that political readings and concerns are not necessarily correlated to educational level.

Similarly, another Latino distinguished between his own disagreement with the gender ideology of "As son" and the
assumed consent of other
Page 224

groups, whom he did not identify except as "others": "en la mayora de los casos, en ciertos grupos, yo creo que es el caso
en muchos grupos, ellos le dan la razn" [In most cases, among certain groups, I believe in many groups, men agree with
the song]. Like the Detroit woman who established an opposition between the traditional women on the island and the
more independent Latinas on the mainland, a number of Latinos located these patriarchal ideologies as a tradition in their
countries of origin but not necessarily in the United States: "tema tradicional de nuestros pases, y tambin en este pas hay
gente que piensa as" [It is a traditional theme in our countries, and also in this country there are people that think in this
way].

Others argued that these changes are informed not only by education but also by age, generation, and indeed by the process
of migration:
 ["As son"] es ms vaciln que otra cosa, est generalizando aunque cuando la escucho no le doy pensamiento a la
letra . . . hay un poquito de la cultura nuestra en la cancin; est generalizando aunque ha ido cambiando, hay un
elemento machista. . . . De una generacin hacia arriba, [la cancin] s reflejara en trminos generales las actitudes
de los hombres, en sus refranes, etc., aunque tratan a sus mujeres con mucho respeto. En mi generacin, yo dira
que se ve menos, con las amistades que yo estoy, [amigos] puertorriqueos, tambin el elemento de la educacin,
todos han ido a la universidad y han sido challenged y han modificado sus ideas, no comparten esa idea del Gran
Combo.

["As Son" is more play than anything else, it is generalizing, although when I listen to it I don't think about the
lyrics . . . there is a little bit of our culture in this song; it is generalizing; although our culture has been changing,
there is still an element of machismo. . . . The song might reflect the general attitudes of the men from a previous
generation, their proverbs, etc., although they treat their women with a lot of respect. In my generation, I would
say that one sees less of this, in the friendships that I have, among Puerto Rican friends, also the element of
education, they've all gone to college and they've been challenged and they've modified their ideas, they don't agree
with el Gran Combo.]

After this observation, the interviewee attempted to quantify in percentages how many men of his generation versus his
father's generation still hold traditional patriarchal values. He estimated that 60 percent to 70 percent of his generation, at
all levels of education, may share the views articulated in El Gran Combo's song, while he believes that 80 percent of his
father's generation holds these traditional views. It was surprising that his first estimate was so high in lieu of his prior
comments. And while the quantitative estimates are not as important as his own perceptions of these gradual shifts in
gender ideology and behavior, overall his assessment tends to illustrate a more realistic view of gradual, slow, ideological
shifts. Also revealing are his initial comments regarding the trivial nature of the song's message, "ms vaciln que otra
cosa," an attribute that minimizes the song's serious impact on gender ideology while also underestimating his own
internalization of patriarchal ideology.
Page 225

A Latino born in El Salvador shared his own perceptions of different gender ideologies, attitudes, and behavior between
those Latinos in El Salvador and Mexico and those who, like him, have transformed their everyday behavior and gender
attitudes as a result of their cultural displacement:

Yo he aprendido en este pas que tanto el hombre como la mujer tiene que hacer partes iguales. . . . En El Salvador
[el refrm es] "en mi casa mando yo" . . . para el hombre latinoamericano venir a este pas tiene que venir a aprender
y dejar el machismo a un lado y eso es lo que enorgullece al hombre latinoamericano, especialmente los mexicanos;
yo conoc muchos mexicanos que son muy machistas.

[I have learned in this country that men as much as women have to play equal roles. . . . In El Salvador (the proverb
is) "I rule in my house" . . . for the Latin American male to come to this country, he must come to learn and to leave
machismo behind and machismo is what gives self-confidence (or pride) to Latin American men, especially
Mexicans; I've met many Mexicans who are very sexist.]

Neither education nor generational differences account for this man's self-perceived shifts in gender ideology but rather
the need to share the housework and the role of income producer with his wife and his older children in order to survive
economically as political refugees in this country. Although he admits that even in El Salvador he changed diapers and
helped with the housework, he also distinguishes the pervasiveness of machista behavior in Latin American countries from
those machista practices sanctioned in the United States. Obviously, economic structures have informed such
transformations in gender roles and in the ideal patriarchal identity of the male as the main provider for the family.

Finally, the observations by another Puerto Rican born student at University of Michigan summarize this process of
displacing machismo:

Hace seis o siete aos atrs, yo hubiera cantado sin ningn problema, y ahora entiendo porque he pasado por un
proceso de aprendizaje de ciertas cosas, entiendo que eso sera ofensivo a ciertas personas, no las cantara frente a
una mujer. . . . Pero simplemente por el hecho de que me parecen canciones joviales no las veo como malas tampoco.

[Six or seven years ago, I would have sung it without any problem, and now I understand since I've gone through
a process of learning about certain things; I understand that it would be offensive to certain people. I wouldn't sing
it in front of a woman. . . . But because I think of them as happy songs, I don't see them as bad either.]
This statement encapsulates the receptive ideological ambiguity that some men experience in listening to salsa's patriarchal
lyrics. While their ideological dissidence is clear to them, they still justify these songs because "parecen canciones joviales"
[they seem happy songs] or as a Latino remarked, because they are "ms vaciln que otra cosa" [more joking than anything
else]. For these listeners, the humorous and trivial textures they present as a reflection of popular culture in Puerto Rico are
a source of affective plea-
Page 226

sure for them when they listen to "As son" in the United States, away from the public spaces in which these types of songs
may be taken for granted.

As they generally identify a gap between the semantic and the affective, between ideology and pleasure, these Latinos also
note how they, as listeners, try to reconcile this contradiction by participating in selective modes of listening practices, what
we may call discriminatory listening. Within this practice, they erase or undermine those elements that may cause
ideological dissonance in this case, the lyrics and stress the musical aspects (the rhythm and the musical arrangements)
and the song's value as cultural reaffirmation. This strategy allows them to engage in their respective productive pleasures,
including memories of growing up in Puerto Rico, enjoying its rhythm and dancing to the song, and discerning the musical
specificity of its arrangements:

No puedo negar que me cri con ella y me gustaba, que te traiga los recuerdos . . . con la nota al calce del tema de
la cancin, que todas las mujeres son malas y traicioneras, que no es as.

[I can't deny that I grew up with it and that I liked it, that it brings me memories . . . in terms of the theme of the
song, that all women are bad and traitors, it's not that way].

People do not necessarily consume these songs and agree with the message, se disfruta por el placer y no tanto por
la letra . . . []hasta qu punto uno est meditando sobre lo que la cancin dice? No creo que eso sea el caso.

[People do not necessarily consume these songs and agree with the message, one enjoys them for the pleasure and
not so much for the lyrics . . . to what degree is one paying attention to what the song says? I don't think that that's
the case.]

Yo tengo grandes problemas con las generalizaciones . . . Creo que si el estribillo "As son las mujeres" estuviera en
la letra de la cancin y no en el estribillo, sera mucho ms aceptable.

[I have big problems with the generalizations . . . I believe that if the refrain, "That's how women are," were in the
text of the song and not in the refrain, it would be much more acceptable.]
Me gust. . . . El Gran Combo es mi grupo favorito, el soneo de los cantantes, Jerry es el que ms me gusta, los
vientos, el ritmo, el cencerro, lo oigo y me dan ganas de bailar. . . . El soneo va con el ritmo, la voz va a la par con
ese acompaamiento musical.

[I liked it. . . . El Gran Combo is my favorite group, the improvisation of the singers I like Jerry the best the wind
instruments, the rhythm, the cowbell; I listen and feel like dancing. . . . The improvisation goes with the rhythm;
the singing goes together with the musical accompaniment.]

A m me gusta la cancin, no el tema en especfico pero en general la msica.

[I like the song, not the theme in particular but the music in general].
Page 227

As a consequence of this gap between the music and the lyrics, consumers strategically choose specific listening modes and
social contexts in which to engage a particular song:

This song is one to be played at a party and danced to . . . women would repeat the lyrics, dance to it but the analysis
of it, they would object to it.

Ese es el tipo de cancin que la gente no le presta mucha atencin a la letra, la gente le gusta bailarla, bueno a lo
mejor "as son las mujeres" es lo nico que la gente escucha, no es que la gente no escuche la letra, t puedes cantar
algo simplemente y no darle ningn pensamiento a lo que est detrs de esa simple letra que t ests escuchando.

[This is the type of song in which people don't pay much attention to the lyrics, people like to dance to it, well
maybe "Such are women" is the only thing that people hear, it's not that people don't hear all the lyrics, you can
simply sing something and not think about it or about what's behind these simple lyrics that you are listening to.]

A Latina from Detroit observes: "Pero porque la sepas cantar no quiere decir que t compartas esa opinin. . . . Es como los
muchachos y muchachas de quince diecisis aos . . . que le gusta la cancin por el ritmo y no por lo que dice." [But just
because you know the words, it doesn't mean that you share that opinion . . . It's like fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boys and
girls . . . they like the song for its rhythm and not for what it says].

Both men and women consistently referred to this mode of discriminatory listening as a practical tactic that allows them to
enjoy the music without semantic dissonance. These observations speak to the need for scholars to identify the various
types of listening practices that are deployed by particular audiences and molded by the spaces in which music is received.
The Latina who mentioned (in Part Two) that she tends to listen to bolero lyrics more than to the texts of a salsa song is
attesting to the ways in which the musical form itself always already prompts a process of emphasizing particular elements
while subsuming or nullifying others. In addition, the particular social context also influences listening modes. At a party,
talking to others and listening to music as background or while dancing, music may be received secondarily as a
background staple that sets the ambience or as background sounds to other cognitive activities. Driving a car, for instance,
where music can be played in the illusory personal space bounded by the windows, illustrates the limitations of listening
with which we are bound in our musical reception. Restraining us from dancing and from engaging in the most direct
forms of physical and corporeal rhythmical movements and pleasures, the car, however, has become, in the context of U.S.
Latinos, a mobile urban space of cultural production that allows us to recover (temporarily) our particular cultural
specificity within the broader
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landscape of homogenized cities and public spaces. I cannot but allude to the personal pleasure and emotional high that I
myself experience when I play salsa music inside my 4 4 on a snowy, cold morning on my way to work at the University
of Michigan. That repeated experience, which becomes a rhythm in itself, a performance for no particular audience,
contributes to a much desired sense of cultural stability in my own experience of migration and displacement.

On the other hand, the fact that these songs are played at parties and dances does not always preclude the impact of their
lyrics. A Detroit Latina remembered that "As son" started a heated discussion about sexual roles at a Christmas party. Her
story suggests that listeners do pay attention to the lyrics during parties and that women do actively disagree and articulate
their own dissonance with the subordinate positions in which these lyrics place them:

Esto ["As son"] me recuerda un da pa' las Navidades que una amiga . . . una amiga que nosotros tenemos que
decimos que es como prima nuestra que estaba oyendo esto y se dio unos traguitos, you know. Y eso se le subi a
la cabeza y discuti con el marido. Porque estaban hablando de esta cancin, y a mi cuado le gusta mucho la
salsa . . . y ella ya estaba un poquito ennotada y empezaron a discutir. Y ella deca que eso no es verdad . . . y el
esposo deca que s. Y ella empez a discutir y cre un conflicto por lo que la cancin deca.

[This reminds me of a Christmas party when a friend . . . a friend of ours that we say is like a cousin, was listening
to this song and having a few drinks, you know. And the drinks went to her head, and she had a fight with her
husband. They were talking about this song, and my brother-in-law likes salsa very much . . . and she was already
a little drunk and they began to fight. And she was saying that it wasn't true . . . and her husband was saying that
it was. And she began to argue and created a conflict over what the song was saying.]

This brief narrative demonstrates the potential of popular music to create spaces for dialogue and even conflictive
confrontations about its messages. The fact that this woman was a bit drunk when she confronted the patriarchal ideology
of the song and thus also challenged her own husband's gender ideology suggests that perhaps not all women are willing
to sacrifice the pleasures of parties, music, and dancing, spaces meant for collective sharing and for friendship, to confront
and address ideologies that affect them in their everyday lives. Among my friends and those people that I interviewed, I
have noted much resistance against the violation of the potential pleasures to be enjoyed in these spaces of entertainment
and "escape." In this regard, the level of unconscious consent to the discourses being articulated by salsa music is much
higher than in other cultural and social contexts.

While both the male and female respondents engaged in these forms of selective listening practices, it is also essential to
examine the different as-

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pects of the song that each group attended to. The different gender politics at work in listening to "As son" may be located
in the elements of the narrative that were remembered by men and women, as well as in what they "did" with these
ideologically charged motifs and plots. Although all the Latinos explicitly disagreed with the song's representation of
women and its generalizing statements about women's behavior, they consistently offered very literal and consensual
readings of certain elements of the song that reaffirmed the very gender ideology they believed themselves to be critiquing.

For instance, most men emphasized the negative image of the (absent) woman as she is portrayed by the singing subject:
"la mujer como golddigger" [woman as golddigger]; "ella aparece materialista" [she seems to be materialistic]; "como si
todas las mujeres fueran como prostitutas yo creo que es equvoco . . . ya que habla del vino, del cigarro, de calles, entonces
eso es a lo que se refiere, a prostitutas" [It is incorrect to assume that all women are prostitutes . . . the song talks of wine,
streets, and so that's what it is referring to, prostitutes]. The first two statements reveal a most literal reading of the woman
as bandolera, and although the word itself does not appear in the song explicitly, its subtextual presence is clearly identified
by these male listeners, revealing their familiarity with this discursive tradition. In the third observation, the male listener
constructs the woman as prostitute based on the conjunction of three symbolic elements wine, smoking, and the public
space of the street which she has transgressed as exclusively male spaces or behaviors.

Synthesizing the information from the song itself, particularly the line that reads "brindaste a todo el mundo tu corazn"
[you offered your heart to everybody] another male listener summarizes the male singer's source of pain and suffering:
"Este es un individuo que esta mujer lo dej y despus esta mujer est por ah, t sabes, con otros hombres, que para l esos
hombres son menos que l . . . olvdate . . . no todas las mujeres te dejan a ti y se van con veinte mil ms" [this is an individual
who was abandoned by this woman, and then this woman is over there, you know, with other men, and these other men
are less than him . . . forget it, not all women leave you to be with twenty thousand other men].

Unable to verbalize the word puta or prostituta, this male respondent periphrastically defines the woman as such, not only
through his silencing of these signifiers but also through his numerical hyperbole in a sort of Caribbean baroque poetics,
referring to the men this woman has supposedly seduced. By pluralizing or exacerbating what in the song was only
suggested metonymically through the image of the "corazn," the listener has reaffirmed, identified with, and justified the
emotional pain of the male
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singer and his diatribe against this particular woman. By also emphasizing the dement of competition among males ("esos
hombres son menos que l"), he also engages the masculine subjectivity that the song articulates through these particular
allusions, metaphors, and ideologemes. He has indeed completed the patriarchal narrative in the song through strategies
of foregrounding and hyperbole.

Positioned differently from the Puerto Rican men interviewed, most Latinas from the UM group were not familiar with
"As son" by El Gran Combo, except for one respondent, again the working-class Puerto Rican woman who remembered
having listened to it in Puerto Rico. The significant degree of unfamiliarity with this song among the UM group reaffirms
the possible process of configuring diverse salsa repertoires and canons that delimit different class sectors. None of them
liked the lyrics or the message, although six of them did attest to receiving pleasure from the music, the voice, and the
rhythm of the song. It was interesting to note that one woman disliked the song because "es medio viejita" [it's a bit old],
thus favoring salsa of the 1990s over the 1970s canon. Yet this observation also suggests that this Latina, like most of the
Latinos, was able to locate this particular song historically, a form of salsa literacy that she did not share with the others.

These Latinas did not associate significant personal or intimate experiences with the song. If anything, most Latinas
identified this song as one of many articulations of patriarchy framed within song, film, and discourse. The song reminded
them of "el machismo del hombre" [male sexism], of "una cancin mexicana que es muy sexista y machista, es muy parecida"
[a Mexican song that is very sexist and machista]; of "las pelculas en que ponen a los hombres en unas barras para as 'llorar
sus penas' [those movies that picture men at a bar, crying over their suffering]. These three associations identify the song's
patriarchal ideologeme as well as other cultural expressions of patriarchy similar to those identified by Ana Lydia Vega
and Carmen Lugo Filippi in their short story, where the men cry away their sorrows by singing not only salsa songs but
also rancheras. 5 A Latina did associate this song's patriarchal discourse with a repeated personal experience: "las veces en
que muchos muchachos me dicen que no entienden a ninguna mujer, que todas son iguales" [those times that men have
told me that they don't understand women, that we are all the same]. In this case, she realizes that ''As son" is part of a
masculine discourse that constructs women in derogatory ways, a locution characteristic of the young men she has known
who have consistently articulated this construct of the female, possibly in relationship to her own person.

What the UM Latinas found in "As son" was definitely the sexism ar-

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ticulated by the male singer. Whereas most of the Latinos accentuated the figure of the absent woman, Latinas focused their
attention on the icon of the male sitting at a bar:

Esta canccin refleja que el hombre no es muy seguro de s mismo pero no refleja el modo de ser de la mujer.
 [The song shows that this man is not very sure of himself, but it doesn't reflect anything about the behavior of
women.]

La mayora de los hombres, cuando estn borrachos desahogando sus penas piensan que eso es as. Pero no todos
los hombres piensan as porque no todos son iguales.

[The majority of men, when they are drunk, unloading their problems, think that it is this way. But not all men
think this way because not all men are the same.]

Los hombres a veces yen a la mujer como un mero objeto. Mientras que las mujeres tienen otras metas, otras
responsabilidades, y segn lo que ellas se propongan, eso lo pueden lograr.

[Sometimes men see women as mere objects. While women have other goals, other responsibilities, and depending
on what they set themselves to do, they can achieve it.]

. . . desprecia a la mujer, est generalizando a la mujer.

[ . . . it devalues women, it generalizes about women.]

Together, these observations resist the patriarchal constructs of women as they are sung by El Gran Combo. Yet they also
exhibit a variety of perspectives regarding the disjunction between text and reality, between song and experience. For some,
the song reaffirms male anxiety while it silences the female perspective. For one Latina, the male voice and perspective
should not be used to generalize all men; another respondent argued that men objectify women, whereas women see
themselves in very positive ways. Thus, while the productive moment in this case tends to vary from voice to voice, there
is a consistent gesture of detachment from the text, a disagreement with and a distancing from the location of the male
voice, from the context in which it was fictionally produced the bar or nightclub and from the whole narrative and
discourse developed therein.

In sharp ideological contrast, the Detroit women immediately and consistently associated the discourse and figure of the
male singer with the men in their lives. Most important, however, they inverted the negative view of women and rewrote
it to produce meanings that would reaffirm their growing sense of autonomy as women and as Latinas. Unlike the Latinos
who reaffirmed the negative figurations of the absent woman in "As son" and the UM Latinas who collectively distanced
themselves from
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that reality, most Detroit Latinas reconstructed this absent woman into a figure that signified positive, liberatory values for
them in their everyday negotiations with the men in their lives as well as in the process of defining themselves and
reimagining their relationships.

Unlike the UM Latinas, who mostly voiced detachment from the male singer and his discourse, all but two of the Detroit
women produced meaningful associations as they listened to the song. Some associated the song with memories of their
youth and of the centrality of music in their lives, creating an instance of remembrance that led to nostalgia for their
countries of origin:

Cuando yo era joven y que he ido a los bailes y muchos de ellos no poda ir porque mi mam no me dejaba.

[When I was young and used to go to the dances and I couldn't go to many of them because my mother would not
allow it].

Bueno, el ritmo que yo oigo en las trompetas y en los timbales. Me recuerda mucho a mi hermano. Mi hermano
siempre se pasaba cantando y haciendo como los timbales. Y me recuerda en el carro de casa, en el carro de l, que
siempre pona la salsa y yo miraba por la ventana y vea el paisaje. Me pone triste en s porque extrao el pas.

[Well, I can hear the rhythm in the trumpets and the timbales. It reminds me a lot of my brother. My brother always
used to sing and imitate the timbales. And I remember our car at home, his car, in which he would always play
salsa and I would look out the window and watch the scenery. It makes me sad because I miss my country.]

Other women clearly identified the male personae of "As son" and its concomitant patriarchal discourse with men they
have known:

S, me recuerda a algunos hombres que conoc, que siempre estn hablando, expresando as de la mujer. Me
recuerda a hombres salvadoreos que conoc, mexicanos tambin.

[Yes, it reminds me of some men that I once knew, that they would always talk this way about women. I remember
Salvadoran men that I knew, Mexicans too.]
Me recuerda a los cubanos. Los cubanos son bien buenos. Ellos te mantienen, te ayudan y todo, pero son unos
descarados. Creen que mientras ms mujeres tengan, ms machos se sienten. Entonces a ellos le gusta esta
cancin . . . porque se dan cuenta de que ellos son unos descarados y que las mujeres, para darle por la cabeza a
ellos, hacen lo mismo. Pero eso es mentira porque yo soy una que le gusta estar con un hombre nada ms. Entonces,
l se va a estar con otra, mientras est conmigo. Y eso me hace sentir muy mal, como si yo fuera una cualquiera.
Pues yo en ese caso voy y busco otro para hacerle lo mismo . . . aunque ellos no lo vean as. Pero las mujeres, como
somos tan "naive," somos tan "gullible," nos creemos esas cosas sin pensar que eso nos daa la reputacin. Por eso
es que los hombres escriben canciones as.
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[It reminds me of Cubans. Cubans are very good. They take care of you, they help you and everything, but they are
a bunch of impudents. They believe that the more women they have, the more macho they will be. Thus, they like
this song . . . because they realize that they are a bunch of impudents, and that women do the same thing to get
back at them. But that isn't always true, because I am the type of woman who only likes to be with one man. Then,
he goes after another woman while he is with me. And that makes me feel really bad, as though I were just anyone.
Then, in this case, I went and looked for another man, to get back at him . . . although men don't see it that way.
But, women, because we are so naive, we are so gullible, we believe that we can do this without realizing that it
will damage our reputation. That's why men write songs like this.]

The Detroit woman who associated the song with Cuban men in particular with her Cuban boyfriend appropriated this
diatribe against women and turned it against men, a strategy that is analogous to what Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo
Filippi achieve in their parodic portrayal of Puerto Rican men listening to music at a bar. 6 This inverting, a common
feminist recourse similar to the process of countervaluation that Limn has proposed and that Radway explains, is also
prevalent in songs interpreted and composed by women. If a woman is a castigadora, then the women sing to the castigador.
If she is the mala, then he is the devil. In this case, "As son" reminded this Latina listener "of Cuban men," whom she
characterizes as ''wonderful butdescarados," an inversion of negative modifiers that she had identified previously in the
voice of the male singer as he constructed women: "the male singer generalized about women accusing them of
being descaradas." She thus reads male diatribes against women as projections of men's own sexual promiscuity and of the
machismo value of measuring their masculinity by the number of women they have possessed, a characteristic discourse
of the Don Juan figure.

In her response, this woman examines the conflictive struggle between men and women over sexuality and power. She
does not condone multiple partners for a woman as a means to punish men's Don Juan behavior. Indeed, she judges women
who engage in these moves as gullible or naive, that is, those who have internalized the power games that males have set
up. Simultaneously, she is quite sensitive to issues of reputacin, the Latina/o cultural value of others' perceptions that is so
influential in self-definition. El qu dirn [what would others say?] becomes, in her mind, a central reason for not engaging
in these moves for sexual power. This woman continues to employ these songs, their lyrics, and the listening act itself as a
space for reflecting not only on her own issues of dependency and autonomy (recall the first line regarding how men
support a woman and take care of her financially) but also in general for reflecting on the sexual politics between men and
women.
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The textual image of the woman who enters a bar or a nightclub and is therefore "easy" "y te portas como una loca . . .
ofreciendo a todo el mundo tu corazn" is also inverted and rewritten by these women listeners. They rewrite this construct
into a positive image, into the woman who is independent, who likes to enjoy herself without a man necessarily:

Potque yo te digo . . . yo voy a barras. Antes tomaba, pero ahora es para oir la msica . . . para bailar. Para hacer lo
otro pa' eso me quedo en casa. Si llegu sola, me voy sola. Si llegu acompaada, me voy acompaada con esa
persona, no con alguien diferente. So, en un sentido a m no me gusta la cancin porque no todas las mujeres son
as. . . . Los hombres estn mal al asumir que todas las mujeres son fciles si estn en una barra.

[Because, I'll tell you . . . I go to bars. Before, I used to drink, but now I go to hear the music . . . to dance. To do that
"other thing" I stay home. If I go alone, I leave alone. If I arrive with a companion, I leave with that person, not with
someone different. So, in a sense, I don't like this song because not all women are like this. . . . Men are wrong in
assuming that all women in bars are easy.]

In this case, the above Latina reasserts her right to transgress the male space of the "barra" and to dance or drink without
being constructed only as a sexual object, an easy woman. She stresses the positive aspect the fact that she can enter a bar,
with or without a man, and enjoy the music or a drink. What is most interesting is the absence of any emphasis on the
negative constructs of women, neither the prostitute nor the easy woman; rather, the narrative is read as reasserting the
will of real women like herself despite the sexist discourse to which they may be subjected.

That these readings definitely reflect personal issues in these women's lives has also been quite clear throughout these
interviews. The woman who most sharply rewrote the estribillo "as son" into a feminist utterance "as somos" spoke about
her own experience in leaving her husband and then returning. This memory, evoked by "Cuando fuiste mujer,'' continued
to reappear as a tenor to her responses and to inform the productive pleasure that she experienced from these two salsa
songs. After listening to "As son," she responded by saying: "El estribillo est bien . . . as somos. Somos atrevidas, ya no
somos tan cohibidas, tan dejadas. Ahora ya hacemos lo que queremos . . . podemos dejar a los hombres" [The refrain is
good . . . that's the way we are. We are fearless, we are no longer so restrained, so passive. Now we do what we want . . .
we can abandon men].

She then continued to recall her own experience of leaving her husband. While it was not an easy decision for this middle-
aged Mexican woman, the separation led to a profound transformation in her relationship with her husband. Her strategy
as a listener and speaker to change the verb son into a personal, collective somos, marks a clear instance of how listeners
reinterpret specific lyrics, transforming them and literally rewriting them to be able to identify and seek pleasure and
reaffirmation in their life situa-
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tion. For her, the estribillo is now appropriated by a collective voice of women who have stolen the language of the
masculine lyrics and thus completed the open-ended utterance with adjectives and traits that reaffirm women's autonomy,
growing sense of independence from men, and power in decision making. The nosotras implicit in her response may be
read as an ideal, utopian view of women's freedom to hacer lo que queremos (to do what we want); through this utterance
she has scripted the history of her decision to leave her husband. Her "podemos dejar a los hombres" enunciates the power
that she now feels after having resolved that conflict in her own personal life. She reasserts, then, the possibility of risk
taking, of making decisions that may be difficult at first but perhaps productive in the long term. She has resisted the literal
reading of the woman as a traitor and instead has reconstructed the autonomy that every woman should feel in her
interactions with the men in her life.

A central listening strategy among these Latinas, which constitutes an ideological feminist opposition to the ways that men
completed this song, is that of filling in women's silenced or repressed desires or feelings. Because in "As son" we hear
explicitly only the male voice, his perspective, and his discourse, both the Detroit and the UM women listeners fill in the
gaps with those motivations, feelings, reasons, and perspectives that a male-authored text may repress or ignore. Some
women qualified the idea that the male singing subject is drinking because he was abandoned, with the idea that "pero por
algo lo habr de haber dejado" [she must have left him for a reason]. Thus, they immediately invoke the motives of the
woman absent in the text. The fact that she left him shows "women's independence from men," another Latina suggested.
A UM Latina commented that, "when a woman leaves a man, usually the man hasn't treated her well. . . . Women respect
themselves while men treat them like objects." Moreover, they identified the underlying motivation of these patriarchal
figurations of the bandolera and of affective betrayal: "cuando una relacin con una mujer no le ha ido bien, piensan de esta
manera'' [when the relationship with the woman is not good, then they think this way].

Converging in this feminist listening strategy, both groups of Latinas recognized the oppressive maneuverings of
patriarchal discourse, as men continue to construct, generalize, and define all women. By stereotyping women, male singers
deny them their individual subjectivity, their agency, their identity. Latina women listened to salsa songs, but they also
spoke, and in the process of speaking they resisted, opposed, and actively rewrote the words, images, and textualizations
from which they dissented. In addition to their gradually growing presence onstage or as musicians and composers, Latinas
thus claim their agency in salsa music as consumers and listeners, as a gendered audience across the stage, on the dance
floor, and on
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the receiving side of their stereos, CD players, or radios, consistently transforming these otherwise monologic texts into
productive moments in their everyday lives.

The interviews presented here clearly exemplify popular culture as "a particular historical place where different groups
collide in transactions of dominance, complicity, and resistance over the power to name, legitimate, and experience
different versions of history, community, desire, and pleasure through the availability of social forms structured by the
politics of difference." 7 Indeed, by selecting two particular songs and documenting the heterogeneous responses, the
contradictory productions of meaning, the various gestures of resistance and opposition, and the plural degrees of consent
to the dominant ideologies experienced by diverse social and gendered groups within the larger Latino/a community, I
have called attention to the complexities of the productive moment within a cultural community. While the Latinos
interviewed explicitly dissented with the patriarchal persuasive modes of the lyrics, they simultaneously revealed anxieties
about their own shifting gender values as Latin American men.

Upper-class and middle-class Latina students at UM, on the other hand, tended to distance themselves from the sexist and
patriarchal ideologies that they locate in working-class men and in the urban spaces associated with that particular sector.
Their detachment and relatively lower degree of productive pleasures may suggest a feminist awareness of sexism in
popular music, but these gestures of distancing are clearly associated with the class-based logic of locating that patriarchy
in the working-class male sector. Indeed, there was a general and implicit refusal to participate affectively in the musical
culture of salsa, which they may have deemed, from their dominant bourgeois gaze, "a surrender to the moment, the fun
of the event, or the horror of the vulgar."8 However, it is also significant that as young professional migrants in the United
States, their structured location as listeners or consumers of salsa music, like those of the Latino interviewees, has shifted
toward a higher level of participation as consumers and listeners. Thus, the productive becomes for them an important
moment in the process of cultural reaffirmation.

The Detroit women also experienced a high degree of ideological dissent to the patriarchal and misogynist views articulated
in these songs. Yet because El Gran Combo's music speaks to the experiences of the working class, they exhibited, at the
same time, a higher degree of affective and social engagement with the music than did UM Latinas although to a lesser
degree than that expressed by the Puerto Rican men. As working-class women, these interviewees consider salsa music a
central part of their everyday lives. Thus, they highlighted those class, racial, and social aspects
Page 237

of the music that enhance their understanding of their cultural circumstances as U.S. Latinas. However, they also
demonstrated, among the three groups, the most active and dynamic degree of the productive. That is, they listened as
women by rewriting and transforming the otherwise monologic, masculine lyrics into songs that reaffirmed their self-image
as autonomous, independent Puerto Rican or Latina women.

This study proposes the existence of various interpretive communities within the larger world of Latino and Latina
listeners. This, in turn, suggests the configuration of different canons within salsa that speak to the values, realities, and
perspectives of various class, racial, and gender groups. The processes of listening to salsa songs and producing meanings
relevant to everyday life are not fixed either; these tend to shift according to the listening context and musical space. Latinos
and Latinas, like other musical audiences across cultures, engage in strategies of emphasis, discrimination or selection,
erasure of dissonant ideologemes, and completion of the perspectives or narrative clements silenced or repressed by the
dominant ideologies inscribed through language.

These heterogeneous listening practices cannot be fixedly associated with particular class sectors, as previous studies of
culture seem to suggest. Pierre Bourdieu, for instance, defines "the cultural forms of dominant bourgeois groups" as "the
celebration of formalism, an elective distance from the real world, with all of its passions, emotions, and feelings," a
"celebration of stylized detachment." On the other hand, the "productive moment of corporeality'' is consistently located by
theorists in the popular sector, which refuses "to engage in social practices defined by an abstract rationality." 9 Here, the
implicit binaries of reason versus emotion and physicality, located in the class duality of the bourgeois versus the working
class, undergirds both Bourdieu's and Henry Giroux's otherwise important discussions. The above multiple responses to
salsa songs allow us to acknowledge that working-class women indeed engaged in more profound discussions and more
sophisticated strategies of gender and cultural negotiation and semiotic production than did their upper-class counterparts,
partly because salsa is a cultural expression that speaks to their class reality and cultural displacement. They theorized
about independence and autonomy, about machismo, about economics in late capitalism, and about migration and
displacement. Their engagement with the music was not limited to an unconscious, preverbal act of physical pleasure that
precluded any sort of intelligent or rational analysis. These women clearly acknowledged the political value of dancing to
salsa in the United States as much as they renounced the patriarchal tenets that repress their desires and perspectives in
the articulation of (hetero)sexual relations.
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Thus, processes of the productive are not as fixedly class-bound as has been suggested. To conceptualize fluid, structural
locations in society with respect to cultural texts and semiotic production allows us to appreciate the complex, at times
contradictory, and ever changing meanings that we constantly produce in our interaction with cultural texts and systems.
The fact that upper-class Latinos and Latin Americans also engage in listening to salsa music for diverse reasons and that
the pleasures of "decolonizing the body" through the act of dancing to salsa have become even more politically relevant as
a result of migration demonstrate the processual nature, the historicity and the personal complex of each individual's
history that inform the moment of the productive. The Puerto Rican men who may have sung and consented to patriarchal
lyrics on the island are no longer willing, at least consciously, to participate in this dominant ideology. Yet they enjoy a
higher degree of identification as male salsa fans, cocolos who constantly negotiate their privilege as males and their
objectification as Latinos in the United States through the pleasures of listening, dancing, and singing to salsa.

These processes of musical reception have also made salient the centrality of differentiation as an integral part of
constructing individual, cultural, and social identity. The politics of differentiation throughout these interviews varied
according to the affective, social, and educational location of the speaker. For some U.S. Latinas and Latinos it was
important to create a boundary between themselves and those perceived by them to hold traditional values in the insular
society, a construct that validates the transformations that they themselves have undergone in their own socialization.
Many Latinas from professional families felt a need to differentiate themselves from machismo that motivated them to
displace it onto the working-class male, a classist and racist generalization revealed in their interstitial comments about
how not all men are the same. The fact that many UM Latinos also shared the need to separate themselves from the larger
culture of machismo as a result of their education speaks to the power differentials inherent in the process of constructing
difference as a step in reaffirming identity. That machismo is a cultural practice and ideologeme always displaced onto
otherness was clearly illustrated throughout these interviews.

Salsa music, then, becomes the cultural locus through which gender politics, sexuality, and cultural identity are
continuously defined and redefined, contested, negotiated, and ultimately, even internalized. These interviews are but
some selected instances of the profound complexities at work in the dialectics of ideology and pleasure, in the inexorable
gaps between the semantic and the affective, that make popular music, in this case salsa, such a unique space for
scrutinizing the culture and politics of gender.
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AFTERWORD

Throughout this book, I have identified and analyzed discursive traditions in the terrains of Puerto Rican music, literature,
and culture that have served to legitimize and naturalize the asymmetries of power between men and women and have
led to what Anglo feminist critics of mass media have termed the "symbolic annihilation" of women. 1 The feminization of
Afro-Caribbean music, a process traced to the late nineteenth century in Puerto Rico, continues to circulate in U.S.-dominant
representations about salsa music; an English translation of a Cuban song and journalistic representations about Anglo
desire for Latin rhythms and dancing reveal the intercultural underpinnings of this process. Eroticization also informs the
almost omnipresent motifs and voyeuristic metaphors in various Caribbean cultural texts about the mulatta and her
rhythm, illustrating that this discourse is not only the exclusive result of either patriarchy or colonial encounters but is also
historically linked to the racialized histories of the Hispanic Caribbean islands.

I am aware, however, that discourse analysis poses the risk of conflating everything into discourse, thus eliding the dialogic
tensions between producers and consumers of music and the historical specificity of the musical forms and traditions
discussed here. Thus, to denounce patriarchy or to engage in content analysis about the representations of women in
Latin(o) popular music is not enough at a time when we now define popular culture as sites where diverse social sectors
negotiate meanings and where power struggles are enacted. As this book has demonstrated, the patriarchal ideology
behind an image like the dancing mulatta shifts, depending on the politics of the singing subject. As I have shown in Part
Three, when women singers, as subaltern subjects in a male-dominated industry, appropriate this imagery, its oppressive
value is transformed into a rhetorical weapon for resisting those masculinist ideologies.

Released in 1994, the song "Calypsos," written and arranged by Wild

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Mango, the multicultural women's group from the Bay Area of San Franciso, reveals how the icon of the dancing mulatta
can also suggest a homoerotic reading or, at the very least, the reaffirmation of women's sensuality unmediated by a male
perspective. 2 This is the result of women's growing participation in the music industry as producers, composers, and
arrangers. It is also, of course, defined by the sexual politics of the group members. What has been otherwise a problematic
icon in male-authored texts is mediated here by an introductory text in French in which the figure of the moon suggests a
homoerotic gaze and desire, thus implying to listeners that the gaze on the mulatta could be that of other women desiring
women. Most interestingly, the oppositional value of this cut also resides in the very intersection or crossroads of a
multicultural production such as Made in Mango, a recording characterized by the combination of various rhythms
associated with Latin America, Arab cultures, and of course, the Trinidadian calypso.

In the 1990s, I would argue, the continuing dominant trend toward salsa romntica seems to exemplify another instance of
feminization as I have discussed it in this book. This time, however, feminization is evident in the industry-induced
hegemony and canonical status of bolero-informed songs about individual heterosexual relationships. Most of the new
salsa interpreters in the 1980s and 1990s, both men and women, invariably sing to and about love, in contrast to the more
heterogeneous thematic repertoire of salsa figures from the 1970s. While Olga Tan's 1994 release, Siente el amor, includes
only love songs, Celia Cruz's Irrepetible, released the same year, includes songs about (hetero)sexual relations, mostly in
defense of women, such as "Que le den candela" and "La guagua." In the latter, she defends women's rights to travel in city
buses without being touched by men, while in the highly political "Cuando Cuba se acabe de liberar," she visualizes a
utopian return to Cuba after the fall of Fidel Castro.3 Willie Coln's 1993 release,Hecho en Puerto Rico, presents love songs
such as ''Idilio," an interesting fusion of salsa romntica with the lyrical language and versification of dcimas jbaras. This
song plays on the market for love ballads while simultaneously reaffirming national identity for Puerto Ricans. A song
such as "Buscando trabajo" addresses the economic difficulties and unemployment that Latinos face in the age of
globalization and dwindling job security for workers, and "Atrapado" narrates the life of a drug dealer in a song that
denounces U.S. materialism.4

A cursory view of this shift in repertoire suggests that salsa romntica has become the dominant genre needed by younger
interpreters to establish themselves in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, although it has not undermined at all the
diversity of genres and topics that singers such as
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Celia Cruz and Willie Coln have consistently presented. Moreover, Wilson Valenn's current research suggests that the
resurgence of the salsa canon from the 1970s, as evidenced by the increased consumption of "classic" salsa both on the
island and in New York, shows that Latina/o audiences look for and consume music that is socially and politically relevant
to their times, even when the industry does not produce such lyrics. The phenomenon of memorializing Hctor Lavoe, in
particular, speaks to the agency of the public in defining what is meaningful in the 1990s. 5

The romantic tendency in the Latin musical canon also should be analyzed systematically from a hemispheric perspective,
given the globalizing and transnational processes that inform it. As Nstor Garca Canclini observes, globalization entails
"the planetary functioning of an industrial, technological, financial, and cultural system whose headquarters is not in a
single nation but in a dense network of economic and ideological structures."6 The insertion of salsa musicians in the ever-
more privatized culture industry may then "neutralize the autonomous development of the field," as Garca Canclini
observes for the visual arts in Latin America.7 In this context, the fusion of salsa with classical music illustrated in the joint
concert of Gilberto Santa Rosa and the Puerto Rican Symphony Orchestra on May 23, 1996, is highly significant. Art music
met popular music in Salsa Sinfnica, a performance held, ironically, at the Centro de Bellas Artes (never named after Rafael
Cortijo) and partly sponsored by the Banco Popular de Puerto Rico and American Airlines.8This concert illustrates the
growing mainstreaming and symbolic "whitening" of salsa in Puerto Rico and confirms my discussion in Part Two about
the process of articulation. In the 1990s this shift may have been facilitated by the feminized (i.e., depoliticized) tunes of
salsa romntica that more easily converge with the musical traditions of a symphony orchestra.

The concert's repertoire reveals the way in which love songs and ballads mediate between art and popular music. A review
by Sara del Valle indicates that the first part of the concert was characterized by an initial instrumental medley of nationalist
songs about Puerto Rico: the danza "Verde Luz," "Soando con Puerto Rico," and Rafael Hernndez's "Preciosa."9 This
beginning, warmly received by the audience, offered a strong sense of national reaffirmation, which was followed by a
sequence of Gilberto Santa Rosa's most popular interpretations of love ballads and salsa romntica, including Albita's "Qu
manera de quererte.'' The second part of the concert, according to the reviewer, broke the stiffness and formality of Santa
Rosa's performance in the first part. This duality between the stiff elegance of the first part and the more "popular" style of
the second signals how the concert symbolizes a postmodern attempt to blur the boundaries
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between high and low art. The second part, indeed, was characterized by extramusical elements that inserted the concert
into the language of mass media: live puppets, a video screening, and a live appearance of local television personalities
who accompanied Gilberto Santa Rosa singing a capella the hit "Conciencia"(Conscience). While it is true that symphony
orchestras, such as the Boston Pops, have long performed popular songs, this particular concert is significant for the ways
in which the icons and technology of mass media are being integrated into the hallowed spaces of a concert hall in the
Centro de Bellas Artes.

It is also highly reminiscent of Nstor Garca Canclini's concept of hybrid cultures in Latin America, where heterogeneous
icons, symbols, technology, and cultural practices, derived from different historical periods and cultural traditions,
converge in cultural practices that articulate our vexed relationship with modernity. Salsa music, in many ways, is itself a
hybrid cultural site. In it, old Afro-Caribbean rhythms continue to be deployed in musical compositions that reflect modern
technologies of sound and postmodern preoccupations with urban life, cultural displacement, and gender relations. Angel
Quintero Rivera's argument for the need to recognize the historical continuity of maroon culture as it survives in the
modern, urban music called salsa converges with Canclini's emphasis on how modernity encompasses multiple historical
temporalities and heterogeneous cultural traditions.

In terms of gender politics, salsa romntica has created, ironically, an aperture for a growing number of women interpreters,
partly because of the tacit social assumption that it is more acceptable for women to sing love ballads and partly because
by the 1990s women in Latin America have had more access to musical training, instrumentation, and the public sphere in
general. Emerging new voices, such as Deddie Romero and Olga Tan from Puerto Rico, Trina Medina from Venezuela,
Miriam y las Chicas from the Dominican Republic, Cuban-American Albita Rodrguez, and the eleven all-women salsa
groups from Cali, Colombia, have rendered invalid the myth of the exceptional status of Celia Cruz as the only woman in
an all-male musical industry. Things have changed substantially since Jeremy Marre produced the documentary Salsa! The
Latin Music of New York and Puerto Rico, filmed in the early 1980s. He then asked Ralph Mercado, a music producer, why
there were so few women singers in the Latin music business except for Celia Cruz. Mercado replied: "I don't know, I guess
there just hasn't been that many around," 10 thus naturalizing and accepting as inevitable women's systematic exclusion
from salsa productions. Today, such a reply would not be valid.

While some women singers in the 1990s Deddie Romero and Olga
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Tan interpret mostly salsa romntica, their very presence as interpreters accords a much needed woman's perspective
to the discourse about love and heterosexual relationships. Together, their lyrics continue to engage in a battle between the
sexes, yet some of this struggle is articulated in a language less strident than salsa from the 1970s contained. Salseras in the
1990s sing about not tolerating abusive relationships, as in Deddie Romero's cut "No llores, no vuelvo," or about taking the
initiative to leave the man, as in Olga Tan's "Hablando sola." Besides her songs about exile and nostalgia for Cuba, Albita
Rodrguez, in No se parece a nada (1995), sings love songs with openly erotic lyrics that can equally suggest lesbian love and
homoerotic as well as heterosexual desire. Composed mostly by her and Julia Sierra and musically informed by Afro-Cuban
rhythms and musical forms, her songs articulate more radical, feminist perspectives that can speak to diverse sexual
orientations. "Qu manera de quererte," the opening song and one of the most popular cuts, seems to speak about passion
as it simultaneously proposes "other" ways of loving. Her song ''Solo porque vivo" strongly denounces the social intolerance
that she has experienced as a lesbian, although there is no mention of homosexuality in the text. Thus, Albita's music
illustrates how women composers are a necessary element in the development of alternative, feminist perspectives in
popular music, although her songs reveal the necessary compromises and containments that popular musicians have to
make in order to be "acceptable" by larger audiences.

Obviously, this book does not constitute a historical work on the role of women as agents or subjects in the production of
Latin(o) popular music. Readers interested in a history of women in salsa music may have been justifiably frustrated by
the absence of such sequential narrative in this book, as I was during the process of writing by the lack of historical
documentation on women salseras. Pnfully aware of this scholarly need, however, I have referred to all the women that I
have identified in my own readings and research and in my own discoveries as a consumer of music. Although the politics
of distribution are still unfortunately tilted in favor of men, major distributors such as Sony have had an important role in
making more women salseras visible in the 1990s. The need for documenting women's participation in salsa and other
forms of Latin(o) popular music is, undoubtedly, urgent, and scholars of popular music and cultural studies should address
this very important dearth in our production of knowledge. I look forward to Lise Waxer's doctoral dissertation on women
salseras in Colombia and to future interventions in this area.

Although limited in scope, the audience research that I present in this book is a contribution to studies of reception and
consumerism in the field
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of Latin(o) popular music. Quantitative approaches are always helpful and allow us to document, empirically, what and
how much music is being sold. Surveys help us confirm processes of canon formation as well as the historical and
ideological shifts that scholars identify in popular music. They may also allow us to study interesting discrepancies between
what conglomerates "plug" in commercial radio and what consumers like to listen to in their private sphere, such as while
driving, during parties at home, at work, and as background to other social activities.

Yet qualitative approaches, oral histories, interviews, and ethnographic work are even more urgent, given the historical
silencing of the "masses" in scholarship, even in studies that attempt to explain them and to vindicate the agency of the
popular sector. Scholarship has constructed women as passive consumers, and they are seen, implicitly, less apt as
producers of meaning. However, the responses from working-class Latinas that I analyze here reveal a strong engagement,
both affective and intellectual, with the gender politics of the songs. While the Puerto Rican men interviewed showed more
access to information about the music, the musicians, and the musical industry, the working-class women went further
than the men in rewriting the texts, appropriating them, and reimagining themselves in their social and affective
relationships. Thus, Part Four, "As Somos, As Son: Rewriting Salsa," posits that women, as consumers of popular music,
are active subjects in their role as listeners, rather than the passive consumers that industries perhaps expect them to be.
Consumption, then, cannot be seen exclusively as a unidirectional process of subordination but rather as a cultural practice
in which individuals, groups, and institutions negotiate cultural identity and social, class, and racial meanings, as well as
naturalizing or contesting gender relations.

Nstor Garca Canclini has identified the need for studies of cultural consumption in Latin America, precisely in order to
determine "of what use culture is to hegemony," "to verify from what patterns of perception and understanding their
audiences are related to cultural goods, and even less so what effect their everyday conduct and their political culture
generate." 11 Likewise, Jess Martn Barbero has insisted on recognizing that there are different sets of "cultural competence"
that live on "in the pool of cultural images that nourish the growth of different social protagonist identities such as women
or youth"; he argues that these competencies are then ''activated" by cultural practices, such as watching television. He calls
for qualitative studies that could be described as "watching with the people" and that allow us to "examine the 'stories,' the
life stories, that people recount and that they recognize in their viewing of television."12 Barbero's call, however, limits itself
to an exhortation, while Canclini's methodology,
Page 245

informed by the exigencies of the social sciences, does not present directly the voices of those surveyed in his study of
museum audiences. We need to continue to tease out the complex, diverse, and not always politically correct negotiations
between consumers and their cultural texts in order to develop more profound understandings of hegemony as domination
by consent. However, to achieve this, we need to validate and utilize the cultural competencies of the very heterogeneous
audiences that continue to remain on the margins, those same cultural producers that have been silenced despite our best
democratic intentions.
Page 247

NOTES

Preface
1. Elmer Gonzlez's article on Deddie Romero "Desde Borinquen" (Latin Beat, September 1994, 10), begins precisely by
discussing women's lack of visibility m the circulation of salsa music, particularly in radio programming. Likewise,
Franz Reynold, in "Ritmo: La msica de hoy" (Latin Beat, September 1994, pp. 1819) initially frames his article by
denouncing how "the nurturing of quality female singers and songwriters appears to be a low, or no, priority" (18)
and how Latinas still remain "musically enshrined in boleros, bachatas, and baladas," that is, as inspiration rather than
as authors.

2. This gender-marked invisibility does not reside exclusively in the symbolic realm but affects the economic
circulation of women's musical productions. That is, practices of distribution and marketing for women's CDs are
much more limited than for men's, as my own research experience revealed. I want to thank the staff at Schooolkid's
Records in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for their help in locating many of the Latina women's CDs.

3. A similar representational tension is played out in Umberto Valverde and Rafael Quintero's recent
publication, Abran paso: Historia de las orquestas femeninas de Cali (Cali, Colombia: Universidad del Valle, 1995). While
this book constitutes a first and important ethnographic documentation on the phenomenon of women's salsa bands
in Cali, the male gaze behind the photographic texts subtly (and not so subtly) undermines the authorship and
subjectivity of the women's voices as they are articulated throughout the interviews.

4. Ibid., 6.

5. I analyze these difficulties in more detail in Part Three of this study.

6. See Tricia Rose's contribution to "A Symposium on Popular Culture and Political Correctness," with Manthia
Diawara, Alexander Doty, Wahneema Lubiano, Tricia Rose, Andrew Ross, Ella Shohat, Lynn Spigel, Robert Stare, and
Michele Wallace (Social Text 36 [fall 1993]: 139).

7. Adalberto Aguirre Jr., "A Chicano Farmworker in Academe," in The Leaning Ivory Tower: Latino Professors in American
Universities, ed. Raymond V. Padilla and Rudolfo Chvez Chvez (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995),
2526. See also Sonia Saldvar-Hull, "Chicana Feminisms: From Ethnic Identity to Global Solidarity," in Feminism on the
Border: Contemporary Chicana Writers (Berkeley: University of California Press, in press).

8. See Deborah Pacini Hernndez, Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music(Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1995), 15872.
9. See Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, Para leer al Pato Donald (Val-
Page 248

paraso, Chile: Ediciones Universitarias, 1971); Nstor Garca Canclini, Transforming Modernity: Popular Culture in
Mexico, trans. Lidia Lozano (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), and Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and
Leaving Modernity, trans. Christopher L. Chiappari and Silvia L. Lpez (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1995); Jess Martn-Barbero, Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations, trans. Elizabeth Fox
and Robert A. White (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1993); and Beatriz Sarlo, El imperio de los
sentimientos (Buenos Aires: Catlogos, 1985).

10. In "What's Left of the Intelligentsia? The Uncertain Future of the Printed Word," NACLA 28 (SeptemberOctober
1994): 1621, Jean Franco traces how the literary intelligentsia in the past had acted as the "voice of the oppressed,"
mediating for the popular sectors and acting as "advocates of social change." Now, with the advent of mass culture
and new technologies of communication, and with the ascendancy of the visual image and of popular music over the
printed word, writers and intellectuals are forced to redefine their aesthetics, forms and genres in order to reach a
larger public. A more nostalgic and troubled defense is posited by Beatriz Sarlo in her article, "Argentina under
Menem: The Aesthetics of Domination," in the same issue of NACLA, 3337, in which she analyzes how Carlos Menem's
image and politics have in fact been mediated and controlled by what could be called a televisual ethos. In her analysis,
she concludes with an exhortation for the rerum of the intelligentsia in defining nation: "intellectuals especially Left
intellectuals can play a decisive role in producing new ideas about how the media can be used in a democratic,
reflexive, imaginative and transparent manner. Certainly, these new ideas would confront an enormously
concentrated power'' (37). However, what she fails to note in this programmatic call is the power of the intelligentsia
itself (in which she clearly participates), to exclude nonacademic Others from processes of cultural production and
naming.

Part One
The Danza and the Plena: A Literary Prelude

1. See Magdalena Garca Pinto's interview with Rosario Ferr in Woman Writers of Latin America: Intimate
Histories (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), 81103, regarding the reception of this story. For an assessment of
the historical and aesthetic impact of the journal Zona de carga y descarga, see Juan Gelp's Literatura y paternalismo en
Puerto Rico (San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1993), 17182. Gelp enumerates a series of
countercanonical strategies deployed by this collective, one of whose editors was Rosario Ferr: a collage format that
rejected the monologic texture of earlier journals, a constant search for new modes of representation, inclusion of
feminist texts, a forum for theoretical reflection on the crisis situation of Puerto Rican literature, and significant book
reviews that revealed the experimental and radical positions of the collective. The journal was published for a period
of three years, from 1972 to 1975.

2. Sandra Messinger Cypess observes that this short story "has received much critical scrutiny because it epitomizes
the exploration of the image of women from a feminist perspective." See "Tradition and Innovation in the Writings of
Puerto Rican Women," in Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature, ed. Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory
Fido (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1990), 84.
3. See Rosario Ferr, "Por qu quiere Isabel a los hombres?" in El coloquio de las perras (San Juan, P.R.: Editorial
Cultural, 1990), 11115. An English version (not translation) of this essay appears in The Youngest Doll (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 14751.
Page 249

4. One of the most lucid analyses of Ferrs Papeles de Pandora is Ivette Lpez Jimnez's "Papeles de Pandora: Devastacin
y ruptura," Sin nombre 14 (OctoberDecember 1983): 4152, in which the rupture with bourgeois ideology is identified as
a central tenet of Ferr's writings. Also of interest are Margarite Fernndez Olmos's "Luis Rafael Snchez and Rosario
Ferr: Sexual Politics and Contemporary Puerto Rican Narrative," Hispania 70 (March 1987): 4046, and "From a
Woman's Perspective: The Short Stories of Rosario Ferr and Ana Lydia Vega," in Contemporary Women Authors of Latin
America: New Essays, ed. Doris Meyer and Margarite Fernndez Olmos (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1983),
7890. Mara Ins Lago-Pope, "Sumisin y rebelda: El doble o la representacin de la alienacin femenina en
narraciones de Marta Brunet y Rosario Ferr,"Revista Iberoamericana 51 (JulyDecember 1985): 73149, also focuses on a
feminist analysis of both characters. Lorraine Elena Roses, in "L esperanzas de Pandora: Prototipos femeninos en la
obra de Rosario Ferr,'' Revista Iberoamericana nos. 16263 (JanuaryJune 1993): 27987, proposes a reading of the two
female characters as a case of hysteria, as defined in psychoanalysis, and also suggests a bisexuality in the erotic desire
of each other. Luz Mara Umpierre's early article, "Un manifiesto literario: Papeles de Pandora de Rosario
Ferr," Bilingual Review 2 (MayAugust 1982): 12026, had already suggested a lesbian reading of the same. Juan
Gelp, Literatura, 161, also observes that the (homo)erotic pleasure that the story evokes as a result of the mutual
discovery of each other's body has hardly been identified by critics. Feminist approaches, then, have suggested a
number of analyses of both women: as self and other in terms of class, race, and social identity and, more radically, as
a portrayal of lesbian desire. Also see Luca Guerra Cunningham, "Tensiones paradjicas de la femineidad en la
narrativa de Rosario Ferr," Chasqui 13 (1984): 1325.

5. Lpez Jimnez, "Papeles," 43.

6. Gelp, Literatura, 116.

7. Henry Giroux, Border Crossings (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 119.

8. I will use the term hegemony based on Gramsci's work. For a clear, basic summary, cf. Dominic Strinati, An
Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995), 16571: "a cultural and ideological means
whereby the dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class, maintain their
dominance by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the
negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incorporates both dominant and dominated
groups" (165).

9. See Arcadio Daz Quiones's introductory essay, "Toms Blanco: Racismo, historia, esclavitud," in Toms Blanco, El
prejuicio racial en Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1985): 1591; "Recordando el futuro imaginario: La
escritura histrica en la dcada del treinta," Sin nombre 14, no. 3 (1984): 1635; Angel G..Quintero Rivera also has
analyzed this phenomenon from a historical perspective in chapter, 4 of Patricios y plebeyos: Burgueses, hacendados,
artesanos y obreros: Las relaciones de clase en el Puerto Rico de cambio de siglo (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1988).
 10. Susan McClary, in Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1991), 334, identifies five levels in which music and gender intersect: (1) musical constructions of gender and sexuality,
(2) gendered aspects of traditional music theory, (3) gender and sexuality in musical narrative, (4) music as a gendered
discourse, and (5) discursive strategies of women musicians. My interest in examining how the danza and the plena
have been feminized relates to McClary's fourth category of study, that is, looking at how music and musical forms
themselves have been gendered as "feminine."
Page 250

11. Luca Guerra-Cunningham, "Tensiones paradjicas,"22, critiques Ferr's underlying phallologocentric structure,
which she considers prevalent in her short stories. Our intertextual and interdisciplinary approach will help to
elucidate this issue.

12. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990),
viiiix.

Chapter One
A White Lady Called the Danza

1. See Samuel R. Quiones, "Otra versin sobre el origen de la danza puertorriquea," Revista del Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriquea 9, no. 30 (1966): 57, for his proposed analogies between the danza and the medieval cantigas. Also see
Cesreo Rosa-Nieves, "Los bailes de Puerto Rico,"Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquea 65 (OctoberDecember
1974): 1418, and Marisa Rosado's anthology Ensayos sobre la danza puertorriquea (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriquea, 1977); the latter includes Salvador Brau's essay as well as two important pieces on the danza by
Amaury Veray. Peter Manuel, in "Puerto Rican Music and Cultural Identity: Creative Appropriation of Cuban Sources
from Danza to Salsa," Ethnomusicology 38, no. 2 (spring/summer 1994): 24980, argues that the Puerto Rican danza is
essentially a Puerto Rican appropriation of the Cuban contradanza, a process of ''resignifying" Cuban music that
according to Manuel is also evident in jbaro music, bombas and plenas, tros, and salsa music.

2. I have used the 1974. edition published by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquea, San Juan, Puerto Rico. El Gbaro is
a typical cuadro de costumbres about Puerto Rico, first published in Barcelona in 1849. A second augmented edition
appeared around 188283 with a prologue by Salvador Brau, and in 1949 a modern edition, annotated by Antonio
Torres Morales, appeared, with revised orthography. The present edition is a "facsimile of the original"; it includes
graphics and drawings that were not part of the original but were culled from press vignettes.

3. Amaury Veray, "Vida y desarrollo de la danza puertorriquea," in Rosado, Ensayos, 24.

4. See Sander Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1985), and "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century
Art, Medicine and Literature," inRace, Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 22361.

5. See Vera M. Kutzinski's Sugar's Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism(Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1993), particularly the first chapter, "Imperfect Bodies," which traces the inscriptions of the mulatta in
nineteenth-century Cuban poetry as an overdetermined site of sexuality. Indeed, as Kutzinski reaffirms, "to speak of
black female sexuality here is somewhat redundant since the body of the dark complexioned woman appears to be
the only available site of female sexuality in nineteenth-century Cuban literature. White women, that is, those of
known 'purity of blood' and hence of social standing, were, almost by definition, exempt from such sexualization"
(30). In Puerto Rico representations of female sexuality and race also express this phenomenon.

6. Salvador Brau, "La danza puertorriquea" in Disquisiciones sociolgicas y otros ensayos (Rio Piedras: Ediciones del
Instituto de Literatura, University of Puerto Rico, 1956), 189206.

7. Janos Marothy, Music and the Bourgeois, Music and the Proletarian (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1974.), locates the
transition from collective forms of music to those informed by an emerging capitalist mode of production and the en-
Page 251

suing bourgeois ego, individualism, in the Renaissance (16). In the Puerto Rican context, Edgardo Daz Daz has
analyzed the social practice of dances at the turn of the century in his article, "La msica bailable de los carnets: Forma
y significado de su repertorio en Puerto Rico (18771930)," Revista Musical Puertorriquea 5 (JanuaryJune 1990): 321. He
analyzes the shift between figure dances, such as the contradanza, and the independent couple dances, such as the
waltz, as a reflection of the tensions between dwindling monarchic values of social order and "aristocratic
ceremoniality" and those of an ascending Creole bourgeoisie, expressed through an individualist spirit.

8. Braulio Dueo Coln, "Estudio sobre la danza puertorriquea" in Rosado, Ensayos, 1422.

9. Daz Daz, "La msica," 15.

10. Veray, "Vida y desarrollo," 25.

11. Brau, "La danza puertorriquea," 198.

12. Veray, "Vida y desarrollo," 23.

13. Brau, "La danza puertorriquea," 199.

14. Ibid., 200.

15. Ibid.

16. Coln, "Estudio," 17.

17. Angel Quintero Rivera, Music, Social Classes, and the National Question in Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras: University of
Puerto Rico, Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, 1987), 2939.

18. Mariana Valverde, Sex, Power and Pleasure (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1987), 150.

19. Brau, "La danza puertorriquea," 205. See also Quintero Rivera, "Music," 221.

20. Peter Manuel, "Puerto Rican Music," 252. As Manuel later adds, "The rise of the danza became linked with the
emergence of this naturalistic hacendado proto-bourgeoise" and its ''independence movement" (253).

21. Brau, "La danza puertorriquea," 204.

22. John Storms Roberts, in The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), considers Louis Moreau Gottschalk (18291869) "the most celebrated and
welldocumented mid-century example of Latin influence on American music" (27). More recently, Federico A.
Cordero reevaluted the influence of Gottschalk on Puerto Rican music in "Sitial de honor de Louis Moreau Gottschalk
en la historia de la danza puertorriquea," Claridad, 713 September 1994, 29.

23. Brau, "La danza puertorriquea," 205.

24. Ibid., 206.

25. Ibid.

26. Juan Flores, "Cortijo's Revenge: New Mappings of Puerto Rican Culture," in Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican
Identity (Houston: Arte Pblico Press, 1993), 92; also published in Juan Flores, George Ydice, and Jean Franco,
eds., On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992),
and in Centro de estudios Puertorriqueos bulletin 3 (spring 1991): 821. Hereafter, references to this essay will correspond
to the Divided Borders edition and pagination.
27. Quintero Rivera, Music, 229.

28. Jos A. Balseiro, "La danza puertorriquea," in Rosado, Ensayos, 1314.

29. Margot Arce de Vzquez, Laura Gallego, and Luis de Arrigoita, eds., Lecturas puertorriqueas: Poesa (Sharon,
Conn.: Troutman Press, 1968), 2931.

30. Antonio S. Pedreira, Insularismo (San Juan: Biblioteca de Autores Puertorriqueos, 1942), 4142.

31. Ibid., 197.

Page 252

32. See the following critical readings about Pedreira: Juan Flores's Relectura de Insularismo e ideologa burguesa: Nueva
lectura de A.S. Pedreira (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1979) and the English version in his Divided Borders, also
Juan Angel Siln's Hacia una visin positiva del puertorriqueo (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Editorial Edil, 1970) and Juan G.
Gelp's Literatura y paternalismo en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1993).

33. John J. Johnson, Latin America in Caricature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), documents in chapter 3 the
gendering of the United States as male and of Latin America as female. Refer also to Ruth Glasser, My Music Is My
Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their Communities, 19171940. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), in which
she documents how in the 1920s and 1930s "many members of this [wealthier] class equated North American music
with Puerto Rico's economic and social progress" (39) and how this colonial assumption affected musicians and their
canon. Refer also to Peter Manuel, Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 22.

34. Peter Manuel, "Puerto Rican Music," 255. Here Manuel interprets Pedreira's characterization of the danza
in Insularismo as positive: "The danza embodied the best aspects of Puerto Rican charactergentility, mildness, and
aestheticismthe very qualities threatened by vulgar, crass, commercial, and naturalistic Americanization."

35. Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991),
11.

36. Peter Bloch, La-Le-Lo-Lai: Puerto Rican Music and Its Performers (New York: Plus Ultra Publishers, 1973), 41. See also
Alejo Carpentier's observations about Ignacio Cervantes's Creole danzas as "feminine" in La msica en Cuba (Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1972), 226.

37. Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991).

38. Adela Rivera Montalvo, San Germn y La Borinquea: Himno de Puerto Rico (San German, P.R.: Insertco, 1986), 11.

39. Sandra Messinger Cypess has denounced the invisibility of women writers in the nineteenth-century literary canon
in Puerto Rico, including Lola Rodriguez de Ti, Luisa Capetillo, and Mara Bibiana Bentez. See "Tradition and
Innovation in the Writings of Puerto Rican Women," in Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature, ed. Carole
 Bryce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido (Trenton, N.J.: African World Press, 1970) 77. Ruth Glasser, My Music, 27,
identifies the nationalistic value of this version but fails to mention its female authorship.

40. Loida Figueroa, "Mara Dolores Rodrguez y Ponce de Len; y Bonocio Ti y Segarra,"Claridad, 1824 November
1994, 1617.

41. Cypess, "Tradition and Innovation," 77.

42. Rivera Montalvo, San Germn, 5.

43. Ibid., 7.

44. Quintero Rivera, "Music," 34.

45. Fernando Ortiz, in La msica afro-cubana (Madrid: Ediciones Jcar, 1975), 17, differentiatesmetalepsis from metstasis,
the latter a process of musical transvaloration across class lines. The case of the danza can be seen as an illustration of
both phenomena.

46. Top Hits Records and Tapes D-2134, 1981.

47. For an overview of Puerto Rico's colonial history, see Edwin Melndez and Edgardo Melndez, eds., Colonial
Dilemma: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Puerto Rico (Boston: South End Press, 1993).

48. Mapey, Criollo y ms, TeleCumbre LP-2002, 1986.

Page 253
Chapter Two
A Sensual Mulatta Called the Plena

1. Toms Blanco, "Elogio de la plena," Revista del Ateneo Puertorriqueo 1, no. 1 (1935): 97106.

2. Juan Flores, "Bumbn and the Beginnings of la Plena," Centro de estudios Puertorriqueos bulletin 2 (spring 1988), 16.
Hereafter, references to this article will be cited from Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston:
Arte Pblico Press, 1993).

3. Francisco Lpez Cruz, La msica folklrica de Puerto Rico (Sharon, Conn.: Troutman Press, 1967).

4. Flores, "Bumbn," 88. See also Ruth Glasser's account of the origins of the plena in My Music Is My Flag, Puerto Rican
Musicians and Their Communities, 19171940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 17177.

5. Flores, "Bumbn," 88.

6. Ibid., 87.

7. Cuban musicologist Leonardo Acosta, in Msica y descolonizacin (Havana, Cuba: Editorial Arte y Literatura, 1982),
16775, maintains that the dichotomy between anonymous and individualized music is illusory and frequently
"arbitrary," for anonymous is any musical piece whose author is unknown to folklorists and musicologists. He thus
calls for a revision of the termfolklore and also illustrates how, in one Latin American context, folkloric music has been
consistently identified with a particular author or composer (175).

8. Flores, "Bumbn," 85.

9. Edgardo Rodrguez Juli, Puertorriqueos: Album de la Sagrada familia puertorriquea(Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1988),
36.
10. Flores, "Bumbn," 89.

11. See Juan Flores's discussion of the controversy concerning Rafael Cortijo and his music in the naming of the new
Fine Arts Complex in San Juan and how it elicited previous social constructs of Puerto Rican identity, in "Cortijo's
Revenge," Centro de estudios Puertorriqueos bulletin 3 (spring 1991), 821. Hereafter, references to this artide will be cited
from Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston: Arte Pblico Press, 1993).

12. Glasser, My Music, 177.

13. From the oral tradition. I am thankful to Joe Daz, arranger and collector of Puerto Rican music, for his generosity
in providing me with a copy of the text and a musical arrangement. Some sources identify the bishop as Irish, whereas
another source (documented by Ruth Glasser, My Music, 175) testified that he was from Spain.

14. Rosario Ferr, "Una conciencia musical," in La escritora hispnica, ed. Nora Erro-Orthman and Juan Cruz-
Mendizbal (Miami, Fla.: Universal, 1990).

15. Edgardo Rodrguez Juli, "Lleg el Obispo de Roma" in Una noche con Iris Chacn (San Juan, P.R.: Editorial
Antillana, 1986), 1152.

16. See Ruth Glasser's discussion of the history of plena in New York, in My Music, 17790.

17. Jorge Prez Roln, "La plena puertorriquea: De la expresin popular a la comercializacin musical," in Centro de
estudios Puertorriqueos bulletin 3 (spring 1991), 52. This article is a condensed version of a longer, unpublished piece
tided "La bombay la plena puertorriquea: Sincretismo racial o transformacin histrica-musical?" which the author
generously shared with me.

18. Flores, "Bumbn," 8586.

19. Prez-Roln, "La plena puertorriquea," 53.

 20. Ibid., 54.

Page 254

21. Nstor Garca Canclini, Las culturas populares en el capitalismo (Mexico: Nueva Imagen, 1982), and the English
translation, Transforming Modernity: Popular Culture in Mexico, trans. Lidia Lozano (Austin: Universtiy of Texas Press,
1993).

22. Ruth Glasser, My Music, 18690.

23. Prez-Roln, "La plena puertorriquea," 54.

24. Flores, "Bumbn," 86.

25. Peter Manuel, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993). Manuel's analysis documents the new democratic uses of cassette technology among northern Indians and
ensuing changes and functional shifts of music. Thus, when Leonardo Acosta, in Msica y descolonizacin, chapters 2
and 3, portrays the commercialization of Cuban popular music in the United States as a unidirectional process of
capitalist colonialism, he excludes the potential reappropriations of technological developments that musicians have
historically practiced in the continuous dialectics of co-optation and resistance. For a lucid analysis of the latter, see
Tricia Rose, "Soul Sonic Forces" in Black Noise (Hanover, N.H. and London: University of New England Press, 1994).

26. Edgardo Rodrguez Juli, El entierro de Cortijo (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1983).

27. Flores, "Cortijo's Revenge," 98.

28. Ibid.

29. Jos Luis Gonzlez, "El pas de cuatro pisos" in El pas de cuatro pisos y otros ensayos (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones
Huracn, 1984), 30.
30. Rodrguez Juli, El entierro de Cortijo, 7071.

31. Rodrguez Juli, Puertorriqueos, 36.

32. Rodrguez Juli, "Lleg el Obispo de Roma."

33. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984),
3537.

34. Rodrguez Juli, "Lleg el Obispo de Roma," 13.

35. At the risk of reducing the ideological complexities of any musical form, there seems to be consensus among
musicologists, cultural historians, and critics that the plena has been an important cultural expression of resistance
and a tool for the critique of the government, the church, and the bourgeois in Puerto Rico and on the mainland. Refer
to Ruth Glasser's more recent discussion on the "social stigma" of this musical form in My Music, 17377.

36. Flores, "Cortijo's Revenge," 98.

37. Toms Blanco, El prejuicio racial en Puerto Rico, ed. Arcadio Daz Quiones (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn,
1985).

38. Ibid., 107.

39. Ibid., 113.

40. Ibid., 12930.

41. Blanco, "Elogio de la plena," Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquea 22 (JulySepember 1979): 3942.

42. See Juan Flores's critique of organic metaphors for national identity in "Cortijo's Revenge," 98.

43. Arcadio Daz Quiones, Introduction to Toms Blanco, El prejuicio, 63.

44. Ibid., 77. See also Vera M. Kutzinski's discussion of the same phenomenon in Cuba in Sugar's Secrets: Race and the
Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 14748, her analysis of Gustavo
Urruitia's Sunday Literary Supplement to Diario de la Marina entitled "Ideales de una Raza," and of Urruitia's constant
efforts to emphasize "how much better race relations were in Cuba" in contrast to the United States.
Page 255

45. Blanco, "Elogio de la Plena," 42.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Sander Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1985), 223.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid., 228.

52. See Manuel Moreno Fraginals, "Cultural Contributions and Deculturation," in Africa in Latin America: Essays in
History, Culture, and Socialization (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984), 1112. He proposes that the concrete, material
conditions that slaves experienced, particularly the absence of women, explain the erotically laden language in black
cultural expressions. He thus contests hypereroticism as an essential trait in blacks, explaining it as a result of inhuman
conditions. I would go a step further and contest Moreno Fraginal's own assumptions about black cultural expressions
as quantitatively different from those of other racial groups, assumptions that elide the primary role of the Eurocentric
gaze as the central perspective, the norm by which others are measured.

53. Quoted by Debra Castillo in Talking Back: Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1992), 162.
 54. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967). In chapter 2,
"The Woman of Color and the White Man," Fanon analyzes the desire of black women for white men as an articulation
of their internalized colonialism and racism, a desire, indeed, for "lactification," for whitening the race. Ironically,
Fanon's male reading of Mayotte Capecia's Je suis Martiniquaise dovetails inversely with Toms Blanco's portrayal of
the Puerto Rican woman as the carrier of prejudice. For both, woman betrays her own race and culture.

55. Blanco, El prejuicio racial, 130.

56. Alejo Carpentier, La msica en Cuba (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1946), 141.

Chapter Three
Desiring the Racial Other

1. Rosario Ferr, "Cuando las mujeres quieren a los hombres" in Papeles de Pandora (Mexico City: Joaqun Mortiz, 1976),
29; translated by Rosario Ferr and Cindy Ventura. See also, in English, "When Women Love Men," in The Youngest
Doll (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 135.

2. Edgardo Rodrguez Juli, "Respeten, que hay damas," in Puertorriqueos: Album de la Sagrada familia
puertorriquea (Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1988), 54.

3. Ibid., 55.

4. Ibid., 56.

5. Also see Mariana Valverde's analysis of the virgin/whore duality in Sex, Power and Pleasure(Philadelphia: New
Society Publishers, 1987), 15758: Women "are offered only two basic forms of desire as possible models": to become
the object of male desire and to repress her own sexual desire and identify with the "higher selfless ideals of nurturing
and mothering." Yet as Valverde concludes, "The content of the fallen woman's desire is different from the Madonna's,
but the form is the same. Both women mobilize a vast reservoir of psychological and physical energy in the service of
male desires" (emphasis mine).
6. Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 12829.
Page 256

7. Rodrguez Juli, "Respeten," 55.

8. Ferr, "Cuando las mujeres," 26; "When Women Love Men," 133.

9. From the oral tradition. Acknowledgments are due to Joe Daz for a written version of these lyrics. The translation
is mine.

10. Ferr, "Cuando las mujeres," 26, "When Women Love Men," 133.

11. Ibid.

12. See Ren Girard's Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965).

13. Valverde, Sex, 38.

14. Ferr, "When Women Love Men," 143.

15. Lorraine Elena Roses uses the reference to blood throughout the story as the basis for an interpretation of the text
that we consider a misreading. According to her, the blood appears as an indication of a physical attack on the part of
Isabd Luberza by which La Negra is wounded. Such a reading reaffirms her thesis about the prototypes of the hysteric
and the sorceress as the basis for the characters, thus invalidating the emancipatory and democratic effect of the final
fusion between the two women. The allusions to blood in the story, in my opinion, are doubly significant: on the one
hand, as signifiers of race and racial difference, and on the other, as images that merge with the red nail polish, thus
suggesting the association between eroticism and death. Lorraine Elena Roses, "Las esperanzas de Pandora: Prototipos
femeninos en la obra de Rosario Ferr," Revista Iberoamericana 16263 (JanuaryJune, 1993): 27087.
16. Sandra Cypess, "Tradition and Innovation in the Writings of Puerto Rican Women," in Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean
Women and Literature, ed. Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1990), 84.

17. Debra Castillo, Talking Back: Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1992), 159, 164.

18. Ferr, "When Women Love Men," 13839.

19. Ibid., 136.

20. Juan G. Gelp, Literatura y paternalismo en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1993),
157.

21. Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Lacan, 65.

22. Ferr, "When Women Love Men," 145.

23. See the definition of tongonear, derived from tongo, in Fernando Ortiz, Glosario de afronegrismos (Havana: Imprenta
El Siglo XX, 1924), 461. Ortiz traces the word to "la intromisin del sufijo ng, que tras una afresis (con-to-ng-oneo)
hace nacer de tal guisa dicha voz de otra:contoneo, que le es sinnima, aunque sin el sentido burln de aquella
degenerada" [the intromission of the suffix ng, that through apheresis (con-to-ng-oneo) gives birth in such a way to
the other's voice: contoneo, is a synonym, however without the chiding meaning of that degenerated term].

24. See Margarite Fernndez Olmos, "Desde una perspectiva femenina: La cuentstica de Rosario Ferr y Ana Lydia
Vega," Homines, 8, no. 2 (198485): 30311.

25. The strategies of erasure and of silencing the black presence within the Puerto Rican upper class at the turn of the
century are unveiled in Rosario Ferr's short novel, aptly titled Maldito amorafter the title of a well-known danza by
Juan Morel Campos.
26. Toms Blanco, El prejuicio racial en Puerto Rico, ed. Arcadio Daz Quiones (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn,
1985), 40.

27. See Vera M. Kutzinski, Sugar's Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism(Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1993), 16468.
Page 257

28. Ibid., 76.

29. See Deborah Gray-White's analysis of analogous racial constructs in the U.S. South in "Jezebel and Mammy: The
Mythology of Female Slavery," in Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton,
1985), 2761.

30. A meaningful comparison here is Manuel Ramos Otero's short story, "La ltima plena que bail Luberza,"
published side by side with Ferr's story in Zona de carga y descarga and reprinted in El euento de la mujer del mar (Rio
Piedras, P.R: Ediciones Huracn, 1979), 4768. While both texts probe the social and erotic power of Isabel "La Negra"
Luberza, Ramos Otero's fictional version of this prostitute is informed by religious references, including santera; the
language of dreams and death; and significantly, the masculinization of Isabel as an "omniscient being, a dictatorial
figure close to Garca Mrquez's "Mama grande.''

31. Ferr, "Cuando las mujeres," 40.

32. Valverde, Sex, 43.

33. Ferr, "Porqu quiere Isabel a los hombres?" in El coloquio de las perras (San Juan: Editorial Cultural, 1990), 150.

34. Castillo, Talking Back, 163.

35. See Rafael Falcn, "El tema del negro en el cuento puertorriqueo," Cuadernos hispanoamericanos: Revista mensual de
cultura hispnica 45152 (JanuaryFebruary 1988): 97109. Falcn concludes his essay with a caveat regarding neo-Negrista
literature for, as he judges, "todava carecemos de obras que expresen una visin clara y definida de la lucha de clases
que entraa el prejuicio racial en Puerto Rico, y que presenten las luchas y aportaciones del puertorriqueo negro
como elemento vivo de nuestra colectividad nacional" [we still lack works that express a clear and definite vision of
the class struggle, including the racial prejudice in Puerto Rico, and that present the struggles and contributions of the
black Puerto Rican as dynamic element(s) of our national collectivity].

36. Rosario Ferr, "Amalia," in Papeles de Pandora, 6580. Also in English in The Youngest Doll, 4758.
37. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Noonday Press, 1989), 4142.

38. See Ferr's "La cocina de la escritura," in La sartn por el mango: Encuentro de escritoras latinoamericanas, ed. Patricia
Elena Gonzlez and Eliana Ortega (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1985), 13754.

39. Susan Andrade, "White Skin, Black Masks: Colonialism and Sexual Politics of Oroonoko,"Cultural Critique 27
(spring 1994), 189214.

40. Rosario Ferr, "Una conciencia musical," in La escritora hispnica, ed. Nora Erro-Orthman and Juan Cruz-
Mendizbal (Miami, Fla.: Universal, 1990).

41. Ferr, "Una conciencia," 89.

42. Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature(Portsmouth, N.H.:
Heinemann, 1986), 17.

43. Ferr, "Maquinolandera," in Papeles de Pandora, 20423.

44. Ibid., 223.

45. Fernando Ortiz, La msica afro-cubana (Madrid: Ediciones Jcar, 1975), 3068.

46. Barthes, Pleasure of the Text, 61.

47. Kutzinski, Sugar's Secrets, 179, observes how formalist literary criticism has persistently "disguise[d] political
choices as purely aesthetic ones"; an excellent case in point is the jitanjfora, which has been traditionally defined as
"mere playful onomatopoeia," thus dismissing its value "as a language with [its] own discrete history[ies]."
 48. Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other," in After

Page 258

the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1986), 62.

Part Two
The Plural Sites of Salsa: A Postmodern Preface

1. Juan Flores and Mara Milagros Lpez, "Dossier Puerto Rico," Social Text 38 (spring 1994): 9395, summarize the
singular case of Puerto Rico in its contradictory position "that appears at once postnational and prenational" (94). The
authors stress issues such as the "national question," economic dependence, consumption without production, social
and ethnic inequality in the educational system, and "insertion into the global economy at points (like high finance
and tourism) that are powerless to transform local life" (93).

2. Quoted in Leonardo Padura, "Willie Coln: Algo distinto," La gaceta de Cuba, JanuaryFebruary 1992, 12.

3. See Demetria Martnez's profile "The Salsa Padre," Vista: Focus on Hispanic Americans, 26 May 1990, 67, 12.

4. Lise Waxer, "Appropriation, Ethnicity, and the Negotiation of Insider-Outsider Roles in Latin Popular Music
Performance." Paper presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Chicago, 1013 October
1991.

5. Andrea Press and Elizabeth Cole, "Women like Us: Working-Class Women Respond to Television Representations
of Abortion," in Viewing, Reading, Listening: Audiences and Cultural Reception, ed. Jon Cruz and Justin Lewis (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), 5580.

Chapter Four
Situating Salsa
1. Csar Miguel Rondn, El libro de la salsa: Crnica de la msica del Caribe urbano (Caracas, Venezuela: Editorial Arte,
1980), 210.

2. Cocolo also refers us to Cocola, the artistic pseudonym of Domingo Cruz, a mulatto Puerto Rican bombardinista
and dance orchestra director famous at the turn of the century. See Angel Quintero Rivera's Patricios y plebeyos:
Burgueses, hacendados, artesanos y obreros (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1988): 7677.

3. In the San Juan Star of 14 June 1987, Carlos Galarza reported on the salsa concert under "Salseros Jam until Morning,"
and Jaime Pieras documented the rock concert under "Rockers Give Fans an Earful."

4. Produced and directed by Ana Maria Garca, Cocolos y rockeros documents the musical wars between salsa and rock
music in Puerto Rico. Filmed in 1992, it received the Special Jury Award in San Juan's Cinemafest that year.

5. Elliott Castro Tirado's profile of Tony Vega, "Tony Vega: Un salsero," Claridad 1218 (June 1992): 2021, begins,
significantly, with questions addressed to the reader that attempt to deessentialize the salsero archetype: "Si les digo
Eladio Antonio Vega Ayala . . . pensaran ustedes en un salsero? Si les digo que es blanco, de ojos claros y pelo lacio . . .
pensaran en un salsero?" [If I mention the name Eladio Antonio Vega Ayala . . . would you think of a salsero? If I say
he is white, with green eyes and straight hair, . . . would you think of a salsero?]

6. Tony Vega, "Busca el ritmo," composed by Johnny Ortiz, in Tony Vega con la Orquesta de Willie Rosario, Rodven
Records, TH2972, 1992.

7. Castro Tirado, "Tony Vega," 2021.

8. Wayka Pagn Agosto, "Esa humanidad no es casualidad: Andy Montaez," Claridad, 1218 June 1992, 23.
Page 259

9. Mark Slobin, "Micromusics of the West: A Comparative Approach," Ethnomusicology, 36 (winter 1992): 187.

10. Willie Coln explains salsa's popularity in Europe as a result of various factors, such as the presence of Larino
groups that toured Larino communities dovetailed with the European following of jazz and its institutionalization
through jazz festivals. Moreover, he ascribes this "easier" penetration of salsa in European countries to the open,
tolerant attitudes of Europeans toward multicultural productions, in contrast to U.S. monocultural trends. See
Leonardo Padura, "Willie Coln: Algo distinto," La gaceta de Cuba, JanuaryFebruary 1992, 11. See also Ramn Cintrn's
summary of the first salsa festival in Paris, "Primer festival de Salsa en Pars (entre logros y tropiezos)," Claridad, 39
March 1995, 24, which he describes as very successful despite problems in publicity, organization, and production.

11. Orquesta de la Luz, Somos diferentes, Sony Discos and BMG Victor, CDZ-80851, 1992. The lyrics of the original song
by Pablo Beltrn Ruiz appear in Carmencita Delgado de Rizo, ed.,Cancionero: Antologa (Bogot, Colombia: Ediclones
Gamma, 1991), 351.

12. See Guillermo Cabrera Infante, "El Son: El fantasma que recorre Amrica," El Nuevo Da, 9 September 1984, 8. This
newspaper piece is a brief version of Infante's earlier essay, titled "Salsa para una ensalada," in Rose S. Minc,
ed., Literatures in Transition: The Many Voices of the Caribbean Area (Gaithersburg, Md.: Hispamrica and Montclair State
College, 1982), 2136.

13. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, "A Cultural History of Salsa, and Some Remarks on the Nature of Musical Creation
and Meaning, Ethnic Identity, Hegemony and Resistance," master's thesis, University of California, Berkeley.

14. Rondn, Libro de la salsa, 182.

15. See John Fiske, "The Jeaning of America," in Understanding Popular Culture (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 123.

16. Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes, U.K., and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1990),
711, discusses articulation, already used by Stuart Hall and defined by Antonio Gramsci as "the most sophisticated
method at present available of conceiving the relationship between musical forms and practices, on the one hand, and
class interests and social structure, on the other."
 17. Jeremy Marre and Hannah Charlton, Beats of the Heart: Popular Music of the World (London: Pluto Press, 1985), 73.

18. Leonardo Acosta, Msica y descolonizacin (Havana: Editorial Arte y Literatura, 1982), 213.

19. Rondn's El libro de la salsa remains the most complete historical overview of the development of this music. See
also Peter Manuel, Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 2450; Jorge Duany, "Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of Salsa," Latin
American Music Review5 (fall/winter 1984): 186216; Hondagneu-Sotelo, "A Cultural History of Salsa"; and Sue Steward,
"Cuba and the Roots of Salsa," in Rhythms of the World, ed. Francis Hardy and Tim May (London: BBC Books, 1989),
2437.

20. Rondn, El libro de la salsa, 20.

21. Ibid.

22. Many of these diverse and conflicting definitions are culled by Sergio Santana in Qu es la salsa? Buscando la
meloda (Medelln, Colombia: Ediciones Salsa y Cultura, 1992). My appreciation to Margarita de la Vega Hurtado for
purchasing this book for me in Colombia. Peter Manuel, in "Puerto Rican Music and Cultural Identity: Creative
Appropnarion of Cuban Sources from Danza to Salsa," Ethnomusicology 38, no. 2 (springsummer 1994), also argues for
the recognition that all

Page 260

Puerto Rican musics have originated in Cuban music. While he stresses how Puerto Ricans have "resignified" these
forms to create their own cultural expressions, I disagree with the degree to which Cuban musical structures are favored
over parallel Afro-Puerto Rican forms.

23. Santana, Qu es la salsa?, 76.

24. Flix M. Padilla, "Salsa: Puerto Rican and Latino Music," Journal of Popular Culture 24 (Summer 1990): 87104.
25. Duany, "Popular Music in Puerto Rico," 187.

26. Steve Loza, in "The Origins of the Son," Aztln 15, no. 1 (1984), 107, summarizes this correction. Manuel Prez Beato,
Jos Juan Arrom, and Alberto Muguercia have all refuted "the authenticity" of Ma Teodora as a historical figure, who
was "most likely . . . fiction." See also Peter Manuel's summary of Cuban music in Popular Musics, 30.

27. See Cabrera Infante, "El Son: El fantasma que recorre Amrica" and "Salsa para una ensalada." Csar Miguel
Rondn honors Pieiro's coining of the term salsa by using his song as an epigraph to his book.

28. Cabrera Infante, "Salsa para una ensalada," 35.

29. See Leonardo Padura, "Willie Coln," 12.

30. Rondn, El libro de la salsa, 25.

31. Peter Manuel, "Puerto Rican Music," 270.

32. Hondagneau-Sotelo, "Cultural History of Salsa," 1-10.

33. Duany, "Popular Music in Puerto Rico," 19597.

34. Hondagneau-Sotelo, "Cultural History of Salsa," 1425.

35. Angel Quintero Rivera, Music, Social Classes, and the National Question in Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras: University of
Puerto Rico, Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, 1987), 12, 31.
Chapter Five
Ideological Negotiations

1. Angel Quintero Rivera, Music, Social Classes, and the National Question in Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras: University of
Puerto Rico, Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, 1987), 6.

2. Ibid., 8.

3. Vctor Hernndez Cruz, Snaps (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 77.

4. Quintero Rivera, Music, 89.

5. Theodor Adorno, "On Popular Music," in Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, vol. 9 (New York: Institute for Social
Research, 1941), 2426.

6. Roberta L. Singer, "Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Latin Popular Music in New York City," Latin
American Music Review 4 (fallwinter 1983), 194.

7. In Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo Filippi, Vrgenes y mrtires (Rio Piedras: Editorial Antillana, 1983), 8188.

8. According to Jorge Duany, "Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of Salsa,"Latin American Music
Review 5 (fallwinter 1984): 201, since its release in 1978 the song "Pedro Navaja" and its character have "become part
of Puerto Rican folklore." Duany also describes the song as a reference to the "urban lower-class community in the
United States," in its continuity with the literary and folkloric character of the guapo or matn. See also Manuel Cachn's
analysis of this song as "a musical'' version of the testimonio in Latin American literature, in "Bailando salsa con el
super en Harlem: El testimonio caribeo del barrio," Apuntes postmodernos/Postmodern Notes, fall 1993, 5964.

9. La verdadera historia de Pedro Navaja, produced by Teatro del Sesenta, is

Page 261

now considered a legend; it probably was the most popular dramatic piece ever performed in Puerto Rico. See Lowell
Fiet's historical assessment of its impact on Puerto Rican theatre in "La verdadera historia de Pedro Navaja: Leyenda y
actualidad," Claridad 26 (August1 September 1994), 1617.

10. Vega, "Letra para salsa," in Vega and Lugo Filippi, Vrgenes y mrtires, 88.

11. See Juan G. Gelp, Literatura y paternalismo en Puerto Rico (San Juan: University of Puerto Rico Press, 1993), 18891.
Gelp analyzes the open spaces of Vega's urban short stories as an oppositional gesture to the enclosed, domestic loci
that prevailed in earlier patriarchal texts of Puerto Rican literature. He extends this oppositionality to include,
metaphorically speaking, the aperture of elite modes of culture onto popular culture, as the presence of salsa references
indicates in this short story.

12. I use these terms based on their definitions and deployment in "Discourse in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination:
Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1981), 259422.

13. Taken from Charley Gerard and Marty Sheller, SALSA! The Rhythm of Latin Music (Crown Point, Ind.: White Cliffs
Media, 1989), 15.

14. Adorno, "On Popular Music," 41. Richard Middleton, in Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes, U.K., and
Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1990), 3463, devotes a chapter to a critique and reading of Adorno, reminding
the reader of the "historical location" of Adorno's writings. While the latter's approach to popular music was formed
during the 1930s, Middleton argues that during the 1940s ''cultural totalitarianism becomes absolute," and it is also
during this period that fascism and Stalinism emerge. Middleton also argues that Adorno's "ethnocentric and culture-
centric perspective" (44) weakened his approach to musical production in the United States and in third world
countries and that his view of the unitary subject, later questioned by poststructuralism, limited his analysis of
audience and reception practices.

15. See Janos Marothy, Music of the Bourgeois, Music of the Proletariat (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1974).

16. Adorno, "On Popular Music," 2124.

17. George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture(Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1990).

18. Middleton, Studying Popular Music, 268.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 269. Middleton establishes two types of repetition in music. Musematic repetition is the "repetition of
musemes," or short units that would include "riffs, call and response structures, and short, unchanging rhythmic
patterns" (270). Discursive repetition, on the other hand, refers to the duplication of longer units such as the phrase,
the sentence, or even complete sections. While these categories are usually related, respectively, with oral and written
forms of musical composition, Middleton argues that "it would be better to see them not as crudely technologically
determined but as actively summoned into development and strongly mediated by the needs of distinct socio-
economic configurations."

21. Peter Manuel, in his introduction to Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 23, summarizes definitions of popular music that connect it with
industrialized nations and with mass media. However, Manuel also shows that non-Western cultures have developed
popular musical forms without such infrastructures.

22. See Duany, "Popular Music in Puerto Rico," 187.

23. Csar Miguel Rondn, El libro de la salsa: crnica de la msica del Caribe urbano (Caracus, Venezuela: Editorial Arte,
1980), 102.
Page 262

24. John Shepherd, "Value and Power in Music: An English Canadian Perspective," in Relocating Cultural Studies:
Developments in Theory and Research, ed. Valda Blundell, John Shepherd, and Ian Taylor (London and New York:
Routledge, 1993), 175.

25. Manuel Cachn, "Bailando salsa," 60, defines "commercial Salsa" as music produced for a consumer market, thus
celebrating dancing and parties, what in Antillean culture has possessed strong religious values. "Politico-social Salsa"
(my translation) integrates to music and dancing a political discourse that serves as a vehicle for appropriation and
for the cultural struggle of the barrio. In my view, these definitions do not do justice to the simultaneous and plural
meanings of any song, regardless of the initial intention.

26. Flix M. Padilla, "Salsa: Puerto Rican and Latino Music," Journal of Popular Culture 24. (summer 1990): 88.

27. Ibid., 91.

28. See Leonardo Padura, "Willie Coln: Algo distinto," La gateta de Cuba, JanuaryFebruary 1992, 12. Leonardo
Acosta, Msica y descolonizacin (Havana, Cuba: Editorial Arte y Literatura, 1982), 74, identifies four major criteria
established by Tin Pan Alley since 1914 in the realm of composition: (1) avoiding variations and emphasizing the
musical theme, (2) limiting improvisation, (3) attaining novelty through a superficial element rather than creativity,
(4) accelerated changes in musical evolution.

29. Peter Manuel, "Latin Music in the United States: Salsa and the Mass Media," Journal of Communication 41 (winter
1991): 110.

30. Ibid., 110.

31. Ibid., 111.

32. Ibid., 114.

33. Jeremy Marre and Hannah Charlton, Beats of the Heart: Popular Music of the World (London: Pluto Press, 1985), 81.

34. Iain Chambers, Popular Culture: The Metropolitan Experience (London and New York: Methuen, 1986), 135.

35. Edgardo Daz Daz, "El repertorio de salsa en dos perspectivas genricas," paper presented at the first meeting of
Iberoamerican ethnomusicologists, Lisbon, Portugal, March 1994. Given the dearth of ethnographic studies on dancing
among Latinas/os, this study represents an important development for understanding Latina/o popular music as
sociocultural practice. See also, by the same author, "La msica bailable de los carnets: Forma y significado de su
repertorio en Puerto Rico (18771930), Revista musical puertorriquea 5 (JanuaryJune 1990): 321.

36. For an analysis of the role and authority of the band and its leader in deciding the musical repertoire, see Manuel
Pea, "Ritual Structure in a Chicano Dance," Latin American Music Review1, no. 4773 (spring 1980); see also Jos Limn's
discussion about dancing as "a site of contestation" within the very dance itself, "at the point of dance production,"
in Dancing with the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1994), 164.

37. Daz Daz, "Repertorio de salsa," 37.

38. Limn, Dancing with the Devil, 49. My emphasis on they needs further discussion. Most unique about Limn's
ethnographic incursion is his own doubled subject position as anthropologist and as participant in this dance club
scene. Although he is there as observer, he also participates as a Chicano male by dancing with Beatriz and by taking
her out to dinner. The gender-inflected they is significant because Beatriz is also implicitly calling him to task for
belonging to that class of men. As he mentions at the beginning of the chapter, he, as anthropologist, also wants
something from her, not her body but definitely her experiences and her cultural knowledge of a
Page 263

social event and world that he is, in many ways, trying to recover as a "working-class Mexican descent anthropologist"
by learning how to dance again.

39. Ibid., 15354. Edgardo Daz Daz, in "Repertorio de salsa," clearly documents through interviews with both men
and women that men ascribe an exclusively physical and erotic meaning to dancing boleros (35), whereas women tend
to be more wary of whom they choose to dance boleros with because they consider this intimate dance an expression
of a serious emotional commitment (3334).

40. Limn, Dancing with the Devil, 164.

41. Ibid., 163. Randy Martin, "Dance as a Social Movement" in Social Text 12:5470.

42. Ibid., 166.

43. This and subsequent citations are part of the interviews held with working-class women in Detroit. Refer to Part
Four of this book for more details.

44. Leslie Gotfrit, "Women Dancing Back: Disruption and the Politics of Pleasure," inPostmodernism, Feminism, and
Cultural Politics: Redrawing Educational Boundaries, ed. Henry A. Giroux (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1991), 17495.

45. Willie Coln, "The Rhythms," in The Portable Lower East Side (New York: The Portable Lower East Side, 1988), 912.

46. Adorno, "On Popular Music," 3739.

47. Gotfrit, "Women Dancing Back," 176.

 48. Limn, Dancing with the Devil, 165.

49. Gotfrit, "Women Dancing Back," 176.

50. Ibid.

51. Luis Rafael Snchez, La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos (Hanover, N.H.: Ediciones del Norte, 1988), 104.

52. Danzn was produced by Jorge Snchez and directed by Mara Novaro. Mexico City: Macondo Cine Video, 1991.

53. See Frances R. Aparicio, "Salsa, maracas, and baile: Latin popular music in the poetry of Vctor Hernndez
Cruz," MELUS 16 (spring 198990): 4358.

Chapter Six
Cultural (Mis) Translations and Crossover Nightmares

1. Leslie Gotfrit, "Women Dancing Back: Disruption and the Politics of Pleasure," in Henry A. Giroux,
ed., Postmodernism, Feminism, and Cultural Politics: Redrawing Educational Boundaries(Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1993), 84.

2. Tim Padgett, Peter Katel, and Niko Price, "Crossover Dreamers," in Newsweek 4 (November 1991), 75.

3. See Leonardo Acosta, Msica y descolonizacin (Havana, Cuba: Editorial Arte y Literatura, 1982), 31. I want to thank
Peter Manuel for pointing out this fact.
 4. I want to thank Bridget M. Morgan for sharing this material with me. The musical score includes both English and
Spanish lyrics and the music by Eliseo Grenet and arranged by Laurence Kempton (New York: Edward B. Marks
Music Corporation, 1931).

5. See Cristbal Daz Ayala, Msica cubana del Areyto a la Nueva Trova, 2nd ed. (San Juan, P.R.: Editorial Cubanacn,
1981), 127, 137.

6. Don Michael Randel, "Crossing Over with Rubn Blades," Journal of the American Musicological Society 44 (summer
1991): 30123.

7. Ibid., 306.

8. Ibid., 307.

Page 264

9. Ibid., 320.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., 32021.

12. Ibid., 322.

13. Ibid.

14. Acosta, Msica y descolonizacin, 45.

 15. I employ these terms informed by Nathaniel Mackey s analysis of musical appropriations in "Other: From Noun
to Verb," Representations 39 (summer 1992): 5170.

16. Carlos Agudelo, "Latin Notas," Billboard (23 September 1989): 69.

17. Ibid.

18. See, for example, George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1990); Jon Cruz, "Testimonies and Artifacts: Elite Appropriations of African American
Music in the Nineteenth Century," in Viewing, Reading, Listening: Audiences and Cultural Reception, ed. Jon Cruz and
Justin Lewis (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994,): 12541; Nathaniel Mackey, "Other"; and Acosta, Msica y descolonizacin.

19. In Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (New York and London: Verso, 1994),
George Lipsitz discusses this shift "as transnational corporations create integrated global markets and the nation state
recedes as a source of identity and identification, popular culture becomes an ever more important public sphere" (7).

20. Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes, U.K., and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1990), 811.

21. Willie Coln, quoted in Agudelo, "Latin Notas," 69.

22. Mackey, "Other," 64.

Part Three
Dissonant Melodies Theoretical Pretexts

1. See Jonathan Culler, "Reading Woman," in On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1982), 4364; Mary Jacobus, Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986); Pamela L. Caughie, "Women Reading/Reading Women: A Review of Some Recent Books on
Gender and Reading," Papers in Language and Literature 24 (summer 1988), 31735; and Janice A. Radway,Reading the
Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984, 1991).
2. Culler, "Reading Woman," 46.

3. See, for instance, Jane S. Jaquette, "Literary Archetypes and Female Role Alternatives: The Woman and the Novel in
Latin America," in Female and Male in Latin America, ed. Ann Pescattello (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1973), 327.

4. Neyssa Palmer, Las mujeres en los cuentos de Ren Marqus (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto
Rico, 1988), 27.

5. Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985; reprint London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 45.

6. Caughie, "Women Reading," 328.

7. Ibid., 31819.

8. Cathy Schwichtenberg, "Reconceptualizing Gender: New Sites for Feminist Audience Research," in Viewing, Reading,
Listening: Audiences and Cultural Reception, ed. Jon Cruz and Justin Lewis (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), 171.
Page 265

Schwichtenberg's working definition of gender avoids the sorts of essentializing traps into which critics such as
Jonathan Culler fall when approaching "reading woman" as a "differential definition": Culler states that "to read as a
woman is to avoid reading as a man, to identify the specific defenses and distortions of male readings and provide
correctives" ("Reading woman," 54). while Culler potentially argues here for the oppositional value of women as
readers, it ultimately makes women's identity contingent on man, that is, woman is what is not male nor masculine, a
legacy of Freudian theories of penis envy and of woman as "lack.''

9. Frances Aparicio, "'As son': Salsa Music, Female Narratives, and Gender (De)Construction in Puerto Rico," Poetics
Today 15 (December 1994): 65984.

10. See Mary Ellison, Lyrical Protest: Black Music's Struggle against Discrimination (New York: Praeger, 1989), whose
discussion of sexual politics in the blues and in black music in general is based on the assumption that the lyrics of the
song are unmediated reflections of the singer's personal life. As for salsa music, Jos Arteaga Rodrguez's piece on
violence as a recurring theme in this musical tradition, "Salsa y violencia: una aproximacin sonoro-histrica," Revista
Musical Puertorriquea 4 (JulyDecember 1988): 2033, tends to criminalize salsa singers from New York as direct agents
of the violence they sing about.

Chapter Seven
Woman as Absence

1. Peter Manuel points out that the habanera rhythm emerged in Cuba as early as 1803 and was a staple feature of the
early- to mid-nineteenth century contradanza. I want to thank him for this historical clarification.

2. See Iris M. Zavala, "De hroes y heronas en lo imaginario social: El discurso amoroso del bolero," Casa de las
Amricas 30 (MarchApril 1990): 12329. See also Rend A. Campos, "The Poetics of the Bolero in the Novels of Manuel
Puig," in World Literature Today 65 (autumn 1991): 63742.

3. Printed in Un siglo de bolero (Mexico City: EDUSA, n.d.), vol. 5. Also in Cancionero: Antologa, ed. Carmencita Delgado
de Rizo (Bogot, Colombia: Ediciones Gamma, 1991), 245 (hereafter cited as Cancionero).

4. Zavala, "De hroes y heronas," 124.

 5. Ibid., 125.

6. This phrase is quoted from Luis Rafael Snchez's La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos(Hanover, N.H.: Ediciones
del Norte, 1988), 104, in which he establishes a poetic contrast between the centrifugal movements of dancing to
guarachas and the centripetal forces of the bolero. The association of the bolero with the eternal, its universality and
timelessness, has also been discussed by Hctor Madera Ferrn in "El bolero es eterno," Un siglo de bolero, 35, in which
he celebrates the popularity of this musical form throughout one hundred years.

7. Luis Rafael Snchez, La importancia, 3. This phrase, which describes Latin America as bitter, barefoot, and speaking
Spanish, becomes a leitmotif throughout the book. Its recurrence anchors the preeminence of the everyday life and
culture of the working class and proletariat over the elite forms of culture in Latin America, a class dialectic that the
bolero, according to Snchez and others, truly bridges in its language of love.

8. Zavala, "De hroes y heronas," 124.

9. Luis Miguel, Romance, Warner Music Netherlands CPXI-7150, 1991.

10. Zavala, "De hroes y heronas," 125, and Madera Ferrn, "El bolero es eterno," 4.

11. Chuto y La Calandria, Siempre peleando, Ansonia Records ACS 1520.

12. I have used Deborah Pacini Hernndez's English version of "Aqu la mujer

Page 267

34. "Nuestro balance," composed by C. Novarro and interpreted by Tito Rodrguez in Los grandes xitos de Tito
Rodrguez.

35. Octavio Paz, El laberinto de la soledad (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1959).
36. Daniel Santos, "El que canta," Cancionero, 136.

37. In "Is There a Fan in the Home? The Affective Sensibility of Fandom," in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and
Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 54, Lawrence Grossberg defines
"sensibility" as "a particular form of engagement or mode of operation" that "defines the possible relationships between
texts and audiences.'' He argues that single texts, genres or media can't fully account for the constructing of meanings
or the "structures of pleasure" that audiences experience in a particular cultural context. Thus, he proposes "sensibility"
as a concept that acknowledges the particular context in which "musical texts and practices, economic and race
relations, images of performers and fans, social relations, aesthetic conventions, styles of language, movement,
appearance and dance, media practices, ideological commitments" come together to constitute that specific semiotic
moment of the productive.

38. When the interviewee states that "amor es el pan de la vida," he is quoting from Pedro Flores's "Obsesin," a well-
known bolero that attempts to define love despite its ineffability and that reaffirms the "obsessive" nature of man for
woman.

39. Hlne Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa," in New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabel de Courtivron
(New York: Schocken Books, 1981), 24564.

40. Campos, "Poetics of the Bolero," 638.

41. It is not arbitrary that Luis Rafael Snchez's textualization of Daniel Santos is informed and mediated by the figure
of Don Juan. Julia Kristeva, in "Don Juan, or Loving to Be Able To," inTales of Love, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York:
Columbia.University Press, 1987), 191208, associates music, eroticism, and performance in Don Juan's constant
deferral of love. It is the "pure jouissance of a conqueror," that infinite "eternal return" (193) that characterizes
donjuanismo as musical: "Don Giovanni is musical precisely became he has no Ego. He has no internality, but, as his
roamings, his flights, his many as well as unbearable residences show him to be, he is a multiplicity, a polyphony.
Don Giovanni is the harmonization of the multiple" (193).

42. Luis Rafael Snchez, La importancia, 205.

43. Zavala, "De hroes y heronas," 125.

44. Jorge A. Morales, Baladas de yellohera y otras consideraciones (San Juan, ER.: Editorial Easymoving Co., 1981), 1.
Chapter Eight
Patriarchal Synecdoches

1. Composed by Billo Frometa, a Dominican composer who resided in Venezuela and was director of the band Billo's
Caracas Boy, "Las muchachas" was included in the Sonora Matancera's recording celebrating its sixtieth
anniversary: Sexagsimo Aniversario de la Sonora Matancera, Discos Peerless, MC-TV 4003-9, 1984.

2. Edgardo Rodrguez Juli, "El veranazo en que mangaron a Junior," in El cruce de la Baha de Gunica (Rio Piedras,
P.R.: Editorial Cultural, 1989), 99130.

3. Ibid., 105.

4. See Edgardo Rodrguez Juli, "Una noche con Iris Chacn," in Una noche con Iris Chacn (San Juan, P.R.: Editorial
Antillana, 1986), 10249. See also Juli's historical novel, La noche oscura del Nio Avils (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones
Huracn, 1984).

5. Orquesta Aragn, "Tan Sabrosona," BMG Music, 2446-2-RL, 1956.

Page 268

6. See Vera Kutzinski, Sugar's Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism(Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 1993), 172.

7. Fernando Ortiz, La msica afro-cubana (Madrid: Biblioteca Jcar, 1975), 35.

8. Enrique Fernndez, "Salsa x 2," in Currents from the Dancing River: Contemporary Latino Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry,
ed. Ray Gonzlez (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1994), 110.

9. Antonio Bentez Rojo's The Repeating Island, trans. James E. Maraniss (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992),
a postmodern perspective on the geocultural entity of the Caribbean, allegorizes this culture as polyrhythm, chaos,
and carnival, ideologemes that the author concludes are "feminine": "There is something strongly feminine in this
extraordinary fiesta: its flux, its diffuse sensuality, its generative force, its capacity to nourish and conserve." (29).

10. Fernndez, "Salsa 2," 1.

11. Ibid., 2.

12. Ibid., 7.

13. Fernndez's feminization of Latina/o culture may be read as a cultural allegory of the male/female power relations
behind "emotional labor." That is, while Latin(o) America continuously feeds the ego of the masculine United States,
providing indeed for "emotional caregiving," the United States does not recognize its parasitical or dependent
relationship nor rewards it accordingly. See Sandra Lee Bartky's ''Feeding Egos and Tending Wounds: Deference and
Disaffection in Women's Emotional Labor," in Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of
Oppression (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 99119.

14. While Fernndez considers the term merengue (meringue) another instance of the convergence of food and sexual
pleasure in Latina/o cultures, this is not exclusive to Latinas/os. As Rosalind Coward analyzes this convergence
in Female Desires: How They Are Sought, Bought and Packaged (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1985), in Anglo cultures
women are referred to as sweets, which to Coward signals the function of nourishment and possession that women
embody in patriarchal societies as well as in the role of "inessential luxury," with which their "labor" is also associated
(91). Thus, while the langnage of sweets constructs the feminine in the North, in Latina/o cultures a discourse about
taste and spice "contaminate" the culture of the erotic. Structurally, however, the analogy is valid, for in both cultures
patriarchal language positions women as objects of cannibalism.

15. Catherine Guzmn, "Pnmelo ah que te lo voy a partir: Sex and Violence in the Merengue," inPopular Culture and
Literature in the Hispanic World: A Symposium, ed. Rose Minc (Gaithersburg, Md.: Hispamrica, 1981), 17383. I mention
that this is an early article became nowadays the merengnes of Juan Luis Guerra have surpassed in popularity those
such as "Caa brava."

16. Among other songs, see Gerardo, "Rico Suave," Mo'Ritmo, Interscope Records 7-91619-4, 1991; El General, "Te ves
buena," Meren-Rap, Prime Entertainment, 3229-4-RL, 1991; "Las mujeres de San Diego," lyrics by Lucho Bermdez and
Ramn de Zubira, Cancionero, 225.

17. Deborah Pacini Hernndez, Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music(Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1995), 17378.

18. Rodrguez Juli, "El veranazo," 108.

19. Robin Roberts, "Music Videos, Performance and Resistance: Feminist Rappers," Journal of Popular Culture 25 (fall
1991): 149.

20. Fransheska, Menalo, New York, Prune Records, 3207-4-RL, 1991. The song "Menalo" also is included in the
anthology Meren-Rap.

21. Ortiz, La msica afro-cubana, 36.

22. Lisa M, "Taste the Flavor of the Latin," Flavor of the Latin, Sony Discos DCC 80687, 1991.
Page 269

23. Sylvia Walby, Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford and Cambridge: Basil Black-well, 1990), 107.

24. Bartky, Femininity and Domination, 74.

25. Judith Ortiz Corer, "So Much for Maana," in Terms of Survival (Houston: Arte Pblico Press, 1987), 37.

26. Santi y sus Duendes, "La gordita," Meren-Rap.

27. Toa La Negra, "La Negrita Concepcin," Toa la Negra: La sensacin jarocha, Discos Peerless MCP 2519-7, 1991.

Chapter Nine
Singing the Gender Wars

1. See Alba Nydia Rivera Ramos, ed., La mujer puertorriquea: Investigaciones psicosociales (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Editorial
Edil, 1991), particularly the chapter rifled "Actitudes y autopercepcin de un sector de mujeres puertorriqueas," by
Rivera Ramos and Jos Acevedo (318). Also relevant areLa mujer en Puerto Rico, ed. Yamila Azize Vargas (Rio Piedras,
P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1987);La mujer en la sociedad puertorriquea, ed. Edna Acosta Beln (Rio Piedras: Ediciones
Huracn, 1980); and Margarita Ostolaza Rey, Poltica sexual en Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1989).

2. Rivera Ramos and Acevedo, "Actitudes," 15.

3. This most popular of boleros, "Usted," authored by Gabriel Ruiz, has been interpreted by diverse singers throughout
Latin America, including Rubn Blades. The lyrics appear in Carmencita Delgado de Rizo, ed., Cancionero:
Antologa (Bogot, Colombia: Ediciones Gamma, 1991, 399 (hereafter cited as Cancionero).

4. See Mara Herrera-Sobek, The Mexican Corrido: A Feminist Analysis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990),
for an analysis of images of women in this form of Mexican oral tradition. Anna M. Fernndez Poncela, in "La
consritucin del gnero a travs de la cultura popular: Cuentos y leyendas," paper presented at the third Coloquio del
Programa Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer (PIEM), at the Colegio de Mxico, Mexico City, November 1993,
arrives at similar conclusions regarding the negative textualization of women who disobey and the concomitant
idealization of the figures of the mother and the virgin.

5. Sander Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1985), 1718.

6. Ibid., 22.

7. Ibid., 25.

8. See Csar Miguel Rondn, El libro de la salsa: Crnica de la msica del Caribe urbano(Caracas, Venezuela: Editorial Arte,
1980), 32.

9. Quoted in John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 168, in his analysis of the
political potentiality of cultural texts.

10. Jessica Benjamin, "The Bonds of Love: Rational Violence and Erotic Domination" in The Future of Difference, ed.
Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 4170, summarizes how the
process of male individuation emphasizes maintaining boundaries and stressing difference between the Self and
Other, a dynamic that discursively informs rationality in the Western world and the dualist, binary oppositions that
emerge regarding gender.

11. Jos Arteaga Rodrguez's arricle, "Salsa y violencia: Una aproximacin sonoro-histrica,"Revista Musical
Puertorriquea 4 (July-December 1988): 2033, does not even allude to violence against women in salsa. Peter Manuel's
historical summary of salsa, "The Soul of the Barrio: 30 Years of Salsa," NACLA: Report on the Americas 28
(September/October 1994): 2226, 2829, does acknowl-
Page 270

edge the invisibility of women in this musical industry, although he concludes that salsa lyrics are "mildly machista,
though they display little of the crude and blatant sexism found in reggae, calypso, and hardcore rap." It should be
noted that all of Manuel's incursion into gender issues in salsa was framed within a parenthetical statement. Elsa
Fernndez Miralls, in a very short journalistic arricle rifled "La salsa, en contra de la mujer?" El nuevo da, 7 March
1979, pp. 21, 22, is perhaps one of the first female voices to bring to the foreground the problematic lyrics of salsa
regarding gender roles and women in particular.

12. See, among others, Virginia W. Cooper, "Women in Popular Music: A Quantitative Analysis of Feminine Images
over Time," Sex Roles 13, nos. 910 (1985): 499506, and Timothy E. Scheurer, "Goddesses and Golddiggers: Images of
Women in Popular Music of the 1930s," Journal of Popular Culture 24 (summer 1990): 2338.

13. See Robin D. G. Kelley, "Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles," in Race
Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 183227; and Tricia Rose, "Never
Trust a Big Butt and a Smile," Camera Obscura 23 (1991): 10931.

14. I take this quote from Robin D. G. Kelley's unpublished version of "Kickin' Reality," p. 4.

15. bell hooks, in "Feminist Movement to End Violence," Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End
Press, 1984), 121.

16. Ibid., 117.

17. Ostolaza Rey, "Poltica sexual," 43.

18. Septeto Nacional de Ignacio Pieiro, Sones cubanos, Seeco SCCA-9278, 1992.

19. Sonia Lpez y su combo, "Castgalo," Sonia Lpez PDC-8701.

20. See Daniel Santos, "Yo la mato," guaracha included in Daniel Santos y su conjunto de sociedad, vol. 2, Ansonia ALP
1234, and Lisa M's "Ingrato," Flavor of the Latin, Sony Discos DCC 80687, 1991.

21. Las Chicas del Can, Explosivo, Rodyen Records, 2970, 1992.

22. Delgado de Rizo, ed., Cancionero, 126.

23. Comisin para los Asuntos de la Mujer, Ley para la prevencin e intervencin con la violencia domstica (No. 54, 15
August 1989, San Juan, Puerto Rico), 1.

24. In the first survey on domestic violence carried out by Doris Knudson and Yolanda Daz, the women interviewed
cited these three reasons for the abuse exerted by their male spouses. See Doris Knudson, "'Que nadie se entere': La
esposa maltratada en Puerto Rico," in Yamila Azize Vargas, ed., La mujer en Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones
Huracn, 1987), 148.

25. Bienvenido Benes, "La crcel de Sing-Sing," Cancionero, 189. Valeria Sarmiento's documentary about machismo in
Latin America, El hombre cuando es hombre (A man when he is a man), also poignantly portrays two interviews with
convicts who had killed their wives for jealousy and for disobedience.

26. Benjamin, "The Bonds of Love,"49.

27. This term is inflected by Gloria Anzalda's coinage of "linguistic terrorism" to refer to the ways in which Latina
women are silenced not only by social institurions such as schools and government but also by the patriarchy in
Mexican culture. See "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" inBorderlands/La Frontera (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute,
1987): 5364.

28. Rivera Ramos and Acevedo, "Actitudes," 1316. The authors also explain this gap in perception as a result of men's
and women's internalizing the insularist myth about Puerto Ricans.
29. El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, "Oprobio," Aqu no se sienta nadie, Combo, Rico Record Productions RCSLP 2013,
1979.
Page 271

30. Hctor Lavoe, "Bandolera," Comedia, Fania Records JM-00522, 1978.

31. According to Scheurer in "Goddesses and Golddiggers," 2338, the image of the golddigger had not emerged before
the 1930s: "the golddigger was something new, something slightly shocking, and something probably only the
Depression could have created" (32).

32. Kelley, "Kickin' Reality," 217.

33. This summary is based on Javier Costa Clavell's documentation of Galician legends inBandolerismo, Romeras y
jergas gallegas (La Corua, Spain: Editorial La Voz de Galicia, 1980). See particularly "Pepa A Loba, figura cumbre del
bandolerismo gallego" (2943).

34. "El bandido robado," a poem about a bandit who kills himself because of unrequited love, presents the figure of
the male bandit in an ironic twist of fate in which he becomes the victim of an affective assault by the death of his wife.
Thus, the woman becomes the bandit of his love: "La compaera amorosa / la del bandolero esposa, / la mujer de su
ilusin, al ladrn de alma brava / le haba robado un da, / por lo visto, el corazn!" [The love companion / wife of
the bandit / the woman of his illusion / had stolen one day from the courageous thief, even his heart!], in Constancio
Bernaldo de Quiros y Prez and Luis Ardila, El bandolerismo andaluz (Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1973), 21314.

35. Pedro Conga y su Orquesta Internacional, "Ladrona de amor," No te quites la ropa, Discos Musart CMPI 8008; Rubn
Blades, "Ella se esconde," Caminando, Sony Records International DCC 80593, 1991. Also see "Ladrona de besos," a
bolero composed by Ramn Incln, in Siglo de bolero (Mexico City: EDUSA), 57.

36. Son de Azcar, "Devoradora," Ms dulce!, Sony Discos DIC-80681, 1991. Copyright 1991 Sony/ATV Music
Publishing LLC.

37. Milly y los vecinos, "Ese hombre," 14 Grandes Exitos Originales, Capital Records H4F-42486, 1991.

38. La India, "Ese hombre," in Dicen que soy, Sony Records CDZ-81373, 1994. La India appeared performing this song
as the closing cut in the television series New York Undercover.
 39. Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco, "Las divorciadas," De nuevo, Msica Latina Internacional, Vaya Records 4XT
JMVS-106, 1985. See also Celia Cruz, "Que le den candela," in Irrepetible, Sony Discos CDZ-81452, 1994.

40. Lisa M and Santy y sus Duendes, "Tu Pum Pum," Meren-Rap, Prime Entertainment, 3229-4-RL, 1991.

41. El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, "Psicologa," Treinta aos de sabor: Gracias!, Combo Records RCSA-2090, 1992.

42. Sandra Lee Bartky, "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," inFemininity and
Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 6382.

43. Ibid., 78.

44. Ibid., 79.

45. Ibid., 80.

Chapter Ten
Singing Female Subjectivities

1. See Karen E. Petersen, "An Investigation into Women-Identified Music in the United States," inWomen and Music in
Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Ellen Koskoff (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 20312. Also see
Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1986), 62.

2. See Cristbal Daz Ayala, Msica cubana, del Areyto a la Nueva Trova, 2nd

Page 272
ed. (San Juan, P.R.: Editorial Cubanacan, 1981); Pedro Malavet Vega, La vellonera est directa: Felipe Rodrguez (La Voz) y
los aos 50, 3rd ed. (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1987), and Del bolero a la Nueva Cancin (Ponce, P.R.: Editora
Corripio, 1988); Un siglo de bolero [author unknown] (Mexico: EDUSA, n.d.).

3. See Daz Ayala, Msica cubana, 15254, who dedicates a two-page section to "las compositoras cubanas." In addition
to the Lecuona women (Ernestina, 18821951, and Margarita), the prominence of women composers in the development
of the Cuban guajira and the son is evidenced by the compositions of Juana Gonzlez, Coralia Lpez, July Mendoza,
Sara N. Rodrguez, and Cora Snchez Agramonte. The role of women composers during the 1940s and 1950s was also
central to the international popularity of Cuban music. For instance, Daz Ayala mentions Cristina Saladriga's "Ojos
malvados" and "Aorada Cuba," Trini Mrquez's "Eres mi amor,'' Ela O'Farrill's "Ni llorar puedo llorar," and others.
He closes this section with a reference to Concha Valds Mirando, who, according to the author, "sorprende con sus
atrevidas canciones" [surprises us with her daring compositions] and whose selected titles during the 1970S include
"La mitad," "Las cosas buenas de la vida," "Tpame contigo," and "Orgasmo."

4. Umberto Valverde and Rafael Quintero, Abran paso: Historia de las orquestas femeninas de Cali (Cali, Colombia:
Universidad del Valle, 1995), 3749.

5. Rayda Cotto, "La mujer negra en la msica folklrica y popular en Puerto Rico," Claridad, 25 September-1 October
1992, 25.

6. For instance, Olga Tan received two major Lo Nuestro Awards for 1995, and La India appeared in Banco Popular's
musical video for 1995, "Somos un solo pueblo." Albita, whose CDNo se parece a nada (Sony Music Entertainment,
EK66966, 1995) is fast outselling her previous recording, was invited to perform at the National Council of La Raza's
annual fund-raising event. Because of her homoerotic and androgynous lyrics and performance, she has been hailed
by Madonna and others as a most promising figure in the Latin scene.

7. Taken from Quince xitos de Toa La Negra: Versiones originales, RCA/Ariola Internacional, CSC-1270, 1986. The song,
composed by Andrs Eloy Blanco, dates back to 1946.

8. Quoted from Coqui Santaliz, "Bolero de mujer," Claridad, 1622 April 1993, 21. This article is a positive tribute to those
women composers of the bolero in Puerto Rico who have remained truly invisible in our musical histories. Santaliz
names these composersSylvia Rexach, Puchi Balseiro, Ketty Cabn, Karmen Mercado, Alyce Gracia, and Mara Alicea
de Sharrn as well as contemporary composers such as Sylvia Domenech, Rayda Cotto, Zoraida Santiago, Nilda
Torres Feliciano, and Ivette Pacheco, among others, as an initial attempt to document their agency in the development
of the bolero in Puerto Rico. She rightly asserts that "la cantera de mujeres que componen es interminable, mas no se
conocen como se merecen" [the numerous women who compose is endless, yet they are not known as they should be].
While this article represents an effort in the right direction, its writing tends to essentialize women's compositions
uniquely as a product of women's location within the affective, sentimental modes. Themes of solitude, passion, and
pain consistently recur as markers of feminine modes of composition.
 9. Historical information culled from Malavet Vega, La vellonera est directa, 196, and from Daz Ayala, Msica cubana,
22857.

10. See Daz Ayala, Msica cubana, 274, and Jon Pareles, "La Lupe, a Singer, Is Dead at 53; Known as 'Queen of Latin
Soul,'" New York Times Obituaries, 7 March 1992.

11. Pareles, "La Lupe," 11.

12. Daz Ayala, Msica cubana, 274.

13. Ibid., 275.

Page 273

14. Csar Miguel Rondn, El libro de la salsa: Crnica de la msica del Caribe urbano (Caracas, Venezula: Editorial Arte,
1980), 208.

15. Ibid., 209.

16. Ibid., 46.

17. Ibid., 45, 47.

18. Ibid., 47.

19. See Hctor Monclova Vquez, "La Lupe ms all del mismo cuento," Claridad, 2329 September 1994, 24,
documenting the theatrical production of La Lupe's life and works. Titled La Lupe vuelve, it was produced, written,
and scripted by Tite Curet Alonso and Zora Moreno. The script integrates La Lupe's songs in this "espectculo
 biografa" that was shown on 2324 September 1994. Zora Moreno, who performed as La Lupe, also interpreted the
singer in Julio Axel Landrn's theatrical piece Carnaval y pasin.

20. "La Tirana," La Lupe: The Best, Sony Discos CDZ-81108, 1993. Also by La Lupe: One of a Kind/Unica en su clase, Tico
Records TSLP-1416, 1977, and La Lupe: En algo nuevo, Msica Latina Internacional JMTS-1438, 1980; with Tito
Puente, Tito Puente and La Lupe: La Pareja, Tico Records JMTS-1430, 1978.

21. Catalino Curer Alonso, better known as El Tire Curer, is one of the most important composers of salsa music in
Puerto Rico. His songs range from traditional love ballads to feminist rewritings of Puerto Rican history, as m
"Anacaona," and to denouncements of U.S. colonialism, as in "Tiburn." For a summary of El Tite's importance in the
development of salsa, see Rondn, El libro de la salsa, 21113, 22123.

22. In La Lupe: The Best.

23. "Canta bajo," composed by La Lupe and Pat Patric, with arrangements by Marty Sheller, in La Lupe: One of a Kind.

24. "Duea del cantar," in La Lupe: One of a Kind.

Part Four
As Somos, As Son Listening to the Listeners

1. El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Aqu no se sienta nadie, Combo Records RCLSP-2013, 1979.

2. Observation by a Puerto Rican man interviewed for this study.

3. Jean Franco, "What's Left of the Intelligentsia? The Uncertain Future of the Printed Word,"NACLA 28 (September-
October 1994): 21. See also Jos-Luis Gonzez, El pas de cuatro pisos y otros ensayos (Rio Piedras: Ediciones Huracn,
1983), p.21, documenting the emerging centrality of popular culture, mass culture, and orality in the configuration of
Puerto Rican cultural identity
4. For John Fiske, "productive pleasure" is that "pleasure which results from [a] mix of productivity, relevance, and
functionality, which is to say that the meanings I make from a text are pleasurable when I feel that they are my
meanings and that they relate to my everyday life in a practical, direct way" (Understanding Popular Culture [Boston:
Unwin Hyman, 1989]), 57.

5. Lawrence Grossberg, "Is There a Fan in the House? The Affective Sensibility of Fandom," inThe Adoring Audience:
Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 5065.

6. Jon Cruz and Justin Lewis, eds., Viewing, Reading, Listening: Audiences and Cultural Reception(Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1994), 15. This anthology of essays is an important contribution to audience research not only for the
theoretical proposals found throughout but also because these studies have integrated the voices of diverse audiences
into their work.
Page 274

7. Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other," in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture,
Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 62.

8. The constellation I refer to here is constituted by what Myriam Daz-Diocarets describes as the intersection "of the
extratextual with the textual: . . . there is a critical locus of an encounter among the I, the social being, the writing
subject, and the subject of the utterance" (quoted by Iris M. Zavala, in "Las formas y funciones de una teora crtica
feminista: Feminismo dialgico," in Breve historia feminista de la literatura espaola [en lengua castellana] [Barcelona:
Anthropos; San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1993], 74).

9. Tania Modleski, "Femininity as Mas(s)querade," in Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist"
Age (New York: Routledge, 1991), 32.

10. Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 12122. See also Pierre Bourdieu's previous discussion of the "disgust at the
facile" in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984),
48688.

Chapter Eleven
As Son: Constructing Woman

1. Pedro Malavet Vega, La vellonera est directa: Felipe Rodrguez (La Voz) y los aos 50, 3rd ed. (Rio Piedras, P.R.:
Ediciones Huracn, 1987), 393409.

2. Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo Filippi, "Cuatro selecciones por una peseta," in Vrgenes y mrtires, 12737.

3. Mayra Muoz Vzquez, "Matrimonio y divorcio en Puerto Rico," in La mujer en la sociedad puertorriquea, ed. Edna
Acosta-Beln (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1980), 21125. In a follow-up article, "La experiencia del divorcio
desde la perspectiva de un grupo de mujeres puertorriqueas," in La mujer en Puerto Rico: Ensayos de investigacin, ed.
Yamila Azize Vargas (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracn, 1987), 15570, Muoz Vzquez argues that instead of
defining divorce as the "fracaso de la pareja" [the failure of the couple], it needs to be analyzed as ''una forma de
resistencia o protesta usada principalmente por las mujeres para expresarse inconscientemente en contra de las
condiciones nocivas u opresivas en su vida" [a form of resistance or protest principally used by women to express
themselves, unconsciously, against the dangerous or oppressive conditions of their lives] (160). As the author
predicted in her 1980 article, the rate of divorce did indeed rise, from about 40 percent to almost 50 percent by 1987.
4. Vega and Lugo Filippi, "Cuatro selecciones," 132, 134.

5. Ibid., 133, 135.

6. Adorno, "On Popular Music," in Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, vol. 9 (New York: Institute for Social
Research, 1941), 42.

7. Vega and Lugo Filippi, "Cuatro selecciones," 137.

8. For a recent analysis of ideology, political status, and mass media in Puerto Rico, see Federico Subervi-Vlez and
Nitza M. Hernndez-Lpez, "Mass Media in Puerto Rico" (with the assistance of Aline Frambes-Buxeda), Centro de
Estudios Puertorriqueos Bulletin 3 (winter 199091): 1731.

9. Vega and Lugo Filippi, "Cuatro selecciones," 129.

10. Cathy Schwichtenberg, "Reconceptualizing Gender: New Sites for Feminist Audience Research," in Viewing,
Reading, Listening: Audiences and Cultural Reception, ed. Jon Cruz and Justin Lewis (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
1994), 171.

11. Manthia Diawara et al., "A Symposium on Popular Culture and Political Correctness," Social Text 36 (fall 1993): 139.
Page 275

12. John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 168.

13. I want to thank Lisa Quiroga and Wilson Valentn for serving as interviewers in this project. Lisa facilitated the
interviews with UM Latinas, and Wilson served as the interviewer for all the Latino subjects. This was done to avoid
as much as possible the influence of a Latina on the male responses as well as that of a professor on those of the female
students. I did, however, lead all of the interviews with the Detroit women, none of whom knew about me nor about
the gender focus of the project. All subjects were told that it was an interview about salsa music.

The interview format consisted of a series of initial short questions regarding age, place of birth, number of years in the
United States, favorite salsa groups, and frequency of dancing. The rest of the interview consisted of questions about
the two songs analyzed here, "Cuando fuiste mujer" and "As son." The same general and open-ended questions
regarding both songs were asked of each interviewee. Depending on the listener's degree of engagement with the song,
some responses were very detailed and lengthy; others were brief and to the point.

14. Grossberg, in "Is There a Fan in the House? The Affective Sensibility of Fandom," in The Audience: Fan Culture and
Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), identifies this "ideology of authenticity"
among rock and roll fans who distinguish between "authentic and co-opted rock'' (62).

15. Janice Radway, "Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Function of Romance Reading,"
in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, ed. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson
(Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 46586. Originally published in Daedalus 113 (summer
1974), 3.

16. Tania Modleski, "Some Functions of Feminist Criticism; Or, the Scandal of the Mute Body," inFeminism without
Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age (New York: Routledge, 1991), 38.

17. Here I paraphrase Iris M. Zavala's definition of symbolic economy in "Las formas y funciones de una teora crtica
feminista. Feminismo dialgico," in Breve historia feminista de la literatura espaola (en lenqua castellana) (Barcelona:
Anthropos; San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1993), 54.

18. Willie Coln, "Cuando fuiste mujer," in Legal Alien/Top Secrets, WAC Productions JM655, 1989.
19. Hlne Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa," in New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabel de Courtivron
(New York: Schocken Books, 1981) 249.

20. One Puerto Rican male student commented that "nuestra educacin nos lleva a entender y prestar atencin a los
mensajes" [our education allows us to understand and to pay attention to the messages], and the Salvadoran
interviewee asserted that "para m estar en este pas [United States] ha sido una escuela; he aprendido a compartir con
mi esposa, mis hijos" [for me, being in this country has been a process of schooling; I have learned to share with my
wife, my children].

21. In reference to "Cuando fuiste mujer," a Latino observed the following: "Aunque ella se enamorara de otro hombre,
l est insinuando que se acuerde de l cuando la hizo mujer, dependiendo, ella puede tener un recuerdo grato o malo.
Si l la hizo mujer con amory cario, el recuerdo es grato. Si l la hizo mujer en contra de su voluntad, lo recordar
mal" [Even if she falls in love with another man, he insinuates that she should remember him when he made her a
woman, depending on whether she has a pleasant or a negative memory. If he made her a woman with love and
warmth, the memory is pleasant. If he made her a woman against her will, then she will remember him badly]. It is
noticeable that the language of the lyrics, "fuiste mujer," contaminates these observations thoroughly.
Page 276

22. Another respondent from Detroit similarly substituted the dominant male perspective with a female one: "es
romntica porque est diciendo las cosas que una mujer piensa cuando est en desarrollo, est creciendo . . . est
detallando las cosas que una mujer piensa al desarrollarse como mujer, en la experiencia, en el futuro de ella." [this is
a romantic (song) because it is expressing what a woman thinks when she is developing, growing up . . . it is detailing
what a woman thinks as she develops, in experiences, in her own future].

23. See Judith Ortiz Cofer, "Quinceaera," in Silent Dancing (Houston: Arte Pblico Press, 1990), 13240. See also the
poem of the same title both in Silent Dancing, 47, and in Terms of Survival(Houston: Arte Pblico Press, 1987), 9.

Chapter Twelve
As Somos: Rewriting Patriarchy

1. Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber, "Girls and Subcultures," in Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-
War Britain, ed. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (London: Hutchinson, 1976), 216.

2. I have included the term countervaluation, proposed by Jos Limn and referred to by Janice Radway, Reading the
Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 21112, as "a
process of inversion whereby the original socioeconomic limitations and devaluations of a subordinate group are first
addressed by the folkloric performance and then transformed within or by it into something of value to the group. If
the process is successful, Limn maintains, the performace contests by supplementation." Radway equates this with
the function of romance reading for the women in her study, a fictional genre that "supplements the avenues
traditionally open to women for emotional gratification by supplying them vicariously with the attention and
nurturance they do not get enough of in the round of day-to-day existence."

3. Henry A. Giroux and Roger I. Simon, "Popular Culture as a Pedagogy of Pleasure and Meaning: Decolonizing the
Body," in Henry A. Giroux, Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education (New York: Routledge, 1993),
192, discuss the "persuasive" as ''the ways in which hegemony functions on the terrain of popular culture through a
variety of pedagogical processes that work not only to secure dominant interests but to offer as well the possibility of
a politics of resistance and social transformation." In this context they develop the "related categories of consent,
investment, ideology, and pleasure."

4. I follow Giroux and Simon's differentiation between two forms of consent: first, the orthodox version, which refers
to the "ways in which the dominant logic is imposed on subordinated groups through the mechanizations of the
culture industry." In the revisionist radical version, consent "is defined through more active forms of complicity in
that subordinated groups are now viewed as partly negotiating their adaptation and place within the dominant
culture" (193).
5. This observation was expressed by a Mexican-American woman, showing that although she does not identify with
salsa as her own national tradition, she nonetheless is able to identify the analogous forms of Latin American
patriarchy and their articulation in both Afro-Caribbean and Mexican songs.

6. It is essential to add that this song evoked visually the image of men at a bar listening to music and drinking their
sorrows away. This was clear not only in the responses of the Puerto Rican man whose father owned a restaurant but
also among three middle- and upper-class Latinas who associated these icons and cultural rituals with machismo. The
class-based implications here are most poignant if indeed these Latinas associate machismo only with the social spaces
of the working class or proletariat.
Page 277

7. Giroux and Simon, "Popular Culture," 189.

8. Ibid., 190.

9. Ibid.

Afterword

1. For a discussion of this concept, see G. Tuchman, et al., eds. Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media (New
York: Oxford University Press), 1988. Also see Dominic Strinati,An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (London
and New York: Routledge, 1995), 17889.

2. Wild Mango, Made in Mango, Redwood Records RR9402CD, 1994.

3. Olga Tan, Siente el amor, WEA Latina W2-97881-2, 1994. See also Celia Cruz, Irrepetible, RMM Records CDZ-81452,
1994.

4. Willie Coln, Hecho en Puerto Rico, Sony Discos CDZ-81040, 1993.

5. Wilson Valentn, "Memorializing Hctor Lavoe: Cultural Heroes and Popular Music in the Puerto Rican
Community." Paper presented at the Second Puerto Rican Studies Association Conference, San Juan, September 2629,
1996.

6. Nstor Garca Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, trans. Christopher L. Chiappari
and Silvia L. Lpez (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 229.
7. Ibid., 62.

8. Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, the major Puerto Rican-owned financial institution on the island, has been an
important sponsor and mediator of Puerto Rican culture, particularly of musical performances. It has created a
tradition of producing music videos for each Christmas season.

9. Sara del Valle, "Salsa Sinfnica: Un concierto balanceado," Claridad, 713 June 1996, 30.

10. Jeremy Marre and Hannah Charlton, Beats of the Heart: Popular Music of the World (London: Pluto Press, 1985), 80.

11. Nstor Garca Canclini, Hybrid Cultures, 93.

12. Jess Martn Barbero, Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations, trans. Elizabeth Fox and
Robert A. White (London: Sage Publications, 1993), 22223.
Page 279

Continued from page iv

"Caa Brava" by Too Abreu. Copyright 1960 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"El Sancocho Prieto" by Luis Alberti. Copyright 1955 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed.
International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"Usted" by Gabriel Ruiz & Jos Antonio Zorrilla. Copyright 1951 by Promotora Hispano Americana de Msica S.A.
Administered by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. Used by
Permission.

"Oprobio" by Rafael Hernndez. Copyright 1931 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"La Negrita Concepcin" by Cuates Castilia. Copyright 1943 by Promotora Hispano Americana de Msica S.A.
Administered by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. Used by
Permission.

"Angelitos Negros" by Andrs Eloy Blanco & Manuel Alvarez Maciste. Copyright 1946 by Editorial Mexicana de Msica
Internacional S.A. Administered by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured.
Used by Permission.

"Se Fue" by Pedro Flores. Copyright 1941 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"Malaguea Salerosa" by Galindo & Ramrez, also known as La Malaguea. Copyright 1947 by Promotora Hispano
Americana de Msica S.A. Administered by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright
Secured. Used by Permission.
"Es Tarde Ya" by Sylvia Rexach. Copyright 1959 by Southern Music Publishing Co. Inc. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"Flores Negras" by Sergio de Karlo. Copyright 1937 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"Arrncame la Vida" by Agustn Lara. Copyright 1934, by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed.
International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"Las Muchachas" by Billo Frometa. Copyright 1958 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
Page 280

"Tan Sabrosona" by Rafael Lay & Richard Erges. Copyright 1956 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright
Renewed. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"El Negrito del Batey" by Medardo Guzmn. Copyright 1955 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed.
International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"Yo la Mato" by Pedro Flores. Copyright 1967 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"El Castigador" by Ignacio Pineiro. Copyright 1933 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International
Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"La Crcel de Sing Sing" by Bienvenido Benes, also known as Historia de Sing Sing. Copyright 1967 by Peer International
Corporation. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"Bandolera" by C. Vctor Cavalli. Copyright 1950 by Promotora Hispano Americana de Msica S.A. Copyright Renewed.
Administered by Peer International Corporation. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

"Cuando Fuiste Mujer" by Vilma Planas & Hctor Garrido. Copyright 1981 by Peer International Corporation.
International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

Victor Hernandez Cruz's poem "descarga en cueros," published in Snaps (Random House/Vintage Books, 1969), is
reprinted by permission of the author.
Page 281

INDEX OF SONGS AND RECORDINGS

"Ahora no," 131

"Angelitos negros," 17576

Antecedentes, 113

"Arrncame la vida," 134

"As son," xviii, 123, 19194, 197, 203, 204;

circulation of, 18788, 220;

gender ideology in, 221;

images of women in, 19293;

lyrics of, 19192;

 listeners' responses to, 21938;

in Puerto Rican fiction, 19396

"Atrapado," 240

"Babal," 172

"Bandolera," 16364

"Bsame mucho," 133

"Borinquea, La," 14, 24;

versions of, 2023

"Brujera," 187

"Burbujas de amor," 105

 "Busca el ritmo," 7172

"Buscando trabajo," 240

"California Girls," 14243

"Calypsos," 239

Caminando, 113

"Caa brava," 148

"Canta bajo," 182

"Crcel de Sing-Sing, La," 161

"Castigador," 159

"Castgalo," 159, 167

"Celoso," 160
 "Cenizas," 175

"Un cigarrillo, la lluvia y t," 132

"Conciencia," 242

"Conversacin en tiempo de bolero," 133

"Cuando Cuba se acabe de liberal," 240

"Cuando fuiste mujer," xviii, 193, 196, 197, 203, 204, 213, 220, 234;

images of women in, 20510;

lyrics of, 206208;

responses to, 21018, 275n 21

"Cuando las mujeres qnieren a los hombres," 57;

lyrics, 4950

"Cuando vuelva a tu lado," 133

D

"Dale un palo," 160

Danzas para mi pueblo, 24

"Decisiones," 112

Delicate and Jumpy, 93

"Descarga en cueros," 83

"Devoradora," 166

Dicen que soy, 167

"divorciadas, Las," 167

"Duea del cantar," 182

"Echale salsita," 80
 "El Gran Varn," 88

El inigualable, 132, 134

"El negrito del batey," 14647

"El sancocho prieto," 148

"Ella se esconde," 165

"Ese hombre":

by Milly y los Vecinos, 166;

by La India, 167

"Esta noche la paso contigo," 133

"Esta noche o nunca," 160

"Fichas negras," 133

 "Flavor of the Latin," 150

"Gordita, La," 151

"Guagua, La," 240

"Hablando sola," 243

Hecho en Puerto Rico, 240

"Idilio," 240

"Infortunio," 132, 133

"Ingrato," 160

Irrepetible, 240
Page 282

"Ladrona de amor," 165

"Lgrimas negras," 140

"Laura y Georgina," 18

"Ligia Elena," 8688

"Lrica borinquea," 108109

"Malaguea salerosa," 132

"Maldicin gitana," 132

"Mama Ins," 105107, 111

"Mamita lleg el Obispo," 3031, 172;

 in Puerto Rican literature, 3738

"Maquinolandera," 35, 172

"Ms feo que yo," 187

"Menalo," 149

"Mi msica," 77

Mi tierra, 113, 114

"Muchachas, Las," 14243, 145, 169

"Mucho corazn," 133

"Mujer," 12627

"Mujeres de San Diego, Las," 148

"Negrita Concepcin, La," 15253

 "Noche criolla," 175

"No llores, no vuelvo," 243

Nuestra cosa, 92

"Nuestro balance," 135

"Obsesin," 125

"Oprobio," 16263

"Oracin Caribe," 175

"Pedro Navaja," 85, 112, 260n 8

"Pennies from Heaven," 113

Perfecta, La, 81
 "Preciosa," 241

"Psicologa," 16971

"Puro teatro," 181

"Que le den candela," 167, 240

"Qu manera de quererte," 241, 243

"Recuerdos de Ipacara," 133

Rhythm Machine, 92

"Rico suave," 148

"Se fue," 12930, 162

 "Shake your Thang," 149

Siente el amor, 240

"Solo porque vivo," 243

"Somos diferentes," 7274, 141

"Soando con Puerto Rico," 241

"Tan sabrosona," 143

"Te ves buena," 148

Threepenny Opera, The, 85

"Tiburn," 32, 83

"Tintorera del mar," 30, 32

"Tirana, La," 178, 17981

 "Tu Pure Pum," 168

"Usted," 194, 195

"Usted abus," 17374

Vmonos pa'l monte, 82

"Veracruz," 175

"Verde luz," 241

"Woman del callao," 148

Y su pueblo, 108
"Yo la maro," 160, 161

"Yo quiero andar," 131

Page 283

GENERAL INDEX

Abreu, Too, 148

Acosta, Leonardo, 34, 78, 114, 253n 7

Adorno, Theodor, 84, 9091, 94, 103, 190, 196, 210, 261n 14

Afro-Puerto Rican music. See music

Aguirre Jr., Adalberto, xiv

AIDS:

in salsa music, 8889

Alejandro, Chico, 170

Alfonso X the Wise, 8

 Almodvar, Pedro, 181

Alonso, Manuel A., 910, 11, 17, 44, 45

Althusser, 111

Anzalda, Gloria, 270n 27

appropriation, by listeners, 219, 233;

cross-cultural, xvii, 115;

of plena, 33

Arnaz, Desi, 107, 172

Arteaga Rodrguez, Jos, 265n 10

articulation, 77, 241. See also appropriation, resemanticization

Astol, Flix, 14
 audience research, 185238;

need for, xviii-xix, 1879, 24345

authenticity, 68, 71, 93, 114, 200

bachata, xvii, 104, 148

bandolera, 161, 16365, 193, 229, 235

Barbero, Jess Martn, 244

Bakhtin, 86, 99, 101

ballad, romantic, 95

Barretto, Kay, 80, 82

Barrio Obrero, 37, 139

Barthes, Roland, 60
Bartky, Sandra Lee, 135, 151, 169

bastonero, 11

Bauz, Mario, 79

Beach Boys, The, 70, 14243

Beatles, The, 70, 115

Bcquer, Gustavo Adolfo, 126

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 141

Bell, Monna, 133

Beltrn Ruiz, Pablo, 74

Bentez, Lucecita, 59, 60

Bentez Rojo, Antonio, xvi, 146

Billboard, 108
 blacks:

exclusion of, 9, 1314, 28;

in Puerto Rican literature, 56;

on television, 35.

See also music: Afro-Puerto Rican

Blades, Rubn, 32, 65, 68, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 93, 165, 223;

as crossover, 108116;

listeners' preferences to, 199201;

lyrics by, 8688

Blanco, Andrs Eloy, 175

Blanco, Jos, 42

Blanco, Toms, 4, 6, 27, 45, 47, 50, 53, 147;

writings by, 3844

blues, 115

Bobbitt, Lorena, 168

bolero, xvi, 74, 76, 162, 180, 213, 227, 240;

gendering in the, 13841;

in Puerto Rican fiction, 19395;

male responses to, 13638;

origins of, 126;

patriarchal discourse in, 12830, 154;

rancheros, 133;

reception of, 125;

rewritings of, xviii, 13841;

and social classes, 139;

and salsa ertica, 13637;

and transnationalism, 127;

versus guarachas, 101102, 177;

women composers of, 13032, 133.

See also Santos, Daniel

bomba, 9, 27, 59, 81

bombardino, 13

Boone, Pat, 115

Boston Pops Orchestra, The, 242

Bourdieu, Pierre, 237

Brau, Salvador, 4, 23, 44, 45, 50;

 writings, 1016

brujera, 51;

in women-authored boleros, 132

Page 284

Butler, Judith, 7

Byrne, David, 66, 115

Cabn Vale, Antonio. See Topo, El

Cabrera Infante, Guillermo, 79, 81, 92

Cachn, Manuel, 112

Caldern, Vitn, 24, 25

Callejo, Fernando, 13

calypso, 28
Campos, Ren, 133, 135, 137

capitalism: in Puerto Rico, 5, 29, 33, 158

carpe diem, 132

Carpentier, Alejo, 80

Carreta, La, 129

Carter, Jimmy, 25

Castilla, Cuates, 152

Castillo, Debra, 51, 56

Castro, Fidel, 79, 240

catholicism, 38

Caughie, Pamela, 122

Certeau, Michel de, 37

Chacn, Iris, 59, 60

Chambers, Iaian, 95, 99

Chantelle, 123

Chicago (musical group), 71

Chicano movement, 176

Chicas del Can, Las, 99, 123, 150, 160, 173

Chuto el de Bayamn, 130

cimarrones, 82, 84, 141, 242

Cixous, Hlne, 137, 206

Claridad, 72

Clark, John, 28

class:
conflict in Puerto Rico, 54;

and gender, 4244;

and musical preferences, 199, 204, 230, 236.

See also salsa: and class

clave, 8990

Club Palladium, 7980

Cocola, 13, 258n 2

cocolo, 56, 85;

versus rockero, 6973

Colina, Lolita de la, 131

Coln, Willie, xviii, 65, 67, 68, 80, 82, 90, 94, 95, 99, 115, 116, 173, 193, 196, 200, 203, 204, 220;

gender in, 205209;

listeners' responses to, 21018;

repertoire of, 24041;

song by, 8889

colonial alienation, 58

colonialism:

in Puerto Rico, 56, 1820, 176, 196

combo, the, 90

Concepcin, Csar, 33

Conga, Pedro, 165

consent, 222, 223, 228, 276n 4

convivencia, 5, 6

Cordero, Federico A., 15

 Cortez, Alberto, 132

Cortijo, Rafael, 34, 36, 60, 92, 108;

in Puerto Rican literature, 3437;

y su Combo, 3537, 59, 111, 175

corridos, Mexican, 29, 82

countervaluation, 219, 233, 276n 2

country-dance, European, 11

courtly love, 130

creole:

music, xvi;

woman, 10

Crossover Dreams, 109

 crossover music, xvii, 108117;

redefining, 116

Cruz, Celia, xii, 82, 95, 123, 142, 167, 175, 179, 242;

feminism in, 17374;

repertoire of, 24041

"Cuatro selecciones por una peseta," 188, 19396

Cuba, 7981, 105108

Cubop, 79

cultural difference, 68, 76, 105108

cultural hybridity, 68

cultural nationalism in Puerto Rico, 4

cultural studies, 78, 18889, 227

 Curet Alonso, Catalino "Tite," 77, 178, 179, 181, 182

dances:

in Puerto Rico, 9

dancing:

and gender roles, 9699;

social meanings of, 95103, 104

danza, xvi, 18, 27, 241, 250n 1;

feminization of, 1620;

historical development of, 826;

as political music, 8, 2024;

representations of, 10;

syncretism in, 14;

transculturation of, 1115

Danzn (film), 102103

danzn, Cuban, 8, 126

Daro, Rubn, 126, 139

D'Castro, Alex, 72

dcimas jbaras, 240. See also jbaro music

De Len, Oscar, 80, 111

"Descarga en cueros," 83

descargas (jamming), 83

desclasamiento, 34

desire, 52, 127, 208;

 female, 208209;

intercultural, 67, 107108, 116, 146;

mimetic, 48;

triangular, 50

dialogism:

in salsa, 8689

diaspora, Puerto Rican, 188

Daz, Joe, 253n 13

Daz Ayala, Cristbal, 107, 178

Daz Daz, Edgardo, xviii, 11, 9697

Daz Quiones, Arcadio, 5, 6, 38

Page 285

differentiation:

in listening, 238. See also listeners, listening

discourse analysis, 239

displacement:

in listening, 223, 237. See also listeners, listening

distribution, 247n

divorce, in Puerto Rico, 195

Don Juan, 140, 142, 159, 167, 169, 233

Dorfman, Ariel, xviii

Duany, Jorge, 92

Dueo Coln, Braulio, 13

E

economies, affective, 188

Ellison, Mary, 265n 10

"Elogio de la plena," 27, 3844, 53. See also plena; Blanco, Toms

Emerson, Paul, 108

Enrique, Luis, 199

Enlightenment, 10, 15

Erges, Richard, 143

eroticism:

and blacks, 57, 255n 52

eroticization, 239;

of female groups, xii;

 of Latin music, 104;

of literary text, 59.

See also feminization

Escuela Libre de Msica, 72

Estefan, Gloria, xii, 108, 11314, 116

eterno femenino, 48

Fabin, Don, 132

Falcn, Rafael, 56

Fania Records, 9293

Fanon, Frantz, 42, 135, 255n 54

Feliciano, Cheo, 72, 82

 Feliciano, Jos, 94

female:

body, in Latin culture, 15052;

listeners as producers of meaning, 190, 234;

silencing of listeners, 189.

See also feminism, gender, listeners, woman, women

feminism:

Anglo, 15052, 156, 168, 239;

in songs, 14953

feminization:

of music, xvi, 7, 826, 2744, 107108, 11617

Fernndez, Enrique, 14647

 Fernndez, Ruth, 59, 175

Fernndez Juncos, Manuel, 2021, 23

Fernndez Poncela, Anna M., 269n 4.

Ferr, Rosario, xvi, 2, 3, 24, 27, 31, 35, 43, 67, 172;

short stories by, 4561

Fifth Symphony (Beethoven), 141

Filippi, Carmen Lugo, xviii, 124, 181, 188, 193, 196, 197, 220, 230, 233

Fiske, John, 77, 273n 4

Fitzgerald, Ella, 167

Flores, Juan, 16, 28, 29, 34, 37, 54, 60, 66

Flores, Pedro, 125, 129, 175

folklore, 2829, 253n 7

 Foucault, Michel, 169

fox-trot, 19

Franco, Jean, 188, 248n 10

Fransheska, 14950

Freud, 48

Gabriel, Ana, 174

gachupines, 12

Garca Canclini, Nstor, xviii, 33, 241, 242, 24445

Garrido, Hctor, 206

Gatica, Lucho, 177

Gautier Bentez, Jos, 17

 Gelp, Juan G., 4, 52

gender:

conflict in music, 124, 15471;

ideology, 225, 229;

roles, transformation in, 225

genealogy, 67

General, El, 148

George, Catherine, 28

Gerardo, 148

Gbaro, El, 910, 250n 2

Gilman, Sander, 10, 42, 155

Girard, Ren, 50
 Giroux, Henry, xviii, 3, 5, 237

globalization, 7376, 241

golddigger. See bandolera, woman

Gmez Llanos, Laura, 133

Gonzlez, Celio, 142

Gonzlez, Elmer, 247n 1

Gonzlez, Jos Luis, 35, 52

Gonzlez, Ray, 146

Gotfrit, Leslie, 99, 101, 104

Gottschalk, Louis M., 14, 15

Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, El, xviii, 37, 82, 92, 98, 99, 123, 162, 169, 170, 194, 199, 200, 201, 204, 205;

listeners' responses to, 21938;

reception of, 108112;

popularity of, 18788;

songs by, 19193

gran familia puertorriquea, La, 5, 6, 14, 24

Greever, Mara, 132, 133, 138, 175

Grenet, Elisco, 107

Grossberg, Lawrence, 136, 188

Grosz, Elizabeth, 48, 52

Grupo Niche, 80

Grupo Victoria, 176

guaracha, 81, 139, 155;

versus bolero, 101102, 177

 Guerra, Juan Luis, 104105, 108, 148, 199

Guilln, Nicols, 59

Gines, Tata, 79
Page 286

giro, censorship of, 12

Guzmn, Catherine, 148

habanera, 8

hacendados, 5, 16

Hegel, 161

hegemony, 249n 8

Hendrix, Jimi, 69

Hernndez, Rafael, 162, 175, 176, 241

Hernndez Cruz, Vctor, 83, 103, 104

Herrera-Sobek, Mara, 269n 4

 heteroglossia:

in salsa music, 8688

heterosexual:

conflict, 15563, 197, 209, 212;

relations, 237.

See also gender

hispanophilia, 6

Homer, 139

homoerotic:

rewritings of music, 102103, 240

homosexuality, 8889, 140

hooks, bell, 158

 Hottentot Venus, 42

Huyssen, Andreas, 60, 61, 189

hybrid cultures, 242

hybridity. See cultural hybridity

identity:

and differentiation, 238.

See also gender, cultural difference

Iglesias, Julio, 94

Importance of being Earnest, The (Wilde), 140

Importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos, La (Snchez), 101102, 125, 139. See also Santos, Daniel; Snchez, Luis Rafael

improvisation, 8485;
 in literature, 8586

individualism, 28

industrialization:

in Puerto Rico, 29

interpretive communities, 237

intertexts, 4, 5, 50

Ithier, Rafael, 92

inversion:

as listening strategy, 233

Jameson, Fredric, 98

Japan, 76
 Jarrn, 79

jazz, 115

jbaro music, 66. See also dcimas jbaras

Jimnez, Jos Alfredo, 133

Jimnez, Manuel "Canario," 30, 32, 33

jitanjforas, 59. See also language: Afro-Antillean

Kelley, Robin, 15758

Kutzinski, Vera, 54, 14445, 250n 5

La India, xii, xiii, 167, 174

La Lupe, xii, xiii, 123, 124, 175;

as performer, 17783

La Noreste, xii

language, Afro-Antillean, 53

Lamarque, Libertad, 176

Lara, Agustn, 12627, 128, 134, 138, 175

Latin Beat, xii

Latin New York, 92

Latin music. See bolero, danza, merengue, plena, rap, salsa

Lavoe, Hctor, 80, 82, 111, 163, 241

Lay, Rafael, 143

Lebrn, Lolita, 25

Lecuona, Margarita, 172

 libidinal economy, 135

Limn, Jos, 9798, 100, 101, 233

limpieza de sangre, 57

Lipsitz, George, 90

Lisa M, xvii, 150, 160, 16869

Lisette, 174

listeners, xviii;

class differences in, 230, 236;

emotional-type, 195;

female, 12124, 197218, 21920, 23037;

male, 19596, 198, 199201, 204205, 210, 21214, 22030

listening:
discriminatory, 225, 227;

practices, 227, 21938;

as women, 12124, 21418, 237

Little Richard, 115

Llorns Torres, Luis: housing project, 37

Lpez, Israel "Cachao," 113

Lpez, Mara Milagros, 66

Lpez, Sonia, 123, 15960, 167

Lotman, Juri, 4

Luberza, Isabel "La Negra," 3, 4556

Lubiano, Wahneema, 197

Luciano, Felipe, 78
M

Ma Teodora, 80

machismo, 225, 230, 237;

and listening practices, 205, 238;

and social class, 211;

stereotypes of, 157

Machito, 79

Mackey, Nathaniel, 115, 11617

MacManus, James, 3132

Madonna, 57

magical realism, 105

 mambo, 34, 79, 104, 153

Manuel, Peter, 19, 34, 81, 94, 95

Mapey, Grupo, 25

"Maquinolandera," 35, 172;

as short story, 5860.

See also plena; Cortijo, Rafael: y su Combo

marianismo, 46
Page 287

Marks, Elaine, 3

Marqus, Ren, 4, 6, 38, 129

Marre, Jeremy, 242

maroons. See cimarrones

Martn Barbero, Jess, xviii, 244

Martin, Randy, 9798

Martnez, Mayra, 79

masculinity, Latin, 136, 164, 192. See also listeners, male

mass culture, 9295

masses:

as active listeners, 209;

feminization of, 189;

silencing of, 24445

Masucci, Jerry, 182

Mayra, Celins y Flor de Caa, 123

McLary, Susan, 7, 19, 249n 10

Medina, Trina, 242

Mercado, Ralph, 242

merengue, xvii, 11, 12, 28, 76, 95, 104, 123, 155, 166;

censorship of, 84;

representations of women in, 14648.

See also upa

mestizaje, 4044
 metalepsis, 2426, 252n 45

metstasis, 252n 45

Middleton, Richard, 77, 115

migration, 81, 224, 236, 237;

and listening practices, 190, 198, 200;

and memory, 9091;

and music, 9091;

and women, 129;

Cuban, 107

Miguel, Luis, 73

Milans, Pablo, 21

Milly y los vecinos, 123, 166, 167

Miranda, Ismael, 82

Miriam y las Chicas, 242

Misln, Angel, 24

Modleski, Tania, 189

modernism, 189

modernismo, 126

modernity, 242

modernization and power, 16971;

and women, 12830

Moi, Toril, 122

Monge, Yolandita, 174

Monroig, Gilberto, 132

 Montaez, Andy, 73, 99, 108, 111

Montaner, Rita, 107

montuno, 88, 193, 209

Morales, Jorge A., 141

Mor, Benny, 175

Morel Campos, Juan, 15, 23, 24, 36

moritaten, 29

mulatta, 10, 54, 239;

images of, xvii, 14345, 250n 5;

infantilization of, 145

multiculturalism, 115

Muoz Marn, Luis, 24, 31

 music:

African-American, 116;

Afro-Puerto Rican, 9, 13, 16, 2744, 60, 236;

and class, 189;

country western, 157;

feminization of, 9;

and gender, 249n 10;

and national identity, 96;

popular, trivialization of, 18990;

in Puerto Rican literature, 45, 59;

and race, 175;

training in, 173;

 woman identified, 172;

women's invisibility in, 17273.

See also bolero, danza, merengue, plena, rap, salsa

musicians, U.S. Puerto Rican, 80. See also women

nationalism, 114

Navarro, Olga, 65, 79

Nazario, Ednita, 174

Nazism, 90

neo-Negrista literature, 56. See also blacks

Neruda, Pablo, 139, 167

New York Times, The, 146, 179

 Newsweek, 104, 108, 116

Nieves, Modesto, 25

Nia Rita, 107

Novaro, Mara, 102

Nueva Cancin, 25

nueva narrativa, xvi, 35, 59, 60

Nueva Trova, 21

Nuyorican movement, 176

Operation Bootstrap, 34

Oppenheimer, Joselino ''Bumbn," 28

Orquesta Aragn, 143, 148

 Orquesta de la Luz, 67, 7476, 11314

Ortega y Gasset, 19

Ortiz Cofer, Judith, 151, 218

Ortiz, Fernando, 145, 252n 45

Other: female, 47, 205206;

cultural, 105, 158;

Self and, 155, 161

Pacheco, Johnny, 80

Pacini Hernndez, Deborah, xvii, 14849

Padilla, Flix, 80, 93

Pals Matos, Luis, 46, 59

 Palmer, Neyssa, 122

Palmieri, Charlie, 80

Palmieri, Eddie, 59, 80, 81, 82

Papeles de Pandora, 4, 57, 58

Patato, 108

patriarchy:

in discourse, 145;

and memory, 215;

and modernization, 154, 16971.

See also gender, machismo, woman, women

Page 288

Paz, Octavio, 136

Pedreira, Antonio, 4, 6, 38, 45, 50;

writings of, 1721

Pepa La Loba, 16465

Peregrino, Mara Antonia, 175

Prez Prado, Dmaso, 65, 67, 79, 175

Prez-Roln, Jorge, 33

performance:

and gender, 17374;

by La Lupe, 178;

and sexual politics, 181-82

Petrarch, 134

phallologocentrism, 137, 206

Pieiro, Ignacio, 80, 92, 159, 161

 Planas, Vilma, 206

plebeyismo, 52, 60

plena, xvi, 7, 2744, 81, 82, 111;

commercialization of, 33 (see also appropriation, resemanticization);

contents, 29;

and the danza, 27, 41;

feminization of, 27, 41;

instrumentation, 30;

lyrics, 4950;

marginalization of, 27;

origins of, 27, 29;

in Puerto Rican literature, 3438, 49;

racialization of, 27, 41;

and salsa music, 37;

structure, 29;

syncretism with mambo, 34;

term, 2728;

and transnationalism, 30;

versification, 29

Poison, 69

Ponce, xvi, 3, 6, 24, 28

popular culture: scholarship on, xviii, 18889;

in academia, xi, xv, xix;

and pedagogy, xiv

 Popular Democratic Party, 31

positivism, 10, 1516

Postmodernism:

in Puerto Rican literature, 5;

and salsa music, 24142

preciosismo, 126

prejudice, racial, 3844

Presley, Elvis, 115

Pretto, Frank, 67

primitivism, 105, 157

productive moment, xviii, 231, 236

productive pleasure, 188, 195, 197, 226, 273n 4

 Puente, Tito, 65, 79, 95, 113, 179

Puerto Rican Autonomist Party, 24

Puerto Rican literature, 37, 4561;

in U.S., 6.

See also Hernndez Cruz, Vctor; Ferr, Rosario; Filippi, Carmen Lugo; Snchez, Luis Rafael; Vega, Ana Lydia

Puerto Rican Symphony Orchestra, 241

Puerto Rico, gendering of, 19

Queen, 69

Queen Latifah, 149

Quintero, Rafael, 17273, 247n 3

Quintero Rivera, Angel, 13, 14, 16, 23, 54, 82, 242;
 works by, 8391

Quiones, Samuel R., 8

race:

improving, 54;

and interracial desire, 43;

in Mexico, 153;

in Puerto Rico, 3844;

"race" music, 32

racialization:

of women, xvi, 4561

racism:
in Puerto Rico, 3844, 53;

treatment of in literature, 53;

in Toms Blanco's works, 3840

radio, 94;

in Puerto Rico, 33

Radway, Janice, 203, 233

Ramrez, Paco, 20

Ramos Otero, Manuel, 257n 30

ranchera, 76, 194, 195, 230

Randel, Don Michael, 108, 113, 116, 201

rap:

African-American, 34, 157, 164;

Latino, xvii, 148, 157

rappers, African-American women, 149

rape, 43

Ratt, 69

recording industry, U.S., 32

repetition, 59, 15960;

as eroticization, 59;

types of, 9192, 261n 20

resemanticization, 33. See also appropriation, articulation

Reynold, Franz, 247n 1

Rexach, Sylvia, 13031

rhythm: and cultural identity, 99

 Rivas, Olga Luca, xiixiii

Rivera, Danny, 24, 25

Rivera, Margot, 59, 172

Rivera, Ismael, 34, 36, 59, 60, 69, 72, 82, 108;

in Puerto Rican literature, 59, 60

Rivera, Mon, 34, 81

Rivera Montalvo, Adela, 23

rock and roll, 70, 157, 172

rockero:

versus cocolo, 27, 6973, 200

Rod, Jos Antonio, 19

Rodrguez, Albita, xii, xiii, 136, 174, 241, 242, 243

 Rodrguez, Arsenio, 79

Rodrguez, Felipe, 177

Rodrguez, Tito, 79, 128, 132, 135, 138

Rodrguez de Ti, Lola, 2124, 25

Rodrguez Juli, Edgardo, xvi, 29, 32, 60, 143, 147, 149;

on Rafael Cortijo, 3437;

treatment of women by, 4648

Rohena, Roberto, 59

romance, Spanish, 29

romantic sensibility, 136. See also sensibility

romanticism, 16, 17
Page 289

Romero, Deddie, xii, 24243, 247n 1

Rondn, Csar Miguel, 77, 81, 178, 179

Rondstadt, Linda, 115, 116

Rosa Nieves, Cesreo, 8

Rose, Tricia, xiii, xiv, 34

Rubens, 40

Ruiz, Gabriel, 194

rumba, 81, 105, 107

Salazar, Max, 92

Saldvar-Hull, Sonia, xiv

 salsa, 227;

Anglo constructions of, xvii, 6667, 99, 104108;

and class, 6973, 8788, 11112, 199;

contradictions in, xii;

as Cuban music, 7980;

and cultural hybridity, 66;

dancing to, 95103;

in English, 11314;

ertica, 93, 13637, 205, 212;

in Europe, 259n 10;

feminization of, 23940;

and gender politics, xiii, 117, 190, 195, 238;

and globalization, 7374, 116, 241;

ideological plurality in, 61, 6568, 77, 142;

label, 67, 92;

in literature, 19396;

machismo in, xiii;

mainstreaming of, 66, 67, 73, 11617(see also appropriation, articulation);

and maroon culture, 82, 83;

and mass media, 9295;

and nationalism, xvii, 6566, 68, 7882;

and postmodernism, xvi, 61, 6568;

and race, 6973, 96, 11112, 116, 241;

reception of, 66, 67, 77, 99, 121, 124;

repertoire, 24041;

representations of women in, xiixiii, xvii, 12124, 14249, 155, 19193, 205210;

and resistance, 66, 68, 77, 82, 124;

and rock and roll, 6972;

romntica, xviii, 73, 78, 205, 24041, 24243;

as sociomusical practice, 67;

in Toronto, 67; and U.S. Latinos, 66, 81;

in Venezuela, 69;

violence in, 157

salsamigo, 67

salsdromo, 67

Salt'n Pepa, 149

 San Juan Star, The, 70, 71

Sanabria, Izzy, 92

Snchez, Luis Rafael, xvi, xviii, 35, 43, 124, 125, 127, 133;

on Daniel Santos, 13941;

on music, 101102

Santa Rosa, Gilberto, xiii, 72, 73, 136, 205, 241, 242

Santana, Carlos, 69, 71

Santi y sus duendes, 15152, 16869

Santiago, Eddie, 93, 99, 136, 143, 199

Santos, Daniel, 124, 125, 127, 128, 132, 134,136, 142, 160, 161;

in fiction, 13941.

See also bolero

 Sarlo, Beatriz, xviii, 248n 10

Schwichtenberg, Cathy, 123, 197

Selena, xii

sensibility, 267n 37. See also romantic sensibility

sexual politics, 124, 233

sexuality, female, 55;

male, 48

Shakespeare, William, 139

Shepherd, John, 93

Showalter, Elaine, 4, 53

Sierra, Julia, 243

Silva, Mirta, 17577

 Silvestre, Sonia, 131

Simon, Paul, 115, 116

Singer, Roberta, 84

singers, female, 12324

slavery, 147, 255n 52

son, Cuban, 28, 76, 8081, 82, 105, 107, 159

Son de Azcar, 16566

soneo, 84;

in literature, 8586

Sonora Matancera, La, 142

Sony, 243

Spanish language, eroticized, 147;

in salsa music, 11314

standardization, 9091

strategy, 37

Strinati, Dominic, 249n 8

subjectivity, female, 46, 4748, 124, 154, 17283;

male, 129, 133, 135

subtext, 4, 5, 193

syncopation:

in literature, 59

syncretism, musical, 14, 34

synecdoches: in the bolero, 13435;

patriarchal, 135, 14249

T

Taberna India, La, 35

tango, 194, 195;

tango-congo, 107

Tan, Olga, xii, 174, 240, 24243

Tavrez, Manuel G., 14, 23, 24, 25

teatro bufo:

in Cuba, 105

terrorism, discursive, 16162

Tex-Mex music, 9798

Thiong'o, Ngugi wa, 58

timbales, 12

Tin Pan Alley, 94

Tjader, Cal, 92

Toa La Negra, 138, 15253, 17576

Tongolele, 177

Topo, El, 25

Touzet, Ren, 133

translation, cross-cultural, 105108

tresillo elstico, 13, 14, 23

Page 290

tropicalization, 105;

of salsa music, 108

Tropicuba, Los, 177

Truman, Harry, 25

upa, 11. See also merengue

Valdelamar, Emma Elena, 133

Valdez, Miguelito, 172

Valentn, Wilson, 241

validation through visibility, 73

 Valle, Joe, 33

Valle, Sara del, 241

vallenato, 82

Valverde, Mariana, 55

Valverde, Umberto, 17273, 247n 3

Vargas, Wilfrido, 160

Vzquez, Consuelo, 133

Vega, Ana Lydia, xvi, xviii, 35, 102, 124, 167, 181, 188, 197, 220, 230, 233;

short stories, 8586, 19396

Vega, Tony, 7172

Venezuela:

immigration to Puerto Rico, 11;

 salsa music in, 69

Ventura, Gilda, 58

Ventura, Johnny, 160

Veray, Amaury, 10, 11, 12, 13, 24

violence, sexual, 43;

against women, 15563

Wagner, Richard, 3

Walby, Sylvia, 150

Waxer, Lise, 243

Western culture, 104, 155

"When Women Love Men" (Ferr), 34, 4560

 White, Hayden, 110

Wilde, Oscar, 140

witches. See brujera

Wild Mango, xii, 23940

Wolfe, Gilbert L., 105107

woman:

as absence, 12541, 232;

as bandolera, 229;

construction of, 20610, 229;

idealized, 12627;

lost, 12830, 138;

objectification of, 135, 14249, 266n 28;

as prostitute, 229;

as traitor, 235;

woman's culture, 4, 53.

See also feminism, gender, heterosexual conflict, salsa, women

women:

bands, 17273;

black Puerto Rican, 173;

composers, 172, 272n 3, 272n 8;

instrumentalists, 17273;

rappers, 149;

singers, 156, 16569, 17283, 24243;

symbolic annihilation of, 239

 World War I, 29

Yoli, Lupe Victoria. See La Lupe

zarzuela, 107

Zavala, Iris, xviii, 125, 126, 130, 132, 133, 141;

writings of, 13839

Zona de carga y descarga, 3

Page 298

FRANCES R. APARICIO is Associate Professor of Spanish and American Culture at the University of Michigan, where she
has also directed the Latino Studies Program. Her books include Versiones, Interpretaciones, Creaciones (1991), which
analyzes the poetics and practice of literary translation among modern Latin American writers; an anthology of Latino
literatures for young readers (Latino Voices, 1994); and an English translation of Francisco Matos Paoli's Canto de la
locura/Song of Madness (1989). She has also co-edited, with Suzanna Chvez-Silverman, a collection of essays
titledTropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad, published by the University Press of New England. She is
currently writing on the politics of bilingualism among U.S. Latinos.

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND publishes books under its own imprint and is the publisher for Brandeis
University Press, Dartmouth College, Middlebury College Press, University of New Hampshire, Tufts University, and
Wesleyan University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aparicio, Frances R.
Listening to salsa : gender, Latin popular music, and Puerto Rican
cultures / Frances R. Aparicio.
p. cm. (Music/culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8195-5306-9 (cl : alk. paper). ISBN 0-8195-6308-0 (pa)
I. SalsaPuerto RicoHistory and criticism. 2. Feminism and
music. I. Series.
ML3535.5.A63 1997
781.64dc21 97-9121