Why “being Latino” is so fashionable: Real recognition or cultural appropriation?
By Mariano Yberry
“Now everyone wants to be Latino,” reggaeton singer Bad Bunny sings in ‘El Apagón’, one of the songs from his album that went viral ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’, a production that has endorsed the place of the Latin American urban genre as one of the most popular of the moment.
The “Latin” fashion infected even the Spaniards C. Tangana and Rosalía, the latter going viral from Afro-Caribbean words like saoco to adopting “poses” that, for some, refers to the relaxed and informal attitude that, they say, characterizes Latin American identity.
There are plenty of examples of the capitalization of Latin American identity in the market: from Disney movies such as Coco or Encanto, which try to show the Anglo-Saxon interpretation of local customs and traditions, through mezcal and tequila brands that are promoted by actors, foreign singers and businessmen who were “fascinated” by Latin American folklore.
There is also the commercialization of clothing with indigenous designs by international luxury brands without giving credit to the original artisans.
But the fashion of “being Latino” has also generated a debate on the appropriation of cultural and identity expressions of indigenous or Afro-Caribbean people in the region, as well as the stigmatization of a region that, in the political field, also fights for recognition against the hegemony of the United States and its quest to bring its democracy and lifestyle to an entire continent, as authors such as Leopoldo Zea have problematized.
WHAT IS IT TO BE LATINO?
For anthropologists and researchers, defining a Latino identity is complicated given that, despite sharing the Spanish language and a colonialist past, what is understood by Latin America is much more diverse than stereotypes let on.
For the Mexican writer Jumko Ogata of the Mexican Institute of Radio (IMER) and creator of the podcast ‘Yo soy negra’, categorizing what is Latino hides the cultural diversity of each of the countries that integrate them.
But above all, many cultural expressions associated with this identity from music such as reggaeton, salsa, and even words like bichota (a term to refer to a drug trafficker in Colombia, but today it is popularized as an independent woman) are of black origin.
“Putting it under the concept of ‘Latina’, in general terms, is a homogenizing effort. Those who are visible as Latinos are white or white-mestizo people, while the issues they reproduce are from original nations and black peoples,” explains Jumko Ogata Aguilar, who participated in the anthology of essays Tsunami 2 by Editorial Sexto Piso.
Precisely musical genres such as reggaeton have their origins in the early 1990s in marginalized areas of Puerto Rico and Panama, where, in the absence of production capacity, long marathons of reggae and dance hall tape mixes were held.
This genre is born from a very particular political and social situation that is very far from the current expressions interpreted by Spaniards and Argentines, who seek to perpetuate stereotypes about Latin Americans: carefree party people who, in very simple terms, are reduced only to fun, sex and waste.
“This Latino label is becoming popular based on often racist or fetishizing stereotypes of Latin American people,” says Ogata, recalling that acts such as Rosalía’s chewing gum with her mouth open went viral for “reflecting” local attitudes at different points in Latin America.
THE CULTURAL DIVERSITY OF A REGION
Problematizing Latin American identity has occupied intellectuals, philosophers, and writers since the independence of the American colonies began in the 19th century, given the need to materialize the unity of peoples with a common history against the hegemony of powers such as the United States and Spain.
However, in this search for unity, we lost sight of the multiple cultural expressions and stories that define each of the countries of the so-called Global South, which translates into “many Spanish” spoken in the region and many customs that differ completely from one of other.
In the podcast, ‘Ese es el Punto’, from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Universidad de los Andes, specialists such as historian Martha Herrera and anthropologist Natalie Puex warn that the category “Latino” denies any cultural diversity under the justification of miscegenation that lived during the colony.
That is to say: by pointing to everyone as Latino, it is assumed that the mestizo identity is homogeneous when it is not.
If Latin American pasts are categorized into a single identity due to their common past, this category would necessarily have to recognize cultural diversities at the local and regional levels, points out Puex.
For her part, anthropologist Adriana Hurtado points out in the same podcast that this common past that links Latinos is also marked by strong inequality and a strong process of modernization during the 20th century, which leaves the region in a situation of uncertainty in the face of social inequity and economic crises.
This uncertainty is also responsible for cultural expressions and social actions with a tendency to political mobilization and survival, which are caricatured in a so-called “Latin tropicalism”.
That is, the stereotype of people who live in disorder, at parties, and the chaos to face the few opportunities that the immediate future offers them, very far from the glamor that current reggaeton singers sell.
Added to this general Latino label is another problem generated by the market: the categorization of “international Latinos,” that is, white or white-mestizo people who make black, brown, and indigenous people invisible, the majority in the region, but who in terms of commercial and advertising are more accepted.
“The broad term ‘Latino’ is already a form of violence, it has been since it was created because it is putting white and white-mestizo identities at the forefront, but being predators of cultural and linguistic issues of black and indigenous people,” Jumko Ogata warns.
THE MIGRATORY FACTOR
In this sense, Adriana Hurtado indicates that the migratory flow is also key to understanding the multiculturalism of the Latino since forced displacement has caused different ethnic groups abroad to seek to create a common space for American Spanish speakers, although these also end up in stereotypes of the Latin American.
An example of this can also be found in music, especially salsa. Its origin is attributed to Central American migrants based in New York and Puerto Rico who, in the mid-20th century, promoted African rhythms originating mainly in Cuba.
Characters such as Johnny Pacheco and Tito Puente always refused to use the term “salsa” to refer to their work, as they were aware that they replicated already defined Afro-Cuban genres such as guaguancó, son montuno, and guaracha, but today it is easy to see how to salsa music becomes the main example of Latin music, whether in movies or records, even though each region has also developed its own variants.
You don’t have to go that far back in time: the main soundtrack of Disney’s Encanto (2021) film, based on the Colombian worldview and culture, is a hard salsa song titled No Se Habla de Bruno.
“They did not invent these genres nor are they revolutionizing them,” says Jumko Ogata, for whom these artists take advantage of the fact that “it is much more digestible and acceptable for a European to sing reggaeton” than for a black man from Puerto Rico or Colombia to do it while they shield themselves from criticism because, due to their geographic origin, they identify themselves as “Latinos.”
“There is a lot of resistance from mestizo people who have also reproduced these dynamics of appropriation and dispossession and who are bothered that now it is reaching them by rebound, and they are the ones who are bothered when Europeans like C. Tangana and Rosalía do it, but they do the same thing: they are not black people, and they are making use of this caricature,” concludes the Mexican writer.
With information from Sputnik
Read More from The Rio Times