Salsa and Sexism: Are You Mouthing Misogyny?

By Guest Contributor Rachael Kay Albers, cross-posted from Latina Fatale

It is after midnight and I’m in a taxi on the way back to my barrio, mouthing the lyrics to a song on the radio that I’m proud to know the lyrics of when, suddenly, I stop (fake) singing. Spanish is my second language and memorizing song lyrics doesn’t come as easily to me as it does in English—if I can successfully sing along to a song in a café or on the radio, I wave the useless ability like a flag. But, as I silently croon in my cab tonight, I realize that, in my quest to hone my dual language lip syncing abilities, I have paid absolutely zero attention to the content of the lyrics I’m not singing.

The song on my cabbie’s radio is “Lamento Boliviano,” (Bolivian Lament). You may know it for its famous chorus:

Y yo estoy aquí

borracho y loco

y mi corazón idiota

siempre brillará

y yo te amaré

te amaré por siempre

(And I am here

drunk and crazy

and my stupid heart

will always shine

and I will love you

I will love you forever)

As I listen carefully to the lyrics, I imagine the scene being described: a drunk, desperate man declaring his undying love to his wronged mujer after saying, in earlier lyrics, that he feels there is a volcano of rage inside of him. I have lived this scene. The drunk, desperate man “in love” is not nearly as romantic as the Enanitos Verdes — the Argentinean rock band that croons “Lamento Boliviano” — make him seem. He can be, in fact, quite dangerous, especially when he says he has an, um, “volcano” inside of him.

Ugh — sexist lyrics glamorizing alcoholism and violence in Spanish, too? I think, dumbly. How has the thought never occurred to me before? I mean, what did I expect from the music that just happened to be playing the many times I have been fondled or — I’ll just say it — humped on various dance floors across Mexico? Hip hop gets the rap in the United States for violent, misogynistic lyrics with country music coming in at second place—both deservingly. But, what about the music I’m listening to in Latin America?

I decide to survey the music I have been deafly enjoying for the last few years, focusing on salsa, bachata, and reggaeton— genres I enjoy socially as well as for lip syncing purposes. I learn that salsa, a descendant of Cuban son, developed in the 1960s in the Latino barrios of New York City as an expression of the urban working class experience. Bachata was coming of age at the same time in the Dominican Republic—music many say was born out of the frustrations of Rafael Trujillo’s oppressed masses. Reggaeton, largely influenced by hip hop, developed later in Panama and, like salsa and bachata, the music has political roots, as well. Many feminists theorize that the emphasis on salsa, bachata, and reggaeton’s role in Pan-American working class resistance has obscured the genres’ treatment of women.

Working class resistance or not, under a microscope, the songs ooze sex—the ruling class sponsored kind that either idealizes or demonizes women while simultaneously objectifying them. Females across these genres are cast in three main roles:

• The young, virgin fruit, ripe to be plucked—by the song’s protagonist, of course
• The experienced seductress who drives the song’s protagonist to sexual desperation
• The deceptive, transgressing bitch who wrongfully broke the protagonist’s heart

She is usually anonymous— unnamed— and identified only by her physical characteristics and/or sexual desirability. That, or her wickeness and sexual impurity, as in the “scorned lover” songs so popular in bachata. In all cases, she is the victim of pre-meditated violence on the part of the protagonist, who vows in his lyrics either to use her sexually or abuse her violently.

Page 1 of 3 | Next page