I explain in this blog my reaction to the readings of the week: “In Search of a New Topography” by Guillermo Gómez-Peña; “The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media Cinstructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s Cross-Over Butt’” by Mary C. Beltrán; and “The Embodiment of Salsa: Musicians, instruments and the Performance of a Latin Style and Identity” by Patria Román-Velázquez.

Gómez-Peña’s text deals with the Mexican revolutionary group of the 90s called the Zapatistas, and more precisely with its leader, the so-called Subcomandante Marcos. The extract explains that Marcos initially won popularity by trying to be a popular culture phenomenon: he used slang, references to urban culture and pop culture, theatrical performance… But he eventually lost this popularity: people simply got tired of his character with time, as if he was a pop star instead of a guerillero.

Beltrán’s text focuses on the fact that in the late 1990s, most of the popular attention devoted to Latina star Jennifer Lopez was centered around the shape of her butt. From this rather unconventional starting point, the author tries to develop an argumentation about how this could illustrate a media system that is still uncomfortable with promoting the body shape of non-white women or, to the contrary, an industry that continues to use and to extrapolate stereotypes from other ethnicities.

The last text, by Patria Román-Velázquez, is centered around the theme of salsa, a Latin dance/music that the author of the essay uses to reflect on ethnicity and culture. By taking the example of Salsa musicians who are not Latin and who play in London, the essay states that, though we consider salsa to be a pure element of Latin America popular culture, musicians from other backgrounds can learn it but, due to the differences in places, they will play it slightly differently: one does not need to be Latin to play Salsa but according to the place of learning the result will differ (not that there is a more authentic way, warns the writer). Additionally, salsa bands in English-speaking countries note the constrains imposed by the industry: to remain profitable, they have to cope with the expectations and the limited familiarity of their audience with this music. They must keep the Spanish lyrics fairly simple and restrain themselves to create a music to make people dance.