Performing race in the Barranquilla Carnival: the case of the Negritas Puloy de Montecristo (original) (raw)
Related papers
Public Culture, 2019
This essay examines the ideological power of Carnival and the carnivalesque on the Colombian Caribbean Coast by circumnavigating the dominant narrative about these events as primarily stages to transgress social norms and resist authority. Instead, it explores whether blackface and other forms of racial impersonation performed during these festivities are globally migrating manifestations of anti-Blackness. It argues that in order to achieve visual resonance, performers rely on taken-for-granted propositions about how Blackness works in Colombian society and that in the absence of such objectivated social knowledge, as Stuart Hall describes it, the racialized characters Las Negritas Puloy, Las Palenqueras/Las Negras Bollongas, and El Son de Negro would be illegible to audiences. These three popular representations of Blackness ascribe particular behaviors and ways of being to phenotypic variations associated with Blackness (skin complexion, hair texture, body type, etc.). This essay demonstrates the racial subordination that can develop, fester, and be reproduced through debasing cultural productions in an environment where anti-Black racism is typically invisibilized and trivialized.
This essay examines the significance of a 'self-objectifying' carnival performance that draws upon stereotypes of sexualized black femininity. The scholarship in this area has focused on whether performers reify or contest dominant stereotypes. I shift the lens from the performer to the audience. Specifically I examine fan responses to Rosa Luna , an Afro-Uruguayan Carnival vedette who became synonymous with Montevideo's annual Carnival from the 1950s until her death in 1993. In a nation that is Eurocentric, yet draws on aspects of Afro-Uruguayan culture for its identity, Rosa Luna became a national icon. Her performance embodied dual stereotypes of black femininitythe over-sexualized black woman and the black maternal. By turning to psychoanalytic theory, I argue that the performer is produced through the audience's desire. I suggest that the encounter with the vedette can be understood as a public 'specular moment' that activates the oedipal drama. Her performance reverberated with the symbolic ordering of sex, gender, and race hierarchies, provoking both the desire, and the disavowal of the desire, for black femininity. This insight draws attention to public performance as a site for the negotiation of desires that are structured through, and structure, hierarchical systems.
The Poetics and Politics of Afro-Cuban Carnival
Anthurium a Caribbean Studies Journal, 2013
The closing decade of the last century saw the publication of a number of groundbreaking studies that examine, from various perspectives and through multiple methodologies, the important role that race has played in Cuban cultural history and in the formation of a modern
Blackface at the Andean Fiesta: Performing Blackness in the Danza de Caporales
Latin American Research Review, 2019
This study assesses the deployment of blackface in a performance of the Danza de Caporales at La Fiesta de la Virgen de la Candelaria in Puno, Peru, by the performance troupe Sambos Illimani con Sentimiento y Devoción. Since blackface is so widely associated with the nineteenth-century US blackface minstrel tradition, this article develops the concept of "hemispheric blackface" to expand common understandings of the form. It historicizes Sambos' deployment of blackface within an Andean performance tradition known as the Tundique, and then traces the way multiple hemispheric performance traditions can converge in a single blackface act. It underscores the amorphous nature of blackface itself and critically assesses its role in producing anti-blackness in the performance. Este ensayo analiza el uso de "blackface" (literalmente, cara negra: término que designa el uso de maquillaje negro cubriendo un rostro de piel más pálida) en la Danza de Caporales puesta en escena por el grupo Sambos Illimani con Sentimiento y Devoción que tuvo lugar en la fiesta de la Virgen de la Candelaria en Puno, Perú. Ya que el "blackface" es frecuentemente asociado a una tradición estadounidense del siglo XIX, este artículo desarrolla el concepto de "hemispheric blackface" (cara-negra hemisférica) para dar cuenta de elementos comunes en este género escénico. El estudio analiza el uso de blackface dentro de una tradición andina y puntualmente, en un baile que se llama el "Tundique" y luego rastrea diferentes tradiciones escénicas en las Américas que convergen en un mismo acto de cara-negra. Finalmente, este ensayo demuestra el carácter amorfo de los actos de cara-negra y establece críticamente el rol de estas manifestaciones escénicas en la producción de un sentimiento anti-negro.
Mobilizations of Race, Place, and History in Santiago de Cuba's Carnivalesque
American Anthropologist, 2017
I offer a model of racialization, the ongoing process of making race meaningful, by proposing the concept of micro-mobilities: people's movements through immediate lived space. I examine how qualities of movement in an annual carnival procession normalize racialized bodies and places. In Santiago de Cuba's carnival, neighborhood-based conga societies participate in official competitive displays and grassroots neighborhood activities. The grassroots Invasion evokes Cuba's wars for independence. Thousands join the Conga de Los Hoyos to process through the "territories" of other congas. I examine the Invasion as a performed diagram of "routes of Blackness" mapped onto a reenactment of Cuba's national "roots" to argue that it mobilizes the racialization of bodies, cultural forms, and neighborhoods. My focus on bodies in motion challenges static mappings of identity, place, and history to instead show how Blackness and whiteness are constituted in the relation between race as embodied experience and object of discourse. [race, racialization, mobilization, festive performance, Cuba] RESUMEN Presento un modelo de la racialización-el proceso que da sentido a la "raza"-en proponer el concepto de micro-movilidades: los movimientos de la gente por su espacio inmediato y cotidiano. Examino la manera en que las cualidades del movimiento en una procesión del carnaval normalizan la racialización de los cuerpos y lugares. En el carnaval de Santiago de Cuba, las sociedades congas, basadas en distintas vecindades, participan en las competencias oficiales y las actividades comunitarias. La comunitaria Invasión evoca las guerras cubanas de independencia, cuando miles se desfilan con la Conga de Los Hoyos por los "territorios" de las otras congas. Analizo la Invasión como un diagrama en actuación de las "rutas de Negritud" aplicado a una reconstrucción de las "raices" nacionales cubanas, para plantear que funciona para movilizar la racialización de los cuerpos, formas culturales, y vecindades. Este enfoque en los cuerpos móviles desafía los mapas estáticas de la identidad, el sitio, y la historia para mostrar la constitución de las razas en la relación entre la experiencia corporal y la objectificación discursiva. [raza, racialización, movilización, actuación festiva, Cuba] RÉSUMÉ Je propose un modèle de racialisation, le processus continu pour donner un sens au terme de race en suggérant le concept de "micro-mobilités": les mouvements de personnes dans un espace vécu immédiat. J'examine la faç on dont les qualités de mouvement dans un défilé de carnaval annuel normalisent des corps et des lieux racialisés. Dans le carnaval de Santiago de Cuba, des associations de quartier, les conga, participent dans des manifestations officielles et compétitives ainsi que dans des activités de quartier populaires. "L'Invasion" populairé evoque les guerres d'indépendence de Cuba. Des milliers de personnes se joignentà la Conga de Los Hoyos pour traverser les "territoires" d'autres conga. J'examine l'Invasion en tant que schéma d'interprétation de "voies de Négritude " tracées sur une reconstitution des "racines" nationales cubaines afin de défendre que celle-là mobilise
Where Is the Carnivalesque in Rio's Carnaval? Samba, Mulatas and Modernity
Visual Anthropology, 2008
This article chronicles the historical normalization of carnaval parades and samba performances in Rio de Janeiro, by looking at the progressive standardization of audiovisual imagery fueled by a nationalistic project based on cultural appropriation. Afro–Brazilian performance traditions have come to stand for Brazilian national identity since at least the 1930s, and practices of visual consumption such as shows de mulata (spectacles where Afro–Brazilian women dance the samba) have elevated ‘‘mixed-race’’ women to be icons of Brazilianness. While these practices have de-emphasized grotesque excess in order to fit scopophilic drives, they have failed to secure a firm grip over performers’ experiences.
Festive Devils of the Americas. Milla Cozart Riggio, Angela Marino and Paolo Vignolo (editors). Seagull. London, New York, Calcutta, 2015
The Devil is the great protagonist of the carnival of Riosucio, Colombia, from his triumphant entrance that initiates the fiesta to the closing bonfire when his effigy is set ablaze in the main plaza directly in front of the cathedral. A new icon has emerged in recent years, though—the Diabla, built and carried through the streets in a procession by a group of persons at the margins of the public sphere (street artists and artisans, but also prostitutes, alcoholics, addicts and petty criminals). The Diabla has become a symbol of recovery and participation for city dwellers at the margins. In contrast to other initiatives to promote a variety of cultural traditions, such as attempts to generate an ‘Indian carnival’ similar to the carnival of the Devil but in a nearby rural area, the appearance of the Diabla in the town’s public space has been a successful exercise in active citizenship, reclaiming the right to popular participation in the festive performance.
IMAGES OF RELIGION IN A MANGUEIRA CARNIVAL
GIS - Gesto Imagem e Som, 2022
In this essay, we examine the connections between religion and carnival in recent parades of the Estação Primeira de Mangueira samba school, especially for the 2020 carnival – the last before the festival was suspended due to the Covid-19 global pandemic. In particular, we explore the backstage context of the show performance, extending from the barracão (warehouse), where costumes and floats are made, to the concentração (concentration) – that is, the moment that immediately precedes and conditions the school’s entrance into the Marquês de Sapucaí Sambadrome during the champions parade. Given the magnitude of the event, we present an essay with alternative images to those disseminated in the commercial media, which are taken at the climax of the festival and perpetuate its monumental scale. What we propose is not an aesthetic appreciation of the parade but an analysis of how the images and performances of ‘religion’ are articulated and appear in a research field like carnival that is seen, a priori, as profane.
"Living like Queens: Gender Conflict and Female Counter-Hegemony in Contemporary Cádiz Carnival"
Journal of Festive Studies (Issue No1, Vol 2 :The Politics of Carnival pp: 153-178), 2020
This article focuses on the feminist mobilization that has characterized Cádiz Carnival since 2011, leading to the elimination of the Ninfas y Diosas (Nymphs and Goddesses) custom, a variant of the Reina de las Fiestas (Queen of Traditional Fiestas) ceremony introduced under Francisco Franco's dictatorship (1939-75). By calling into question the representation of women in Carnival celebrations, female festive organizations have challenged the old, male-dominated festival traditions and transformed Cádiz Carnival. Their activism has carried over into everyday life, as female Carnival groups have created their own community and translated the artistic manifestations of their desire for equality into public policy. Using oral testimonies and archival material gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in the city, I trace the history of the reina and ninfas customs and analyze a variety of material related to their birth, evolution, and recent discontinuation. The ultimate purpose of this article is to map the tensions embedded in both the festival and contemporary Spanish society and to show how the Carnival stage can become a space where embodied feminist counter-hegemony is performed, thus contributing to the slow democratization of Spanish society.