Abstract
Interwoven with a textual analysis of Colombian electronica band Bomba Estéreo’s viral music video “Soy yo” (2016), here I offer an autoethnographic perspective on the experience of Latina feminist media identification for a US Colombiana/Latina viewer unaccustomed to encountering herself in popular media. I trace the numerous moments of what I term “Latina feminist recognition” in “Soy yo,” with an eye toward how the video, often described as an “ode to little brown girls everywhere,” implies a universality of Latina experience, yet may simultaneously be read as a uniquely Colombian diasporic text. In centering the Latina contemplative eye, I assert that the power ascribed to “Soy yo” is in significant part anchored in the Latina female gaze. This gesture ultimately offers a potent alternative paradigm for reimagining gendered US Colombianidad and Latinidad in popular media generated within the Global North as well as by the Colombian state.
Resumen
Entrelazado con un análisis textual del “viral” video musical “Soy yo” (2016) de la banda electrónica colombiana Bomba Estéreo, ofrezco en este trabajo una perspectiva autoetnográfica sobre mi experiencia de identificación latina y feminista en los medios, como espectadora colombiana estadounidense/latina no acostumbrada a verse en los medios populares. Identifico los múltiples momentos de lo que llamo “reconocimiento de latinas feministas” en el video “Soy yo,” con la mirada puesta en cómo el video, que a menudo se describe como una “oda a las niñas mestizas en todo el mundo” implica una universalidad de la experiencia latina que también podría leerse simultáneamente como un texto particular representativo de la diáspora colombiana. Al centrar la mirada contemplativa latina, afirmo que el poder adscrito a “Soy yo” está en gran parte afianzado por la visión de la mujer latina. Este gesto a la larga ofrece un poderoso paradigma alternativo para reimaginar la colombianidad y la latinidad estadounidenses en función de género en los medios populares generados dentro del norte global así como por el estado de Colombia.
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Notes
For an in-depth analysis of this particular episode of Ugly Betty, see Chapter 4 (“ ‘Ugly’ America Dreams the American Dream”) in Molina-Guzmán (2010).
Like many contemporary music videos, the setting of “Soy yo” plays on the tensions between specificity (the rapidly gentrifying streets of González’s Brooklyn neighborhood) and ambiguity (a nameless urban center), reflecting the desire of video creators to market their product to a global audience, increasing its potential consumer appeal.
“Don’t worry / If they don’t approve of you / When they criticize you / Just say / ‘That’s me.’”
I elect to use the more expansive “Latina/o/x” throughout this piece in recognition of the fact that individuals experience gender in multiple and at times shifting ways. As a feminist scholar I believe in retaining the “a” and the “x” in particular given the rich history of Latina feminist activism (see Trujillo-Pagán 2018) as well as the important need to acknowledge non-binary individuals within our scholarly work.
A detailed consideration of production-level concerns is beyond the scope of this essay, but I would like to underscore the potential implications of Kjelstrup’s male and European positionalities, however briefly. I am particularly interested in the director’s status, a fact that renders “Soy yo” and its affirmative message a particularly thorny vehicle for co-optation.
I signal the particular marginalization of studies of Colombia’s Caribbean coast and its diaspora with irony. As Wade (2000) cogently argues, despite its persistent framing as a culturally, racially, and linguistically inferior space relative to the nation’s interior Andean regions, La Costa (as it is popularly known) frequently stands in for Colombian culture as an undifferentiated whole in the Colombian domestic as well as the global popular imagination.
Bomba Estéreo, “Soy yo,” 7 September 2016, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxWxXncl53U.
I would be remiss if I did not point out the exclusionary ethnoracial logic at the heart of any attempt to simplistically wed Latinidad to brownness or mestiza/o/x identity, a move that ultimately erases Latin American and Latina/o/x Afro-descendant and indigenous subjectivities.
“En el exterior” (On the outside) is the official designator employed by the Colombian state to label the Colombian diaspora.
For additional scholarship on the most highly visible and audible US Colombianas, see the following pieces on Shakira: Celis (2012), Cepeda (2003, 2008, 2010), Fuchs (2007), and Gontovnik (2010). Regarding Sofía Vergara, see Casillas et al. (2018), Porras Contreras (2017), Fernández L’Hoeste (2017), Molina-Guzmán (2014, 2018), and Vidal-Ortiz (2016).
In his attempts to locate a universal Latinidad in the mestiza body of Sarai González, Mejía unwittingly draws our attention to the ethnoracial national hierarchies that animate the Latin American and Latina/o/x popular imaginations. Specifically, his comment that González could be from Mexico or “even Argentina” indexes the ways in which Mexico is broadly associated with mestiza/o/x brownness, whereas Argentina is unproblematically conceptualized as the “whitest” of all Latin American nations, in a manner that challenges our ability to imagine the existence of Argentine indigenous and Afro-descendant subjects.
Here I wish to acknowledge the potential for the gaita as a uniquely Colombian musical reference to be lost or mis-taken by many media consumers, a fact that may render “Soy yo” a more generically pan-Latina/o/x composition.
The intertextual, mediated nature of diasporic cultural production proves significant here, given that, as a feminist anthem for young Latinas—indeed, as a feminist text directed at Latinas of all ages—the lyrical content of “Soy yo” engages in direct conversation with the work of earlier global feminist Colombian bands such as Aterciopelados, specifically their 1997 single “No necesito,” off of La Pipa de la Paz.
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Acknowledgements
Muchísimas gracias to Jennifer Harford Vargas, Johana Londoño, Lina Rincón, and to my anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments. I am also grateful to audiences at Brown University, the University of Kansas, and Williams College for their feedback on earlier versions of this work.
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Cepeda, M.E. Latina feminist moments of recognition: Contesting the boundaries of gendered US Colombianidad in Bomba Estéreo’s “Soy yo”. Lat Stud 18, 326–342 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-020-00267-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-020-00267-3