Centro Journal ISSN: 1538-6279 [email protected] The City University of New York Estados Unidos

Ortiz, Roberto Carlos Puerto Rican sugar: the transnational film career of Mapy Cortés Centro Journal, vol. XVII, núm. 1, spring, 2005, pp. 122-139 The City University of New York New York, Estados Unidos

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CENTRO Journal

Volume7 xv1i Number 1 spring 2005

Puerto Rican sugar: The transnational film career of Mapy Cortés

ROBERTO CARLOS ORTIZ

ABSTRACT

This article charts the movie star text of Puerto Rican entertainer Mapy Cortés (1910–1998), one of the top box- office attractions of Mexican cinema in the 1940s, who made a quick trip to Hollywood in 1942 and returned to in the 1950s and 60s to collaborate in the nascent national television and cinema. By charting the vedette’s on-screen image, especially her embodiment of Puerto Rico, the tropics or Pan-Americanism, the article analyzes the racial and gender norms governing transnational Puerto Rican stars prior to better known Latina performers such as Rita Moreno or Jennifer López. [Key words: Mapy Cortés, Mexican cinema, Hollywood, movie star, vedette, race and gender]

Top left: With Victure Mature in a studio photo for Seven Days Leave 1942 . Bottom left: RKO Radio Pictures, collaborating with the War Rationing Board, used Mapy Cort s in Seven Days Leave to educate women on how to get the most out of their outfits. The accompanying text stated: To make this suit right for dressy daytime occasions, or for informal restaurant dining, Mapy Cortes unbuttons the jacket to the waistline, turning the fronts back in dress coat reverse, wears a blouse that s a cascade of crisp ruffles with lace insertions. Her dress hat, worn behind a low pompadour, is air corps blue fringed with tiny dark red feathers, gloves and bag re also dark red. Clip is gold, set with a giant topaz, with ear clips to match. Mapy is currently featured in Seven Days Leave, RKO radio musical. Photography by Ernest A. Bachrach, 1942.

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With few exceptions, such as Paramount Studio’s promotion of singer and and happily married (off-screen) white female entertainer seems dated. She did not comedienne Olga San Juan as the “Puerto Rican Pepperpot” in the 1940s, “subvert” or “resist” the movie star system, reach mythical proportions in relation to Puerto Ricans were not noticeable in Hollywood cinema until the 1950s, nationalist rhetoric (as Dolores del Río or María Félix did) or develop a “camp” or when a government-sponsored wave of migrations made them very visible within “kitsch” following by minority groups (like Carmen Miranda and Maria Montez). the . Puerto Ricans were mostly featured in “social problem” films Still, in spite of a mostly forgettable filmography, Mapy Cortés’s star text is of with an urban U.S. setting (Pérez 1998), most notably the “socially conscious” interest due to her mobility as a Puerto Rican female movie star through different musical West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961), which produced national cinemas from the 1930s up to the 1960s. the best-known Puerto Rican characters in film: the insular, virginally white Maria In itself, the transnational mobility of Mapy Cortés and her husband Fernando was (Natalie Wood) and the darker sexually experienced Nuyorrican Anita (Rita Moreno). not exceptional. Traveling through different national cinemas was common among West Side Story continues to play a role in the imagining of Puerto Ricans and the biggest Latin American movie stars and filmmakers of the period. At the peak of Latinos, as exemplified by press reports that while growing up Jennifer López her film career in the early to mid 1940s, the Mexican film industry had become— repeatedly watched the movie, especially Rita Moreno’s performance, and by the courtesy of U.S. policies during World War II—a cinematic melting pot, playing host opening lyrics of Carlos Santana’s 1999 hit song “Maria Maria”: to some of the best artistic talent from Latin America, exiles from the Spanish Civil War, and to “adventuresses from South America and the Antilles who emit a strong Maria Maria smell of perfume, fortune hunters who offered their bodies or their talent as She reminds me of a west side story merchandise”(Guiú 1993:191). This essay traces Mapy Cortés’s on-screen image at Growing up in Spanish Harlem three important moments in her transnational film career: the years of full-fledged She’s living the life just like a movie star stardom in the 1940s Mexican film industry, the brief trip to Hollywood in 1942 and the “return home” in early 1960s. There were other Puerto Rican actresses working In both instances, the characters of Maria and Anita are reworked to illustrate on the same national cinemas between the 1930s and 60s (Blanca de Castejón, different aspects of the contemporary lives of Latin American women in the United Rita Moreno, Marta Romero, Olga San Juan), but none of them achieved the same States. Carlos Santana’s Maria actually lives in East L.A., where she witnesses level of success as Mapy Cortés. In exploring one aspect of the actress’s star text, shootings and lootings, and has an eviction letter in her mailbox. Jennifer López, this article seeks to be a starting point for the further exploration of Mapy Cortés’s a dark-skinned (at least by Hollywood standards) singing and dancing Nuyorrican career and of other Puerto Rican entertainers in transnational media outside the like Anita, is the one really “living the life just like a movie star.” References to Rita U.S. context and prior to the times of globalization. Moreno in relation to Jennifer López follow the pop feminism of the famous Virginia Slims cigarette ad campaign, thus noting that Puerto Rican women “have come a La mulata borincana long way, baby.” Mapy Cortés made her film debut in Spain with 1933’s Dos mujeres y un Don Juan. West Side Story is regarded as a foundational text in terms of the portrayal of Puerto The Puerto Rican vedette was an import from the theater, as were many early Ricans in transnational media, especially Hollywood films, thus generally neglecting performers of Spanish and Latin American cinemas, and went on to play supporting the work of performers before the 1960s and outside the U.S. (Negrón-Muntaner roles in at least half a dozen Spanish films throughout the Second Republic until the 2004; Sandoval-Sánchez 1999). This essay draws attention to the film career of outburst of the Civil War, most notably Rosario Pi’s 1935 folkloric musical melodrama Puerto Rican vedette Mapy Cortés (1910–1998), which spans from Spanish Republican El gato mont s (the first Spanish feature-length film directed by a woman). After leaving cinema in the 1930s to the so-called “golden age” of the Mexican film industry in the Spain, Mapy Cortés co-starred in an Argentine comedy and a Cuban musical comedy 1940s and then back to Puerto Rico in the 1960s. Along the way, Mapy Cortés and before joining the Mexican film industry with a featured role in the comedy Pap se her husband Fernando made brief stops in , , and desenreda (Miguel Zacarías, 1940). Hollywood, where the actress co-starred in the 1942 wartime musical Seven Days Once in , husband Fernando Cortés heavily promoted her career to the Leave. Despite being one of the most successful Puerto Rican movie stars to date, point of directing most of her later films. As part of the roster of “exclusive artists” scholars have largely neglected Mapy Cortés’s film career. On the one hand, of CLASA Films, Mexico’s most important film studio, Mapy Cortés quickly became academic studies on the Mexican star system have favored the glamorous one of the Mexican film industry’s top movie stars, starring in five commercially (trans)nationalism of Dolores del Río, the masculine femininity of María Félix, the successful films in 1941. Off-screen, Mapy and Fernando Cortés became un-official verbal dexterity of Cantinflas, or the sexual excesses of rumba dancers in brothel Puerto Rican cultural ambassadors in Mexico. However, Mapy was better known melodramas (Hershfield 2000; López 1998; Monsiváis 1997). On the other hand, on-screen for singing Spanish variety songs and dancing the Cuban conga than for scholars of Puerto Rican popular culture have privileged the contemporary careers performing any distinctively Puerto Rican rhythms. In fact, the only Mexican film of U.S. based performers such as Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin (Fiol-Matta 2002; where Mapy Cortés played a Puerto Rican character was the 1941 Pan-American Holmlund 2002; Negrón-Muntaner 1997 & 2004; Quiroga 2000). musical La liga de las canciones. Given the tendency to study movie stars in relation to their resistance to general In that film, a group of struggling male musicians from different Latin American notions of race, ethnicity or gender, the lack of interest is understandable. By countries, living in the Hotel Do-Re-Mi, owned by the Spanish Don Asdrúbal, comparison, the star text of the sexually flirtatious (on-screen) but ultimately proper unite to put on a show to be broadcast by radio throughout Latin America

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and advocating music as vehicle for Pan-American unity. The film very clearly all blended together in this symphonic representation of Antilles’ ‘fiery, lyrical lands.’ establishes a hierarchy within Latin American cultural production: Spain is The mulata, in short, represents, everything but herself, all colors except her own. represented as a father figure that provides a common home, language and In fact, all that is left is an empty shell of femininity” (1993:190). In this respect, racial/ethnic lineage, the United States representative provides financial resources Mapy’s whiteness makes her an ideal embodiment of the mulatez borincana (on loan and seeking profit), while the stylish Mexican male protagonist, in collab- celebrated in Rafael Hernández’s song. In line with the ideology of racial mixture oration with his Cuban and Argentinean gentleman buddies, heads the Pan-American and whitening of the races characteristic of Spanish Caribbean nationalist unity efforts and keeps the girl at the end. discourses, Mapy Cortés is the perfect mulata: a sexually flirtatious “whitened” The girl in question is Mapy (Cortés), “an extraordinary woman sent to us by the female whose racial and ethnic identity is signified by the performance of Afro- small and beloved island of Puerto Rico,” who is the only female delegate. The Mexican, Caribbean rhythms and not by skin color. Cuban and Argentinean protagonists set aside their rivalries and unite when they La liga de las canciones was the only Mexican film where Mapy Cortés played a think that a U.S. investor courts Mapy. When the Mexican leading man (crooner distinctively Puerto Rican character, but there was always a “tropical” component to Ramón Armengod) warns his buddies that “the gringo wants to take her from us,” her roles. In El gendarme desconocido (Miguel M. Delgado, 1941), Mapy Cortés played his Cuban friend (Fernando Cortés) replies that “not even the Good Neighbor Policy La Criollita, a gangster’s mistress and tropical dancer who seduces El Rey de los will take that territory away from me.” Securing Mexico’s leadership and Puerto Diamantes (the masquerading title character, played by Cantinflas) during her cabaret Rico’s membership within Latin American cultural production, Ramón gets to keep act by strutting her body to the sounds of Afro-Puerto Rican bandleader Rafael Mapy at the end. She then closes the film by leading a communal conga, after which Hernández’s “tropical rhythms.” Although she has the physical attributes to pull it the other characters march in carrying the flags of the Americas. off, the number was suggestive enough to merit censorship in Spain, and Cantinflas’s Mapy is introduced performing “Por mi tierra borincana,” a song that explicitly character does fall for her (but eventually returns to the arms of his Mexican proclaims her symbolic role within the film. The number opens with a shot of Mapy girlfriend), Mapy Cortés’s Criollita is not wholly convincing as a sexual temptress. standing at the top of the Hotel Do-Re-Mi’s stairs. The camera then pulls back as she Her cute cherubic face plays against her. It suggests an underlying wholesome sways her body down the stairs and through the lobby, spreading joy and hope to the innocence that makes unsurprising her transformation from tropical vixen to good- hotel’s struggling artistic community: hearted woman by the end of the film. Even though she is a kept woman, La Criollita does not follow the mold of the fallen woman set by Santa (Antonio Moreno, 1931) Por mi tierra borincana yo me mato con cualquiera and La mujer del puerto (Arcady Boytler, 1933), the two foundational whores of Y el que lo quiera probar que me hable mal de ella Mexican cinema. At most, La Criollita is a coqueta or a p cara: a cute tropical flirt. Si todo buen borincano que por ella viva y muera It was as a flirtatious embodiment of the tropics that Mapy Cortés found her niche within Mexican cinema. By the end of 1941, Mapy Cortés had become Debe hacer lo que yo hago defenderla dondequiera one of the industry’s top box-office attractions, to the point of replacing the Borinquen cuánto te quiero y lejos de tí me muero “less bankable” actress Gloria Marín (the Mexican love interest in El gendarme La vida entera daría por volver a ti algún día desconocido) for the female lead in El Conde de Montecristo, the first “super production” of Mexican cinema. Back then, the growing Mexican cinema industry lacked The number concludes with the following chorus, performed twice in close-up: established female stars:

Es la reina soberana, la mulata borincana Isabela Corona was the great actress. Con su tiple y su guirito, se alborota el jibarito Gloria Marín was the Mexican beauty. María Elena Marqués was inexperienced and ingenuous youth. The lyrics of the chorus racialize Mapy Cortés (a white-skinned mulata borincana), Dolores del Río was the Mexican woman who had agreed, align her with a specific imaginary of the nation (Borinquen, the mythical pre-colonized due to patriotism, to abandon Hollywood. island), and establish sex as the only site of Puerto Rican independence. Although a U.S. Andrea Palma [was] a certain mystery that directors were territory, Mapy can be a “sovereign queen” when she seductively sings and dances about the island, exciting the mythical white male Puerto Rican countryman. unable to decipher (Taibo 1985: 12). National identity thus centers on the sexually charged body of the Puerto Rican woman: Mapy, the white mulata borincana. The song’s racialized engendering of the Mapy Cortés became the charming tropical flirt. Her Mexican filmography alternated nation is reminiscent of the work of Luis Palés Matos, the 1920s white Puerto Rican pre-revolutionary nostalgia musicals and sexually risqué comedies. The actress’s porcelain negrista poet whose best-known works (especially “Majestad negra”) centered on the doll looks made her seem right at home within the idealized Mexico of nostalgia bodies of mulatas as erotically charged symbols of cultural fusion and pan-Caribbean musicals, while her girlish slyness (picard a) was played off for comedic effect in sex farces. identity. In her discussion of Palés Matos’s “Mulata-Antilla,” Vera Kutzinski points out that for the poet, “the mulata is not a ‘woman of color’ but a woman of colors,

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Cuplés and conga As the Mexican Rosa makes her debut in the ’s social circles at a party It is fitting that a significant part of Mapy Cortés’s filmography consisted of nostalgic honoring the dictator, the half-Cuban Violeta makes her stage debut behind her recreations of the Mexican belle poque (1867–1910). During that period of theatrical father’s back. In her first number, Violeta sings in front of a painted backdrop of activity, dominated by musical comedies (French operettas and Spanish zarzuelas) Havana, dressed in a white Creole-style costume: and the cult of female dancers, can-can replaced ballet as the most important form of theatrical dancing (Ramos Smith 1995). Since the can-can favored choreographic Soy cubanita, soy de la playa hermosa inventiveness, exhibitionism and explicit eroticism instead of dancing technique, Donde se agita más armonioso el mar the dancer’s charisma, grace and beauty made up for their lack of technical or artistic A España vengo, ay, tierra cariñosa merit. These changes at the turn-of-the-century led to the emergence of twentieth century vedettes such as Mapy Cortés, female entertainers who were not regarded Buscando amores que no puedo hallar. as great singers, actresses or dancers, but whose worth as artists was measured by physical beauty, charisma and sexual slyness. For her next musical number Violeta changes into a sexually risqué black costume: With the advent of sound in the 1930s, Mexican filmmakers resorted to theatre big hat with feathers, elbow-length gloves, and tight-fitting strapless top with ruffled and radio to supply music and talent for their films. Theatrical conventions thus knee-long skirt and stockings. While the first number sexualized the cultural bonds affected the way in which music and dance was incorporated to Mexican cinema. between Spain and the Caribbean, as embodied by Mapy Cortés, the second number For the most part, music and dance was not seamlessly integrated into narratives of centers on a double entendre clearly illustrating the actress’s flirtatious sex appeal. heterosexual coupling as in Hollywood musicals. Instead, Mexican cinema developed hybrid forms that were clearly indebted to the theatre. Thus, Aurelio de los Reyes Yo tengo un lunar, lunar muy redondito argues that All en el rancho grande (Fernando de Fuentes, 1936), the comedia ranchera En un lugarcito que no puedo encontrar (rural musical comedy) that consolidated Mexico’s position within the Latin ¿Quién me ayudará a encontrar mi lunarcito?… American movie market, “is variety theatre because the film’s narrative stops with Busco un caballero que lo pueda hallar… every musical number; the camera forgets its function and supplies spectators with theatrical variety numbers as they sit on their chairs” (1987:146). Set in a mythical Mi lunar es muy lindo y caprichoso rural Mexico untouched by the hardships of the Mexican Revolution, All en el rancho Mi lunar es coqueto y juguetón grande and subsequent comedias rancheras indirectly evocated the pre-revolutionary Mi lunar es pequeño y voluptuoso morals and paternalistic social order that were explicitly longed for in Juan Bustillo Mi lunar nadie lo puede encontrar Oro’s nostalgia musical En tiempos de Don Porfirio (1939). Dígame usted caballero Set during the Mexican belle époque, the film revolved around the character of don Francisco de la Torre (Fernando Soler), “a very turn-of-the-century gentleman, ¿Podría usted adivinar dónde tengo ese lunar down on his luck, good drinker, impenitent player, womanizer and with an que busco con tanto esmero? invulnerable sense of humor,” but the plot was merely an excuse “to interweave the style, the customs, the music, and the charm of the corniness of the epoch” (Bustillo At the end, Violeta lifts her skirt and finds her playful and voluptuous birthmark by Oro 1984:181,182). The successful release of the film inaugurated a cycle of nostalgia her legs. With her girlish good looks and malicious double entendres, Mapy Cortés musicals set on a mythical turn-of-the-century Mexico, culminating with Las tandas was a perfect embodiment of the turn-of-the-century vedette: “the flirt who arouses, del principal (1949), which united director Juan Bustillo Oro with Mapy Cortés, who incites, perverts with the wink of an eye, flatters the instincts, and makes herself had separately become a popular star of nostalgia musicals. desirable” (Monsiváis 1987:13). Drawing from the conventions of Porfirian variety The five Mapy Cortés nostalgia musical vehicles, released between 1941 and 1944, theater, where “the coded language (although the code is so obvious) induces the were affectionate parodies of the gender norms of the period. In Yo bail con Don shivers of pleasure… at the center of the game lies innocence redressed with puerility Porfirio (Gilberto Martínez Solares 1942), Mapy Cortés plays a dual role as Rosa, and reinforced by malice,” in Mapy Cortés’s musical performances, “the inconveniences a young lady from Tampico, and her half sister Violeta, an aspiring vedette, daughters of of the voice are redeemed by slyness, which is the relationship between the stage and respectable society man don Severo de los Ríos (Joaquín Pardavé). While the prim and the sexual hunger that runs through the seats” (Monsiváis 1987:13, 8). It should be proper Rosa was conceived in marriage to doña Leonor (Consuelo Guerrero de Luna), noted, however, that Mapy Cortés’s on-screen sexuality is attributed to her foreign the singing and dancing Violeta was the product of don Severo’s illicit affair with a (tropical) background. It is the cubanita who goes on stage “looking for love” and her Cuban singer a few days before his marriage. After the death of her mother during “flirtatious birthmark.” By splitting her sex appeal in two characters, feminine labor, Violeta was secretly raised in Mexico City by her maiden aunt, while don Severo reserve is labeled Mexican, while a Cuban origin signifies sexual looseness. led a dual life as don Plácido de la Garza during his visits to the capital. When Rosa Most of Mapy Cortés’s musical numbers in other nostalgia musicals are also depend- travels to Mexico City with her parents, and both girls separately find stylish gentleman ent on sexual double entendres. For example, in El globo de Cantolla (Gilberto Martínez suitors, the inevitable problems of mistaken identity ensue, ending with the meeting Solares, 1943) Luisa (Cortés) performs “El gato negro” (a new metaphor for the of the two sisters and the formation of two couples (of artists and aristocrats). “flirtatious birthmark”), a “vulgar song” that scandalizes her mother.

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However, although Luisa admires “the happy outlook on life that artists have,” she does Puerto Rican sugar not want “to be daring” or “to do anything that would stain her dignity.” As Luisa In 1942, Mapy Cortés made her only Hollywood appearance in RKO’s wartime warns at the end of “El gato negro”: “Daré cualquier cosa pero el gato no...¡miau!” musical Seven Days Leave, playing a supporting role modeled after then popular Despite their contemporary setting, the Mapy Cortés sex comedies drew “Brazilian Bombshell” Carmen Miranda. Dubbed by press books as the from the same sexually teasing mixture of girlish innocence and malice based on “Torrid Stepper from the Tropics” and “Your Puerto Rican sugar ration—a singing, Porfirian morality. In Internado para se oritas (Gilberto Martínez Solares 1943), dancing, sensation,” RKO press agents tried to pass off Mapy Cortés as a 23-year-old Mapy Cortés stars as Catalina, a teenager at a girl’s boarding school who falls in single woman. As noted by a 1942 publicity photo caption, “From Mexico, where she love with her young, absent-minded literature professor (crooner Emilio Tuero). is a leading movie star, comes Mapy pronounced Moppy Cort s to liven Hollywood Unfortunately, their love faces the objections of Doña Clotilde (Prudencia movies. Mapy was born in Puerto Rico, is therefore an American citizen, and speaks Grifell), the school’s old conservative director, Señorita Ana (María Luisa Zea), English perfectly with a charming accent. Her real name is Maria del Pilar; she s 23, a beloved maiden teacher, and Irene (Katy Jurado), a teenage femme fatale. 5ft. 3 in tall, has black hair, flashing black eyes, and is always accompanied by a duenna. Luckily, after a series of plot twists, the two lovebirds unite at the end. Along the M apy s first US movie will be Seven Days Leave, soon to be released, in which she sings, way, in keeping with Mapy Cortés’s Pan-American mission, Catalina recites love acts, dances the conga. sonnets by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, gives a conga lesson to her classmates, leads the In fact, Mapy Cortés was a 32-year-old married woman whose husband heavily steps of communal tap dance, and performs a folkloric musical number dressed in promoted her career, frequently co-starred with her on-stage and on-screen, Mexican indigenous costume, complete with braids and basket of flowers. and would soon become the director of most of her films in Mexico, Venezuela and There is no mention of Catalina’s national origin, but Mapy Cortés is curiously Puerto Rico. At first glance, the decision to pass her off as a single woman seems whitened and darkened in relation to her Mexican co-stars. In one scene, Catalina designed to merely posit the Puerto Rican woman as a sexually available commodity. teaches her classmates to do the conga. She first dances alone in the middle of the Curiously, however, by erasing the fact that she was married, studio publicity also dormitory room, surrounded by two rows of beds and illuminated by the light gave Mapy Cortés a surprising degree of agency for a supposedly single Puerto Rican coming from an open bathroom door. As a result, a full shadow of her body woman in the 1940s. Although photographed in a stereotypically Latin costume clearly forms in front of her. At first, full shots of Catalina’s dancing shadow (large hat, bare mid-riff, ruffled sleeves and skirt), one of RKO’s press articles introduced alternate with medium shots of her swinging upper body. Her classmates then join Mapy Cortés to U.S. audiences as a “film producer in Mexico City” and claimed that in, forming two rows on each side. Most of the number is composed of shots of before returning to Mexico “Mapy demanded to see a rough cut of the picture, their dancing shadows, thus diffusing the sexual content of a group of young explaining that before she came out there she was told that ‘Hollywood gives the Latin women in nightgowns performing a sexually suggestive Afro-Caribbean dance. good scenes, then cuts her out’” (Ranney 1942). Another caption for a similar picture By displacing their sexuality onto their shadows, the film also reinforces the informed newspaper readers that Mapy Cortés “has a contract all signed and sealed association between darkness, sexual looseness and the Caribbean. calling for her to produce a series of musical movies for Latin-American consumption. Catalina’s shadow (the only one fully visible through the dance) doubles for the She will hold the distinction of being Mexico’s only woman motion picture producer.” sexual content of her performance, but her whiteness connotes she is really a good girl. Unlike Carmen Miranda, who was quoted phonetically and photographed in This point is made clear in the next scene, where Mapy Cortés’s goody-goody whiteness excessive costumes (over-the-top hats, bare midriff and platform shoes), Mapy is distinguished from the sexually trangressive darkness signified by a teenage Katy Cortés’ publicity noted that she spoke perfect English (albeit with “a charming Jurado, whose wide expressive eyes, long face and full lips provide a perfect contrast to accent”) and also showed her in glamorous close-ups or wearing diverse outfits, the Puerto Rican actress’s small bright eyes, round face and heart shaped lips. In only her such as bathing suits, pant suits, and even a fur coat. However, in Seven Days Leave, second film, Katy Jurado’s dark looks already signify “the Bad Woman who underlines Mapy Cortés, like Carmen Miranda, played a nightclub entertainer who loses the the gray behavior of Good Women” like Mapy Cortés (Monsiváis 1997:68). At the guy in the musical’s narrative of heterosexual coupling. dormitory, Irene (Jurado) lies down in bed smoking a cigarrete. Photographed in profile, Introduced by bandleader Les Brown as “some Puerto Rican sugar” to relief the the dim lighting highlights the white smoke emerging from her mouth, thus emphasizing shortage, Mapy Cortés performs only one musical number: “You Speak My Language,” the transgression of gender norms symbolized by the act of smoking. By contrast, a duet with leading man Victor Mature. Curiously, the introduction as “sugar” does Catalina sits down in her bed with her white face fully lit. Irene offers her the cigarette, not only posit the Puerto Rican as a “natural commodity” for U.S. consumption, but Catalina can only cough and cross her eyes when attempting to smoke. but is actually consistent with Caribbean nationalist discourses in which the mulata Despite starring in comedies full of sexual innuendoes and being one of the first to was linked to sugar economy as a metaphor of cultural fusion. Staged as an arrival perform sexually suggestive Caribbean rhythms in Mexican films, Mapy Cortés’s on- scene, the number begins when Mapy walks into a U.S. Army barracks courted by screen sexuality amounted to a tease. In her films, she inhabited a sexually flirtatious, soldiers and sits down on top of her luggage. Unable to “speak their language,” but ultimately chaste, generically Hispanic body that would be displaced in Mexican Mapy asks for help and is delighted to hear that trumpeter soldier Johnny (Mature) cinema of the late 1940s by the sexually explicit and more distinctively Caribbean “speaks her language”: the language of music and dance, which functions as transna- bodies of rumba dancers, most notably Cuban Ninón Sevilla. Still, in the early 1940s, tional language of love. As Johnny sings to her, “You speak my language when you within a national cinema dominated by reserved se oritas, suffering mothers, and dance like that” and “You don’t know my adjectives and I don’t know your grammar. mythical Indians, the flirtatious Mapy Cortés “injected health” (Viñas 1987:111). But when in comes to making love, you speak my language, and we’re hand in glove.”

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After singing, Mapy and Johnny are about to dance conga when an overweight With the exception of a failed attempt at melodrama, playing a poor country- soldier cuts in. The tropical rhythms increase in intensity until the number climaxes woman in 19th century rural Mexico in El amor de una vida (Miguel Morayta, 1945), with a full shot of Mapy leading soldiers and other party guests into a communal Mapy Cortés continued to star in nostalgia musicals and sex comedies. The latter conga dance. The arrival scene (Mapy, “the Puerto Rican sugar,” arrives to the U.S.A.) lasted longer, becoming more mundane as the years passed, and turned Mapy Cortés and transnational courtship number (U.S. soldier and Latin woman “speak the same into “the focus of attraction of the erotic comedy” (Viñas 1987:113). Her combination language”) thus ends as a Pan-American celebration (Puerto Rican entertainer, of girlish innocence and adult malice was emphasized by playing women in their late Latin rhythms, white American dancers). teens or early twenties, thus taking advantage of the actress’s combination of cherubic Unfortunately, the transnational language of music and dance “spoken” by Mapy face and full grown body (with ample breasts emphasized by tight-fitting costumes). and Johnny is not enough to sustain their relationship. Soon after announcing their Another important complement to Mapy Cortés’s girlish sexuality was the frequent engagement, Johnny dumps longtime girlfriend Mapy for white American socialite casting of real-life husband Fernando as a paternal figure in her movies, thus simulta- Terry (Lucille Ball). Their marriage will mend an old family feud: Johnny and Terry’s neously deflating the risqué elements (the actress was really a happily married woman respective grandparents could not marry because they were on opposite sides during off-screen) while adding an incestuous quality to her sex appeal. the Civil War. At times of war, national unity is even more important than Mapy Cortés remained one of the Mexican film industry’s top stars throughout international relations. Therefore, in an act of good neighborly self-sacrifice, the 1940s. A July 1943 reader’s poll in the Mexican magazine Cinema Reporter ranked Mapy gives up Johnny without a fight, even unselfishly returning her expensive her as the sixth most popular star of the national film industry, just below then wedding attire. She then patches things up for the protagonists and joins her newcomer María Félix and above the “national couple” of Dolores del Río and Pedro American gal pals to see the boys off to war. Armendáriz (Taíbo 1985: 37). In 1944, Spanish critic Álvaro Custodio named Mapy Except for her entertaining musical number, Mapy Cortés’s participation in Cortés among the six most “effective interpreters” in Mexican cinema (together with the film is undistinguished. In Carmen Miranda’s films, the excessive costumes Cantinflas and Jorge Negrete) (García Riera 1992a:113). In 1945 she was still one of and spectacular on-screen performances in garish Technicolor allowed the Brazilian the top five female stars in the Mexican film industry (Taíbo 1985:81). entertainer to subvert the heterosexual narratives of her films. By contrast, However, the increase in production of brothel melodramas by the late 1940s Mapy Cortés only performs a black-and-white musical number that does not allow marked “the first decisive cinematic break with Porfirian morality” and turned the her to overcome the trappings of the plot. It turns out that Hollywood did “cut her figure of the exotic (usually Cuban) rumba dancer into a social fantasy “through out” of the film. Production stills of Seven Days Leave show Mapy Cortés dressed in which other subjectivities could be envisioned, other psychosexual and social ruffled rumbera costume as part of another musical production number that took place identities forged” (López 1993:160). In the late nineteenth century Mexico, the inside a nightclub, featuring similarly costumed female dancers and men dressed like popularity and influence of African, Oriental and other folkloric dances had led to j baros, which did not appear on the final cut of the film. In doing so, Mapy Cortés was emergence of the exotic dancers or ex ticas. They became a staple of nightclubs and taken the one aspect—their excessive performances—that stereotyped Latin American and popular interest in exóticas and rumberas reached its apex in the late entertainers but also allowed them to rise above those stereotypes by potentially 1940s and early 1950s, leading to “the first public discussion about the forbidden disrupting the codes of narrative realism. (Mapy does get to wear a wedding dress and the permitted in terms of corporeal movements” in Mexico and Latin America on-screen, something U.S. audiences probably could never imagine Carmen Miranda (Monsiváis 1998:16). Carlos Monsiváis argues that the term exótica did not connote wearing anywhere, unless the dress had a bare midriff and a fruit basket on top.) the actual foreign origin of the performer, but the freedom from gender restrictions Not surprisingly, the new “Latin charmer” intended to fill the Carmen Miranda on Mexican women (1998:16). On-screen, the foremost figure was Cuban rumba mold did not make much of an impact in Hollywood. As a national import meant to dancer Ninón Sevilla, whose “face where innocence and astuteness become stand-in for Latin America, RKO’s “Puerto Rican sugar” was no match for Twentieth indistinguishable” turned her into the quintessential “image of the Beloved, who Century Fox’s bountiful “lady in the tutti-frutti hat.” Mapy Cortés’s cute porcelain does not confer respectability but prestige (‘I wouldn’t introduce her to my mother, doll looks do not convey the excessive otherness that popularized Carmen Miranda but let all my friends know about her’)… the cabaret siren whose lasciviousness leads and Puerto Rico’s status as U.S. territory made her an inappropriate ambassador of the parochial man to instantly hate his legitimate woman” (Monsiváis 1997:68). good neighborly relations. By the late 1940s, Cuban rumba dancers like Ninón Sevilla replaced Mapy Cortés as Mexican cinema’s favorite “Caribbean other.” The fuller bodies and more revealing outfits Head of the mouse of the rumberas were attune to the new beauty standards for female stars in Mexican Smartly, Mapy Cortés returned to Mexico, where she became one of the most cinema: “a more earthly sensuality, less elaborate and artificial… it’s the turn of wide hips, bankable and pampered stars of the national film industry and her husband overflowing breasts, very pronounced (if possible) waistlines, and wide shoulders” (García would soon start a long-lasting, if artistically unremarkable, career as film director. 1986:30). Tropical female entertainers no longer embodied a longed-for, paternalistic sexual Although she traveled back to the United States to make personal appearances in playfulness, but a contemporary sexually explicit urbanism. This clash between Hispanic conjunction with the showing of her Mexican films, Mapy Cortés did not make nostalgia and a decadent urban reality symbolized by torrid Caribbean rhythms is evident another Hollywood film. As explained to the New York Times during one of her in Vagabunda (Miguel Morayta, 1950), where the title character (Leticia Palma) aspires to promotional trips, “I’d rather be the head of the mouse in Mexico than the tail become a Spanish flamenco dancer only to be laughed at while performing at a shady of the lion in Hollywood” (Pryor 1944). cabaret. In order to survive, she gives in to public demands and becomes a rumbera.

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David Román (1989) has referred to Mapy Cortés as a “white rumbera,” racially- re-emerged as a symbol of national pre-modernity (the “Puerto Rican sugar” codifying her less explicit sexuality in opposition to that of Ninón Sevilla. Although of Hollywood and Mexican cinemas) that collaborated in its modernization both female entertainers were white—with Sevilla even becoming a blonde—the (a foundational member of Puerto Rican television and cinema). fuller body, more revealing outfits and sexually aggressive moves of the Cuban rumba After spending most of the 1950s working on television, Mapy Cortés returned dancer were more attune with Mexican cinema’s imaginary of the Caribbean as a to the big screen in the 1960s, but this time around in Puerto Rico. After sporadic dark (and by extension sexually loose) continent within the Americas. The sexually ventures since the 1910s, film production in Puerto Rico had become consistent by suggestive movements of the exóticas and rumberas in brothel melodramas made up the 1950s with the governmental filmmaking unit of the División de Educación de la for the sexual acts forbidden by censorship. However, Ninón Sevilla points out “there Comunidad (DIVEDCO), which sought to educate Puerto Rico’s rural population were no more moral persons than the rumberas, cabareteras, and people like that. We about the changes brought by industrial development through films with simple were very moral and never showed our panties for any reason. Well, they wouldn’t let narratives and realist aesthetics which incorporated the island’s rural communities. us show them” and that, due to the restrictions of Mexican censors, rumba dancers Thus, in the 1950s, while mediocrity was the common denominator of most Latin “never made love [on-screen]. We only moved a little bit” (Taíbo 1985: 109). American cinema, Puerto Rican films enjoyed their first moment of international As the production of brothel melodramas reached its apex, Mapy Cortés gave acclaim. However, even though DIVEDCO remained active until the 1970s, the closure to her Mexican film career by recycling the formulas that made her a star. alleged “golden age” of quality insular filmmaking culminated in 1959 with the Juan Bustillo Oro’s nostalgia musical Las tandas del principal (1949) did well at the successful commercial release of Maruja, which marked the beginning of the most box-office, but “there was no possibility of progress for a nearsighted, purposeless productive and artistically unremarkable decade for Puerto Rican feature-length nostalgia” (García Riera 1992b: 60). The marital comedy Reci n casados no molestar filmmaking. Production companies such as Maruja’s Probo Films were short-lived, (Fernando Cortés, 1950) “undoubtedly longed for the success that similar ones seeking quick profit and releasing products of dubious artistic quality, mostly achieved ten years before with its handling of nuptial excitements” (García Riera mundane musical melodramas or comedies made in co-production with Mexico. 1992b:240), but its reliance on sexual teasing and double entendres had become In the 1960s, the political changes throughout the continent, especially the Cuban as dated as pre-revolutionary nostalgia. Mapy Cortés appeared in only one more Revolution of 1959, together with a different awareness of the social significance of Mexican film: Dormitorio para se oritas (Fernando Cortés, 1959), a remake of her cinema and the influence of Italian Neorealism, had led to a desire to transform Latin 1943 hit Internado para se oritas in which she symbolically passed the reigns of movie American filmmaking into an instrument of social change and consciousness-raising. stardom to her niece and adoptive daughter Mapita. Filmmakers rejected industrial modes of production and narration, particularly Hollywood and Mexican melodramas, and disregarded the need for technical Mr. and Mrs. Television perfection in order to emphasize the continent’s underdevelopment (López 1997). Mapy and Fernando Cortés then traveled to Venezuela as part of the group of actors, The 1950s and 60s were also decades of important social and political changes in directors and technicians from Argentine and Mexican cinemas hired by Bolívar Puerto Rico. Under the leadership of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, the newly Films to propel the national film industry. Fernando Cortés directed two movies in established Commonwealth of the United States (Estado Libre Asociado) underwent Venezuela: Amanecer a la vida (1950), an urban melodrama with Mexican star Susana a period of accelerated modernization and socio-economic change. In contrast to Guízar, and Venezuela tambi n canta (or Olimpiadas musicales, 1952), a musical vehicle other Latin American countries, Puerto Ricans on the island enjoyed a period of for his wife that recycled the Pan-American motif through “hypothetical continental apparent peace, especially after the end of the Korean War in 1954, with new conflicts related to the sports world, U.S. politics towards the rest of America and, employment opportunities, higher salaries, better education, and opportunities for incredulously, racial segregation in the United States” (Colmenares 1999:128). The costly social advancement. Another important element of the island’s rapid industrialization movie musical was a failure, but the career of Mapy and Fernando Cortés’s star text and the alleged paz mu ocista of the 1950s was the government-sponsored relocation acquired new meaning in 1950s Puerto Rico thanks to a new medium: television. of many Puerto Ricans in the United States, mostly in eastern metropolitan areas. Ángel Ramos, founder of Telemundo, hired Fernando Cortés to become the first As new aesthetic proposals surfaced throughout Latin America, Puerto Rican artistic director of the nascent Puerto Rican television station. On March 28, 1954, cinema produced the kind of films against which the “new Latin American cinema” Mapy Cortés starred in El caso de la mujer asesinadita, a comedy special directed by her defined itself. In contrast with most of Latin America, the Cuban Revolution of 1959 husband and broadcast live during Telemundo’s first day of consistent transmission. was more of a mixed blessing than a source of inspiration for Puerto Rican The couple later starred in Mapy y Papi, the island’s first sitcom, reportedly modeled filmmakers. Cuban cinema of the 1950s was dominated by a system of co- on “I Love Lucy,” and Mapy Cortés also co-starred in another TV series featuring productions with Mexico that usually played on the racial cultural differences Yo-Yo Boing. between the two countries, with a common Spanish heritage symbolizing morality Within the context of the socio-political changes that took place in Puerto Rico and Cuba’s distinctive African culture signifying sexual looseness (Podalsky 1999). during the 1950s, Mapy Cortés’s transnational star persona resurfaced as a synthesis In the 1960s, Puerto Rico came to occupy the place left vacant by Cuba. For the of two time periods. In 1940s Mexico, the Puerto Rican entertainer simultaneously most part, Puerto Rican co-productions with Mexico avoided the racial embodied Hispanic nostalgia (singing Spanish variety songs in a mythical pre- differentiation of the Cuban co-productions. They instead highlighted the island’s revolutionary Mexico) and contemporary transnational relations (leading communal rapid modernization and local folklore, often recycling the Pan-American motif conga dances in Pan-American musicals). In 1950s and 60s Puerto Rico, Mapy Cortés common in many Mexican films of the 1940s and 50s.

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Puerto Rico became the momentary working site of several members of the Lamento borincano is a product of the very modernization that threatens the nation, declining Mexican film industry, such as Julián Soler, María Antonieta Pons, but the presence of both stars in the film grounds the budding Puerto Rican cinema and most curiously Mexican cinema’s infamous auteur Juan Orol. In the 1960s, industry within an insular-bound notion of national identity. Since it is the Island Mapy Cortés co-starred in three Puerto Rican/Mexican co-productions directed (and not, for example, the New York barrios) that symbolically travels with trans- by her husband. The most interesting and commercially successful was Lamento national Puerto Rican movie stars like Mapy Cortés and Arturo Correa, borincano (1962), a musical melodrama about migration to the United States. no alternative national identities are to be imagined. Within the movie’s plot, Like the 1929 Rafael Hernández song, the film narrates the hardships faced by those new identities are literally gunned down. a Puerto Rican countryman in the city. Juan Hernández (Arturo Correa) travels n one scene, Pilar sings “Por mi tierra borincana” at the insistence of Rafael from Comerío to New York to make enough money to save the family farm. Hernández (playing himself), who wrote the song for Mapy Cortés to perform Martita, a sister who lives in San Juan, funds the trip to New York, where Juan Iin La liga de las canciones. The nostalgic reprise points to a special relationship encounters a world full of discrimination, crime and drugs. He also finds an between them. Rafael Hernández, an important member of New York’s Latin music illegal Mexican immigrant (Luis Aguilar) and a Puerto Rican restaurant owner community in the 1920s, had been living in Mexico for almost a decade, incorporated (Cortés) who offer advice and solace. Juan’s association with his Spanglish- to the national radio industry, by the time the Puerto Rican vedette and her husband speaking gambler cousin Arturo (Miguel Ángel Álvarez, known for his joined the Mexican film industry in 1940. Hernández even made a brief appearance, Nuyorrican comedy character “Johnny El Men”) leads to a wrongful murder conducting an orchestra and dancing with leading lady Marina Tamayo, in the accusation, but the jibarito is acquitted under the defense attorney’s argument Cantinflas film guila o sol (Arcady Boytler, 1939). A similar scenario was repeated in that his only crime was “the mistake of abandoning his country and his El gendarme desconocido (1941), another Cantiflas vehicle, where the Afro-Puerto Rican impatience to become a Mister Dollar.” Sadly, gangsters gun down Juan when composer conducted the orchestra while Mapy Cortés danced conga. However, he is about to fly back home. The film ends with the mourning of Juan by his unlike Mapy Cortés, who played lead roles and achieved star status, Rafael family at a Puerto Rican cemetery, where Doña Rosa (the mother) tells Juan Hernández had few interventions in Mexican cinema and, like other Afro-Caribbean that the cross that marks his burial ground “will remind us that we must love entertainers, was restricted to being tropical décor. the land in which we are born. Rest in peace, my son.” In Lamento borincano, Mapy Cortés refers to Rafael Hernández as “a reminder of The film’s plot and engendered symbolism are reminiscent of René Marqués’s our island.” However, it wasn’t the physical presence of his black male immigrant canonical play La carreta. Drawing on the metaphor of Puerto Rico as a “great body that took Puerto Ricans back to the island, but his songs as performed by other family,” both texts narrate the disintegration of a Puerto Rican country family entertainers. In “Preciosa,” the 1937 ode to the island performed in the film by Luis when its members migrate to the city (San Juan) and the United States (New York). Aguilar, Hernández celebrates Puerto Rican beauty as the synthesis of indigenous Lamento borincano’s four female characters stand in for different aspects of Puerto bravery and Spanish nobility without mention of African cultural heritage, a striking Rican national identity. Doña Rosa (Gilda Galán) embodies the strong spirit of the omission given the composer’s own blackness. Rafael Hernández’s nickname, island, represented as an indestructible mother. Martita (Maribella García), the El Jibarito, is also conspicuous since that key figure in the mythical engendering of only daughter and the family’s first immigrant, becomes a prostitute in San Juan, the island’s national identity was a white illiterate countryman, while the black but repents for her sin by returning to the country and finds social redemption by composer “who proudly called himself a ‘jíbaro’ grew up in a coastal town, hopped marriage. Carmen (Gladys Rodríguez), Juan’s girlfriend, is another female casualty between Latin American cities, and quite possibly never spent a day in the country in of the migration experience. She discovers her pregnancy soon after Juan’s his life” (Glasser 1995:159). Rafael Hernández’s black jibarito is the flip side of Mapy departure and is thrown out by her father. Luckily, she finds shelter in the family Cortés’s white mulata borincana. The two stars were transnational symbols of Puerto farm and in the arms of Antonio (Braulio Castillo), Juan’s hunky, hardworking and Rico (the Island) that simultaneously excluded and included racial difference by patriotic younger brother. transforming visual markers of race into the aural registers of “Latin” or “tropical” Pilar (Mapy Cortés), the owner of “a Puerto Rican little corner” in New York rhythms. Yet, even though both aurally perform national identity, Mapy Cortés’s (with coqu soundtrack), acts as the film’s national conscience and surrogate mother “whitened” mulata is the one who gets to visually symbolize the island on-screen. figure. The character draws from Cortés’s star text by the 1960s. In her New York In her musical comedies questions of race are, at most, alluded to by shadows, restaurant, Pilar (Mapy’s real name) keeps an altar dedicated to the memory of her as in the conga production number from Internado para se oritas. Whatever “color” years in the movies, with the Puerto Rican and Mexican flags framing one of her there is to Mapy Cortés is signified through her white body’s natural disposition to pictures. The altar is clearly visible in the backdrop of a scene where Pilar and Juan perform Afro-Caribbean (“tropical”) rhythms, thus allowing the white mulata borincana discuss his return to the island, turning the scene into a symbolic meeting between to symbolize Hispanic bonds and travel through different national cinemas. Mapy Cortés and Arturo Correa, the two Puerto Rican stars of Mexican cinema The relationship between Rafael Hernández and Mapy Cortés was fondly who are now active participants in the establishment of a national film industry. remembered in her last film: the mundane Puerto Rican comedy Luna de miel en Their meeting symbolizes the effort to maintain a separate cultural identity in spite Puerto Rico (Fernando Cortés, 1967). Mapy and Fernando Cortés appear as of the lack of political and economic independence. This effort was particularly themselves, a childless middle-aged couple of theatre entertainers who become important within the context of a new political status, the increased modernization entangled in a scam while celebrating their wedding anniversary at the Condado on the island and the government-sponsored migrations to the United States. Beach Hotel. The film ends with a tribute to the recently deceased Rafael

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Hernández, already the subject of the unsuccessful biopic Vida y muerte del Jibarito Guiú, Emilia. 1993. Una estrella al desnudo: vida y pecados de Emilia Gui . México: Compañía (Julián Soler, 1966), hosted by Mapy and Fernando Cortés. At the beginning of the Editorial Impresora y Distribuidora, S.A. tribute, the couple performs “Nada,” a song written especially for them when Hershfield, Joanne. 2000. The Invention of Dolores del Rio. Minneapolis: University of newcomers to Mexican show business. After Mapy breaks down in tears and walks Minnesota Press. off the stage, several Latin American stars (including Lucha Villa) perform some of Holmlund, Chris. 2002. Impossible Bodies: Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies. London the composer’s best-known songs. and New York: Routledge. The nostalgic tribute to an absent black immigrant male markedly contrasts with Sugar s Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism the stereotypical representation of a black couple in the film. They are the target of Kutzinski, Vera. 1993. . Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia. several racist jokes and their identification as African displaces blackness away from the island. The homage to an Afro-Puerto Rican composer while the African López, Ana M. 1993. Tears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the ‘Old’ Mexican characters are objects of ridicule exemplifies the “double dynamic” of racial identity Cinema. In Mediating Two Worlds: Cinematic Encounters in the Americas, eds. John in Latin America, whereby pride in African-influenced culture coexists with King, Ana M. López and Manuel Alvarado, 147–63. London: British Film discrimination against blacks (Wade 1993). Physically absent, Rafael Hernández’s Institute. black immigrant body is “whitened” as national nostalgia, but physically present the ______. 1997. An ‘Other’ History: The New Latin American Cinema. In New Latin black bodies of the “African couple” are easy targets for racist jokes. American Cinema. Volume One: Theory, Practices and Transcontinental Articulations, ed. With Luna de miel en Puerto Rico, Mapy Cortés gave closure to a film career that Michael T. Martin, 135–56. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. spanned more than thirty years and six different countries. Her husband, Fernando ______. 1998. From Hollywood and Back: Dolores del Rio, Transnational Star. Studies in Cortés, remained active as a director of commercial Mexican films until the 1970s, Latin American Popular Culture 17: 5–32. mostly mundane vehicles for from Tin Tan to La India María, thus Monsiváis, Carlos. 1987. María Conesa: retrato antiguo para voyeur del pasado. In M ar a becoming the Puerto Rican director with most feature-length films to his credit. By Conesa, ed. Enrique Alonso, 7–19. México: Ediciones Océano. the time of her death in 1998, a year before the short-lived “Latin pop explosion” of Rostros del cine mexicano 1999, Mapy Cortés had spent decades away from show business. At most, her name ______. 1997. . México: Américo Arte Editores. resurfaces in pop biographies chronicling the careers of “exemplary Puerto Ricans” ______. 1998. Tongolele y el enriquecimiento de las buenas costumbres. In No han matado in show business who have given the island “a good name” abroad. Her flirtatious, a Tongolele, ed. Arturo García Hernández, 11–19. México: Ediciones La Jornada. but ultimately prim and proper, charms may seem dated, but Mapy Cortés’s Negrón-Muntaner, Frances. 1997. Jennifer’s Butt. Aztl n 22(2): 181–94. embodiment of Puerto Rico, the tropics or Pan-Americanism during important ______. 2004 Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture. New historical periods (the “golden age” of Mexican cinema and the foundation of Puerto York: New York University Press. Rican television and cinema) allows us to historically map the performances of Pérez, Richie. 1998. From Assimilation to Annihilation: Puerto Rican Images in U.S. Puerto Ricans in transnational media prior to the work of contemporary U.S. Films. In Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media, ed. Clara E. consumer-oriented performers of Latinidad such as Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez. Rodríguez, 142–63. Boulder: Westview Press.

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