University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting

AUSENCIA SENTIMENTAL: COLOMBO-VENEZUELAN AFFECT, DIASPORA, AND MUSIC IN CAMPO DE LA CRUZ, COLOMBIA

JAMES EVERETT

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2019

Dedicada al pueblo de Campo de la Cruz, a mis padres, a mi familia y a todas mis amistades

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis would not be possible without the people of Campo de la Cruz. The love and friendship that this community has shown me is what inspires me to conduct this type of research. I am particularly grateful to my hermanazo and research assistant Julio Salas for always engaging with me in meaningful conversations and for helping me theorize so much of this work.

I am thankful to Alberto Páez for being my first campero friend and the best co-teacher that anyone could ask for, and also for helping me with several of the ideas in this text. I would like to thank my entire Salas-Esquea host family—Julio, Lettis, Meison, Maxwell, Obdulia, and

Señor Julio—and to all of my neighbors and friends in Barrio La Esperanza, Barrio Cachimbo,

La Calle Mocha, and La Pica for receiving me into your homes with such warmth and for always making it so difficult to say goodbye. I am eternally grateful to my mom and dad, Leslie and

James Everett, who have always fostered my curiosity and supported me in all of my life endeavors, even those that took me far away from their sides. I would also not be here without the support of my querida abuelita and abuelito—Gloria y Fructuoso Gonzalez—and my loving grandma, Jeanette Darby. I am thankful to all of my beloved friends who have helped me throughout this process, whether emotionally or academically—you know who you are. I include in this group the MALAS cohort at UF for having shared in this wonderful adventure with me and for always giving me feedback and emotional support. Despite the distance that may soon separate us, you are all my family will always be close in my heart. I am also extremely thankful for the mentorship of my advisor, supervisor, and committee chair—Dr. Tanya Saunders, who inspires me to be a better human being, activist, and scholar—and for all of my brilliant committee members: Dr. Welson Tremura, Dr. Lenny Ureña, and Professor Augusto Soledade who have taught me so much along this journey. Without all of your support, this work would not be possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 7

GLOSSARY OF TERMS ...... 8

ABSTRACT ...... 11

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 13

2 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 27

The African Diaspora, Mestizaje, and Hybridity ...... 27 Participatory Music, Affect, and La Costa ...... 34

3 PERFORMING COSTEÑIDAD IN CAMPO DE LA CRUZ ...... 41

“Colombia es pa’lla.” [Colombia is that way.] ...... 41 “Hay ese muro entre el costeño y el cachaco” [There’s that wall between the costeño and the cachaco] ...... 44 May 22nd, 2018: Around 10:30 AM ...... 44 Wednesday, 5/16/2018: Salas House in Campo de la Cruz ...... 47 “Yo no me voy a refiná” [I’m not going to refine myself] ...... 53

4 THE DIASPORIC AND RACIALIZED NATURE OF COSTEÑIDAD ...... 59

“Es otra forma de racismo.” [It’s another form of racism.] ...... 59 “¡Pero nosotros vinimos de ese lado!” [But we came from those parts!] ...... 63

5 FROM CAMPO TO CARACAS AND BACK AGAIN ...... 69

Tuesday, 7/24/2018: Front Porch of Salas House ...... 71 “Aquí no hay fuente de empleo, sinceramente” [Here there are no job opportunities, sincerely] ...... 71 Saturday, 6/23/2018: Salas House ...... 76 “Yo creo que ese barrio lo hicieron prácticamente colombianos” [I believe that neighborhood was basically made by Colombians] ...... 80

6 COLOMBO-VENEZUELAN MUSIC AND AFFECT ...... 86

Siempre se dedicaba a la misma, a los mismos tipos de música [There was always a dedication to the same, the same types of music] ...... 87 Uno se va, se transporta. [One goes, one is transported.] ...... 94

7 CODA ...... 109

APPENDIX

A INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 112

B ATLAS T.I. CODE FREQUENCY ...... 114

REFERENCE LIST ...... 120

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 122

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

1-1 Map of Campo de la Cruz’s location in the Atlántico Department ...... 13

1-2 Peace Corps training ...... 16

1-3 Celebrating Mother’s Day...... 18

1-4 My Campo host family and neighbors ...... 22

5-1 Motocarro ...... 70

6-1 The “King Kong” picó ...... 91

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Cachacx Cachacx is the gender-neutral form of a word used on La Costa in the following ways: (1) To refer broadly to anyone who is Colombian but not from La Costa or (2) to refer to a Colombian who is from the capital: Bogotá. There are some nuances in this term and the way it is used varies by individual and situation. I will discuss the idea of the cachacx in further detail in Chapter 3 of this thesis.

Champeta Champeta is a music genre that emerged in Cartagena and is likely the second-most popular music genre on La Costa, particularly among young people. Champeta is of African origin, and the original champeta songs— champetas africanas—were in African languages and played from discs that came directly from Africa. Eventually, champeta was dubbed over in Spanish by local musicians in Cartagena and other African diasporic communities such as San Basilio de Palenque. Champeta is an up-beat style of music that is typically associated with dancing. It is most often played at outdoor parties centered around a large sound system—referred to on La Costa as a “picó.” Instrumentation for champeta is varied, but normally includes vocals, electric guitar, and various forms of percussion. Many modern champeta songs are made using synthesizers and studio audio effects and rhythms.

Colombo- I will use the term Colombo-Venezuelan to refer to individuals who were Venezuelan born in Venezuela to at least one Colombian parent. This group represents four of eleven interview collaborators whose stories I will share in this thesis. Most of the individuals in this group had at least one Colombian parent who had migrated to Venezuela, making them eligible for dual- citizenship because of their Colombian roots—although not all had gone through the process to attain this dual-citizenship. Those with dual- citizenship were legally considered Colombo-Venezuelan, although, like retornadxs, some chose to foreground their Colombian nationality, some their Venezuelan nationality, and some chose to not choose one or the other but to highlight both.

Corronchx Corronchx refers to someone who is imagined to be obnoxious and cultureless. It is a term that is used outside of La Costa to refer to costeñxs, and within La Costa to refer to individuals who perform a certain type of working class identity. I will discuss this term in greater detail in Chapter 3.

Costeñx Costeñx (pronounced costeñe) is the gender-neutral form of the word that refers to anyone who is from La Costa. I will also use it to refer to Colombo-Venezuelans whose families are from La Costa. All of the interview participants whose interviews are used in this thesis are costeñxs and they represent my population of focus. As I will explore in Chapter 2 of this thesis, costeñxs are marginalized within the Colombian national

context. La Costa and costeñxs are seen as backwards and stereotyped to be loud, obnoxious, lazy, and alegre [joyful]. I also conceptualize costeñxs as part of the African Diaspora and associated with ideas of Blackness, as I will explore in Chapter 4.

Estadero This is a word that is used on La Costa to refer to an open-air cantina where music is played.

La Costa I use the term “La Costa” to refer to Colombia’s Caribbean region, which is made up of the following 8 departments: Atlántico, Bolívar, Cesar, Sucre, Córdoba, Magdalena, La Guajira and San Andrés y Providencia. These departments are located near the Northern/Atlantic coast of Colombia, with the exception of San Andrés, which is an island. La Costa is a racially and economically marginalized region of the country. Popular music in Colombia overwhelmingly comes from La Costa, where genres such as vallenato, champeta, cumbia, and porro emerged.

Pupi Pupi is a word used in Colombia to refer to someone who is either middle or upper class or who pretends to be. I will discuss this term in greater detail in Chapter 3.

Retornadxs Retornadxs are locals born in Campo who have lived or worked in Venezuela for extended periods of time—three years by government standards—but who have returned to Campo due to the economic crisis in Venezuela. Seven out of eleven of the interview collaborators whose stories and perspectives I share in this thesis fall into this category. In conversations with these returning Colombians many of them expressed to me that they had come back to Campo out of necessity. They cited that factors such as gang violence, delinquency, and unstable access to food and household goods had that caused them to leave Venezuela. By returning to Colombia, these individuals hoped to find a more stable existence for themselves and their families. The majority of these individuals lived and worked in neighborhoods of Caracas that were predominantly Colombian. They referred to these predominantly Colombian neighborhoods in Caracas as “colonias colombianas.” I will discuss these neighborhoods in greater detail in the fourth chapter of this thesis. While I refer to individuals in this group as retornadxs to highlight their national origin, I would like to stress that these individuals identify nationally in diverse ways. While most people in this group foregrounded their Colombian nationality, there were several who chose to identify with both nationalities and considered themselves to be Colombo-Venezuelan, regardless of whether or not they had dual-citizenship.

Vallenato Vallenato is a music genre that formed from various working-class musical traditions in La Costa and began gaining popularity in the 1940s. It is commonly cited as emerging in the municipality of Valledupar—located in the Cesar department— from which it derives its name. Traditional

vallenato must incorporate the following three instruments: the accordion, the caja (a small single-headed hand drum), and the guacharaca (a wooden percussion instrument with rivets that is used to make a scraping sound with a small metal trinche). The instrumentation of vallenato is often used as a metaphor for mestizaje [racial mixing], with the accordion representing European heritage, the caja representing African heritage, and the guacharaca representing Indigenous heritage (although there is now some dispute as to whether the guacharaca is of Indigenous or African origin). There are four “aires” [airs/rhythms] of vallenato, each with a unique sound: son, paseo, merengue, and puya. Vallenato is the most popular music in La Costa and amongst the interview participants of this thesis. I will discuss vallenato in greater detail in Chapters 1 and 5.

Venezuelan I will use the term “Venezuelans” to refer to individuals who were born in Venezuela but who do not have a parent from Campo. Unfortunately, these individuals could not be represented in my thesis data due to time constraints and a lack of social connections. This is a group that I would like to collaborate with in future research in the region as they likely represent one of the most marginalized groups in the community due to their lack of immediate familial connections to Campo or legal status. A report from El Heraldo stated that many of these individuals worked in various jobs in Campo but were likely paid about half of what a local might be paid. Personal accounts that I heard from my time in Campo also showed that many of these individuals are discriminated against, associated with crime and violence, and seen as economic competition to locals in a pueblo that already has extremely limited job prospects.

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

AUSENCIA SENTIMENTAL: COLOMBO-VENEZUELAN AFFECT, DIASPORA, AND MUSIC IN CAMPO DE LA CRUZ, COLOMBIA

James Everett

May 2019

Chair: Tanya L. Saunders Major: Latin American Studies

In recent years, Campo de la Cruz, a pueblo in Colombia’s Caribbean region, has seen a significant increase in migration from Venezuela due to the current political crisis across the border. Many of these new arrivals identify as Colombo-Venezuelan and either are originally from Campo or have familial ties to the community. Members of the Campo diaspora live in neighborhoods of Caracas where they are surrounded by other Colombians from the Caribbean— a region which remains one of the most economically and racially marginalized parts of

Colombia.

Within Campo and the rest of the Caribbean region, local popular music is a strong signifier of identity for residents. Genres such as vallenato and champeta play an important role in the lives of Colombo-Venezuelans as a way of experiencing emotions and expressing themselves. In my interdisciplinary ethnographic account, I explore the relationship between music, diaspora, and affect within this Afro-diasporic transnational community. My research intends to understand how—through Caribbean musical traditions—these individuals are able to experience complex overlapping emotions and transport themselves sentimentally to another time and/or place. Through stories from interviews, I highlight how both local campocrucenses

and members of the Campo diaspora perceive themselves as marginalized within the Colombian national context, how this affects their lives, and how they use music as a way to feel and process their experiences.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The following document is a study of affect, hybridity, diaspora, and music in the municipality of Campo de la Cruz, Colombia1. It is based on ethnographic observation, semi- structured interviews about musical preferences and various layers of identity, and roughly two and a half years of lived experiences in Campo.

Figure 1-1. Map of Campo de la Cruz’s location in the Atlántico Department

Located in the south of Colombia’s Atlántico Department2, about a two-hour bus ride from the departmental capital of Barranquilla, Campo sits within Colombia’s Caribbean region which I will refer to as “La Costa” using the local terminology. In my years living and working

1 I will refer to the municipality as a “pueblo” which is local terminology for a small community, and I will also refer to it as “Campo” instead of its complete name, which is also common in the local dialect.

2 Departamentos [departments] in Colombia are a political division roughly equivalent to a U.S. state. Colombia has thirty-two departments, not including the distrito capital [district capital]: Bogotá.

in Campo, I encountered many individuals who had recently migrated from Venezuela or who had been born there. Almost everyone that I spoke with seemed to think that over half of the pueblo’s population had lived in Venezuela at some point in their lives. While Campo’s official website does not have any population statistics, the most recent reports from the Barranquilla- based news source “El Heraldo” cite Campo as having an estimated total population of 19,1073, with an estimated population of 1,429 undocumented Venezuelans. This would mean that 7.4% of the pueblo’s population would be Venezuelan citizens, making it the pueblo with the highest percentage of Venezuelans in the department by roughly a 2% margin. But this statistic only tells part of the story. It doesn’t include the thousands of individuals who have arrived from

Venezuela recently, but who were originally born in Campo (referred to as “retornados”

[returned people]). Reports from El Heraldo cite the number of retornadxs in Campo between

1,500 and 3,000 individuals, but locals seem to think that this number is much higher. The statistics also do not include individuals with dual-citizenship who were born in Venezuela to parents from Campo who had moved to Venezuela for work—referred to as Colombo-

Venezuelans. These are populations that I plan to focus on in my project.

In this M.A. Thesis, I analyze interviews about migration, identity, and musical preferences conducted with Colombo-Venezuelans and retornadxs in Campo de la Cruz in order to show the racialized and hybrid nature of the regional identity of La Costa and the complex ways in which its inhabitants are able to feel and transport themselves through music. By doing this my goal is to complicate traditional narratives and stereotypes surrounding costeñxs, that I argue are based in Anti-Black racism, and to show the hybridity and complexity of costeñx identity through their connection to music.

3 There was a more recent national census conducted by DANE in 2018, but the results have still not been published at the time that I am writing this thesis

As a self-identifying bicultural Puerto Rican-American, and therefore a cultural “hybrid” myself, I have been interested in cultural hybridity for as long as I can remember. My mother is a light-skinned “Nuyorican” woman born to Puerto Rican parents who had migrated to the Bronx, and grew up mostly in New Jersey has lived most of her life in Central Florida. My father is a

White Floridian man who spent most of his life in Central Florida as well. I now identify as an off-White “Florida Rican,” embracing my ethnoracial hybridity, but this was something that I struggled with growing up. I grew up speaking mostly English, but received Spanish exposure from my mother and her parents. Up until my teenage years, I didn’t consciously identify with my Puerto Rican roots. Because of my name and light skin, I was mostly white passing. Despite this, I was still occasionally racialized and taunted with racial slurs such as “spic” for my ethnoracial background. By the time I was in high school, I began improving my Spanish skills, which set me on a path towards understanding and embracing my hybrid Puerto Rican-American and Latino identity.

I arrived in Campo for the first time in January of 2015 as a Peace Corps Volunteer mandated to teach English at one of Campo’s three local schools—a public Catholic school called “Institución Educativa Técnica Industrial La Inmaculada” (locally known as La

Inmaculada/The Immaculate or, more colloquially: Las Monjas/The Nuns). While my initial arrival in the community was obligatory as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I quickly found myself making connections in the community and being received by locals with unbound kindness and hospitality. After two years of living and working in the same rural municipality, I became known by many in the community, even if they had never met me personally. People knew me by various names. Some called me “James”4, some called me “Profe” [teacher], and some simply

4 Pronounced “Hah-Mess”, as my name’s spelling would be pronounced phonetically in Spanish

called me “Gringo,” a term to which —as a self-identified U.S. Latino— I originally took offense, but later learned to accept. I became entrenched in this rural community. I felt happy. I made friends that seemed more like family. I engaged in local music/dance culture in Carnaval celebrations and at the local cantinas and festivals. I learned the local dialect to the best of my ability. I adopted local styles of dress and even haircuts. I tried my best to become an integrated member of the community, despite not being from there or having any known familial connection there.

Figure 1-2. My English teacher counterpart, Alberto (left), and I (right) at a Peace Corps training event

I became particularly interested in music because while living in Campo because I noticed that musical events provided a context in which I was able to integrate into the local community, both through participation in local musical traditions, and by sharing English- language music that I frequently listen to. This cultural exchange through music gave me certain psychological benefits and made me feel more “at home” in general. Most importantly, local music became a way for me to attempt to enter the worlds of my local friends and loved ones, a

form of “world traveling” as described by Maria Lugones in “Playfulness, "World"-Travelling, and Loving Perception” (1987). I remember many nights sitting with my best friends Alberto and

Julio at local cantinas and drinking Águila Light beer while vallenato music blared. When certain songs would come on, I remember them carefully explaining to me the story of the song, the meaning of the lyrics, and why the song was important to them. There were certain anthems that inspired locals at the cantinas, oftentimes middle-aged men, to stand up and sing. They would sometimes dance alone with one hand on their chest and the other hand raising a bottle of Águila

Light in the air. Their faces would express what I perceived to be a variety of emotions: pain, bliss, confusion, melancholy, playfulness. Sometimes an African champeta song would sound over the speakers and young men and women would stand and dance, their feet moving so fast that I was unable to comprehend their exact steps. Through their dance they showed another level of connection with the music. In both instances, it seemed that something magical was happening, and soon I began to feel something too when these coastal genres would play. I wanted to know more about the relationship between individuals in this community, many who had what I would conceptualize as hybrid cultural identities, and local music practices.

My initial research question was: What is the role of music in experiencing and performing hybrid Colombo-Venezuelan identities in Campo de la Cruz, Colombia? By answering this question, I hoped to gain a better understanding of what it meant to experience a hybrid cultural identity and the relationship between music and said identity. I wished to know what roles music plays in the formation of these identities, and how different identities shaped musical choice. Simply put, I wanted to understand why music was so important to this group of people.

Figure 1-3. Celebrating Mother’s Day with Julio (left) and his friend (right) outside of a local estadero

I titled this thesis “Ausencia Sentimental” [Sentimental Absence] after a vallenato song composed by Rafael Manjarréz Mendoza in 1986. It is the official song of the Festival de la

Leyenda Vallenata in Valledupar, Cesar—the most popular renowned vallenato music festival within La Costa—and gives the account of one young man’s feelings of longing and nostalgia for his coastal home of La Guajira, Colombia as he studies in the capital: Bogotá. It is an emotionally complex song. It has a seemingly happy tune coupled with melancholy lyrics. In many ways, I think it exemplifies the ways in which music from La Costa can work on multiple emotional levels and help individuals to not only process their emotions, but to transport themselves emotionally to another place, another time, another home.

My analysis and research are guided by the following guiding concepts: diaspora, hybridity, participatory music, and affect. I tackle these themes using a decolonial approach. I will discuss these concepts and relevant scholarship in Chapter 2—which serves as my literature review. In Chapter 3 I will discuss the performance of costeñidad, and discuss how this marginalized identity shapes the mindset of individuals in Campo. In Chapter 4 I will discuss how interview participants conceive of costeñidad as a racialized, diasporic, and hybrid identity.

In Chapter 5 I will share stories of how costeñxs were disproportionately affected by economic hardships and forced to move to Caracas in search of opportunities. I will also discuss the ways

in which they formed “colonias colombianas” in Caracas. In Chapter 6 I will focus on the types of music that my interview participants listened to both in Campo and in Caracas and attempt to explain how these individuals were able to feel and process complex emotions through the music, and sometimes even transport themselves to another place, time, and home. I will end this chapter with a lyrical analysis of “Ausencia Sentimental” the song after which this thesis is titled.

I will conclude the thesis with a short “coda” in which I discuss what I learned and how I plan to approach future research in the form of a dissertation.

Methods

In Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman’s “Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist

Theory, Cultural Imperialism, and the Demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice’” the authors argue that the only meaningful motive for White feminists to engage in theorizing with Women of Color

Feminists is not due to a sense of obligation or a selfish desire for self-growth or domination, but rather, for friendship: “The only motive that makes sense to me for your joining us in this investigation is the motive of friendship, out of friendship” (p.576). Because I am an outsider within the community, I strived to approach this investigation with the same spirit of friendship.

The people of Campo have been an important part of my life since I lived there as a Peace Corps

Volunteer, and the reason why I feel motivated to pursue research within the community.

In the introduction of Patricia Hill Collins’s book Black Feminist Thought the author highlights the ways in which lived experiences are important to developing theory:

“Much of my formal academic training has been designed to show me that I must alienate myself from my communities, my family, and even my own self in order to produce credible intellectual work. Instead of viewing the everyday as a negative influence on my theorizing, I tried to see how the everyday actions and ideas of the Black women in my life reflected the theoretical issues I claimed were so important to them.” (1990, p. VIII)

Inspired by Hill Collins, I also approach the idea of the everyday and lived experiences as a way to create meaningful theory in the context of my research. Although I am not costeñx or from

Campo, I see my interpersonal connection and friendship with people of Campo as a positive influence on my theorizing and a way to connect these lived experiences to the themes that I discuss in this thesis. While my analysis draws primarily on interview and field notes data from my formal field work, my theorization is also based in nearly two and a half years of these lived experiences within the community that I work.

I began my formal field research in the summer of 2018 using a grounded theory approach. I had these broad questions about music, hybridity, race, and identity that I wished to explore, but I wanted to gather data first before developing further research questions. Because my questions were so broad, it was important for me to use grounded theory as a way to theorize during the research process and not arrive in the field with preconceived notions of what I needed to write about. As Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin explain in “Grounded Theory

Methodology: An Overview”: “Theory evolves during actual research, and it does this through continuous interplay between analysis and data collection” (1994, p.273). In this way, I conceptualize my work as a continuously evolving project. When I was conducting field work I tried to find the issues that were most salient based on broad questions that I asked during interviews. I allowed the data collection and analysis process to change the focus of my writing and theorizing. After all, I believe that the goal of this type of work should be to represent issues that are relevant to the community with which I am working. So, while I went into the field with the idea to focus on hybridity and the Colombo-Venezuelan influence on identity and local music traditions, I instead began to notice other important themes emerging in my interviews such as:

Colombian regionalism, diasporic identities, and the affective realm of music. These themes that

evolved in the data collection and analysis phase have become the primary themes of this thesis, as I believe they more accurately represent the interests and lived experiences of my informants and the community that this work aims to serve.

My data was gathered using ethnographic methods. These included observant participation in the local music life, video recordings of music events, frequent field notes and reflections, and semi-structured video interviews with retornadxs and Colombo-Venezuelans who were currently living in Campo. During the first several weeks of my research I focused on building community connections, explaining my research to locals, observing music life in the community, and readapting to life in the pueblo. This was a community where I had lived and worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years, which helped to accelerate my research process as many locals were already familiar with me and were able to direct me towards potential interview subjects. It became apparent to me that, seemingly, most of the individuals in this community had lived at Venezuela at some point in their lives.

After the first month, I enlisted the help of my host-brother and close friend Julio Salas as a research assistant. Julio and I have known each other since I first arrived in Campo as a Peace

Corps Volunteer in 2015. When I returned to Campo in 2018 to conduct the field research for this thesis I decided to reach out to Julio to see if I could live in his family’s home because of our friendship. During my field research Julio assisted me in finding interview subjects and recording interviews by working the video camera. I chose to ask Julio for help because he was

Colombo-Venezuelan, seemed to know almost everyone in the community because of his work, was well-connected with the local music scene, and because he was someone who I trusted and interacted with daily. Although Julio did not ask for any form of payment, I allocated money from my research grant to pay Julio for his assistance in finding informants and recording

interviews. I also compensated him and his family for the use of the bedroom in their home where I was staying.

Figure 1-4. My Campo host family and neighbors seated on a log outside of their home in Barrio La Pica. Pictured from left to right on the log: Julio, Lettis, Maxwell, Meison, and Wilsito

With the help of Julio I was able to conduct 33 interviews total (31 video and 2 audio) with individuals who had lived in Venezuela for some period of time or who had interacted frequently with the Colombo-Venezuelan population. The interviews ranged from 15 minutes to

1 hour each and interview questions were primarily focused in two sections: one section on music and national identity and another on music and ethnoracial identity. I asked people about their experiences of migration, the types of music that they heard in each country, their musical preferences, their racial and national identities, and why they liked the music that they liked (see

Appendix A for list of interview questions). An example of a question that I asked was “Could you name a specific song or artist that you listened to when living in Venezuela and really liked

or felt a strong connection to? What attracts you to this type of music?” By asking questions such as these I hoped to gain a better understanding of why people felt a connection to the music that they did. In this way I hoped to understand the importance of the music in their lives.

To gain a better understanding of the local music scene I also engaged in observant participation. I attended all types of music events including: informal vallenato practice sessions on my neighbor’s front porch, outdoor street parties centered around massive picó speakers, government-sponsored gatherings of local composers, birthday parties with live music, and dance nights at local cantinas. Vallenato was the most-heard music locally and so I also decided to take weekly music lessons for the caja and guacharaca, two percussion instruments that are integral to the genre, with a local percussionist and neighbor: Jimmy Tejeda. I felt that my familiarity with local music helped me to build trust and sometimes friendships with the individuals whom I was interviewing. After these music events and percussion lessons, I wrote or typed field notes in my bedroom, noting interesting occurrences that related to my research topic. I was also careful to record conversations or observations that I made in other moments of my life in Campo that related to my topic. To help remember the events which I wrote about in my field notes, I frequently brought my video camera and recorded interesting moments and tried to capture the general ambiance. After twelve weeks of conducting these observations and completing over thirty interviews, I left for the nearest city, Barranquilla, and returned to Florida on July 30th.

My primary data for this thesis includes 11 of the 33 interviews that I conducted. I tried to select a sample that was representative of diverse experiences. Out of the interviews that I used, 5 of the informants identified as women and 6 identified as men. I should note that I had a more difficult time arranging interviews with women. When I asked my research assistant, Julio,

why this might be he said that it was “por pena” [because of shame/embarrassment] that many local women didn’t want to appear on camera or be recorded, especially if there were other people present who were watching. It is also important to note that most of my interviews were not conducted in private. Most people whom I interviewed lived with their families and so it was nearly impossible to arrange a private interview. Houses also tend to be more open in Campo, in the sense that families normally leave their doors and windows open during the day and that families and friends are normally passing through. The fact that I was a man and an outsider to the community may have also been a factor as to why fewer women wished to participate. There is, after all, a history of locals in rural regions being taken advantage of my outsiders. This is something that I should consider in future research in order to share a more representative array of women’s voices. The women whose interviews I do use in this thesis were personal friends, neighbors, and family members of my host family. I had an easier time arranging interviews with men. I found that many of my friendships in Campo were with other men and that certain activities such as going out and drinking at the cantinas would have been seen as inappropriate or romantic had they been performed with women.

Out of the 11 interviews examples that I use, 7 participants identify as Afrodescendiente

[Afro-Descendant], 2 identify as morena/o [brown], and the other two did not identify with a particular race or ethnicity. When asking people about their racial identification I gave certain examples of racial categories used to describe skin tone that I had heard locally (such as morenx, negrx, blancx, etc) and racial categories that are used in the Colombian census (such as

Afrodescendiente, Indígena, etc…) and I asked them if they identified themselves as or considered themselves to belong to any of these or other ethnoracial groups. The two collaborators who didn’t identify racially may have been confused by the question and the way

that I phrased it. Race was not a factor that was unanimously perceived to be important in people’s everyday lives. It is likely that many locals identified with the ideology of mestizaje that stresses how all Colombians are a mix of African, European, and Indigenous ancestors, while not actively highlighting one ethnoracial group over the other— although this is an ideology that has historically been used to erase Black and Indigenous people from national dialogue. This is a topic that I will address in the literature review.

The interviews that I use in this thesis were analyzed using an open coding approach and

Atlas TI software. I created 186 codes based on themes that interview collaborators raised in our conversations (for a list of my codes see Appendix B). These codes were created while watching the interview videos as a way to map the themes that the individuals discussed. Later, I used the code manager to sort out the most frequent codes (an example of a frequent code would be:

“Likes music because of feeling”). There were also some less-common codes that I felt were relevant and included in my data analysis because they somehow related to a more common code. An example of an uncommon code would be “Moved to Venezuela because of violence” which relates to the larger theme of moving to Venezuela that is discussed alongside the more common code “Moved to Venezuela for economic reasons.” The frequent codes and the stories that I use in this thesis were transcribed in their original language of Spanish and translated into

English by me. In this thesis the Spanish transcription appears first, followed by my English translation5. These transcriptions demonstrate the themes that I discuss in the following five chapters of this thesis. Additional data used for this thesis includes video recordings of various

5 As always, there are terms and phrases that appear in interviews that are difficult to translate into English. All translations were done to reflect content first and precise word choice second. There were also parts of the audio recordings that were very difficult to hear and could not be transcribed. In these sections I write: [inaudible] to reflect how I was unable to hear what was being said.

musical events in the community, over 30 pages of ethnographic field notes, and nearly two and a half years of lived experiences.

The results of my research will be relevant to interdisciplinary work on affect, performance, race, hybridity, Diaspora studies, migration, and Transnationalism. My research also applies more broadly to the disciplines of anthropology, ethnomusicology, sociology. This is a topic that is incredibly relevant at this time due to waves of Venezuelan immigration to

Colombia, specifically to the south of Atlántico and other migration waves within Latin

America. I have not been able to locate much scholarship about Colombo-Venezuelan identity in general, and this research would go towards understanding this particular identity, as well as others that exist between nations and cultural formations. Although I will focus on a particular community at a particular point in time, I believe that gained understandings will be applicable to other small communities in La Costa.

In this thesis my goal is to complicate the stereotyped and racist narrative of the costeñx alegre [jolly costeñx] that is so pervasive in Colombia and show how costeñxs experience a variety of simultaneous emotions through music that may seem “happy” to an outsider.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

I will divide this literature review into two sections. In the first section, I will focus on the themes of diaspora and hybridity. Borrowing heavily from works like “Decolonial Moves:

Translocating African Diaspora Spaces” by Agustin Lao-Montes, I will attempt to show how I approach the African Diaspora in relation to this project. I will then analyze various articles on the concept of hybridity by scholars such as Deborah Pacini Hernandez and Juliet Hooker in an attempt to separate the usefulness of the concept from its potentially problematic features and the history of mestizaje and whitening in Latin America. Through the review of scholarship on diaspora and hybridity, I will explain how I approach these themes with a decolonial lens.

In the second section of this literature review I will focus on music and affect. I will begin by conceptualizing music from La Costa as it is approached in anthropological studies such as in Peter Wade’s book: Music, ombia. I will then relate the concept of participatory music as conceptualized by ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino in Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation to music from La Costa. I will end this section by examining queer studies scholarship on affect by Sarah Ahmed and José Muñoz, and make a case for the importance of the affective realm and emotions in my research.

The African Diaspora, Mestizaje, and Hybridity

As the majority of my interview participants identify as Afrodescendiente, I believe it is crucial to delve into the concept of diaspora in order frame the experiences of people in Campo.

In Thomas Turino’s book—Music as Social Life—the author conceptualizes different types of groups that can form around culture. One of these conceptual groups that he discusses is a diasporic formation, which he defines as such:

“Diasporic formations are distinct in that they combine habits from the original home and their new home and are influenced by the cultural models from other

places in the diaspora. The diasporic sites are unified as formation by at least symbolically emphasizing their allegiance to their original homeland and by social networks across the sites.” (2008, p.118)

Turino highlights the fact that members of a diasporic formation have a connection to shared

“homeland” and that habits from what the group considers their original homeland are combined with habits from the new home in order to produce a mix of habits. Despite this mixture, a connection to the original homeland is what is emphasized. He also explains how that a diasporic formation shares a connection with other members of the diaspora that might be in different geographical locations. In the context of Campo, the original homeland is Africa and nearly all of my interview participants agreed that being Afrodescendiente meant having roots African roots, even if these African roots existed alongside other cultural heritages.

Sociologist Agustin Lao-Montes discusses Blackness and the African Diaspora specifically in the 2007 article “Decolonial moves”:

The Afroamerican diaspora it is not a uniform formation but a montage of local histories interweaved by common conditions of racial, political economic and cultural oppression and by family resemblances grounded not only in commensurable historical experiences of racial subordination, but also in cultural affinities and similar (often shared) repertories of resistance, intellectual production, and political action. (p.314)

Like Turino, Lao-Montes points out how the African Diaspora—specifically the Afroamerican diaspora—is not necessarily uniform, but that there are clear links with other members of the diaspora in regards to culture and experiences of subordination. Perhaps it is because of this shared history of racial subordination that many of my interview participants chose to identify with the African Diaspora through the term “Afrodescendiente” as opposed to only acknowledging the nationality of their host countries: Colombia and/or Venezuela. Lao-Montes also connects the African Diaspora to the idea of Blackness:

I conceptualize blackness as more than simply color, as a contested terrain of memory, identity, culture and politics, as an historical arena in which different

political projects, historical narratives, cultural logics, and self-designations are enunciated and debated. Some arenas of these variations of blackness are the politics of self-naming (‘black’ and/or ‘Afro-descendant’), the question of color (should we distinguish black and brown?), and the entanglements of the local, national, and transnational dimensions of black histories. (p.313)

According to this view, Blackness is about more than skin-tone, but it is rather a “contested terrain.” Lao-Montes highlights how there are different variations on the concept of Blackness that may be expressed in the ways that people identify or differentiate themselves. In the context of Campo, people may distinguish between who is negrx [black] and who is morenx [brown] but people in both categories might recognize themselves to be Afrodescendiente and therefore a part of the African Diaspora. I would also argue that this self-recognition as Afrodescendiente is also related to Blackness, whether the person describes their skin tone to be black or brown.

I do believe it is important to recognize, however, how individuals in Campo who identify their skin-tone as black or brown do not always necessarily identify with the African

Diaspora. It was not uncommon to meet two people with a very similar skin-tone and have one identify as Afrodescendiente and the other not identify with the African Diaspora. Despite not all people self-naming as Afrodescendiente, I believe that the shared history of marginalization and resistance, as well as local cultural practices and music traditions that are traced to Africa, are enough conceptualize Campo and the La Costa region as part of the African Diaspora. I will explore this idea and the racialization of the coast in the following chapters.

As I have stated earlier it is my goal to take a decolonial approach to this research, and recognizing this region as part of the African Diaspora and based in the Caribbean, is an important step towards the decolonial goal. In this excerpt, Lao-Montes explains how the African

Diaspora is, in fact, a decolonial project:

The African Diaspora can be conceived as a project of decolonization and liberation embedded in the cultural practices, intellectual currents, social movements, and political actions of Afro-diasporic subjects. The project of

diaspora as a search for liberation and transnational community-making is grounded on the conditions of subalternization of Afrodiasporic peoples and in their historical agency of resistance and self-affirmation. As a project the African diaspora is a north, a utopian horizon to Black freedom dreams. (p.310)

By conceptualizing La Costa and the people of Campo as Afro-diasporic subjects—whether it be from their self-recognition as Afrodescendiente, from cultural practices of La Costa that are traced to Africa, or a shared history of racial subjugation—I hope to challenge colorblind ideologies that perpetuate a racialized social structure which serves to marginalize the Afro- diasporic people of La Costa.

One of the ways in which the attempted erasure of Afro-diasporic and Indigenous populations in Latin America occurs is through state-sponsored ideology of mestizaje

[miscegenation or race mixing]. This ideology is linked to the concept of hybridity, and I believe it is now necessary to explore the limits of hybridity for this reason. By decolonizing the glorification of hybridity, I hope to be able to show which aspects of hybridity can be useful and insightful in this research.

In the 2014 article “Hybrid subjectivities, Latin American mestizaje, and Latino political thought on race” political scientist Juliet Hooker highlights some of the issues with hybridity in

Latin America:

Indeed, Latino political theorists in the USA who adopt benevolent accounts of mestizaje stand in sharp contrast to the strong criticisms of such narratives by increasingly vocal contemporary indigenous and black movements in Latin America, which tend to argue that theories of harmonious mestizaje have served to legitimize racial hierarchy and discrimination in the region. The approach of many Latino political theorists to race–which seems to be to emphasize hybrid subjectivity and fluid identities drawing on Latin America’s history of mestizaje– is thus out of step with what are arguably the most progressive forces struggling against racism and cultural hierarchy in Latin America: self-identified black and indigenous movements that are striving to remake their countries in order to address the racial discrimination and social, political, and economic exclusion that have characterized Latin American societies to varying degrees. (p.10)

In this excerpt Hooker cites how Black and Indigenous movements in Latin America are critical of mestizaje because—despite painting a picture of racial harmony—it actually perpetuates racialized social structures and hierarchies. In her article she contrasts this against how U.S.- based Latinx political theorists write about mestizaje in a positive way. Other scholars such as anthropologist Deborah Pacini Hernandez are also rightfully critical of the use of mestizaje as an ideology. In the 2011 article titled “The politics of hybridity and mestizaje in U.S. Latino popular music,” Pacini Hernandez discusses the criticism that hybridity has received:

They rightly charge, for example, that the implicit equation of mestizaje’s hybridity with equality –that is, “we are all mixed so we are all equal”– has long been used in Latin America to avoid facing (and altering) the social, economic, and political structures responsible for perpetuating race-based “pigmentocracies”, in which white-skinned individuals enjoy privileges of every sort; mixed-race people occupy an intermediate space depending on such variables as their phenotypical proximity to whiteness, education, wealth, and so forth; and people of more unambiguously African or native ancestry are subject to subordination and exploitation. The term hybridity has also been criticized for perpetuating discourses of racial difference, since it depends on essentialist notions of racial difference among its constituent parts. (p.933)

Here Pacini Hernandez highlights a similar failure of hybridity to address issues of Afro- diasporic and Indigenous people in Latin America by creating a false sense of equality. In the final sentence, she explains how criticisms state that hybridity can promote essentialist notions of race by attributing certain defining characteristics to the various racial groups which are imagined to compose the mixture.

In the case of La Costa—as in many other areas of the Hispanophone Caribbean—this racial mixture is imagined to be comprised of African, Indigenous, and European/Spanish heritage. These three races are even represented in the instrumentation of the most popular music in the region: vallenato. In vallenato music, for example, the three primary instruments are the accordion, the caja hand drum, and the guacharaca percussive scraping stick. The accordion is said to represent the European influence on La Costa, the caja the African, and the guacharaca

the Indigenous. Interestingly, despite the fact that the majority of European influence in La Costa was from Spain, the accordion is a German instrument that is used to represent the European heritage of the region. It is also interesting to note that the European instrument is the most prominent and well-recognized instrument in vallenato. There has also been some debate as to whether the guacharaca is indeed an indigenous instrument, with some now claiming that it may also be African like the caja hand drum. Despite some of these tenuous historical connections to racial groups, the racialized instrumentation of vallenato music goes to perpetuate the national ideology of mestizaje in Colombia.

So is there a place for hybridity in this research, and if so, how can it be applied? Some scholars both criticize and utilize the concept of hybridity in their work. In Oye Como Va!

Deborah Pacini Hernandez explains the utility of hybridity as it relates to U.S. Latinxs after acknowledging how it has also been used in ways that glorify mestizaje and perpetuate inequality:

Far from being something abnormal or problematic, hybridity, whether racial, ethnic, cultural, or a combination of these, is one of the signature characteristics of the Latino experience. It is not a question of ‘either/or,’ but rather, like hybridity itself, of “both/and.” (2010, ix-x)

According to Pacini Hernandez, hybridity is an important part of the Latinx experience and provides a new way for thinking about identities and how they are able to coexist. It moves us away from the idea that identities are contained things that exist within a bubble, and brings a new level of complexity to thinking about identity formation. In Hybrid Cultures Nestor Garcia

Canclini—an Argentine anthropologist who theorizes about hybridity—writes about the process of hybridization in an age of globalization. In the introductory chapter of the book he defines hybridization as:

[S]ocio-cultural processes in which discrete structures or practices, previously existing in separate form, are combined to generate new structures, objects, and

practices. In turn, it bears noting that the so-called discrete structures were a result of prior hybridizations and therefore cannot be considered pure points of origin. (1995, xxv)

Within studies of hybridization it is crucial to remember that there is no pure point of origin. If everything is in a constant process of hybridization and change, then how could there be any identities that aren’t hybrid in some way? This line of thinking challenges previous ways of writing about ethnicities as things, and encourages us to instead look at the process of change which results in further hybridization. If hybridity can be taken up in these kinds of ways, it can be used to show a more complicated and nuanced view of identity.

Pacini Hernandez also cites another important reason why we can’t necessarily ignore the idea of hybridity through the example of U.S. Latinxs:

Those contesting such constructions, on the other hand, offer an equally disturbing scenario, in which Latinos’ hybridity is believed to render them particularly prone to “buying in” to the United States’ racial hierarchy, because Latinos (at least some of them) are able to “pass” as whites. Although there is certainly some truth to this latter analysis, the inability to imagine Latino hybridity as a progressive force in U.S. race relations means that all but the darkest-skinned Latinos are assumed to be “whites in waiting” or “honorary whites”. I do, however, insist that US Latino voices be heard and understood on their own terms, which means fully appreciating their long and rich history of racial and cultural hybridity, and valuing their struggles to express and perform it. (p. 935)

Just as U.S. Latinxs express their racial and cultural hybridity, many of my interview participants in Campo also acknowledged their own racial hybridity as a part of their Afro-diasporic identities. I believe that this distinction is one key way in which we can use hybridity in a constructive way and not in a way that erases Afrodescendiente and Indigenous people from the dialogue. As Lao-Montes and Turino highlighted in their conceptualizations of diaspora and diasporic formations, a diasporic community will inevitably be influenced by the area where they are living, creating a mixture of habits and expressions. As Garcia Canclini explained, this mixture is inevitable and there are no cultures that can truly be considered “pure” or

uninfluenced by hybridity. I think it most appropriate, then, to foreground the position of La

Costa as a region that is part of the African Diaspora, but that is also culturally hybrid. By imagining La Costa as an Afro-diasporic region that is also hybrid we are able to take a decolonial move and think about a new unit of analysis that isn’t necessarily based in the nation- state as the primary unit of analysis. This is the argument of Lao-Montes:

The argument here is not for displacing nations with diasporas, and/or for replacing nationalism with postnationalist discourses, but to look into how an Afro-diasporic perspective can allow us to rethink self, memory, culture, and power beyond the confines of the nation as unit of analysis (and the dominant form of political community) and to develop a politics of decolonization not confined to nationalism. (p. 313)

For this thesis I will be taking this approach. While I discuss Colombia and Venezuela as countries, I primarily focus my inquiry on the people of La Costa—Colombia’s Caribbean region—which I conceptualize as an Afro-diasporic region that is also hybrid. With this understanding, I will now turn to literature on participatory music and affect in order to gain a deeper understanding of their connection to identity and diaspora in the region.

Participatory Music, Affect, and La Costa

In this section I will focus first on scholarship related to the music of La Costa by Peter

Wade. I will then discuss the concept of participatory music as conceived of my Thomas Turino, and frame music from La Costa as participatory in nature. I will then explore work on affect, happiness, and emotions by scholars like Sarah Ahmed and José Muñoz and posit reasons why it may be helpful to examine music and identity on La Costa through an affective realm. I will conclude by synthesizing these ideas with the concepts discussed in the previous section on diaspora and hybridity.

In the year 2000 British anthropologist Peter Wade published

and provided a historical account of the music of La Costa. Wade

also examines the racialized nature of La Costa as a region and how that relates to ideas surrounding music. Early in the book, he discusses La Costa as a region that is ambiguous:

“The Caribbean, or Atlantic, coastal region has a particular place in the country’s racialized cultural topography. It is a place characterized by a certain ambiguity: it is black, but also indigenous and white; it is poor and ‘backward’ (although not as poor as the Pacific region or the Amazon region), but has also been a principal point of entry for ‘modernity’ into the country; it has been politically vocal, but economically weak. It is also the source of much of the country’s commercially and internationally successful cultural products: musical styles such as cumbia, authors such as Gabriel García Márquez, and painters such as Alejandro Obregón and Enrique Grau. (p. 39-40)

Wade also imagines La Costa as a region of Colombia that is perceived as predominantly Black, but also hybrid in its Indigenous and White influence. Despite the economic marginality of La

Costa, Wade recognizes that it has contributed greatly to Colombia’s cultural and artistic production. In fact, the most popular genres of music autochthonous to Colombia include vallenato, champeta, and cumbia, all of which originated in La Costa (Wade, 2000). I do not find it surprising that La Costa is simultaneously seen as being backwards—which I will discuss in greater detail in the following chapter—while its music is widely consumed in the rest of the country and internationally. I see this as a neocolonial form of exploitation in which La Costa is marginalized economically while its cultural productions are appropriated as symbols of

Colombian national heritage and exported internationally.

In my research, vallenato music was overwhelmingly the favorite genre of my interview participants. While vallenato music is generally well-respected now, it was seen as vulgar and backwards by elites when it first emerged as a named genre in the 1940s in rural communities of

La Costa. Once local elites realized that the genre was growing in popularity, they were able to capitalize on it. Wade writes how this commercialization of music genres from La Costa sometimes led to what was perceived to be a lack of authenticity, as the music moved further and further away from its Black and Indigenous roots (2000, p. 53). The most well-known vallenato

star internationally is Carlos Vives, but I quickly noticed that nobody in Campo actually listened to Carlos Vives. People that I spoke to saw him as disconnected from the music tradition that they perceived to be authentic vallenato, despite the fact that he was from the coast. Meanwhile, stars like Alejo Duran, Diomedes Diaz, Binomio de Oro, Los Hermanos Zuleta, Los Betos, Los

Diablitos, Kaleth Morales, Patricia Teherán, Martin Elias, and Silvestre Dangond—who may not be very popular outside of Colombia—are seen as some of the more-respected musicians in the genre1.

In the previous section I discussed how the instrumentation of vallenato is racialized.

Wade goes into further detail regarding this phenomenon in popular music of La Costa:

It is common to tie individual instruments, styles, or elements of styles to particular racialized origins… Whatever the oversimplification of the complexities of cultural hybridization, the end result is the constant reiteration of the founding myth of Colombian nationality, spoken through the medium of La Costa, where the indigenous and African elements are said to have had a strong impact. As is always the case in talking about mestizaje, the music is seen as a symbol of fusion, of the overcoming of difference, but the representation of that symbol involves the continual reiteration of difference. Hierarchy is also involved, although it is ambivalent: black and indigenous people are seen as the eventual repositories of true tradition (European popular traditions are rarely mentioned), but as a result they can be seen as both backward and authentic.” (p. 66)

I believe that these are all important things to consider when thinking of music from La Costa.

Like Wade states, it reiterates ideas of mestizaje that we discussed in the previous section, while also maintaining a connection to Black and Indigenous communities. This is even more apparent in genres such as champeta, which actively highlights its Africanity and connection to the

African Diaspora.

1 Silvestre Dangond was becoming more popular internationally at the time of my field research after collaborations with reggaeton stars such as Nicky Jam. As he adopted a less-traditional sound, some locals stopped listening to his music.

Whether the music highlights its Africanity, such as champeta, or its hybridity, such as vallenato, I argue that both of these genres of music as they are listened to in Campo should be conceptualized as being significant to their listeners within an Afro-diasporic and hybrid region.

I also believe that it is important to underscore the participatory nature of these music genres in how they are, not only listened to, but danced alongside within Campo.

In ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino’s 2008 book Music as Social Life: The Politics of

Participation, the author dedicates a chapter to conceptualizing what he labels as four “fields” of music: participatory, presentational, high fidelity, and studio audio art (2008, p.90). These fields are not divided by style or typical ideas of genres, but by the goals of the music makers and the way in which the audience interacts with this music. In this thesis I conceptualize the music of

La Costa as participatory music, which is defined as music that has as its goal the maximum participation of the audience. Turino defines this participation as “actively contributing to the sound and motion of the musical event through dancing, singing, clapping, and playing musical instruments when each of these activities is considered integral to the performance” (p. 28) In the places that I observed—particularly places such as estaderos—this participation almost always came in the form of dance. In participatory music, the music itself is seen as a process rather than a product. Turino argues that this music often promotes “social synchrony” amongst its listeners.

I would now like to turn to the affect in order to understand how we can connect ways of feeling to the idea of participatory music in La Costa. Jose Muñoz is one author who theorizes about affect in the article “Feeling Brown”:

The inquiry I am undertaking here suggests that we move beyond notions of ethnicity as fixed (something that people are) and instead understand it as performative (what people do), providing a reinvigorated and nuanced understanding of ethnicity. Performance functions as socially symbolic acts that serve as powerful theoretical lenses through which to view the social sphere. I am interested in crafting a critical apparatus that permits us to read ethnicity as a

historical formation uncircumscribed by the boundaries of conventional understandings of identity. In lieu of viewing racial or ethnic differences as solely cultural, I aim to describe how race and ethnicity can be understood as “affective difference,” by which I mean the ways in which various historically coherent groups “feel” differently and navigate the material world on a different emotional register. (Muñoz, 2000, p. 70).

This shift in scholarship away from identities as something that people are towards something that people do seems to in line with scholarly work that focuses on the process of hybridization, while challenging notions of ethnicity and identity as somehow bound. By focusing on how people feel and experience, I believe that Muñoz provides us with a meaningful way for understanding race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, and other categories that we imagine as falling within the realm of identity.

Feminist and queer studies scholar Sarah Ahmed also writes extensively about affect. In

The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Ahmed provides us with a way of understanding emotions that takes into account their influence on bodies:

It is not difficult to see how emotions are bound up with the securing of social hierarchy: emotions become attributes of bodies as a way of transforming what is ‘lower’ or ‘higher’ into bodily traits…In fact, I want to reflect on the processes whereby ‘being emotional’ comes to be seen as a characteristic of some bodies and not others, in the first place. In order to do this, we need to consider how emotions operate to ‘make’ and ‘shape’ bodies as forms of action, which also involve orientations towards others. (p. 4)

Ahmed makes the case that emotions aren’t just things that we have. Emotions shape the very fabric of who we are: “In other words, emotions are not ‘in’ either the individual or the social, but produce the very surfaces and boundaries that allow the individual and the social to be delineated as if they are objects.” (p. 10) Ahmed’s way of viewing emotions also relates them to social hierarchies and how certain bodies can perform affective states that are considered either lower or higher. She tackles these themes in her 2010 book The Promise of Happiness where she

discusses the “happiness duty” that our society imposes and brings to light the ways in which the obligation to be happy in society excludes certain queer or racialized expressions of happiness.

In “Feeling Brown” Muñoz writes about the performance of affect as identity, relating it to hegemonic whiteness and U.S. Latinxs. In this excerpt the author details ways in which identity is performed affectively:

This performance of whiteness primarily transpires on an affective register. Acting white has everything to do with the performance of a particular affect, the specific performance of which grounds the subject performing white affect in a normative life world. Latinas and Latinos, and other people of color, are unable to achieve this affective performativity on a regular basis. (p. 68)

I will argue in this thesis that retornadxs and Colombo-Venezuelan costeñxs in Campo de la

Cruz also perform a particular affect that falls outside of national normativity. I believe that one realm through which these affective states can be witnessed is through participatory music, where my interview participants were able to connect with music in complex ways that contrast in interesting ways with stereotyped image of the costeñx alegre.

In line with Ahmed, I take the stance “that emotions should not be regarded as psychological states, but as social and cultural practices” (p. 9) and by viewing these emotional states as cultural practices, I aim to show how they relate to the people of La Costa, which I imagine as an Afro-diasporic and hybrid region. The realm of music is worth examining because of the important role that music plays as an object of emotion:

Given that shared feelings are not about feeling the same feeling, or feeling-in- common, I suggest that it is the objects of emotion that circulate, rather than emotion as such. My argument still explores how emotions can move through the movement or circulation of objects. Such objects become sticky, or saturated with affect, as sites of personal and social tension. (p. 10-11)

In the case of my research, the music that people listen to and connect with serves as the object that is saturated with affect. But why does music in particular become so saturated with affect?

Turino might argue that it is because of the high “semiotic density” of music that it is so likely to

interact with emotional states. He defines semiotic density as: “Semiotic density refers relatively to the number of potential signs occurring simultaneously…” (p. 108). Put simply, overlapping aspects of music create a sign vehicle that is particularly dense and therefore likely to elicit a variety of strong emotions. In music this density of signs could be present through the lyrics, rhythm, melody, tone, etc… of the song. For this reason, music is an affective object worth examining.

While people may not always have the same connection to this affective object—music— from the interviews it was clear to see that there were similarities in the way that people articulated their emotional states as they related to music, particularly the way in which music could transport them and make them feel nostalgia, happiness, and melancholy. I will address this in greater detail in the final chapter of this thesis. To conclude this literature review I would like to reiterate the ways in which scholarship on diaspora, hybridity, music, and affect now frames the analysis in this thesis. First, I conceptualize the population of focus as members of the

African Diaspora who are also in a constant process of hybridization, whether in relation to the host nation of Colombia or Venezuela. Second, I imagine the music of La Costa as participatory and as an object saturated with affect that is able to elicit complex affective states and performances from the population of focus. Lastly, I posit that these affective states should be viewed as cultural practices through which bodies are shaped and identities are understood. With this framework, I can now engage with data collected from the people of Campo de la Cruz in order to understand their stories, challenges, identities, and the role that music plays in their lives.

CHAPTER 3 PERFORMING COSTEÑIDAD IN CAMPO DE LA CRUZ

“Colombia es pa’lla.” [Colombia is that way.]

It was the day after Colombia’s 2018 presidential elections. The conservative candidate

Iván Duque, commonly acknowledged by detractors as a puppet of former president Álvaro

Uribe, had just comfortably defeated progressive left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro in a presidential race that created a notable tension in the household where I was living in Campo de la Cruz. It was a hot and humid afternoon, like most afternoons in Campo, and I had just finished interviewing a member of my host family, Lucho.

Lucho is 48 years old and was born and raised in Campo, prior to immigrating to

Caracas, Venezuela for work. He identifies racially as Afrodescendiente [Afro-Descendant], and is one of the few participants in my interviews that is an official member of the pueblo’s Afro-

Colombian group. Nationally, he identifies as Colombian, while also acknowledging the important role that Venezuela has played in his life. Lucho has a stern face and a perpetual serious frown that rarely cracks a smile which is further accentuated by his thick black mustache.

On this day, he wore a loose-fitting blue button-up work shirt and a baseball cap. Prior to the interview I hadn’t heard too much from Lucho, but I was always impressed with how concisely he could articulate his thoughts on the occasions when he did speak. At first, he had shown reluctance to participate in the interview, but was encouraged to participate by Julio, his 38 year- old son-in-law—my host brother—and self-declared hermanazo [big brother]. Once we began to speak it was clear that he had a lot to say regarding topics of race, transnationalism, politics, and music, and his initial reluctance gave way to a long and interesting conversation. Perhaps one of the most profound and shocking things that Lucho shared with me actually came after the interview. Lucho explained to me how there used to be a saying that costeñxs would tell

foreigners that arrived to La Costa: “Colombia es pa’lla.” [“Colombia is that way” or “Colombia is over there”]. He said this while motioning southward with his arm. When I asked for clarification, he explained that the pa’lla [over there] that he was referring to was the interior of the country, which includes Colombia’s three largest cities: Bogota, Medellin, and Cali. Lucho went on to explain how many costeñxs feel as if La Costa were a separate country and somehow not part of Colombia. This phrase also highlights how the Caribbean region is not perceived to be the Colombia that foreigners are looking for when they arrive in the country, hence the need to be redirected to the interior, where an imagined “real” Colombia exists. This sentiment was not unique to Lucho, and reflected ideas of regionalism that had been communicated to me during my two and a half years of living in the Caribbean region of the country.

In order to understand the complex identities of individuals living in Campo de la Cruz, we must first explore what it means to be costeñx, particularly how costeñidad [costeñx-ness] is performed and understood both as a part of and in conflict with national identity. We must also understand the racialized and diasporic nature of the costeñx identity. While costeños is generally the term used by individuals of La Costa to refer to themselves as a group, I am choosing to use the gender neutral “costeñx” or “costeñxs” (pronounced costeñe/costeñes) when referring to all costeñxs as a group in order to be inclusive of people who might not identify with a binary gender category and to not unfairly focus only costeño men. The “x” in costeñx therefore represents all potential endings (“o” for masculine, “a” for feminine, “e” for gender- neutral) and is a step away from only centering men. When referring to individuals who identify as male and female I will use the terms “costeño” and “costeña” respectively. It should be noted that most interviewees will use the masculine “costeño” (singular) and “costeños” (plural) as the default to refer to all costeñxs regardless of gender. Similarly, I will use other terms such as

retornadxs and cachacxs with the “x” ending rather than the masculine default. This is a political choice that is becoming more prominent in academia and is spreading in colloquial use, even if it has not yet become common in the context in which I work.

In this chapter I will argue that costeñx identity is understood as a marginal identity in relation to a national Colombian identity that is imagined in La Costa through the stereotype of the cachacx—which I will discuss in the following section (I use cachacx instead of cachaco for the same reasons that I use costeñx instead of costeño). I also argue that this identity is performed and constantly created and recreated through performance. To utilize a performative approach, I will borrow concepts from a variety of scholars such as Steven Mullaney, Judith

Butler, Erving Goffman, and Pierre Bourdieu. In the final section on race and the African

Diaspora I will borrow from race scholars such as Peter Wade, Elizabeth Aranda, Mara Viveros

Vigoya, and Tanya Saunders.

Before examining accounts related to identity it is important to note that individuals who identify as costeñx do not all share the same lived experiences and therefore may conceptualize their identity in diverse ways. We cannot, therefore, think of the costeñidad as a cohesive whole, or a thing. We cannot essentialize what it means to be costeñx, but rather discuss the ideas that surround the term costeñx that individuals readily identify with within this geographic region.

What it means to be costeñx is not static and varies depending on the context of the individuals who identify with said category. The accounts of costeñx identity that I present in this chapter are primarily those of working class individuals who live in the rural community of Campo de la

Cruz. It should also be noted that all of the individuals whose interviews were used for this chapter, in keeping with the theme of my examination, have lived for at least some period of their life in Venezuela and have therefore also been a part of a Colombian/costeñx diaspora in

addition to being part of the African diaspora, further complicating the hybridity of their identities.

Complicating traditional narratives surrounding costeñidad is one of my primary goals in this thesis. As we will see in this chapter and subsequent chapters, costeñxs are stereotyped within the Colombian national context as being lazy, loud, obnoxious, and constantly joyful

[alegre]. This oversimplification of costeñxs is a narrative that is harmful. It fails to capture the lived experiences and complexities of the people within the region and reinforces racist tropes based in Anti-Black sentiment. In order to do this complicate this narrative and stereotype, I will now share accounts of my time in Campo de la Cruz and the words of its people.

“Hay ese muro entre el costeño y el cachaco” [There’s that wall between the costeño and the cachaco]

Regional tensions were palpable to me in the weeks prior to the presidential election, particularly within the context of my host family. In the following excerpt from my field notes I record an encounter between my host-brother, Julio, his uncle Pedro, and myself in the living room of Julio’s house:

May 22nd, 2018: Around 10:30 AM

Julio and I were sitting at the table over breakfast talking about the upcoming elections. He was expressing to me how he wants to vote for Petro because every other candidate is the same as the former presidents. All they talk about is “la paz”[the peace deals] and the guerrilleros [guerrilla soldiers], which Julio doesn’t believe effects people on the coast very much. He thinks that costeñxs would benefit from new ideas and that Petro could offer them. The elderly Uncle Pedro must have overheard our conversation from his spot sitting and looking out of the window. In all of my time knowing Uncle Pedro, that’s normally what he does: sit quietly. He is kind with his nephew, Maxwell, talking, playing, and watching over him, but I have rarely heard him converse with anyone else. I get the impression that it isn’t because of rudeness, but just because he doesn’t like talking. The political conversation changed that. He came over to me and began telling me about how Petro was a communist and how, even if he wins, he couldn’t be effective in Colombia because of opposition. He warned that under Petro Colombia would become another Venezuela, but that the poor eat up communism like idiots because they think it will benefit them. He went on like this for a while.

I listened politely, although I felt slightly uncomfortable and really wanted him to stop ranting. I kept looking over at Julio, who was laughing quietly. Pedro never stopped looking at me during his rant, as if he really wanted to communicate his point to me. After several long minutes of this, Julio chimed in and started arguing against Uribe and his followers like Duque, also while looking at me. When Pedro responded to Julio’s argument, he responded while looking directly at me. I realized that I had become the battleground for this political disagreement. I don’t think they looked at each other the entire time. Finally Pedro lost energy and left. Julio and I finished the conversation by talking about how benefits for the poor and working class people are a good thing.

Three interesting things jumped out to me from this conversation: First, it demonstrated the trend for locals in Campo to use the crisis in Venezuela and the perceived failure of Maduro’s government as a point of reference during the 2018 Colombian presidential elections. According to this mentality, the failure of the leftist government in the neighboring country meant that any attempt to establish a leftist government in Colombia would inevitably lead to similar ruin. I believe that this mentality was particularly prevalent in Campo because of the large population of locals who had lived in Caracas and experienced first-hand the terrible results of the economic crisis. This included individuals like Uncle Pedro.

Second, this conversation made me reflect on my own status as an outsider within the community. Both Julio and Uncle Pedro were seemingly debating against one another by using me as the battleground. A likely interpretation of this is that they saw me as a neutral observer, someone whom they could win over to their cause. This idea was likely fostered by my behavior within the field, where I was slow to take sides politically and quick to claim my ignorance regarding Colombian politics. Although when questioned enough by local friends, I would normally share that I usually voted for leftist candidates and that I was personally hoping that the progressive Petro would win.

The third and perhaps most interesting thing that came out of this conversation were

Julio’s comments regarding costeñx interests as opposed to the national interest on topics such as

Colombia’s civil conflict, which he sees as insignificant to the majority of people living in the

Caribbean region. Julio and others were excited by the fact that Petro was himself a costeño from the Córdoba department. Many of Petro’s supporters saw the other candidate, Duque, as just another candidate from Bogotá who had little interest in the well-being and issues that pertained to costeñxs. Julio felt that people on the coast were underrepresented nationally and that they rarely saw benefits from national programs that focused on a civil conflict that is not related to the daily lives and interests of most contemporary costeñxs. To put it simply, he wasn’t ready for yet another cachacx president that didn’t have costeñx interests in mind. In this way, he articulated a perceived political marginality of costeñxs and the Caribbean region within

Colombia’s national context. Julio and other Petro supporters in the community were disappointed, but not surprised, when Duque won the presidency. To them, four more years of a status quo that saw costeñxs on the economic and political margins of Colombian society was nothing to look forward to.

In thinking about this dynamic, I remembered how in Steven Mullaney’s The Place of the

Stage the author explores the marginal nature of theater in Elizabethan England by looking at communities called the “Liberties” located on the periphery of the city of London.

The spectacles mounted in the Liberties were tensed by ambivalence and ambiguity; the representation of society they made was one that revealed the gaps and seams, the limits and contradictions of the social fabric… Manifesting the authority of the city, London’s ancient wall defined the community and proclaimed it, in a language of mortar and stone, to be an integral and coherent whole. This proclamation of authority, however, was hedged by contradiction – by the Liberties themselves (Mullaney, 1995, p.39)

Throughout the text the author shows how the Liberties were both part of the city and not a part of the city. By creating a marginal zone, otherness could be accounted for, included, and controlled to some extent whereas complete expulsion could lead to a lack of control. That which existed on the periphery, which had to be both included and marginalized, represented a certain

type of moral pollution that had to be controlled by those within the center of power. According to Mullaney the margins constitute a certain type of stage which also allows for great creativity.

If we think of the Caribbean region of Colombia—the geographical region associated with costeñx identity—as a marginal stage, then what is the center against which it is marginalized? If the Liberties are marginal to London. Similarly, from my research, I began to get a sense that the

Caribbean region of Colombia is marginal in relation to the interior of the country, something that I also saw echoed in the work of Peter Wade.

To costeñxs in the Caribbean region, the interior of the country is associated with the stereotype of the cachacx. I argue that the construction of the cachacx is essential to a dichotomy that helps to give costeñidad meaning particularly within, but also outside of Colombia. The term cachacx, as it is used in the Caribbean region, is most-commonly used to refer to any Colombian who is not from the Caribbean region, primarily those from the interior of the country. This definition is not universal, however, and several costeñxs that I have spoken with over the years have said that, although most costeñxs use it as a blanket term to refer to any Colombian who isn’t costeñx, it is more appropriately used to refer to individuals from the capital. Looking at it in performances terms, the cachacx represents someone who performs on a more central stage.

It is interesting to note that cachacx also refers to individuals from the pacific coast of the country, although perhaps this idea isn’t universal, nor does it include everyone from the pacific coast. The following excerpt from a conversation with Julio highlights interesting contradictions in the use of the term cachacx:

Wednesday, 5/16/2018: Salas House in Campo de la Cruz

I asked Julio once again about Santeria practices in Campo and if he could put me in touch with the Santero that he had mentioned before. He clarified again that he’s not really sure if the man is a Santero but that he knows spells and about spiritual things. He mentions that the man is a Cachaco, although he isn’t sure from what area necessarily. This opens up another conversation about Cachacxs

where I ask Julio to clarify if he distinguishes between Cachacxs from Bogotá and Paisas from Medellin. He says that some people distinguish the two but that to him and other Costeñxs, a Cachacx is any person who isn’t from the coast. After questioning, I confirmed what I had already believed which was that Costeñxs included people from Cordoba, Sucre, Bolivar, Atlantico, Magdalena, Cesar, and La Guajira. I started to mention other regions such as Antioquia, Bogota, Santander, and he responded that they are all Cachacxs. Curiously, I asked if people from Cali were Cachacxs. He said that they were. To make things even more interesting, and to get at what I perceived to be a racialized regionalism, I asked whether people from Chocó were Cachacxs. It didn’t take him more than a second or two to respond that they were not Cachacxs and started to say something that had to do with them being Palenqueros but didn’t fully develop this thought. He seemed pensive. This piqued my interest. I asked why they weren’t Cachacxs and he said that it was because of the way that they spoke. I thought that this was strange because people from other regions of the country have distinct accents as well but are indeed labeled as Cachacxs while Choqueños (being from a region that is predominantly Black and imagined as such) aren’t. He seemed at a loss for how to explain it. I asked if a Black person from Medellin or Bogota came to the Coast, if they would be considered to be Cachacxs. He said that they would, that it doesn’t have to do with race but with the way that one speaks. He gave me the example of a white Costeñx who people might see and initially think is from the interior, but that as soon as he starts to talk and uses local slang like “eche, nojoda” (a typical phrase associated with costeñxs) people will immediately know he isn’t a Cachacx, while a Black person from the interior who talks like a Cachacx would be recognized as one. I still remain curious about the Chocó question and if Cachacx-ness is really based in the way that someone talks and isn’t racialized in some way. I also find interesting, if not surprising, his immediate connection of Chocó to Palenqueros.

In this conversation, I tried to clarify whether people from the Pacific coast, particularly Cali and

Chocó, are also considered cachacxs despite not being from the interior of the country. In his response Julio was clear that people from Cali were also cachacxs, falling in line with the use of cachacx as a blanket term for all Colombians that aren’t from the Caribbean region. I followed up with the question about Chocó, commonly considered to be an African Diasporic and Black region in Colombia, in order to get at a hunch that I had that cachacx wasn’t a strictly colorblind term. His conclusion that they were not cachacxs was based on their way of speaking, but as I wrote in the field notes, every region in Colombia has different speech patterns. What is it about speech patterns from Chocó that make its people seem to not be cachacx? This is a question that

I didn’t have the chance to answer through this conversation, but that I would like to address in future research.

Julio also initially linked people from the Chocó department in the Pacific region, to the maroon community of Palenque in the Caribbean region, only two hours by bus from Campo de la Cruz. I will write more on Palenque in my discussion of the costeñx identity as part of the

African Diaspora, but for the moment it is important to note that Palenque is a nearby community that is associated with Blackness and the African Diaspora. This association leads me to believe that Julio was not only relating the distant department of Chocó with Blackness as he understood it from the nearby municipality of Palenque, but he was recognizing it as opposed to

Cachacx-ness. This still doesn’t answer the question of what it means to be cachacx. Many interviewees referenced cachacxs when asked about regionalism in Colombia, and were quick to share their views on the cachacx/costeñx dichotomy

Zenith was 48 years old and was another participant in my interview who was an extended member of my host family. She was also born and raised in Campo de la Cruz and identifies as Afrodescendiente. She was from the neighborhood “La Esperanza,” and lived just a street behind our house in “La Pica,” towards the outskirts of town. She was reluctant to participate in the interview as she felt that she wasn’t an expert on the subject of music and ethnicity, but also engaged in a long conversation once we got started. She has light brown skin and on the day of the interview she wore her black hair pulled back into a ponytail. In our interview she said the following when questioned about whether regionalism exists in Colombia:

Zenith: Los cachacos en su mente, en su mente, ellos… discriminan a los costeños, porque ellos están como divididos en dos partes. Ellos como que se creen de otro país y la costa es otro país.

James: ¿Sí?

Zenith: Sí

James: Los tratan así como si fueran…

Zenith: O sea… no… Porque eso se ve. Eso se conoce… Lo que pasa es que el cachaco que viene aquí es aceptado porque Campo de la Cruz, parece mentira, es algo como que… Después de este pueblo hay otro…Con eso te digo todo… Aquí viene la gente y se recibe como si fuese campera.

James: Ajá…

Zenith: Pero aquí el costeño que se ve para allá, para… para Bogotá parece como si estuviera en otro país. Que yo tengo a una amiga que me ha dicho que no es lo que dicen. Que allá también es duro.

James: Que los tratan diferente por ser-

Zenith: Sí, sí.

James: ¿Costeño?

Zenith: Costeño.

James: ¿Y qué piensan ellos de los costeños?

Zenith: No sé porque eso ya es pregunta personal de ellos, porque eso es algo que ellos tienen que sentir por la costa. No sé, no sé…

James: Pero es interesante que dijiste que parece como si fuera otro país.

Zenith: Exacto porque parece como si fuera otro país porque mira, este, porque como ellos van, siendo Colombia, siendo Colombia ellos van a hacer la división. Porque si tú ves a americanos yo creo que todos se ven como americanos, entonces no, aquí no. Aquí el costeño (pause) Trata… el de la costa como personas que no están civilizadas y es al contrario. Aquí el costeño está civilizado. Aquí el costeño está civilizado porque el cachaco no está civilizado. El cachaco civilizado ya son los de la cámara y eso porque tú hablas con un cachaco que no sabe hablar… si… el cachaco ese del monte no sabe hablar. Y aquí no, aquí tu puedes ir a un monte y la persona te sabe [hablar]… Entonces para mí hay dos [países]. Hay ese muro entre el costeño y el cachaco.

*****

Zenith: Cachacos in their mind, in their mind they… discriminate against Costeños, because they are like divided in two parts. It’s like they think of themselves as being from another country and the coast is another country.

James: Yeah?

Zenith: Yeah

James: They treat them as if they were—

Zenith: Well…no… it’s because you can see it. It’s known… What happens is that the cachaco that comes here is accepted because Campo de la Cruz, it seems like a lie, is something like… After this pueblo there is another… That says it all… People come here and they are received as if they were campera (locals from Campo).

James: Uh-huh…

Zenith: But here the costeño that goes there to, to… to Bogotá seems as if they were in another country. I have a friend (feminine) that has told me that it isn’t all that they say it is. That there it’s also difficult.

James: That they treat them differently for being—

Zenith: Yes, yes.

James: ¿Costeño?

Zenith: Costeño.

James: And what do they [cachacos] think about costeños?

Zenith: I don’t know because that’s a personal question for them, because it’s something that they have to feel towards the coast. I don’t know, I don’t know…

James: But it’s interesting that you said that it seems as if it were a different country.

Zenith: “Exactly, because it seems as if it were another country because look, umm, why are they going to, being Colombia, being Colombia they are going to make the division. Because if you see Americans (referring to US Americans) I think you all see each other as Americans, but no, not here. Here the costeño [pause] treats… One from the coast as people who aren’t civilized and it’s to the contrary. Here the costeño is civilized. Here the costeño is civilized because the cachaco isn’t civilized. The civilized cachacos are those that are on camera and if you talk with a cachaco that doesn’t know how to talk… yeah… those cachacos from the farm don’t know how to talk. And here no, here you can go to a farm and the person knows [how to talk to you]… So, to me there are two [countries]. There’s that wall between the costeño and the cachaco.

Here, we can see several themes that were familiar to me from my interactions with others in the region. The idea that cachacxs are well received on the coast and that locals are poorly received in the capital is quite common, and related to ideas of hospitality, a trait that costeñxs are strongly associated with. It is interesting to note that when asked about regionalism Zenith

immediately discusses relations between La Costa and the capital. In fact, while cachacx is frequently used as a blanket term for all Colombians who aren’t costeñxs, it seems to be used more specifically to refer to Colombians from Bogota—also known as “rolos”—in her speech.

Cachacxs from the capital are perceived as being cold, serious, and hardworking. According to some, they are also believed to think themselves superior to costeñxs. The perception in Campo is that cachacxs think of costeñxs as being backwards, or “uncivilized,” as Zenith explains.

These populations are juxtaposed against one another via a series of stereotypes. In discussing language, Zenith hints at the topic of how costeñxs are perceived to speak poorly or an incorrect dialect of Spanish. She turns this around on cachacxs, stating that the only cachacxs who speak well are those that are represented in the media, and that cachacxs from rural areas might speak with a dialect that she perceives to be inferior to the dialect of rural costeñxs. The national media is another realm where costeñxs are perceived to be underrepresented. Julio often complained about how costeñx soccer players, even if they were just as good of players, didn’t get as much airtime as cachacx players like James Rodriguez. Many costeñxs that I spoke with understood their position in relation to cachacxs within Colombia as marginal. Cachacxs are both geographically and metaphorically concentrated within the center of the country, and costeños both geographically and metaphorically on the margins, the periphery. This marginality, reflected in perceptions of media representation, political representation, linguistic inferiority, personal bias against costeñxs, also has an economic component that will be discussed as a reason for migration to Venezuela in the following chapter. For now, I would like to turn to how costeñidad is performed through speech and other habits, and then close by discussing the diasporic and racialized nature of the costeñx identity.

“Yo no me voy a refiná” [I’m not going to refine myself]

As Judith Butler argues in “Gender Troubles,” gender identities aren’t things or substances that exist by themselves, but rather, they are in a constant process or becoming, created and recreated through performance:

Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of gender as a constituted social temporality. Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief. (Butler, 1999, p.179)

That is to say that in performing our gender, we are in a constant process of creating and becoming who we are (Butler, 1999). I would like to apply this aspect of becoming and performance to the regional identity of costeñxs. I believe that the costeñx identity is in line with performative interpretations of identity, as was articulated by individuals in interviews and through my field observations, particularly through speech patterns. While costeñxs may not always try to follow stereotypes that they perceive to represent them in all cases, I have observed that certain performative aspects of costeñidad are indeed embraced and may relate to what they perceive to be cachacx stereotypes. It is also important to note the racialized nature of the performance of costeñidad and how it relates to the African Diaspora, which I will explore in the final section of this chapter. By exploring the constant becoming of the costeñx identity and the way in which costeñxs are economically, politically, and racially marginalized both within and without of Colombia, I hope to prepare myself to delve into the affective realm of the costeñx identity in the coming chapters using work on affect from queer studies.

Julio, one of my best friends and self-proclaimed big brother, has known me since my first days in Campo in 2015. He is a tall heavyset man with dark-skin and a bushy black beard.

The day of the interview he is wearing one of his favorite shirts, a sports jersey with the Punisher logo that I had gotten for him as a gift while visiting Florida during Peace Corps Service, and a flat-billed baseball cap that is pulled down close to his eyebrows. It’s my first interview, which was an intentional decision because of how comfortable I felt talking to Julio, and because I knew that he had a lot to say about music. He is, after all, the creator and host of a pirate radio station that he operates out of his home. On this station he plays all vallenato music, and is provided a small amount of income from several local sponsors who have ads on his station.

Julio’s primary source of income is fixing electronics that are brought to his home, and loading up people’s hard drives and flash drives with his impressive digital library of vallenato music that he has acquired over the years. With this money he supports his partner, Lettis, and their two sons Meison (14 years old) and Maxwell (2 years old). During the summer of 2018 Lettis also has a temporary job with DANE [Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística/

National Administrative Department of Statistics] to conduct Colombia’s national census in the municipality, but normally Julio provides the only source of income and the family struggles to make ends meet.

Julio told me that they belong to Strata 1, which is the lowest income bracket in

Colombia’s economic Strata categories and comprises 22% of the national population (DANE).

Julio was born in Caracas, Venezuela and is legally a Colombo-Venezuelan with dual citizenship, but identifies Campo de la Cruz as his home. Racially, Julio is wary of using the term Afrodescendiente to describe himself as he feels (1) that he doesn’t understand what it means or his connection to African culture, and (2) he sees it as a political term that is only used

by people in the community to get group benefits. Julio does claim to be moreno—a racial category in Latin America that implies someone has brown or dark brown skin—and acknowledges that his ancestors were likely African. He also expressed a feeling of identification with others in the African Diaspora, namely US African Americans and US Black culture as represented through media that he was exposed to. When discussing race, Julio denied the existence of racism in Colombia, but had a lot to say about regionalism and the cachacx that we discussed in the previous section:

Julio: El cachaco, el se siente y se cree como superior… Más que el costeño, ya. Y de repente el costeño no se siente como más superior. O sea porque es para mí es como mas, es como mas espontaneo en sus cosas, ya. El… por ejemplo… el dialecto mío yo no me voy a… por ejemplo ahora que estoy hablando contigo yo no me voy a… a refiná. ‘No que, la palabra e “verde” yo voy a decir “ved-de” porque yo soy costeño, ya. Así que la sé pronunciar yo. En cambio de pronto viene un cacacho y me escucha hablá me va a decí “corroncho,” yo soy corroncho, ya. Él, el si puede sé y él se cree que es más fino.

Jimmy: Ajá

Julio: Pero no es así… ya. Ahí lo que nos separa nosotros de repente es el dialecto. Pero somos iguales, Colombianos, o sea el por ser blanco o por ser cachaco no va sé más que yo. Eso es mentira, ya, eso lo tienen ellos aquí en la mente.

Jimmy: Ah, ya.

Julio: Como regionalismo. Y los cachacos siempre van a sé los que van hasta arriba.

*****

Julio: The cachaco, he feels and believes himself like superior… More than the costeño, okay. Perhaps the costeño doesn’t feel himself to be superior. Like, because to me he’s like more, he’s like more spontaneous in his things, okay? He, for example, my dialect, I’m not going to… for example, we are talking with you and I’m not going to refine myself. “No, the word is “verde,” [green] I’m going to say “ved- de” (same word spoken in a regional accent) because I’m costeño, okay? That’s how I know how to pronounce it. So let’s say a Cachaco comes and he hears me talk he’s going to call me a “corroncho,” I’m a corroncho, okay? He, he can be and believe himself to be more refined.

Jimmy: Uh-huh.

Julio: But it doesn’t go like that… okay? There what separates us maybe is the dialect. But we are equal, Colombians, like he by being white or by being cachaco isn’t better than me. That’s a lie, okay? That’s what they have here in their mind.

Jimmy: Oh, okay.

Julio: Like regionalism. And the cachacos are always going to be the ones who come out on top.

This quote expresses several interesting themes. First, he is reaffirming a perceived superiority complex of cachacxs that was discussed in the previous section. Afterwards, he gets to the core of the linguistic performativity of costeñidad by discussing his regional accent, which he is very proud of. He recognizes that cachacxs may perceive his accent as inferior or incorrect, but he affirms that he won’t change his way of speaking for anyone. He is proud to leave the “r” off of the end of words, to not pronounce the “r” when it comes in the middle of the word, and for cutting off the “s” at the end of a word. These are all speech patterns that are widespread in

La Costa, and that immediately signify “costeñx” to individuals from the interior of the country who hear them. Julio then explains how, by hearing this, cachacxs are going to perceive him as being “corroncho.”

Corroncho is term that may roughly translate to obnoxious, but is used in various ways.

Outside of the coast, it may be used to refer to specifically costeños. Within the coast it may be used to refer to cultureless, rude, or working class costeñxs. Working class costeñxs, from my observations and conversations with others, are much more likely to use a strong regional dialect like the one that Julio uses in the interviews, and because of this, to be interpreted as corronchos.

Middle and upper class costeñxs that belong to higher strata such as 3 or 4, may be referred to as

“pupi” which might roughly translate to “bougie” or someone who tries to be fancy and feels superiority to lower classes. Pupi costeñxs seem be less likely to use this strong regional accent or associate themselves with other actions that might be perceived as corroncho. If we can think

of a costeñx/cachacx dichotomy as a form of national division, we can think of corroncho/pupi as a regional form of class-based division that even exists on the municipal level.

In Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste the author explores ways in which the upper classes distinguish themselves from the lower classes in France through various performances such as the way that they eat, dress, decorate their homes, listen to music, etc… In the introduction he highlights the importance of these tastes by stating:

Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed. (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 6)

Bourdieu highlights how these tastes are used to classify individuals within a hierarchy of high culture and low culture. Using this concept, we can see how the idea of the “corroncho” that is associated with costeñxs in general—but particularly working class costeñxs—is synonymous with low culture, with the ugly and vulgar that Bourdieu mentions. Working class costeñxs may perform this corroncho-ness through dialect, as Julio highlights in his interview, or through ways of dressing, eating, and listening to music. Popular costeñx regional music such as vallenato, for example, was considered vulgar in its early years to both upper class costeñxs and cachacxs from the interior of the country before it was appropriated by those very same upper class individuals and became a genre associated with Colombian national heritage (Wade, 2000).

Despite the fact that many costeñxs, and particularly working class costeñxs, recognize their identity as marginal, they are proud of the way that they speak, eat, listen to music, and live, and, like Julio, have no intention of changing in order to impress anyone. As Bourdieu explains:

“Esthetic stances… incosmetics, clothing or home decoration are opportunities to experience or assert ones’ position in social space, as a rank to be upheld, or a distance to be kept” (1984, p.57). In this way, many costeñxs embrace the distinctions that are made

between themselves and cachacxs and actively create and recreate this distance. When costeñxs try to act in a way that is considered to be “pupi”—associated with the middle or upper class— they are oftentimes interpreted as being inauthentic by working class costeñxs. As Goffman states in the Presentation of Self in Everyday Life: “Sometimes when we ask whether a fostered impression is true or false we really mean to ask whether or not the performer is authorized to give the performance in question, and we are not primarily concerned with the actual performance itself” (1956, p.38). Some may see this type of behavior as affected and a way for costeñxs to distance themselves from their own regional marginality and identity.

With an understanding of the performed nature of costeñx identity, I believe that it is also important to acknowledge how this type of identity is also racialized. As I stated in the literature review, I approach this population as both a part of the African Diaspora and hybrid—a move which is based on the participants’ interview responses. In the following chapter, I will attempt to further frame the costeñx identity by exploring its racialized and diasporic qualities as discussed by Colombo-Venezuelans in Campo de la Cruz.

CHAPTER 4 THE DIASPORIC AND RACIALIZED NATURE OF COSTEÑIDAD

One thing that I found interesting while living in Campo was the way in which people spoke about race. Interview participants were fairly divided when it came to denying or accepting the fact of racism in Colombia and Venezuela. Much more consistent were the ways in which people used racialized language to discuss regional discrimination towards costeñxs. And whether interviewees identified as Afrodescendiente or not, almost all acknowledged some type of connection to Africa. In this chapter I will argue that the costeñx identity is not colorless, and is in fact a racialized regional identity that is understood as both hybrid and as related to

Blackness and the African Diaspora. By doing this, I hope to build on our understanding of the performance nad marginality of costeñidad from the previous chapter and contextualize the experiences of my research informants by looking at race and diaspora. Only by understanding the complexities of costeñx identity will we be able to delve into the affective realm of music in the final chapter of this work and complicate prominent narratives of the costeñx alegre. I will now turn to interviews with costeñxs in order to analyze the way that they talks about race and how it relates to their identities.

“Es otra forma de racismo.” [It’s another form of racism.]

Despite denying racism, Julio talks also talks about race when referring to reasons why a cachacx isn’t necessarily better than him: “Pero somos iguales, colombianos, o sea él por ser blanco o por ser cachaco no va sé más que yo” [Translation: But we are equal, Colombians, like he, by being white or by being cachacx, isn’t better than me. That’s a lie, okay?] In the following interview excerpt, Julio also uses language of race to discuss how costeños are stereotyped and perceived by cachacxs.

Julio: Siempre sea cachaco, sea paisa (del departamento Antioquia), sea lo que sea, siempre le van a tirá al costeño, siempre al costeño. Siempre lo van a vé como, por ejemplo

como… Como el blanco cuando es racista lo ve como negro pero no en racismo sino en… en… regionalismo, ya. Aquí se ve mucho el regionalismo.

Jimmy: Entonces no importa si el costeño sea blanco, sea negro, moreno, trigueño…

Julio: Sea blanco sea negro, lo van a ver como costeño.

Jimmy: ¿Chino? Lo van a ver como costeño.

Julio: Claro, lo van a ver como costeño, como si fuera corroncho como si fuera… como si fuera jaque, como si fuera bullero, fiestero, parrandero, ya.

*****

Julio: Always, whether they be cachaco, paisa (from the Antioquia department), whatever they might be, they are always going to put down the costeño, always the costeño. They are always going to see him [the costeño] like, for example like… How a White person when they’re racist sees a Black person, but not racism but… but… regionalism. Here you can see lots of regionalism.

Jimmy: So it doesn’t matter if the costeño is white, black, brown, trigueña (between white and brown)…

Julio: Whether they’re white, whether they’re black, they are going to see them as a costeño.

Jimmy: Chinese? They are going to see them as a costeño.

Julio: Clearly, they are going to see them as a costeño, as if they were a corroncho as if they were… as if they were rude as if they were noisy, party-lovers, okay?

In his speech, Julio both distinguishes but relates regionalism to racism. By using language of race to compare regionalism to racism, we can see the racialized aspect of the regionalism that is perceived against costeñxs. Julio explains that costeñxs are perceived to be a certain way because of the region that they are from. The costeñx stereotypes that he highlights are common ones. Costeñxs are often associated with loudness, parties, obnoxiousness, rudeness, laziness, and happiness. I believe that this is a good example of ethnoracism as explained by sociologist Elizabeth Aranda: “Ethnoracism” captures processes of racialization that may be invoked by the intersection of various markers of social identities such as colourism (phenotype and other physical racial markers), ethnicity (e.g. culture, including language and religion), and

national origin (including stereotypes related to the nation of origin’s position in the capitalist world system)” (2017, p.2236). With this definition we can see ways in which racism, or ethnoracism, can move beyond just skin color to include cultural markers such as, in the case of costeñxs, accent. In this way, race or region identity is not only something that you are born with, it is actively performed through speech. This ethnoracism or cultural racism against costeñxs can also have effects as described in the following excerpt:

Julio: Hay costeños que cuando van a la capital, a Bogotá, a veces pasan trabajo, cuando están buscando vivienda, están buscando apartamento. “¿De dónde eres tú?” “No, soy costeño” “No, yo a los costeños no les alquilo.” No les quieren alquilar la vivienda. Por el hecho de sé costeño, ya. Y no sé qué pasará ahí.

*****

Julio: There are costeños that when they go to the capital, to Bogota, sometimes they can’t find work, when they are looking for lodging, looking for an apartment: “Where are you from?” “No, I’m a costeño” “No, I don’t rent to costeños.” They don’t want to rent them a place to living. Because of the fact that they are costeño, okay? I don’t know what would happen there.

Here Julio presents an example of the difficulties that costeñxs may face in Colombia’s capital that Zenith also discussed in her interview. This demonstrates yet another way in which regionalism in Colombia may act as a form of racism that need not be based in skin color, but in region of origin. That being said, I also argue that this type of regional discrimination is based in

Anti-Black racism that is being mapped on to costeñx culture, which is both African Diasporic and hybrid.

Some interviewees were quick to relate regional identity to skin color or racial identity.

One such example is provided by Edson, a 27 year-old hip-hop artist who is originally from

Campo, but who spent the majority of his life in a Colombo-Venezuelan neighborhood, La

Parrilla, within the largest favela of Caracas (and possibly of the Americas): Petare. I interviewed

Edson on my final day of research in Campo, and I had met him several weeks earlier at a

community event centered on music-making with the elderly. On the day of our interview he wore a plain white shirt and a backwards white cap. Edson smiled a lot when we spoke and his youthful face showed traces of Five-O’clock shadow. One of the first things I remember about

Edson is that he has a large and intricate tattoo of an owl on his forearm. Edson identifies as

Negro, Afrodescendiente, and feels a connection with other individuals who are part of the

African Diaspora. He had the following to say when I asked if regionalism is another form of racism:

Jimmy: ¿Es otra forma de racismo?

Edson: Es otra forma de racismo ¿Por qué? Porque si estamos en una sola nación y yo soy costeño y yo me dirijo a Bogotá, o a Medellín o allá entonces lo que los cachacos como son blancos y eso entonces ya yo soy negro y hablo costeño entonces ya comienzan a como discriminar a la persona como mirarla así como que “A no él es costeño, igual los costeños, que los costeños con los cachacos si vienen acá también “No que él es cachaco” y ya como que lo agarran a la mala o y tal “no, el es cachaco” y entonces como que se da una forma de racismo porque si tu no conoces a la persona y no estás con la persona como puedes odiar a una persona sin conocerla?

Jimmy: Eso sí…

Edson: Entonces ya lo que es es un racismo, una forma de racismo.

*****

Jimmy: Is it another form of racism?

Edson: It’s another form of racism. Why? Because if we are in just one nation and I’m costeño and I head to Bogota or to Medellin or there then, what the cachacos, as they are White and all that, and I’m Black and speak like a costeño, then they start to discriminate against the person, like look at them like “Oh no, he’s costeño”. Also costeños, costeños with cachacos who come here are also like “No, he is a cachaco” and all that, like they take it the wrong way and can say, “no he’s cachaco” and then it’s like a form of racism because if you don’t know the person and you aren’t with the person how can you hate the person without knowing them?

Jimmy: That’s true.

Edson: Then yeah, what it is is racism, a form of racism.

Edson associates cachacxs with Whiteness—as Julio also does in both my field notes and in his interview—and costeñxs with Blackness.

“¡Pero nosotros vinimos de ese lado!” [But we came from those parts!]

In the context of Campo de la Cruz, the majority of interviewees who participated in this project did identify as Afrodescendiente and/or Morena/o, and suggested that race might be connected to geography on the coast. Two interviewees affirmed that they perceived Campo to be an Afrodescendiente community, while others were more ambiguous in their responses, even if they themselves identified as Afrodescendiente. What is unquestioned is Campo’s proximity to spaces that are perceived to be Afrodescendiente, such as the neighboring department, Bolivar, which is just a 10 minute motorcycle ride from Campo. Historically Afrodescendiente communities such as San Basilio de Palenque and Cartagena are both within the Bolivar department that sits so close to Campo.

In the following excerpt, Arnaldo, a 54 year old local of Campo who has spent many years living in Venezuela and now lives on the same street as us (La Pica), discusses his racial identification and makes some interesting statements about the geography of race and the

African Diaspora:

Arnaldo: Me voy a inclinar es más bien a… a Afro, Afro más o menos.

Jimmy: Tienes raíces de, de…

Arnaldo: Exacto. (Pause) Porque mira, mis abuelos son de allá de Bolívar y de ese lado fue que vino, que vinieron los negros.

Jimmy: Ajá

Arnaldo: Por este lado. (Motions Southward) Y mi abuelo paterno… e…. de parte de mi mama es de Bolívar y por allí hay muchos negros.

Jimmy: ¿Sí?

Arnaldo: Sí, entonces sería Afrodescendiente.

Jimmy: Ah ya. ¿Y eso es lo mismo, ser negro y ser Afrodescendiente?

Arnaldo: No, coño... Negro, negro, sería coño, digo yo, de la cultura de allá de África, una cuestión, (pause) ¡Pero nosotros vinimos de ese lado!

Jimmy: Aja, aja.

Arnaldo: Porque cuando ellos [españoles] los trajeron [africanos] para ser este, esclavos aquí, ah, por eso se quedaron y mezclaron las razas.

Jimmy: Aja

Arnaldo: ¿Ya? Entonces me imagino que, que, si depende de esa cuestión de allá.

Jimmy: Ah, ya, ya.

Arnaldo: Claro porque yo vi un largometraje que se llama “raíces” y ellos venían de allá, y eso fue una mezcla con los españoles y esa cuestión cuando estos carajos trabajaban a las esclavas, ah? Y ahí fue cuando vino la mezcla.

*****

Arnaldo: I’m going to incline more towards, Afro, Afro more or less.

Jimmy: You have roots from, from…

Arnaldo: Exactly. (Pause) Because look, my grandparents are from there, from Bolivar and that’s where Black people came from.

Jimmy: Uh-huh

Arnaldo: From this side (Motions Southward) My paternal grandfather, umm, from my mother’s side is from Bolivar and over there, there are many black people.

Jimmy: Yeah?

Arnaldo: Yeah, so I would be Afrodescendiente.

Jimmy: Oh, okay. And is it the same thing to be Black and to be Afrodescendiente?

Arnaldo: No, shit... Black Black, would be, man, I say, from the culture from there from Africa, or something (pause). But we came from those parts!

Jimmy: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Arnaldo: Because when they [presumably Spaniards] brought them [presumably Africans] here to be, umm, slaves, uh, because of that they stayed here and the races mixed.

Jimmy: Uh-huh.

Arnaldo: You know? So, I imagine that, that, yes it depends on that issue from over there.

Jimmy: Oh, okay, okay.

Arnaldo: Of course because I saw a movie that’s called “Roots” and they came from over there, and that was a mix with the Spaniards and all that, when these guys [Spaniards] worked the female slaves, huh? And that’s where the mix came from.

In this dialogue Arnaldo identifies as Afrodescendiente because of his familial connection to grandparents who came to Campo from the neighboring department, Bolivar, typically imagined to be Black and Afrodescendiente. When I ask him if being Afrodescendiente is the same as being Black, however, he is quick to distinguish Blackness as being directly from Africa, before acknowledging that “nosotros” [we] came from there. I am unsure of the “we” that he was referring to in that statement. It could have been “we” (his family), it could have been “we”

(people from Campo), or even “we” (people from this region). What is certain is that a diasporic connection to Africa is acknowledged. This identification as Afrodescendiente, in Arnaldo’s view, does not strictly mean African, but rather foregrounds African heritage as part of a hybrid racial heritage. He talks about the history of mestizaje and implies the sexual violence carried out by the Spanish men against African women by referencing the US mini-series “Roots,” explaining that this is where the Afrodescendiente mix came from. It is interesting to note that three other interviewees from my sample who also identified as Afrodescendiente acknowledged this diasporic identity as one that is hybrid or mixed, but they still choose to highlight their

African heritage rather than their Spanish heritage in speech, something that I would like to explore in future research.

Based on the ways in which participants have discussed race and regionalism I argue that, in the case of costeñxs, the geography of race and the imagining of the African Diaspora as being

located in the Caribbean coast and certain parts of the Pacific coast (like Chocó, mentioned earlier) leads to a particular racialized regional identity that is associated with both hybridity and

Blackness. While mestizaje and racial mixing is commonly acknowledged, cultural performances by costeñxs—such as their manner of speaking and other perceived stereotypes—act as proxies for Blackness even in the absence of a dark skin tone.

In Race and Ethnicity in Latin America Peter Wade, a British anthropologist whose work focuses on race and ethnicity in Colombia writes that:

If ethnicity invokes location in a cultural geography, it may be the case that the phenotypical traits used in racial discourse are distributed across that geography: in Colombia, for example, ‘blacks’ are located in certain parts of the country. (Wade, 2010, p.20)

The parts of the country that he is referencing in this excerpt are predominantly coastal regions, namely the Caribbean coast and Chocó. Within the Caribbean region certain areas may be more strongly associated with the African Diaspora (such as Palenque, Cartagena, and the entire

Bolivar department). Campo, which is within two hours of both Palenque and Cartagena, and just a 15 minute motorcycle ride from Bolivar department, is located within a predominantly

African Diasporic region. But individuals may choose to distance themselves from Blackness or the Afrodescendiente categorization in favor of other intermediary racial categories such as morena/o.

In Cuban Underground Hip-Hop, Tanya Saunders dedicates an entire chapter to outlining the spectrum of racial classifications in Cuba and shines light on some of the ways that these intermediary racial classifications function. When writing about Mulatas/os, Saunders states:

By living in the liminal space of not being Black, mulat@s are able to enjoy some of the social, though not always economic, privileges afforded to those who are not Black, as Blackness is the fulcrum of race thinking and racism in the Americas. (2015, p. 151)

Here, Saunders is clear in stating that, while economic privileges may not be extended to those

who are racialized or self-identify as Mulatas/os, but that they may indeed be able to benefit from certain social privileges. Saunders continues:

As many mulat@s argue, however, they continue to face racial discrimination, with no evidence in the post–Special Period that they benefit economically from their mulat@ status. Some who are classified as mulat@ may experience feelings of marginalization because they are not completely accepted by either Blacks or Whites. (p.145)

Saunders clearly explains how some members of the intermediary category of Mulata/o do not see themselves as benefitting economically from their racial classification and in some cases they may have more anxiety due to not feeling accepted by either group. Wade seems to echo similar thoughts to Saunders in Race and Ethnicity in Latin America when discussing racial categories in

Brazil. He explains: “The intermediacy of the pardos is not necessarily due to them receiving favourable treatment; instead, I argue, it may due to a structural linkage between processes of upward mobility and processes of whitening” (2010, p.76).

I argue that, in Campo, the tendency to identify as morena/o might mirror the mulata/o identification in some ways. In addition, it also may cause a problem of representation for people of color as it is not reflected in the Colombian census. In Colombia the category of morena/o was not even included in the last census because it was deemed to be “too inclusive” (Wade, 2010, p.107). Whether people in Campo personally identify as Afrodescendiente or not, I still believe it is important to acknowledge that due to their location within a region that is imagined as part of the African Diaspora, and because of the ways in which their cultural traits may be racialized by others within Colombia, costeñx identity can be approached as related to both the African

Diaspora and hybridity.

In the article “Dionysian Blacks,” Colombian anthropologist Mara Viveros Vigoya expresses the way that Blacks in Colombia’s Pacific region have been identified almost exclusively with music, dance, alcohol, sex, and other forms of bodily pleasure by their White

and mestizo compatriots from the interior of the country (2000, p.62). From my observations, these types of stereotypes related to pleasure, partying, and music, also are reflected through the imagining of the costeñx alegre [joyful costeñx]. The costeñx subject is imagined as being constantly happy, fun-loving, and warm, despite their political, economic, and racial marginality.

I believe that this is an oversimplification and in the following chapters I will attempt to complicate the stereotype of the happy costeñx by discussing affective realm of the music of

Colombia’s Caribbean region.

As we can see in this chapter, the costeñx identity is racialized and diasporic. In the following chapter, I will explore the economic impact of being a rural costeñx, using the migration from Campo de la Cruz to Caracas, Venezuela as an example. By understanding the costeñx identity within Colombia, we can now explore how economic difficulties disproportionately affect costeñxs and how this shaped their experience as an immigrant group in

Venezuela. In this way, I will attempt to challenge the stereotype of the happy costeñx, and in the final chapter show how music is used by these costeñxs to process and express a wide variety of coexisting emotions such as longing, happiness, pain, and nostalgia.

CHAPTER 5 FROM CAMPO TO CARACAS AND BACK AGAIN

Motocarros are three-wheeled motorcycles with a bench seat behind the driver. They are used as a form of taxi in Campo and the surrounding pueblos. For just 1,000 Colombian Pesos per passenger (roughly 35 cents, USD) they will take you anywhere in the pueblo. There are many motocarros in Campo. Like a two-wheeled mototaxi (literally just a motorcycle used as a taxi), motocarros provide one of the only sources of income for many men in Campo who are unable to find work in the formal sector. During the day they can be found in the cen ter of town, near the hospital, near the entrance of town, and other focal points in the community waiting to pick up passengers. They provide an important service for people who have some extra money and do not want to walk the long distance in the scalding sun. For reference, it would take approximately 45 minutes to walk from the entrance of the pueblo, located next to the highway on the east side of the community (La Via Oriental), to the Cachimbo neighborhood located near the pueblo’s western road to Santa Lucia. Many times, when buses pass by the pueblo on the Via

Oriental, they leave passengers at the entrance of the pueblo, which is still about 25 minutes from the center of town located at the church. Mototaxis and motocarros are almost always parked at the entrance, and drivers will quickly approach the bus doors as the bus leaves passengers, yelling “a la orden” [at your service] to attract clients. Sometimes drivers will fight over customers and their business.

The first day I arrived in Campo to conduct research, I remember making eye contact with one driver as I was getting off of the bus with my suitcase, and giving him a nod that I would go with him in his motocarro. As I was getting off of the bus, a former student of mine who looked to only be about 11 or 12 years old waved for me to get on his motocarro instead. I was surprised to see him working as a driver considering his age, and even though I wanted to

speak with him, I had already agreed to go with the other driver. The boy ran over to the first driver and grabbed the suitcase out of his hand, pulling it in the direction of his motocarro. Other motocarros started yelling that the first driver had been there first and for the boy to let go of my suitcase. I gave him a look and told him that I was sorry but that I had already agreed to go with the first driver. He looked disappointed and let go of my suitcase, but was soon back to talking and joking with the other drivers as we took off towards the neighborhood, La Pica, where I lived while conducting my research.

Figure 5-1. Seated on the back of a motocarro driven by a local driver and friend

There were so many mototaxi and motocarro drivers in Campo that they had to be strategic if they wanted to attract business. After talking with Julio and some friends who were mototaxi drivers I was told that the average driver only made between 10,000 and 20,000 pesos per day in profits (roughly between $3.50 and $7). Even within the pueblo, where food items and living expenses were fairly cheap compared to the city, this was not a significant amount of money. But it did provided some income to buy food for family members, many who did not make any money. The fact that mototaxi driving is one of the few viable options to have a small amount of income in the community highlights one of the main points of this chapter, that there are very few job prospects in Campo for working-class costeñxs.

Tuesday, 7/24/2018: Front Porch of Salas House

At around 6:00 PM a motocarro comes down the road in front of our house. Lettis, Julio, Seño (Julio’s mom), and I are sitting on the front porch. The motocarro carries three people: a middle-aged woman and man, and a young girl. It is loaded with suitcases and luggage. My host family tells me that they are arriving from Venezuela. Julio says that before when families would arrive from Venezuela they would arrive happy, with bags full of cool gifts for family and friends. He said that they would arrive dressed nicely and with bright white skin. Now when they arrive they look sad, normal, like anyone else from the pueblo, he said. They arrived “chupados” [sucked dry]. My family wonders what the little girl must be thinking after arriving from a big city like Caracas to a resource poor pueblo like Campo…

In the previous chapter we discussed the performance of the costeñx identity and the marginal relationship of La Costa to the interior of the country in Colombia. In this chapter I will share stories of migration, of costeñxs who left Campo in search of economic opportunities in Caracas, and who returned to Campo as the situation in Venezuela became unbearable. I will explore how these individuals lived within ethnic enclaves that they described as “colonias colombianas.”

Perhaps most importantly, I will explore the types of music that they heard and actively listened to in these predominantly Colombian spaces. In this way I will prepare to explore the affective realm of music and its importance to this group of people that has had to live between two countries in an attempt to make a living. I aim to highlight the diversity of these experiences and the effects they had on people’s lives. I hope that the agency and resilience of the interview collaborators is apparent from their stories.

“Aquí no hay fuente de empleo, sinceramente” [Here there are no job opportunities, sincerely]

In this section I will address the reasons that interviewees cited for moving to

Venezuela. The overwhelming cause was economic. Simply put, there were few or no job opportunities in Campo and Caracas offered a way for many locals to work and send money back to their families in Campo. Of course, everyone has a different story for how they arrived in

Caracas. I will now share some of these accounts and analyze them based on findings from previous chapters. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Lucho is a retornado was born in

Campo but lived for various years in Venezuela. During our interview, I asked Lucho about his experience migrating to Venezuela and he had the following to say:

Jimmy: ¿Cuando se mudó para Venezuela y cuanto tiempo duró allá?

Lucho: Yo me fui para Venezuela en el año, en el 2011. Los comienzos del 2011. Y vine en el 2017.

Jimmy: ¿O sea duró como cinco o seis años allá?

Lucho: Sí de 2011 a 2017, seis años.

Jimmy: ¿Y qué es lo que hacía allá? ¿O sea por qué se mudo de Campo a Venezuela?

Lucho: Primero que todo cuando la inundación de aquí del municipio que fue en el 2010, a finales del 2010 para contarle mejor, nuestro municipio quedó en una situación económica bastante mala. El estado ayudó pero muchos tuvimos que migrar a pesar de que este pueblo estaba acostumbrado a estar migrando hace años. O sea desde nuestros ancestros estábamos migrando hacia otros países, más que todo para Venezuela.

Jimmy: Ah…

Lucho: Y entonces yo fui para allá. Allá trabajaba criando cerdos, sembrando cebolla. Eh, trabajé en una granja de pollo. Después trabajé rumiando unos animales, unas vacas. Después volví a criar el pollo, o sea en fin, oficios varios. Donde quiera que me movía en varias partes siempre conseguí trabajos distintos. No de la misma, la misma que estaba haciendo, de la misma labor. A veces trabajaba en las panaderías, a veces la pintura en fin, nada más que me defendía. Y uno cuando sale a migrar tiene que defenderse en varios campos…

*****

Jimmy: When did you move to Venezuela and how much time were you there for?

Lucho: I went to Venezuela in the year, in 2011. The start of 2011. And I came back in 2017.

Jimmy: So, you were there for like 5 or 6 years?

Lucho: Yeah, from 2011 to 2017. Six years.

Jimmy: And what is it that you did there? Like, why did you move from Campo to Venezuela?

Lucho: First of all, when the flood from here, from the municipality, that was in the year 2010. The end of 2010 to put it better. Our municipality was in a really bad economic situation. The state helped but many of us had to migrate, despite the fact that this pueblo was used to migrating since years ago. Like, since our ancestors we have been migrating to certain countries, mostly to Venezuela.

Jimmy: Ah…

Lucho: So I went there. There I worked raising pigs, planting onion. Eh, I worked on a chicken farm. Then I worked grazing some animals, some cows. Then I went back to raising chickens, so anyway, various jobs. Not the same kind, the same kind… that I was doing, the same jobs. Sometimes I worked in bakeries, sometimes painting, anyways, I just defended myself. And when one migrates they have to defend themselves in various fields…

Lucho gives an account that is not so different from some of the other stories that I heard from middle-aged men. Like many, he did various types of jobs in Venezuela, from agriculture and animal husbandry, to working in a bakery, to painting, to construction (which he mentioned in a later section of the interview). As Lucho said, he had to defend himself in various fields of work.

He had to be ready to accept whatever type of work was available in order to be able to have a stable income. Lucho also highlights an important piece of Campo’s recent history when he mentions the flooding of the pueblo that occurred in 2010. This was a traumatic event for many people in the community. Everyone was forced to evacuate because the water flooded most houses up to the roof. Many farm animals and livestock died, the earth was damaged an unable to produce agriculture, and many had to use canoes or small boats just to get to their homes and try to collect their belongings. Victims of the flood had to live with family or friends in neighboring municipalities or in cities like Barranquilla. Some chose to move to Venezuela to find work, like Lucho.

Many retornadxs like Lucho lived in Venezuela for long enough that they formed families there. Karina is a 30 year-old Colombo-Venezuelan woman born into such a family. She has one parent from Campo and one parent from Venezuela. Despite being born in Caracas, she

claims to identify more with her Colombian roots than with her Venezuelan roots and has lived various years in each country. Karina did not identify with any particular race or ethnicity. I conducted Karina’s interview outside of our mutual friend Tatiana’s house in Barrio La

Esperanza [The Hope Neighborhood] just a few blocks away from my host family’s home. It was a relatively cool and windy evening, and three of her friends talked with one another about 50 feet away while I was conducting the interview. Men driving motorcycles would occasionally pass by on the dirt road during the interview. In the following excerpt Karina shares the story of how her father moved to Caracas and started his family there.

Jimmy: ¿Tu familia es de aquí del pueblo?

Karina: Mi papá es de aquí de Campo, de Colombia. Y mi mamá es de allá de Caracas.

Jimmy: Ajá y tu mamá es caraqueña. ¿Y se conocieron allá?

Karina: Se conocieron allá.

Jimmy: ¿Ah ya, y tu papá como llegó allá a Caracas?

Karina: Eh, por medio de su papá se fue. Abandonó prácticamente a su esposa, a sus hijos y se fue. Pero siempre tenía comunicación con mi papá y decidió llevárselo y se fue. Mi papá se fue.

Jimmy: Mm, ya.

Karina: Mi papá tiene ya, años en Caracas. El muy poco viene aquí. Viene solamente en diciembre.

Jimmy: Mm, ya.

Karina: Quince días y se va para Caracas.

Jimmy: ¿Y el motivo de llegar allá fue para buscar empleo?

Karina: Sí una mejor estabilidad, una mejor vida.

Jimmy: Ah ya, que no se conseguía por aquí.

Karina: Que no, que aquí es, que aquí es muy difícil. Aquí no hay fuente de empleo, sinceramente.

*****

Jimmy: Your family is from here, from the pueblo?

Karina: My father is from here, from Campo, from Colombia. And my mom is from there, from Caracas.

Jimmy: Uh-huh, and your mom is Caraqueña. And they met each other there?

Karina: They met each other there.

Jimmy: Oh okay, and your father how did he arrive there in Caracas?

Karina: Eh, he went there by means of his father. He [her father’s father] practically abandoned his wife, his kids and he left. But he always had communication with my father and he decided to bring him and he left. My father left.

Jimmy: Oh, okay.

Karina: My father has already lived in Caracas for years. He comes here very rarely. He only comes in December.

Jimmy: Oh, okay.

Karina: Fifteen days and then he goes back to Caracas.

Jimmy: And the motive for moving there was to look for work?

Karina: Yes, better stability, a better life.

Jimmy: Oh okay, because it couldn’t be found here?

Karina: No, because here it’s, here it’s really hard. There are not job opportunities here, sincerely.

Here Karina shares how her grandfather abandoned his family in Campo and moved to

Venezuela, and later helped his son (Karina’s father) get to Venezuela. The motive for the migration was to find economic stability and a better life. This could not be achieved with the lack of job opportunities in Campo. I wrote about the lack of job opportunities in the following excerpt from my field notes:

Saturday, 6/23/2018: Salas House

Almost every individual that I have talked to in Campo about the theme of work or why they might have traveled to Venezuela tells me that it was due to a lack of employment opportunities in Campo. It seems that profitable work has been hard to find for decades. Julio Senior (Julio’s father)—who is over 65—tells me that in his youth he wasn’t prepared in the sense of going to school and learning to read. Instead, in his time many youth who had families that sustained themselves through agriculture learned to work on the farm but may not have acquired the skills to obtain a job in another sector. As many have expressed to me, still to this day in Campo, the only Fuentes de empleo [job opportunities] are: mototaxismo, owning a store or restaurant, selling fried food/sweets on the street, subsisting off of agriculture, or getting involved in politics. In fact, as Julio and several others have explained to me, for jobs in the formal sector (such as at the hospital, the mayor’s office, etc…) the only way to get an “in” is through politics. Basically, people are expected to secure a certain amount of votes for the politician that they are betting on in exchange for some type of benefit. Many times, this comes in the form of a job. The problem is (1) people have no guarantee that their politician will win, and (2) even if one’s politician does win, they may only have the job for several months in order to make room for another supporter of the same politician. Even if they manage to stay in the job the whole time due to the politician’s connections, there is a chance that they will lose the job in four years during the next local elections. Julio has explained his situation to me several times during a former mayoral campaign. He secured the votes of his entire family for Richard Gómez of the Cambio Radical party in exchange for a job working IT at the local hospital. As soon as Richard Gómez lost the mayoral election to José De León Marenco—the current mayor of Campo— Julio was out of a job.

Zenith—who moved to Venezuela with her family when she was only 5 years old—also explained how economic opportunity was an important factor for the migration:

Jimmy: ¿Y ustedes por que llegaron allá a Venezuela?

Zenith: Bueno se llegó a Venezuela para… para el cambio de vida. O sea había fuentes de trabajo. Entonces los padres de nosotros llegan a trabajar para dar una mejor educación a sus hijos. Tener muchas cosas que aquí en ese tiempo no se podía adquirir, inclusive todavía es la hora y porque tenían campos de trabajo. Estaba el abuelo, o sea el dinero costaba más que el peso.

*****

Jimmy: And you all, why did you go to Venezuela?

Zenith: Well we arrived for… for a change in life. Like, there were job opportunities. So our parents went there to work to give a better education to their children. To have

many things that here in that time couldn’t be acquired, including still in this time and because there were fields of work. My grandfather was there, like the money there was worth more than the peso.

Zenith explains how in Venezuela there were more readily available job opportunities, and that the Venezuelan Bolivar was worth more than the Colombian Peso at the time. Based on her age, her family must have migrated to Venezuela in the mid 1970s. But as Lucho stated in his interview, this is a pattern of migration that has been occurring for several generations. Several locals who were in their 60s or 70s cited their family members traveling to Venezuela as early as the 1950s. Census statistics seem to support this data. According to the 1984 article “Colombian

Emigration: A Research Note on Its Probable Quantitative Extent” by Sergio Diaz-Briquets and

Melina J. Frederick, “nearly 46,000 Colombians were counted in the 1950 Venezuelan census”

(p. 100). The authors of this same article estimated that by 1980 there were roughly 1 million

Colombians living abroad. In the 2016 article “’I won’t naturalize foreigners like crazy’: The

Naturalization Campaign in Venezuela, 2004-2006” by Tobias Schwarz, the author cites that by

1981 there were already more than 500,000 Colombians living in Venezuela and estimates that by 2011 there were close to 700,000 (p. 36-37). In a 1984 article titled “Venezuela: Illegal

Immigration from Colombia,” Adela Pellegrino provides data that shows some of economic factors which motivated so many Colombians to move to Venezuela:

From the 200 persons included in the SENALDE sample, only 20 declared to be able to save money in Colombia while 174 could in Venezuela, this being a common feature in all cases. The average declared savings were 477 bolivares per month. The destination of the savings, according to the same study distributed follows: 58 percent sent the total amount to Colombia, 30.5 percent kept savings in Venezuela and 11.5 percent did both. The intended use savings in 88.4 percent was to support the family and 7 percent intended buy adequate housing. (p. 757)

This also aligns with other accounts of families being able to have houses built in Campo because of money that they earned in Venezuela and sent back to Colombia. But job opportunities weren’t the only reason that some left Campo for Venezuela.

Edson was born in Campo de la Cruz to two parents who were also from the pueblo but migrated to Venezuela at a young age because of threats of violence:

Jimmy: ¿Y ustedes siendo de Campo, como llegaron por la primera vez allá a Venezuela?

Edson: ¿A Venezuela? Lo que pasa es que mis padres, mis padres se van por un conflicto acá en Colombia. Un conflicto, un conflicto armado, en ese tiempo, eh, entonces mi mamá lo tenían amenazado y eso con las tierras. Entonces mi papá [inaudible] de muerte y nos tuvimos que ir la familia completa nos fuimos a como especie de familia que llega a otros países y eso. Así nos fuimos nosotros.

Jimmy: ¿El conflicto llegó hasta aquí—?

Edson: Hasta aquí, hasta el pueblo, si.

Jimmy: ¿Paracos, guerrilleros o?

Edson: Sí eh, esas cuestiones. Entonces a él le enviaron una carta porque le querían quitar una tierra a mi papa. Una tierra que él tenía, incluso [inaudible] está peleando, porque no se lo han devuelto todavía. Entonces a él le querían quitar una tierra y le mandaron una carta que si, si no se iba o no dejaba la tierra lo mataban.

*****

Jimmy: And with all of you being from Campo, how did you arrive for the first time there in Venezuela?

Edson: To Venezuela? The thing is that my parents, my parents went because of a conflict here in Colombia. A conflict, an armed conflict in that time, eh, so they had threatened my mom and all that about land. So my dad [inaudible] from death and we had to go, the whole family went, like the type of family that goes to other countries and all that. That’s how we went.

Jimmy: The conflict reached as far as Campo?

Edson: All the way here, to the pueblo, yeah.

Jimmy: Paracos [paramilitaries], guerrillas, or?

Edson: Yeah, uh, all that stuff. So they sent him a letter because they wanted to take a piece of land from him. A piece of land that he had, actually [inaudible] still fighting, because they still haven’t given it back to him. So, they wanted to take away his plot of land and they sent him a card that said if, if he didn’t leave or he didn’t leave the land that they would kill him.

Edson brings to light an important issue in explaining how his family was threatened with violence from either a paramilitary or guerrilla group. While La Costa of Colombia was one of the regions least affected by Colombia’s civil conflict, I heard various anecdotes from locals in

Campo about how there used to be a paraco [paramilitary] presence in neighboring communities in the 70s and 80s, and that occasionally these paracos would get involved in Campo.

One such encounter was expressed through a song written by local campero [person from

Campo] and juglar [old-school accordion player]: Antenor. Antenor was the uncle of my percussion teacher, Jimmy Tejeda, and was over 80 years old at the time of my research

(although he didn’t tell me his exact age). He had grown up in Campo and learned to play the accordion while working on the farm as a teenager, but had also lived in Venezuela for several years, where he continued to make music. Antenor liked to compose songs and lyrics based on his lived experiences. All of his lyrics are from memory and he never wrote anything down. The first time I met Antenor, Jimmy brought me to his house so that we could make music together.

Jimmy would play the caja hand-drum, I would play the guacharaca scratch-stick, and Antenor would play the accordion and sing one of his compositions. Sometimes children and youth from the neighborhood would gather around and listen to Antenor’s stories told through his song. One of the fan favorites was a song that he would sing about his cousin who fled to Venezuela dressed as a woman because he was being hunted by a nearby paramilitary group to whom he owed a debt. These examples highlight how economic factors aren’t the only reasons that push costeñxs to move to Venezuela. Despite La Costa being imagined as a peaceful region (see

Wade, 2000) the threat of violence may continue to be a reality for inhabitants of Campo de la

Cruz and a factor for migration that warrants future research.

“Yo creo que ese barrio lo hicieron prácticamente colombianos” [I believe that neighborhood was basically made by Colombians]

After hearing stories of why local families had moved to Venezuela, I then asked interviewees about the areas that they lived in Venezuela. I was curious if they lived in areas where they were exposed to predominantly Venezuelans and Venezuelan popular music, or whether they lived in areas with predominantly costeñxs. What I found was that the majority of individuals whom I interviewed lived in barrios of Caracas that were either majority costeñx or had a high costeñx population. Adela Pellegrino’s article aligns with these accounts and cites

Caracas as one of the main destination for costeñxs1:

It is also interesting to note that people proceeding from Valle, Norte de Santander, Cundinamarca and Santander, tend more frequently to settle in Venezuela in the state of Tachira, while migrants coming from the Coast mainly cluster in Caracas and the state of Zulia. These findings confirm that migrants tend to settle in those regions culturally closer to their place of origin. (p.751)

Caracas is a large city with a metro population of nearly 3 million inhabitants, but from my conversations I learned that the majority of costeñxs (both from Campo and Colombo-

Venezuelans born in Venezuela) lived in certain neighborhoods that they referred to as “colonias colombianas” [Colombian colonies].

Tatiana, a personal friend and member of my host family, was 33 years old and born in

Campo but moved to Venezuela after graduating from high school. There she studied pharmaceutics and eventually became certified and started working as a nurse. She returned to

Campo with her daughter two years prior to the interview to be closer to her family. In her interview she explained what area of Venezuela she had lived in:

Jimmy: ¿Tu vivías en que parte de Venezuela? ¿En Caracas?

1 The “Coast” that Pellegrino refers to in the quote is the Caribbean Coast which locals and I refer to in Spanish as “La Costa”

Tatiana: Eh, en Caracas, en Caracas, este, la capital. En un barrio llamado “La Parrilla.” Este [pause] había bastante Colombianos allí. La mayoría eran colombianos. Es más, yo creo que ese barrio lo hicieron prácticamente colombianos.

Jimmy: ¿Sí?

Tatiana: Sí, fue, la población era casi toda, un ochenta por ciento de colombianos.

Jimmy: ¿Sí?

Tatiana: Sí, muchos, muchos colombianos.

Jimmy: Muchas personas me han dicho, que he entrevistado han vivido en ese mismo barrio.

Tatiana: Sí…

Jimmy: En, en La Parrilla también en Petare. ¿Cuál fue el otro barrio? O sea me decían que esos barrios, esos barrios eran como colonias colombianas.

Tatiana: Sí, sí. Muchos, muchos colombianos. Muchos.

Jimmy: ¿Y de que parte de Colombia eran las personas que vivían por allí?

Tatiana: Eh, algunas eran de Cartagena, Campo de la Cruz, de Manatí, Carreto… mucha gente de la costa, mucha gente de la costa.

Jimmy: ¿De la costa?

Tatiana: Sí.

Jimmy: ¿Y de esos pueblos por aquí en el sur del atlántico?

Tatiana: Sí. Bastante… La mayoría.

*****

Jimmy: You lived in what part of Venezuela? In Caracas?

Tatiana: Eh, in Caracas, in Caracas, um, the capital. In a neighborhood called “La Parrilla” [The Grill]. Um, [pause] there were many Colombians there. The majority were Colombians. Moreover, I believe that Colombians practically made that neighborhood.

Jimmy: Yeah?

Tatiana: Yeah. It was, the population was almost all… around eighty percent Colombian.

Jimmy: Yeah?

Tatiana: Yeah, many, many Colombians.

Jimmy: Many people have told me, that I’ve interviewed, have lived in that same neighborhood.

Tatiana: Yes…

Jimmy: In, in La Parrilla and also in Petare. Which was the other neighborhood? Like, they told me that those neighborhoods, those neighborhoods were like Colombian colonies.

Tatiana: Yeah, yeah. Many, many Colombians. Many.

Jimmy: And from what part of Colombia were the majority of people that lived there?

Tatiana: Eh, some were from Cartagena, Campo de la Cruz, Manatí, Carreto… many people from the coast (Caribbean coast), many people from the coast.

Jimmy: From the coast?

Tatiana: Yes.

Jimmy: And those pueblos around here in the south of the Atlántico Department?

Tatiana: Yes. Many… the majority.

Here Tatiana explains how she perceived that the majority of people living in La Parrilla were Colombians. Not only were they Colombians, but the majority of them were from La Costa, specifically from pueblos in the south of the Atlántico department such as Campo de la Cruz and the neighboring Manati, and from the nearby Bolivar department such as Cartagena and Carreto.

These ethnic enclaves can be conceptualized as “immigrant communities” as defined by Thomas

Turino in Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation:

“To exist as an immigrant community, people have to associate with each other on the basis of ‘original home’ identity and operate within community networks in the host country to a significant degree, such that the community forms an enclave and supplies prominent models for socialization.” (p.118)

In this case, it is difficult to say definitively what these populations might have conceived of as their “original home.” They could have imagined their national home: Colombia. But as I have highlighted in previous chapters, many costeñxs feel that La Costa is marginalized within the

Colombian national context and were quick to foreground and perform their regional identities as

costeñxs. What is certain is that they formed community networks and interacted with other costeñxs and costeñx culture frequently in their day to day lives in Venezuela.

The specific neighborhood that Tatiana mentions—La Parrilla2—is a neighborhood where 6 other interview participants had also lived at some point. Other popular neighborhoods with large costeñx populations that were referenced were La Parrilla 23 and La Alcabala. These particular neighborhoods were all located within the city of Petare, which forms part of Caracas’ urban area, and is sometimes referred to as one of the largest and most dangerous favelas in Latin

America. Venezuelan-born hip-hop artist and producer Arvei Angulo Rivas—known by his artistic names such as “El Prieto” or “Prieto Gang”—highlights the dangers of living in Petare in a 2011 music video. The opening sequence of the video shows El Prieto waking up and walking outside to talk with some friends, only to have the meeting broken up by three masked gunmen with pistols and rifles chasing them through the streets. The ending shot of the sequence is of a boy being murdered by gunfire as he runs away with the crowd. Onlookers watch as his body lies motionless on the pavement and the title Petare Barrio de Pakistan comes on the screen. The chorus that repeats throughout El Prieto’s description of the realities of living in Petare is “Yo soy de Petare, barrio de Pakistan. Aqui no se vive, aqui se sobrevive” [Translated: I’m from

Petare, neighborhood of Pakistan. Here you don’t live, here you survive]. Although Petare is geographically distant from Pakistan, El Prieto chooses to relate Petare as a neighborhood of

Pakistan because Pakistan is a place that he associates with violence and war. In this way, he compares the neighborhood to a warzone and relates how every day is a struggle to survive.

According to the World Atlas, Caracas is the city with the second highest murder rate in the

2 La Parrilla is a popular name for a neighborhood that exists within the neighborhood that is officially known as “Barrio Bolivar” in northern part of the city of Petare (located within the Caracas metropolitan area).

3 La Parrilla 2 is located within the neighborhood officially known as Barrio San José, also in Petare.

world, and Petare is one of its most dangerous zones. I have spoken with various retornadxs in

Campo who had personally witnessed violent crimes or even lost family members to violent crime while living in Caracas. Some reported that the instability within their neighborhoods was increasing along with economic hardship.

In this chapter I have attempted to show the effects of marginalization on the working- class costeñx population of Campo de la Cruz. I have highlighted how factors such as a lack of job opportunities in Campo and, in some instances, threats of violence cause costeñxs to seek opportunities elsewhere, particularly in Venezuela. I then explored where the majority of these individuals and families end up living and found that the majority migrate to ethnic enclaves or colonias colombianas where they live surrounded by other costeñxs. In this way they form immigrant communities that have a common sense of home. As we have also seen, however, these colonias are predominantly located in dangerous and resource poor areas of Caracas’ urban area, such as Petare. In this way we can see that costeñxs are not only marginalized within the

Colombian national context, but that this marginalization has real effects that lead to individuals and families leaving their home in search of better opportunities. While they may find these economic opportunities in Caracas, they must resort to living in dangerous areas of the city.

These tales of migration also highlight the resourcefulness and agency of costeñxs who take these steps in order to improve their lives and the lives of their families. Some even feel that they are indebted to Venezuela because of the resources that they were able to attain there. Lucho explained that he felt it was the responsibility of Campo locals to receive those immigrating from

Venezuela out of a sense of duty and to repay the debt to the country that had once helped them when they were in need.

Now that we have a better understanding of what being a working-class costeñx from

Campo entails, we can begin to explore the relationship between Colombo-Venezuelans and retornadxs and the affective realm of music. In the following chapter I will share experiences that show the way that music allows costeñxs to feel complex emotions and transport themselves.

CHAPTER 6 COLOMBO-VENEZUELAN MUSIC AND AFFECT

The wildly popular vallenato song “Mi Hermano y Yo” by Los Hermanos Zuleta [the

Zuleta brothers] became one of my favorite songs while I was first living in Campo in 2015. I remember hearing it numerous times at estaderos [a local word for cantina] with my good friend

Julio. We would belt the lyrics together and raise our bottles of Águila Light in the air. The song speaks of the difficulties that the brothers had to face in starting their careers as vallenato musicians. The last verse of the song was the one I found most captivating. As Emiliano Zuleta played the accordion, his little brother Poncho sings:

Se sufre, se goza y se vive feliz Hay ratos solemnes y otros de agonía Y muchas veces triste Y así la gente dice Que todo es alegría

*****

We suffer, we enjoy, and we live happily There are solemn moments and others of agony And many times sad And even so the people say That it’s all joy

After years of hearing these lyrics I still never quite understood the significance of the final three lines: “Y muchas veces triste y así la gente dice que todo es alegría” [And many times sad, and even so the people say that it’s all joy]. One day during my field research in 2018 I was visiting

Julio’s brother Eneison Salas—who is a professional accordion player and vallenato producer— and I asked what these lyrics meant, he stated that Poncho Zuleta was expressing how when he sings in front of a crowd, all that people see is happiness, but that the singer might actually be experiencing deep sadness. To me this song highlights an emotional complexity that may exemplify a particular affective state of costeñx people. Through interviews shared stories, it was

apparent that many of my interview participants experienced great sadness and difficulty in their lives, but somehow the stereotype of the joyful costeñx persisted, and in my perception people in

Campo did seem to outwardly happy. Perhaps—like Poncho Zuleta in “Mi Hermano y Yo”— costeñxs convey or perform joy and positivity alongside the sadness that they may be feeling.

In the previous chapters I attempted to describe the context of working class costeñx people in Campo de la Cruz and abroad by highlighting the marginalized, performed, and diasporic nature of their identities, and the challenges that they have to face in their day to day lives. In this chapter I will take a turn to the musical realm and highlight what type of music my informants listen to and why they listen to it. By doing this, I hope to show how music serves as an affective tool for costeñxs to process complex overlapping emotions such as happiness, sadness, and longing, and how this same music can also transport them sentimentally to another time and place. By showing these complexities, I hope to complicate racialized views of costeñxs where they are portrayed as people in a constant state of joy. I do not attempt to negate the role of joy in the lives of costeñxs, but rather show how costeñxs use music to evoke joy alongside other emotions that may be seen as more negative, such as sadness. I will begin this examination by highlighting the type of music that costeñxs are exposed to in Campo and in Caracas. I will then show how costeñxs connect with these music genres. I will conclude the chapter with a short lyrical analysis of the song “Ausencia Sentimental” after which this thesis is named.

Siempre se dedicaba a la misma, a los mismos tipos de música [There was always a dedication to the same, the same types of music]

Norberto is the owner of a local estadero in Campo de la Cruz: “Los Recuerdos de Ella”

[Memories of Her], named after a famous vallenato song composed by Elbert Diaz and

performed by Diomedes Diaz4. He was born in Venezuela but both of his parents are from La

Costa; his father is from Campo and his mother is from Cartagena. He spent most of his life in

Venezuela and moved to Campo in 2017, opening Los Recuerdos de Ella in December of the same year. In Caracas he lived in a colonia colombiana and was also the proprietor of an estadero. In this interview excerpt I ask Norberto about the type of music that he would play at his locale in Caracas:

Jimmy: ¿Y en ese negocio que tenía allá que, o sea como era la música que ponía que las personas pedían?

Norberto: Claro, por lo menos el estilo de allá por lo menos que es bien, como todo vallenato porque llegaba gente colombiana que pedía vallenato, champeta, salsa. Enfocando la, la música de allá: salsa, reggaeton, este, como dicen allá una bachata, siempre se varia la… [trails off]

Jimmy: Ah ya, pero la música más popular si tenía que decir, si tuviera que hacer como una lista de la música que más se pedía.

Norberto: Claro, pasa que la música más popular que yo utilizaba allá porque trabajaba siempre con colombianos era vallenato.

Jimmy: Vallenato?

Norberto: Sí [smiles].

Jimmy: Casi como aquí.

Norberto: ¡Sí! Igual. No, no me afecta en nada. No me afecta en nada porque la música que colocaba allá prácticamente lo colocaba aquí y nunca me, no me afectaba porque siempre se dedicaba a la misma, a los mismos tipos de música.

Jimmy: Ah, ya.

*****

Jimmy: And the business that you had there, what was the music like that you used to play or that people requested?

Norberto: Of course, at least the style from there, at least that’s well, like all vallenato because Colombian people arrived and they requested vallenato, champeta, salsa.

4 Diomedes Diaz is the most well-known and respected vallenato singer on La Costa. One time when I asked if Diomedes was the “Elvis” of vallenato, a local responded to me that Elvis was the “Diomedes” of Rock.

Focusing on the music from there: salsa, reggaeton, um, as they say there a bachata, it was always varied… [trails off]

Jimmy: Oh, okay, but the most popular music if you had to say, if you had to make like a list of the music that was most requested.

Norberto: Of course, what happens is that the most popular music that I used there, because I always worked with Colombians, was vallenato.

Jimmy: Vallenato?

Norberto: Yes. [Smiles]

Jimmy: Kind of like here.

Norberto: Yes! The same. It didn’t, it didn’t affect me at all. It didn’t affect me at all because there was always a dedication to the same, to the same types of music.

In his interview, Norberto explained that within the colonia colombiana in Caracas he played the same types of music that he now plays at Los Recuerdos de Ella in Campo. The most popular music amongst bar-goers in both Campo and the colonias colombianas of Caracas was vallenato.

Anielis was 24 at the time I conducted her interview. She was born and raised in La

Parrilla, which is a colonia colombiana of Petare, Caracas, but both of her parents are from La

Costa—her father is from Campo and her mother is from Cartagena. She identified as

Afrodescendiente and Colombo-Venezuelan but preferred to foreground her Colombian roots despite growing up in Venezuela. She moved to Campo a year prior to the interview after she saw the economic crisis in Venezuela getting worse, and is happy to be in Colombia. In her interview she also articulates how, despite there being more popular genres of music among

Venezuelans, music from La Costa such as vallenato and champeta were the most popular genres in colonias colombianas:

Jimmy: ¿Cómo era la música que mas escuchabas ahí en la calle o en la casa?

Anielis: Bueno como era, este, en Venezuela se escuchaba mucho la salsa. Pero como la mayoría eran colombianos entonces se escuchaba mucho el vallenato, la champeta, esa, ese tipo de música.

Jimmy: ¿Sí, bastante?

Anielis: Sí. La champeta, el vallenato, Diomedes… Diomedes, que Silvestre, Miguel Morales…

Jimmy: ¿Tambien?

Anielis: Binomio de Oro, si. Mucho, mucho el vallenato de todas, casi de todas…

Jimmy: ¿Y la champeta, que tipo de champeta era?

Anielis: Eh, la champeta africana porque también los barranquilleros escuchan mucho champeta africana que se baila como rapidito.

Jimmy: Mm.

Anielis: Entonces y la champeta como cartagenera que, que, la que se escucha también más acá.

*****

Jimmy: What was the music life that you used to hear on the street or in your home?

Anielis: Well how it was, um, in Venezuela lots of salsa was heard. But as the majority [of people] were Colombian then lots of vallenato, champeta, and that type of music was heard.

Jimmy: Yeah, a lot?

Anielis: Yes. Champeta, vallenato, Diomedes… Diomedes, Silvestre, Miguel Morales…

Jimmy: Them too?

Anielis: Binomio de Oro, yeah. Lots and lots of vallenato of all, of almost all…

Jimmy: And the champeta, what type of champeta was it?

Anielis: Eh, African champeta because people from Barranquilla listen to a lot of African champeta that is danced like, quickly.

Jimmy: Mhm.

Anielis: And also champeta like from Cartagena that, that, that is listened to more here as well.

Anielis mentions specific artists that were popular, including fan favorites such as

Diomedes and Silvestre. I also asked her about the type of champeta music that people listened to because there are several styles. She perceived that champeta africana [African champeta] was the most popular. This style of champeta is normally comprised of African music that was

imported in Cartagena as vinyls as early as the 1960s, and that became widely popular in the city by the 1990s (Sanz Giraldo, p. 7-8). African champeta songs are normally played over large speaker systems called picós and the lyrics are not in Spanish, but in their original languages.

Although most costeñxs do not understand the lyrics, the music is extremely popular for dancing, especially among people in their twenties and thirties. The two most popular ways to dance champeta are to dance “pique” or to dance with a partner. To dance pique is to dance solo— sometimes in the form of a competition with another dancer. Pique is danced using complex rapid leg and foot movements and trying to showboat by improvising steps and doing tricks. This style of dance is usually danced with champeta africana that is sped up and altered in a studio.

Dancing with a partner usually involves partners rubbing and bumping their pelvic areas or butts together following the rhythm of the music. This is less common in champeta africana and more common in champeta urbana [urban champeta] or champeta choque [crashing champeta] which is performed in Spanish and normally has a slower tempo that favors partner dancing over the faster pique dancing.

Figure 6-1. Standing with neighbors next to “King Kong,” a picó from Campo

I believe it is important to highlight the importance of champeta to show that vallenato isn’t the only genre of music from La Costa that is listened to and enjoyed by costeñxs. As we

will see in the section on people’s connection with music, some of my interview participants were indeed champeta fans. Based on observations of estaderos at night and from accounts of people in Campo, it seems like for every 4 or 5 vallenato songs that are played, there are 1 or 2 champeta songs that are played. In these settings champeta is seen as being more associated with youthfulness. At least one person commented that champeta gets young people too worked up, and that playing slower vallenato music is a way to make things simmer down.

There were, however, settings in which champeta was more played. Casetas are outdoor parties that take place in an enclosed area during patron saint festivals or sometimes on regular weekends. There is normally a small cover charge to enter, and they are normally widely attended by teenagers and people in their twenties. The party is centered on a large picó that is normally over 6 feet tall and that plays predominantly champeta music. I have been to two casetas during my time living in Campo. The first time was during the carnival celebrations of

2015. The second time was during a weekend party during my field research in the summer of

2018. Before I went to the caseta several members of my host family tried to dissuade me from going because they claimed that lots of fights formed there and that the scene was associated with delinquency. I ended up compromising and going with some friends who were neighbors and who promised to take care of me. I had a nice time and saw several local friends there, but ultimately left after about thirty minutes because I was feeling sick. In the time that I was there I noticed that it was definitely a much younger crowd than the customers who normally attend estaderos. Although the focus of my thesis does not permit at the moment, in future research I would be interested in doing a more comparative analysis of casetas and estaderos and also champeta and vallenato music and the people with whom they connect.

While most interview participants claimed that they heard the same music in both Campo and Caracas, I would like to highlight that this opinion was not unanimous. Tatiana also lived in a colonia colombiana, but she argues that—although vallenato was still the most popular music—Colombo-Venezuelans and costeñxs in Caracas listened to a different type of vallenato music than the vallenato that is played at estaderos and events in Campo:

Tatiana: Bueno, este, allá en Venezuela se escuchaba mucho los vallenatos. Pero no los vallenatos que escuchamos actualmente aquí que nosotros, este, los vallenatos que usamos, que se escuchan acá son vallenatos parranderos, de parranda. Allá no. Allá en Venezuela se usa, se escucha mucho, vallenatos pero vallenatos románticos. De, de cómo te digo de Los Inquietos, de Los Diablitos, música de, de, de, o sea, este, vallenatos suaves, románticos, no son que nosotros estamos acostumbrados acá en la costa. Y allá se escucha en Venezuela mucho la salsa. La salsa, salsa romántica, la bailan súper bien. Eso es lo que se escucha allá.

Jimmy: ¿Salsa baúl?

Tatiana: Salsa baúl, sí.

Jimmy: ¿Es lo mismo que salsa a?

Tatiana: Sí, salsa romántica, si.

*****

Tatiana: Well, um, there in Venezuela lots of vallenato was heard. But not the same vallenatos that we actually listen to here, um, the vallenatos that we use, that are listed to here, are party vallenatos, for parties. Not there. There in Venezuela lots of vallenatos, but romantic vallenatos, are used and listened to. By, by, how could I say, by Los Inquietos, by Los Diablitos, music by, by, by, like, um, smooth, romantic vallenatos, not what we’re used to here on the Caribbean coast. And there in Venezuela lots of salsa is listened to. Salsa, romantic salsa, they dance it super well. That’s what is heard there.

Jimmy: Salsa baul?

Tatiana: Yeah, salsa baul.

Jimmy: Is that the same as romantic salsa?

Tatiana: Yeah, romantic salsa, yeah.

Here Tatiana distinguishes two types of vallenato: vallenato romántico [romantic vallenato] and vallenato parrandero [party or party lover vallenato]. This is a distinction that other people I spoke with in Campo also made, while agreeing with Tatiana’s general statement that vallenato parrandero is more popular in Campo while vallenato romántico was more popular in Caracas.

Vallenato romántico is seen as being slower with more romantic lyrics while vallenato parrandero is associated with being faster and with lyrics more centered on drinking and parties.

Each style of vallenato is also associated with specific artists; Tatiana names some of the stars of vallenato romántico in her interview. In future research I would like to engage more with this distinction between the two styles of vallenato, but for the purposes of this thesis I will conclude this section by stating that, regardless of the artists and styles, vallenato and champeta music was cited as being the most popular music in both Campo and within the colonias colombianas of

Caracas. It is no surprise, then, that costeñxs predominantly discussed their emotional connection to these genres when asked about their musical preferences.

Uno se va, se transporta. [One goes, one is transported.]

In the previous section I discussed the type of music that people listened to both in

Campo and in the colonias colombianas of Caracas. In this section I will focus on the particular connections that people had to their preferred music genres and how they articulated this connection. By doing this I will attempt to show how people use music as a tool for experiencing emotions such as joy, sadness, melancholy, and ultimately, how they used music as a way to transport themselves to another time or place. In this way I hope to begin a conversation on the affective realm of music as it relates to costeñxs and how music is an object saturated with affect or emotion (Ahmed, 2004) in their context.

Dairo was 33 years old at the time of our interview. He was one of the few interviewees that I didn’t know prior to conducting the interview, but he was a friend of Julio’s and had

agreed to participate in the project. He shared with me that he was from Campo but that he first moved to Caracas in 1996 and lived there for around 12 years while working as a painter. Like most of the interviewees, he lived in a colonia colombiana of predominantly costeñxs in Petare.

Dairo told me that his favorite music was vallenato and when I asked him why, he responded with the following:

Dairo: Eso alegraba el alma. [Se ríe] Si.

Jimmy: ¿Por qué?

Dairo: No sé, tanto tiempo escuchando la canción y se emocionaba uno. Se emocionaba uno.

Jimmy: Ah, ah. ¿Y también lo bailaba?

Dairo: También lo bailaba. Y lo bailo todavía. [Se ríe]

*****

Dairo: It cheered up the soul. [Laughs] Yeah.

Jimmy: Why?

Dairo: I don’t know, so much time listening to the song and one would get excited. One would get excited.

Jimmy: Ah, ah. And did you also dance it?

Dairo: I also danced it. And I dance to it still. [Laughs]

Here we can see how Dairo associated vallenato with joy. It was a way for him to cheer up his soul and feel excited. Like many interviewees, he didn’t only listen to vallenato but he danced to it. Having watched many people dancing vallenato excitedly at town events and at estaderos, I could see how dance was another important way for people to connect to music and experience a temporary sense of joy. In the following interview with Karina, she explains how she connected with champeta music through dance:

Jimmy: ¿Y por qué te gusta la (champeta) africana? ¿Por qué te llama la atención?

Karina: No sé, no sé, será el ritmo. No puedo escuchar una champeta por enseguida me desbarato como dicen aquí en Campo. [Se ríe y aplaude]

Jimmy: ¿Sí? ¿Y eso que significa?

Karina: O sea, me entra una electricidad que [se rie y se mueve los hombros] me emociona. Me emociona.

Jimmy: Aja.

Karina: Pero me gusta, me gusta el ritmo.

*****

Jimmy: And why do you like (African) champeta? Why does it call your attention?

Karina: I don’t know, I don’t know, maybe it’s the rhythm. I can’t listen to a champeta because I’ll immediately bust a move as they say here in Campo. [Laughs and claps]

Jimmy: Yeah? And what does that mean?

Karina, Like, electricity enters me that [laughs and moves her shoulders] gets me excited. It gets me excited.

Jimmy: Uh-huh.

Karina: But I like it, I like the rhythm.

Here Karina articulates how the rhythm of champeta africana excites her and overwhelms her with the desire to dance. Despite the fact that she doesn’t understand the lyrics of champeta africana, the rhythm of the music is saturated with the affect of positive emotions such as excitement and the electricity that makes her want to move her body. The feeling that is associated with the music and its rhythm is why she feels that champeta africana is her preferred music. Arnaldo also expressed how music made him feel a certain way when he discussed vallenato:

Jimmy: ¿Qué aspecto de esa música le llama la atención?”

Arnaldo: Coño, parece que le llevará en la sangre, mano. No sé, mano. Hay una vaina que me atrae, no sé. ¿Ya? No hay que pero que me atrae la música. Coño, tu escuchas una canción y… Yo a veces escucho una canción y joda me provoca echarme unas frías, mano.

Jimmy: ¿Sí?

Arnaldo: Sí, sí. Pero aja a veces tu llegas y no está para echarte tu cerveza, entonces ya también la jugada que lo hago en ocasiones. ¿Ya? El día de los padres, el día de las madres, como no puede hacerlo como se hacía anteriormente. Esto está como muy duro ahorita.

*****

Jimmy: What aspect of that music calls your attention?

Arnaldo: Shit, it seems like something that’s in the blood, bro. I don’t know, bro. There’s a thing that attracts me, I don’t know. You know? There’s no reason but the music attracts me. Shit, you listen to a song and… I sometimes listen to a song and damn, I feel like drinking some cold ones, bro.

Jimmy: Yeah?

Arnaldo. Yeah, yeah. But sometimes you show up and you don’t have enough to drink your beer, so there the game is that I do it on occasions. You know? Father’s day, mother’s day, because I can’t do it like I used to. Things are tough right now.

Arnaldo feels that the music is something that is in his blood—an idea shared by several other interview participants—and that when he hears it, it makes him want to drink beer and party. He contrasts this desire to party against the current economic situation in Campo and explains how he now has to be more conscious about partying only on special occasions. He mentions that this is different from his prior economic situation when he felt more free to be able to enjoy

But do people only listen to music because they associate it with emotions that we normally imagine as positive such as happiness or excitement? Yamileth was a neighbor from barrio [neighborhood] “La Pica” where I lived with Julio, Lettis, and their family while conducting my field research. She was 34 years old at the time of the interview and had recently returned from Venezuela. Although she was from Campo, she had lived most of her life in Petare with her husband and children. She identified as Afrodescendiente and Colombo-Venezuelan. In the interview she spoke with tears in her eyes of how she was forced to leave Venezuela because of the difficulties in acquiring food and other goods, and how she hoped desperately to return

one day if the situation were to improve. In this excerpt, I asked Yamileth how she felt when she heard vallenato music in Caracas:

Jimmy: ¿Entonces usted cuando escuchaba vallenato por allá que sentía?

Yamileth: Ay, una melancolía. [Se ríe]

Jimmy: ¿Sí? ¿Por qué?

Yamileth: Sí porque yo también gocé bastante el vallenato acá. Y lo bailé bastante acá también.

Jimmy: ¿Sí?

Yamileth: Sí. [Empieza a llorar]

Jimmy: Te hizo recordar Colombia cuando…

Yamileth: Sí, por supuesto. No y que también, no sé, creo que me gustaba, me gustaba. Me sentía identificada con los vallenatos.

*****

Jimmy: So when you listened to vallenato over there what did you feel?

Yamileth: Ay, a sense of melancholy. [Laughs]

Jimmy: Yeah? Why?

Yamileth: Yeah because I also really enjoyed vallenato here. I danced to it a lot here.

Jimmy: Yeah?

Yamileth: Yeah. [Starts crying]

Jimmy: It made you remember Colombia when…

Yamileth: Yes, of course. No and also, I don’t know, I believe that I liked it, I liked it. I felt identified with vallenato songs.

Here Yamileth departs from listening to music for strictly joyful reasons. She explains how she felt a sense of melancholy when she would hear a vallenato song while living in Caracas because it would remind her of dancing vallenato in Campo, which she used to enjoy. I would argue that

Yamileth is articulating a certain bittersweetness that is affectively attached to the object of vallenato music. She feels melancholy while listening to the music because it reminds her of a

happy time in her life, but she continues to listen to the music because she likes to feel identified with this time in her life. Yamileth’s connection to vallenato is complex and captures a certain affective state of overlapping emotions—both positive in negative—that become attached to the music.

In my interview with Anielis she explained that vallenato and champeta music were her favorite genres. She felt that the sentimental nature of the music is what makes it good music to connect with. Here she explains sentimentality and a gendered aspect of vallenato music:

Anielis: Bueno me encanta el vallenato. Me muero de [inaudible] vallenato y por lo sentimental de las canciones, por su letra, por, por la acordeón, por, si ese ritmo que tiene. Me encanta, me encanta el vallenato.

Jimmy: ¿Para cantar, o para escuchar, o para bailar?

Anielis: Para bailar, para cantar, para escuchar [se sonríe]. Para… Me encanta.

Jimmy: Para todo.

Anielis: Sí, sí. Las letras son muy sentimentales y no… Hay unas que ofenden a las mujeres, como hay otras que son que mas, que presentan más a la mujer, al amor hacia la mujer. Por eso es que me gusta más ese tipo de…

Jimmy: ¿Hay vallenatos que ofenden a la mujer?

Anielis: Sí, hay unos que sí, que no…

Jimmy: ¿Cómo cual?

Anielis: Este, hay uno que dice, este, como que “El Desquite” o uno de Diomedes que dice como que el desquite… Siempre hay unos que…

Jimmy: Varias canciones de Diomedes…

Anielis: Sí, hay unos que dicen como que hay mujeres, que hay mujeres mejor que tu. Hay uno de Zuleta que se llama “Más que Tú.”

Jimmy: Ah, ya.

Anielis: Entonces que dice cosas como que “hay mujeres mejores que tú” y cosas así. Pero son muy pocas las que son ofensivas hacia las mujeres.

*****

Anielis: Well, I love vallenato. I die of [inaudible] for vallenato and for the sentimentality of the songs, for their lyrics, for, for the accordion, for, yeah, that rhythm it has. I love it, I love vallenato.

Jimmy: To sing, to listen to, or to dance?

Anielis: To dance, to sing, to listen to [smiles]. To… I love it.

Jimmy: For everything.

Anielis: Yes, yes. The lyrics are very sentimental and they don’t… There are some that offend women, just like there are others that are more, that present the woman more, the love towards women. That’s why I like that type more…

Jimmy: There are vallenatos that offend women?

Anielis: Yes, there are some that do, some that don’t…

Jimmy: Like which?

Anielis: Hmm, there’s one that says, umm, like “the retaliation” or one by Diomedes that says like “the retaliation”… There are always some that…

Jimmy: Various songs by Diomedes.

Anielis: Yeah, there are some that say that there are women, that there are women who are better than you. There’s one by Zuleta that’s called “More than You”?

Jimmy: Oh, okay.

Anielis: So they say things like “there are better women than you” and things like that. But there are very few that are offensive towards women like that.

Anielis first highlights how various aspects of vallenato music make it resonate with her: the lyrics, the sound of the accordion, the rhythm, and its perceived sentimentality. She then discusses how vallenato music can sometimes be offensive towards women and gives an example of something that is said in a specific song by Diomedes. She contrasts this against other vallenato songs that represent women in what she considers to be a more positive manner. I have also heard vallenato songs that have outwardly sexist lyrics, but like she states, this doesn’t seem to be the majority of vallenato songs. It would be interesting to research in greater detail the gender dynamics of vallenato music in Colombia, as songs in the genre are overwhelmingly

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composed and performed with a male voice5. Still, many women that I interviewed felt a strong connection to the genre.

Vallenato music wasn’t the only music that people felt strong connections with. Edson, who was the only interviewee who said rap music was his favorite genre, goes into more detail about the role of music in feeling a variety of emotions:

Edson: El rap porque es un estilo de música que, que es muy diferente a todo y es un estilo de que, de que la gente se expresa. Expresa sus sentimientos y es muy buena y no sé me gusta demasiado. Yo escucho rap y, para alegrarme, o si estoy triste escucho rap y me animo o si estoy alegre escucho rap, si estoy triste, y después [inaudible] tengo música especifica pa’, pa’, pa’ como me sienta, pues.

*****

Edson: Rap because it’s a style of music that, that’s really different from everything and it’s a style which, which people express themselves with. They express their feelings and it’s really good, and I don’t know, I like it a lot. I listen to rap to cheer myself up, or if I’m sad I listen to rap to lift my spirits, or if I’m happy I listen to rap, if I’m sad, and then [inaudible] I have specific music for, for, for however I’m feeling, you know.

To Edson, rap is a style of music that he feels he can listen to in order to connect with a variety of emotional states. He engages in creating rap music because he feels that it is a way to express himself and the way that he is feeling. Like Yamileth, he explains how the emotions associated with the genre can be both positive and negative.

Several interviewees also expressed how the connection to music was something that was innate or “in the blood.” In the following interview with Zenith she expresses this perception:

Zenith: ¿Porque sabes una cosa? Este, parece mentira, cuando tú tienes raíces costeñas, eso tiene uno en la sangre, es algo. Como tú eres americano y por mucho que te guste el vallenato la música tú llevaste en la sangre algo. No sé si a ti te ha pasado así. Algo, algo que llama uno. Entonces te digo sinceramente, la música costeña es linda y me gusta. Y por mucho que yo allá (en Venezuela)… Eso es algo, algo le llama a uno, la sangre, la, es innato, ese es algo innato que, porque tú eres

5 I mean that vallenato songs are both sung predominantly by men, and that the song lyrics are written from the point of view of a man. There are some exceptions to this, but the only woman vallenato singer who is commonly listened to is Patricia Teheran.

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americano vuelvo y te digo: te gusta la música costeña, pero tú al oír allá tu música esa, algo, algo, algún sentimiento te llama, algún sentimiento. Ese es algo innato, algo natural con que uno nace.

*****

Zenith: Because you know something? Umm, it seems like a lie but when you have costeña roots, it’s something you have in your blood, it’s something. As you are American and as much as you like vallenato, you carried something in your blood. I don’t know if it’s happened to you. Something, something, that calls you. So I’ll tell you sincerely, costeña music is pretty and I like it. And as much as I, over there (in Venezuela)… It’s something, something that calls you, the blood, it’s innate, it’s something innate that, because you’re American I’ll tell you again: you like costeña music, but when you hear that music of yours, something, something, some feeling calls you, some feeling. It’s something innate, something natural that you are born with.

In her interview Zenith expresses how she believes the connection with music is something innate that people are born with. I believe one of the important things that this strong statement conveys is the deep connection that costeñxs are perceived to have with local music genres from

La Costa. This connection is attached to “some feeling” and even if that feeling is not named, it is apparent that the music becomes an object that is saturated with affect. As Lucho expressed in another interview, this deep connection with local music can actually serve as a way to experience Afro-diasporic ancestral memories:

Lucho: Son cosas que le traen recuerdos a uno escuchar una canción. De pronto hay vivencias que fueron vivencias ancestrales. De pronto una salsa la escucha… La hemos escuchado mucho, de Joe Arroyo, eh, “La Rebelión.”

Jimmy: Esa canción es buenísima.

Lucho: Entonces son cosas que de pronto le traen recuerdos a uno lo que uno nunca vivió pero sí que de pronto los afros que vinieron hacia acá que trasladaron comprados, de diferentes maneras, no… No se adaptaron. Tuvieron que ser tomados porque ya la esclavitud… Entonces ese disco si uno se pone a mirar, escuchar la letra de la canción y se imagina y se remonta de aquel por aquella.

*****

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Lucho: They’re things that bring memories to people when they hear a song. Maybe there are experiences that were ancestral experiences. Maybe you hear a salsa… We’ve heard it a lot, by Joe Arroyo, eh, “La Rebelión.” [The Rebellion]

Jimmy: That song is great.

Lucho: So these are things that maybe bring one memories of things they’ve never lived through but yeah maybe the afros that came here that were transferred as purchases, in various ways, they didn’t… They didn’t adapt. They had to be taken because already slavery… So that song, if one takes a look at it, listens to the lyrics, they imagine themselves and they move from this to that.

In this statement Lucho references a popular salsa song—“La Rebelión”— by the Cartagena- born salsa legend: Joe Arroyo. The song is about an enslaved African in colonial Cartagena who rebels against and kills his Spanish captor after catches the Spaniard hitting his wife. This is followed by the famous chorus “No le pegue a la negra” [Don’t strike the Black woman]. Lucho argues that, even though no living costeñxs have experienced being enslaved to the Spanish, the ancestral memory of slavery and the memory of resistance to that oppression can be evoked through music. This highlights my final point regarding music and affect amongst costeñxs: that music is used by costeñxs to travel sentimentally to another time or place. Several interviewees, such as Julio, discuss music as a way of travelling in time:

Jimmy: ¿Qué te atraía al vallenato cuando estabas por allá (en Venezuela)?

Julio: Recuerdos. Por ejemplo hay veces que nosotros escuchábamos canciones, por ejemplo, te voy a poner un ejemplo, tú cuando de repente tú estás en tu país y escuchas “Mi Hermano y Yo.”

Jimmy: [Se ríe]

Julio: O de repente escuchas una canción de Diomedes y te acuerdas algún día que parrandeaba aquí.

Jimmy: Ah, ya.

Julio: Eso. Recuerdos que de pronto o de repente tienes alguna noviecita y le dedicas una canción y la escuchas y tú te acuerdas de esa persona. Te regresas a ese tiempo. ¿Ya?

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Jimmy: What attracted you to vallenato when you were over there (in Venezuela)?

Julio: Memories. For example, there are times that we would listen to songs, for example, I’m going to give you an example, you when maybe you’re in your country and you hear “Mi Hermano y Yo.” [My Brother and I]

Jimmy: [Laughs]

Julio: Or maybe you hear a song by Diomedes and you remember some day when you were partying here.

Jimmy: Oh, okay.

Julio: That’s it. Memories that might, maybe you have a girlfriend and you dedicate a song to her and when you hear it you remember that person. You return to that time. You know?

In this excerpt Julio is expressing the way in which music engages with memory in order to make one travel in time, an idea that was also reflected by his cousin, Tatiana, in her interview:

Tatiana: Entonces si nosotros vamos pa’lla estamos por, por su música. La escuchamos. También se nos pega. Se nos queda. Y entonces uno la quiere escuchar por la letra, por lo que dice, porque siento uno que es con uno, o sea, cuando uno escucha esa música, ay si, o sea [pone la mano en la cara y mira hacia la distancia] es algo que me recuerda a mí en mi tiempo… En este tiempo yo estaba haciendo esto y si me gustaba mucho y entonces le gustan las cosas a uno y pues, este, siempre ahí en la mente, siempre la va a escuchar.

Jimmy: Claro. Yo entiendo. Hice lo mismo con el vallenato cuando volví a los Estados Unidos.

Tatiana: [Se ríe] Claro, o sea… Uno se va, se transporta. Se transporta.

*****

Tatiana: So if we travel there we are surrounded by their music. We listen to it. We also start to like it. It stays with us. So one wants to listen to it because of the lyrics, because of what it says, because one feels that it’s, like, when one listens to that music, oh yeah, like [puts her hand on her face and looks off into the distance] it’s something that reminds me of myself in my time… In that time I was doing this and I liked it very much and so one likes it, umm, always there in your mind you’re going to listen to it.

Jimmy: Of course. I understand. I did the same thing with vallenato when I went back to the United States.

Tatiana: [Laughs] Of course, like… One goes, one is transported. One is transported.

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This feature of music is one that is obviously very important to working class costeñx people in

Campo de la Cruz. But why would one need to be transported? And why would this affective transportation be so important to working class costeñxs retornadxs and Colombo-Venezuelans in Campo? To answer this question I would like to turn to the song “Ausencia Sentimental” after which this thesis is titled, in order to compare the experiences of this population to the song lyrics. In this way we can perhaps shed some light on the affective results of the migration.

Ausencia Sentimental [Sentimental Absence]

The song “Ausencia Sentimental” was composed by Rafael Manjarrez in the year 1986 and in 2010 it became the official song of the Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata [Festival of the

Vallenato Legend]—the largest vallenato competition and festival in Colombia. The composer is from the municipality of La Jagua del Pilar in the La Guajira department, the northernmost department of Colombia and La Costa, which shares a border with Venezuela. He wrote the song about his experience studying law in the capital, Bogota, and the longing that he felt for his home. The song is beautifully portrayed by vallenato singer Silvio Brito, who is from Fonseca,

La Guajira and begins with the following verse:

Ya comienza el festival, vinieron a invitarme. Ya se van los provincianos que estudian conmigo. Ayer tarde que volvieron preferí negarme, pa' no tener que contarle a nadie mis motivos. Yo que me muero por ir y es mi deber quedarme. Me quedo en la capital por cosas del destino. Porque el medio de mis viejos es tan humilde que me dan para venirme y en diciembre regresar. Encerrado temblando escribí unas letras que detallan mi tristeza, mi ausencia sentimental

*****

The festival starts now, they came to invite me. Now my countrymen who study with me leave. Late yesterday when they returned I preferred to refuse,

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So I didn’t have to tell anyone my motives. I who would die to go and it’s my duty to stay. I stay in the capital as a thing of destiny. Because the means of my parents are so humble That it’s just enough for me to come and return in December Closed-in, shaking, I wrote some lyrics That detail my sadness, my sentimental absence

In this verse the writer conveys how it is his duty to stay in the capital and study in order to presumably improve his and his family’s quality of life. The Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata has just started in Valledupar, and despite how much he wants to attend, he can’t because of insufficient economic means. Instead, he must stay in the capital, where costeñxs are perceived as being looked down upon, and watch as all of his fellow costeñxs return to their home in order to attend the festival. In order to deal with the sadness of being away from home, he chooses to write down his feelings of sentimental absence as a coping mechanism. He continues in the following verse:

Que me traigan razones, le pedí al veni' a mis compañeros las anécdotas y los cuentos nuevos, que son costumbres de allá renglones pa mis viejos diciendoles cuanto los recuerdo mi novia y los amigos aquellos con que suelo frecuentar pa no mortificarme, ni escuchar la radio yo me atrevo que si el Mango está en la plaza igual que si el Maestro Escalona asistió si bajó Toño Salas del Plan que pasó? y aqui estoy pero mi alma está allá. ***** May they give me reasons, I requested of my partners when they come back, The anecdotes and new stories, That are customs from there Long letters for my folks Telling them how much I remember them My girlfriend and those friends of mine That I tend to hang around with To not be mortified, I don’t even dare to listen to the radio

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If the Mango is in the plaza like before If the Master Escalona attended If Toño Salas gets off the stage What happened? And here I am, but my soul is back there.

Here the author continues by telling us how he told his friends to fill him in on what is happening back in his home. He also tells them to bring long letters to his parents so that they know how often he thinks about them. While he wants to know what is going on back home, he doesn’t dare to turn on the radio to hear the music and happenings of the festival because it would mortify him. Perhaps he knows that hearing the music would transport him there, while recognizing that it would be an incomplete transportation. He still wants to know, but continues to feel the sentimental absence of his body being in Bogotá and his soul being in his home, La Costa.

Many people that I spoke with in Campo felt a strong connection to this song and after hearing their stories I can understand why. Like the Manjarrez, they had to pursue new opportunities in a place far from their home. Often, they did not have the means to travel or visit frequently and missed Campo dearly. I believe many of them likely shared a similar affective state to Manjarrez because of their positionality: a state of sentimental absence. The song or music then becomes the object to which this affect is attached.

In the context of this sentimental absence, we can begin to understand why the ability for costeñxs to use music as a way to feel and transport themselves as they discussed in their interviews is so important. All of the interviewees whose stories were shared in this project have lived between two host countries. In addition to these two host countries, as members of the

African Diaspora they also share an ancestral homeland in Africa. Because of their unique and racialized position within the Colombian nation, this population is marginalized and forced to go to great lengths to find work, sometimes far away from the home that they feel a connection to— whether it be Campo or Caracas. In this case, music becomes a crucial affective tool that

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costeñxs deploy in order to cope with life’s difficulties and travel to a different time and place. In the conclusion of Sarah Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness she states:

When I think of what makes happiness “happy” I think of moments. Moments of happiness create texture, shared impressions: a sense of lightness in possibility. Just think of those moments where you are brought to life by the absurdity of being reminded of something, where a sideways glance can be enough to create a feeling that ripples through you. Two people burst out with laughter by the recollection of an event. Just a word can prompt such recollection, a gesture, anything. (2010, p. 219)

Perhaps one of the reasons that costeñxs are stereotyped as being alegre [joyful] is because of their ability to use music as a tool to experience these “moments” that Ahmed mentions. This is not to say that they should be imagined as conforming to racialized stereotypes of being in a constant state of bliss, or of duplicating some type of national happiness duty. Rather, costeñxs should be seen as agents that use music and the moments that it creates—whether happy, sad, or oftentimes a combination of happy and sad—in order to improve the quality of their lives in a context where they face so many challenges and a sense of sentimental absence.

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CHAPTER 7 CODA

In this work I have explored a particular working-class costeñxs identity as it relates to

Colombo-Venezuelans and retornadxs in Campo de la Cruz, Colombia and their connection to music. I began by sharing ways in which this regional identity was performed as opposed to the national stereotype of the cachacx and the class-based stereotype of the pupi. In relation to both of these identities, working-class costeñxs are perceived to be backwards, lazy, and joyful partiers. Despite discriminatory rhetoric, costeñxs in Campo continue to be proud of their regional identity and actively highlight it. I have also attempted to show the ways in which this particular identity is racialized and perceived to be both Afro-Diasporic and hybrid, with the participants placing an emphasis on their African roots. I then showed the ways in which costeñxs from Campo de la Cruz emigrated to Caracas, Venezuela in order to find opportunities and improve their quality of lives. This was particularly important in the context of Campo, as everyone who I have spoken with constantly mentioned how there were a lack of job opportunities in the pueblo. Through the stories of these individuals I showed how they formed immigrant communities, or colonias colombianas, in Caracas. Within the colonias colombianas, participants discussed how they primarily listened to music genres that were formed in La Costa such as champeta and vallenato. Music was seen as important to everyone that I interviewed, and these music songs, genres, and experiences became imbued with emotions—as affective objects that elicited complex reactions from the interviewees. I argue that the importance of music to

Colombo-Venezuelans and costeñxs in Campo ultimately lies in its uncanny ability to transport its listeners sentimentally to another time or place, and to feel something that they may never have processed or felt otherwise. Ultimately, music can serve both as a way to experience the

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ausencia sentimental after which this thesis is named, and to conquer it through its ability to transport the listener.

Far from being a hard conclusion to this investigation of affect, music, and diaspora in

Campo de la Cruz, this “coda” serves as an ending to this particular piece, but the starting point for what I hope will become a dissertation research project. I have learned much from the stories of the people of Campo—more than I could possibly analyze in this thesis. I have learned how working class people of La Costa utilize music as a way of existing and coping with the material difficulties of their lives. I have learned the challenges that they have faced abroad and how they formed colonias colombianas in Caracas. I have learned that in Campo a wide variety of music traditions are listened to such as vallenato, champeta, hip-hop, reggaeton, trap, salsa, merengue, cumbia, son de negros, puya, papayera, etc… and that each of these genres occupies distinct spaces and connects with distinct audiences. I have learned that La Costa is a racialized region that is marginalized in relation to the nation’s capital, and that locals in Campo perceive this hierarchy. I have learned that costeñxs are also active agents who take steps to improve their quality of life in face of these neocolonial power structures. Perhaps most of all, I have learned that the people of the region, and their connection to music, is much more complex and nuanced than national stereotypes portray. I even learned to sing vallenato and play the guacharaca!

Despite having learned all of these things, I ultimately feel like I have more questions coming out of the field than I had going into it.

In future research it will be important to engage more in-depth with dynamics of gender, race, sexuality, and class in the region. A more thorough investigation of local music traditions, and genres that are not local but that people listen to, will also be necessary in order to ascertain how different genres may be connected to different affects. I would love to engage more fully

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with scholarship on affect in the future in order to be able to better research and articulate the emotional states that become the cultural practices of the people of Campo de la Cruz and La

Costa. I also hope to learn new ethnographic research methodologies and ways of approaching research as an activist before conducting future research so that my scholarship and research process can make a positive and meaningful intervention in the community that my work aims to serve.

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APPENDIX A INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

1. Warm-Up Questions Please state your first name, middle name (if first name is common), and your age. What soccer team is better: Junior or Nacional? Why? (To lighten the mood) Tell me a little bit about yourself: What do you do? / What is your profession? / What do you like to do? / How do you occupy your time? (Whichever are Applicable) Where are you from? What places have you lived? (This is a transition question to the section on Colombo-Venezuelan Identity. If the response includes Venezuela, I will ask questions from section 2. If the response does not include Venezuela, I will skip to section 3.) 2. Questions for people who have lived in Venezuela How long did you live in Venezuela and why did you move there (if from Campo)? How much time have you lived in Campo de la Cruz? Why did you come to/come back to Campo de la Cruz? I have heard that there are neighborhoods in Caracas such as Las Parrillas that are almost entirely Colombian. Did you live in one of these neighborhoods and if so which one? If not, tell me what your neighborhood/city was like? When you were living in Venezuela what kind of music did you primarily listen to/dance to/make? Could you name a specific song or artist that you listened to when living in Venezuela and really liked or felt a strong connection to? (After they name the song/artist) What attracts you to this type of music? What type of music did you hear most commonly in your daily life in Venezuela, regardless of whether you listened to it on purpose or not? 3. Questions about Campo’s Music Scene/Traditions How would you describe the types of music do you most commonly hear in Campo de la Cruz currently? How has this music changed throughout your lifetime? (If they have lived in Campo for an extended period of time) How do you most commonly listen to music in Campo de la Cruz? What type of music do you choose to listen to/dance to/make while living here? Can you name a specific song or artist? (After they respond) What attracts you to this type of music? Do you believe that migration from Venezuela has changed the music that you hear on a day to day basis in Campo de la Cruz? If so: How? I have heard that migration from Venezuela has influenced Campo in other ways (mention rap and Santeria) Have you noticed any of these or other cultural influence from Venezuela in Campo? How so? 4. Questions about Identity & Race My research focuses primarily on identity and music and I am very interested in how people identify here in Campo and the role that these identifies play in their lives (Give examples of identity categories using my own identity). If you don’t mind, I’m going to ask you a few questions about identity: If someone were to ask you if you are Colombian, Venezuelan, or Colombo-Venezuelan, or some other nationality, how would you respond? Why might you respond that way? Is this aspect of your identity important in your everyday life? Why or why not?

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Do you believe that the music that you choose to listen to/dance to/make is related to this identity in some way? (Give example if necessary) How would you identify racially or ethnically? (Give examples from conversations or categories from the census if necessary) Does this match with how you think others would identify you racially or ethnically? Is this racial category important to you in your everyday life? Why or why not? Do you believe that the music that you choose to listen/dance to/make is related to this identity in some way? (Give example if necessary) I have heard a lot of people in Campo identify to themselves as Moren@, but less people refer to themselves as Negr@ or Afrodescendiente. Are these categories different and how so? Is Campo an Afro-Colombian pueblo? Some people that I have talked to have expressed that they don’t think racism is a problem here on the Coast like it might be in other places. Do you believe that racial discrimination or inequality exist in the region, and how so? 5. Closing Are there any other identities that you have that you find to be important to your experiences living in Campo? Is there anything else that you would like to add about the themes that we discussed? Are there any questions that you would like to ask me?

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APPENDIX B ATLAS T.I. CODE FREQUENCY

Code Frequency Likes vallenato 11 Heard same vallenato in Venezuela 10 Heard coastal music in Venezuela 10 Lived in area with mostly costeños 9 Likes music because of feeling 9 Economic factors for living in Venezuela 8 Identifies as afrodescendiente 8 Discrimination against Colombians in Venezuela 8

Heard salsa music in Venezuela 8 Regionalism exists in Colombia 8 Likes music for dancing 8 Likes music for lyrical content 8 From Campo 8 No job opportunities in Campo 7 Identifies as Colombian 7 Racism doesn't exist in Campo/locally 7 Vallenato most popular music in Campo 7 Lived in La Parrilla 7 Venezuelans haven't influenced culture/music in Campo 7

Came to Campo because of the situation in Venezuela 7

Racism exists locally (Campo/La Costa) 6 Campo economically dependent on Venezuela 6

Costeños are stereotyped 6 Las Parrillas is mostly Colombian 5 Feels music reflects Colombian identity 5 Feels Colombian identity is important 5 Identifies as morena/o 5 Discrimination against Venezuelans exists 5 Lived in Venezuela over 10 years 5 Heard more vallenato romantico in Venezuela 5

Lived in Petares 5 Racism exists in Venezuela 5

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Afrodescendiente is the same as skin color 5 Afrodescendiente means African roots 5 Identifies as Colombo-Venezuelan 5 No discrimination against Venezuelans 4 African influence in music 4 Identifies with mixed racial heritage 4 Music taste varies by generation 4 Venezuelans associated with crime 4 Music associated with nostalgia/memory 4 From Venezuela 4 Venezuelan values are different 4 Racial identity is reflected through music preference 4

Lived majority of life in Venezuela 4 Vallenato parrandero more popular in Campo 4

Wants to return to Venezuela 4 Venezuelan influence on music in Campo 3 Costeños are seen as happy 3 Las Parrillas is mostly Camperos 3 Blackness associated with place 3 Vallenato popular with older generation 3 CVs speak differently than locals 3 Afrodescendiente as racial hybridity 3 Racial response is ambiguous 3 Costeños seen as inferior/corronchos 3 Racial identity is important 3 Feels Colombo-Venezuelan identity is important 3

Heard mostly champeta in Venezuela 3 Identifies more with Colombia 3 Music reflects national identity 3 Doesn't identify racially 3 Afrodescendiente is different from skin color 3

Colombians listen to coastal music 3 Parents are Colombian 3 Lived in Venezuela less than one year 2 Venezuelans treated better in Campo than in cities 2

Lived in Campo most of life 2

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Venezuelans liked Vallenato music 2 Gang activity 2 Campo is afrodescendiente 2 Music associated with ancestral memory 2 Racial identity isn't seen as important 2 Costeño music was seen as vulgar 2 Costeño music appropriated by cachacos 2 Highlights costeño identity over Colombian identity 2

Young people more likely to adopt Venezuelan tastes 2

Heard musica llanera in Venezuela 2 Interacted primarily with Colombians in Venezuela 2

Venezuelans listen to more salsa 2 Vallenato romantico is newer than vallenato parrandero 2

Regionalism is another form of racism 2 Identifies as negrx 2 Perceived as Venezuelan in Campo 2 Young people listen to rap more than older generations 2

Rap associated with delinquency 2 Difficulties adjusting to life in Campo 2 Likes Champeta Africana 2 Music is in the blood 2 High Venezuelan population in Campo 2 Vallenato music can be sexist 2 Likes salsa romantica 2 Lived in a neighborhood with few Colombians 2

C-V differences are marked 2 Champeta popular with younger generation 2 Racism is related to class 2 African influence through drums 2 CVs dress differently than locals 2 African cultural influence 2 Champeta is Haitian 1 Moved to Venezuela because of flood 1 Fusion of C-V cultures among youth 1 Costeños underrepresented in media 1

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CVs defend Colombia 1 CVs defend Venezuela 1 Identifies as Venezuelan (with Colombian parents) 1

Students want to mark their Colombian culture 1

Circular migration influence on pop music 1 People dance if the music touches them 1 Good vallenato songs don't go out of style 1 Vallenato lyrics no longer as meaningful 1 Students want to adopt Venezuelan culture 1 International genres brought by Venezuelans 1

Difficulties adjusting to life in Caracas 1 Students don't have strong divisions between C-V 1

CVs dress more informally 1 Campo is returning a favor to Caracas 1 CVs act differently than locals 1 Champeta gets people worked up 1 Venezuelans request different music in estaderos 1

Likes many genres of music 1 Fiestas de pico' 1 Vallenato romantico result of hybridity 1 Laws have made vallenato music less sexist 1 Venezuelans have influenced music in Campo 1

Colombians seen as parasites in Venezuela 1 Formation of the conclave 1 Nobody in Campo has pure blood 1 Went to Venezuela for education 1 Some don't identify as afro por pena 1 Have to like Vallenato to be costeño 1 Vallenato as an afrodescendiente genre 1 Lived well in Venezuela 1 Maduro responsible for ruining Venezuela 1 Students identify strongly with Venezuelan culture 1

Unequal health services for Venezuelans in Colombia 1

Music associated with melancholy/longing 1

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Tranquilidad in Campo 1 Colombians were treated like slaves in Venezuela 1

Racism exists only in señores 1 Reggaeton brought from those who have lived in 1 Venezuela International genres increased with mass media 1

Folkloric music only played at events to show national 1 value Media foments Anti-Venezuelan fear 1 Lived in Campo for less than 1 year 1 Bachata popular with younger generation 1 Racism exists within children 1 Venezuelans as job competition 1 Champeta can have sexist lyrics 1 Likes music because of novelty 1 Racism is a personal issue 1 Likes English language music 1 Mentions tranquilidad in Campo 1 Folkloric music decreasing in popularity 1 Constant movement between Venezuela and Campo 1

Afrodescendiente related to hair texture 1 Vallenato music will not be replaced on the coast 1

Merengue popular with older generation 1 Reggaeton popular with younger generation 1

Heard merengue music in Venezuela 1 Heard pop/English language music 1 Discrimination against Venezuelan women mentioned 1

Light skinned people are more represented on television 1

Cities have more discrimination/racism 1 Urban genres will replace vallenato 1 Colombian associations in Venezuela 1 Likes pop ballads 1 Bureaucratic difficulties getting work in Colombia 1

Likes merengue 1

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Reggaeton increased with mass media 1 Identifies with others in the African Diaspora 1

Merengue makes him want to dance 1 Light skinned people have more opportunities 1

Folkloric music not played at estaderos 1 Most rappers in Campo arrived from Venezuela 1

African influence through dance 1 Writes music to express reality and feelings 1 Light skinned people tend to be better off economically 1

Likes hip-hop/rap 1 Lived in Campo whole life 1 Moved to Venezuela because of violence 1 Feels music reflects Colombo-Venezuelan identity 1

Undocumented Colombians detained in Venezuela 1

Discrimination against Colombians in Venezuela in past 1

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

James Everett was born in 1993 in DeLand, Florida, and raised in the neighboring town of Orange City, Florida. After graduating from DeLand High School—where he was involed in

TV production, drama, and chorus—he went on to study International Studies at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. At UNF, James was able to leave the country for the first time during a summer study abroad in Greece, where he developed a fascination for exploring other cultures. During his time at UNF he was also able to intern with the U.S. Peace Corps in

Washington, D.C., and was president of the university’s Spanish Club. After graduating at the age of twenty, James went on to serve as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Campo de la Cruz,

Colombia—the same pueblo on which the majority of his research is focused—from 2014 to

2016. During the summer of 2017, James worked as an Interpretive Ranger at Yellowstone

National Park prior to beginning his graduate studies at the University of Florida in the fall semester. James completed his M.A. in Latin American Studies—with a specialization in

“Gender, Sexuality, and Racialization” at UF in the spring of 2019.

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