Negro Soy Yo Refiguring American Music Series Editors Ronald Radano Josh Kun Charles McGovern Negro Soy Yo Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba Marc D. Perry Duke University Press Durham and London 2016 Raced Neoliberalism iii © 2016 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Designed by Natalie F. Smith Typeset in Quadraat Pro by Copperline Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perry, Marc D., [date] - author. Negro soy yo : hip hop and raced citizenship in neoliberal Cuba / Marc D. Perry. pages cm—(Refiguring American music) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-5985-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-5885-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-7495-4 (e-book) 1. Hip-hop—Political aspects—Cuba. 2. Blacks—Cuba—Social conditions. 3. Cuba—Race relations. I. Title. II. Series: Refiguring American music. ml3486.c82p47 2015 782.421649089’9607291—dc23 2015020930 Cover art: Ariel Fernández Diaz. Photo by Steve Marcus. For my parents, Morton and Margie Perry, and my dear aunt, Susan Ribner Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Raced Neoliberalism: Groundings for Hip Hop 29 Chapter 2. Hip Hop Cubano: An Emergent Site of Black Life 57 Chapter 3. New Revolutionary Horizons 91 Chapter 4. Critical Self-Fashionings and Their Gendering 135 Chapter 5. Racial Challenges and the State 171 Chapter 6. Whither Hip Hop Cubano? 199 Postscript 235 Notes 239 References 255 Index 273 Acknowledgments This book has been a long-awaited endeavor, as many can attest. All said, there are numerous individuals who have lent collaborative time, intellect, guidance, and political investment to bringing this book to fruition, and I am deeply grateful and indebted to them for this. First and foremost are my friends, colleagues, and others in Cuba whose lives, work, and art inspired this project and for whom this book is ultimately dedicated. In Havana these include artists Magia López (and her family, especially her mother, Cari- dad), Alexey Rodríguez (and his parents, Celso and Maria), Sekou Yosmel Sarrias and Kokino Entenza, Soandres del Río and Alexis Cantero, Randy Acosta and Jessel Saladriga, Odaymara Cuesta, Odalys Cuesta, and Olivia Prendes, Yrak Saenz and Edgar González, Magyori Martínez, Yanelis Valdéz, and Yaribey Collia, Julio Cardenas, Michael Oramas and the epg&b crew, the Diez y Diecinueve posse, Edrey Riveri and 100% Original, Reyas de la Calle, Roger Martínez, Papo Record, and Telmary Díaz. Other instrumen- tal individuals within this broader community include Pablo Herrera, Ariel Fernández Díaz, Alexis “D’Boys” Rodríguez, Rodolfo Rensoli, Balesy Riv- ero, Yelandy Blaya, Javier Esteban, and Mateus Da Silva. In Santiago de Cuba I would like to thank Luis Gonzales, Rubén Cuesta Palomo, Omar Planos Cordoví, Aristey Guibert, Café Mezclado, Chucho shs, Antonio, and Eu- genio for their involvements. Other Havana-based interlocutors with whom I am also humbly indebted are Roberto Zurbano, Tomás Fernández Robaina, Nehanda Abiodun, Assata Shakur, Gisela Arandia, Grizel Hernández Baguer, Norma Guillard Limonta, Rogelio Martínez Furé, Gloria Rolando, Yesenia Sélier, Joseph Mutti, Elvira Rodriguez Puerto, Rita, Mario, Ernesto, Lisnida, Amílcar, Delmaris, Guil- lermo, and Delbis Gomez. Additional Cuban or Cuba-related individuals who have contributed important form to this book include Tonel (aka Anto- nio Eligio Fernández), Sue Herrod, Catherine Murphy, Baye Adofo Wilson, Vanessa Diaz, Antonio (Tony) Reyes, Lisandro Perez-Rey, Danny Hoch, Ma- rinieves Alba, Kahlil and Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Dana Kaplan, Javier Mach- ado Leyva, Ariel Arias, Sahily Borrero, Steve Marcus, Sarah Siebold, Ybp Banderas, David Downs, Teresa Konechne, Lou “Piensa” Dufieux, Juliette Barker Dufieux, Vox Sambu, Warda Brédy, Diegal Leger, and the whole No- madic Massive posse. The formative stages of this project occurred at the University of Texas, Austin. I would like to thank my advisor Ted Gordon and committee mem- bers Charles Hale, Joao Costa Vargas, Craig S. Watkins, and Jafari Allen who was also an important compadre in the field, for their intellectual guidance and support. Here I would also like to thank Aline Helg, Shelia Walker, Stu- art Guzman, Bob and BJ Fernea, Deborah Kapchan, Isar Godreau, and Asale Ajani for their early support and engagements. My appreciation goes to my peers who encouraged and intellectually challenged me during this period: Jennifer Goett, Ben Chappell, Keisha-Khan Perry, Kia Lilly Caldwell, Mark Anderson, Peggy Brunache, Lynn Selby, Julio Tavares, Saheed Adejumobi, Denni Blum, Dana Maya, Courtney Johnson, Chantal Tetreault, Elana Zil- berg, Vania Cardoso, Scott Head, and David Lynch. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Arlene Torres, Gilberto Rosas, Ellen Moodie, Matti Bunzl, Alejandro Lugo, Martin Manalansan, Charles Rosemam, Erik Mc- Duffie, Jessica Millward, Tage Biswalo, Fanon Wilkins, Diane Pindergrass, Merle Bowen, David Roediger, Lisa Nakamura, Christian Sandvig, Cristobal Valencia, Anthony Jerry, and Maritza Quiñones. I extend my gratitude to my colleagues while completing this project at Tulane University (2010–15): Laura Rosanne Adderley, Christopher Dunn, Mariana Mora, Felipe Smith, Olanike Orie, João Felipe Gonçalves, Allison Truitt, Michael Cunningham, Beretta Smith-Shomade, TR Johnson, and Justin Wolfe for their intellectual engagement and much appreciated support. x acknowledgments I additionally would like to thank the following individuals for their support and varying involvements during the course of this project: Deborah Thomas, Faye Harrison, Mark Anthony Neil, Ariana Hernandez Reguant, Lisa Maya Knauer, Frank Guridy, Ruth Behar, Henry Taylor, Ivor Miller, Robin Moore, Ron Radano, Tejumola Olaniyan, Frances Aparicio, Steven Gregory, Nita- sha Sharma, Arlene Davila, Mark Sawyer, Novian Whitsitt, Emily Maguire, Bakari Kitwana, Laurie Frederik Meer, Nadine Fernandez, Karen Morrison, Katherine Gordy, Ned Sublette, Umi Vaughn, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Jed Tucker, Sherwin Bryant, Karine Poulin, Marietta Fernandez Lopez, Antonia Chabebe, Kristin Kalangis, Francoise Grossmann, Joseph Tolton, Jean Co- hen, Virginia Miller, and Rosalyn Baxandall. I would like to thank Janet Dixon Keller for her keen editorial eye, and India Cooper and Cyndy Brown for their copyediting. My appreciations to Ken Wissoker at Duke University Press for his patient shepherding of the project as well as to the four anonymous re- viewers who provided valuable feedback in bringing this book to final form. The following institutions provided generous support during the re- search and writing of this book: the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas, Luther College and the Con- sortium for a Strong Minority Presence in Liberal Arts Colleges’ Minority Scholar-in-Residence Program, The Ford Foundation Diversity Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowship Programs, the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Tulane. Lastly I would like to thank my partner Maria Hinds for her sharp eye, love, and generous support through the final stages of this project. acknowledgments xi Introduction Siento odio profundo por tu racismo Ya no me confundo con tu ironía Y lloro sin que sepas que el llanto mío tiene lágrimas negras como mi vida I feel profound hatred for your racism I am now no longer confused by your irony And I cry without you knowing that my cry has black tears like my life —“Lágrimas negras,” Hermanos de Causa In “Lágrimas negras” (Black tears) by the Havana-based hip hop duo Her- manos de Causa (Brothers of the cause), the artists Soandres and Pelón pro- vide a biting critique of the racialized hardships they, as young black men, encounter in the Cuban everyday. Borrowing the title from the classic bolero- son first popularized in the 1930s by the celebrated Cuban composer Miguel Matamoros, Hermanos de Causa poetically refigure the terms of “Lágrimas negras” by placing black life amid Cuba’s evolving social malaise at its nar- rative center. Where the original composition offered a ballad of romantic sorrow, Hermanos de Causa speak of “black tears” of racial marginalization, criminalized gazes, and the simultaneous invisibility and hypervisibility that has come to mark Afro-Cuban life following the island’s post-Soviet eco- nomic crisis of the early 1990s. The artists in this sense offer a poignant play on blackness that reflects a shifting Cuban complexity of race and nation- hood, while foregrounding the salience of black subjectivity itself as a site of political life and contest. Cut to a humid July evening in 2006 during a party I attended at a rooftop flat in Regla, a residential barrio a quick ferry ride across the harbor from the tourist-laden district of Habana Vieja. Atop the narrow staircase leading to the apartment, one is greeted by a large portrait of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the heroic patriarch of the Haitian Revolution, poised in military garb with his foot pressed triumphantly upon the head of a hissing snake. A photo of Malcolm X sits prominently amid other images garnishing the living room walls, as a large spray-painted figure of an afro-adorned man sits affixed to an outside wall of the flat’s rooftop patio. The evening’s