Arts & Sciences Events

Location

Boswell Hall (formerly Morton Hall), Room 314
100 Ukrop Way
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location

Celia Cruz, perhaps the most well-known salsa performer in the world, has come to function as a symbol of unity for Latino communities in the United States. A black woman born into poverty, Cruz' audiences have imbued her with the power to break down ethnic and racial boundaries through her musical performance. This is despite the fact that in the U.S. Latino imaginary, blacks often do not have a place, and that in Latin America, blackness is often marginalized. Drawing from an analysis of news stories in the Miami Herald and the New York Times written after her 2003 death, this talk argues that the veneration of Celia Cruz as a pan-Latino icon has relied on both the erasure and hyper-visibilization of Cruz' blackness. Discourses used to celebrate her universal and crossover appeal deem her a celebrated "virgin mother"? while also reifying common gender stereotypes used to describe African Diasporic women. Furthermore, her blackness or "Africanness" is called upon to represent Cuban "authenticity"? and the essence of Latinidad. Grappling with the contradictions in the representation of this beloved legend, this paper brings attention to the need to disrupt Latin American racial democracy and United States post-racial discourses that idealize racial transcendence.