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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2021
In this article I examine how, during a period of extreme social unrest, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took up the role of a salsa radio deejay as a show of confidence in his hold on political power and of his solidarity with ordinary Venezuelans. I argue that this all but unprecedented and, for many, controversial course of action by a sitting president provides us with an unusual opportunity to analyse Venezuela's long-standing political crisis. In particular, I highlight how Maduro harnessed salsa's long association with poor Latin Americans, its connection to Venezuela and its pleasurable character to bolster his socialist credentials, and I show how this strategy unleashed a public exchange of criticisms with one legendary salsero (salsa musician), Rubén Blades. By exploring the way music intersects with politics, I show how popular culture is neither ancillary to nor derivative of the country's ever-deepening strife but, rather, constitutive of it.
En este artículo examino cómo, durante un periodo de malestar social extremo, el presidente venezolano Nicolás Maduro asumió el papel de locutor de salsa en la radio como una muestra de confianza sobre su control del poder político y su solidaridad con los venezolanos comunes. Argumento que este curso de acción casi sin precedentes − y, para muchos, controversial − de un presidente en el poder nos ofrece una oportunidad única para analizar la crisis política venezolana de largo plazo. En particular, subrayo cómo Maduro aprovechó la tradicional asociación de la salsa con los pobres latinoamericanos, su conexión con Venezuela y su carácter placentero para reforzar sus credenciales socialistas, y muestro cómo esta estrategia desencadenó una ola pública de críticas con un salsero legendario, Rubén Blades. Al explorar la forma en la que la música se entrecruza con la política, muestro cómo la cultura popular no es ni auxiliar ni derivativa de los problemas cada vez más profundos del país, sino más bien, los constituye.
Neste artigo examino como, durante um período de extrema agitação social, o presidente venezuelano Nicolás Maduro assumiu o papel de DJ de salsa no rádio como uma demonstração de sua confiança em seu domínio do poder político e sua solidariedade para com os venezuelanos comuns. Afirmo que este curso de ação quase sem precedentes − e, para muitos, controverso − por um presidente em exercício nos oferece uma oportunidade incomum de analisar a crise política venezuelana de longo prazo. Destaco, em particular, como Maduro aproveitou a associação tradicional da salsa com as classes populares latino-americanas, sua conexão com a Venezuela e seu caráter agradável para reforçar suas credenciais socialistas, e mostro como essa estratégia desencadeou uma troca pública de críticas com um lendário salsero (músico de salsa), Rubén Blades. Ao explorar a forma como a música se cruza com a política, mostro como a cultura popular não é auxiliar nem derivada das lutas cada vez mais profundas do país, mas sim constitutiva delas.
1 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.
2 This research has its origins in casual conversations with other ethnomusicologists in which we grappled with the question of how any of us could continue our study of the music of Venezuela in a context in which a stretch of on-the-ground fieldwork that might include individual interviews, archival research and participant observation, had become increasingly impossible to project. This is because at the time of discussing our common dilemma, Venezuela continued to experience bouts of widespread civil unrest prompting repressive responses from the state, very high levels of crime, rampant inflation, widespread food insecurity and lethal shortages of medicine and hospital care, to list only the most discouraging disincentives to a researcher considering Venezuela as a fieldwork site. Sadly, the relevance of this internet-based research to ethnographers has only increased with the devastation and uncertainty wrought by the coronavirus pandemic around the world. Some sense of the severe risks to personal safety faced by Venezuelans of all social classes can be obtained from the Institute for Economics and Peace's Global Peace Index report, which rates Venezuela 20th among the world's most dangerous countries, making it, by this metric, the most dangerous country in the western hemisphere. See Institute for Economics and Peace, ‘Global Peace Index 2019: Measuring Peace in a Complex World’ (Sydney: IEP, June 2019), p. 9, available at http://visionofhumanity.org/reports, last access 15 Jan. 2021. For the specific limitations on free movement about Caracas that I encountered in 2015 and 2016, see Sean Bellaviti ‘In Search of the Organization of American States 1970s Field Recording Collection in Caracas, Venezuela’, in Sound Matters: The SEM Blog (available at https://soundmattersthesemblog.wordpress.com/, last access 15 Jan. 2021).
3 In this respect, my own study follows the model employed by Eduardo Frajman that offers an analysis of Hugo Chávez's weekly television show Aló Presidente, based on transcriptions widely available on the internet. See Frajman, Eduardo, ‘Broadcasting Populist Leadership: Hugo Chávez and Aló Presidente’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 46: 3 (2014), pp. 501–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 At the time of writing, La Hora de la Salsa (hereafter La Hora) continues to be aired with Javier Key in the role of emcee.
5 The online Appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X21000237 under the ‘Supplementary materials’ tab.
6 The PBS documentary Frontline: The Hugo Chávez Show (2008) provides a succinct and informative snapshot of the tone, content and political dimensions of Aló Presidente. See also Dominic Smith, ‘A Corpus-Driven Discourse Analysis of Transcripts of Hugo Chávez's Television Programme “Aló Presidente”’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2010.
7 For a thorough and, to be sure, highly critical examination of Chávez's support for the country's internationally renowned nation-wide classical music programme, Fundación del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela (National Network of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela), more colloquially referred to as ‘El Sistema’, see Baker, Geoffrey, El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela's Youth (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.
8 See ‘Maduro tocando las congas en el concierto de Andy Montañez’, YouTube, 23 Nov. 2014, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eg4nkN8QIA, last access 8 Jan. 2021.
9 See ‘Maduro llega al barrio de El Chorrillo’, YouTube, 10 April 2015, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFSBun8s918, last access 8 Jan. 2021.
10 Sánchez, Rafael, Dancing Jacobins: A Venezuelan Genealogy of Latin American Populism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), p. 7Google Scholar.
11 Coronil, Fernando, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 2Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., pp. 168−72.
13 The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) offers substantial in-depth coverage of La Salida and the protests that followed, including, for example, Alejandro Velasco's excellent interview with María Pilar García-Guadilla. See Alejandro Velasco, ‘Venezuela Before and After the Protests (An Interview with María Pilar García-Guadilla)’, 28 Sept. 2014, available at https://nacla.org/article/venezuela-and-after-protests-interview-mar%C3%ADa-pilar-garc%C3%ADa-guadilla, last access 15 Jan. 2021.
14 See ‘Venezuela's President Maduro Calls for New Constituent Body’, BBC, 2 May 2017, available at www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39775092, last access 15 Jan. 2021.
15 María Isabel Sánchez, ‘Dancing Through Scandal: Venezuela's President Hosts a Salsa Show while His Country Churns in Crisis’, Business Insider, 24 Nov. 2016, available at www.businessinsider.com/afp-president-dances-salsa-while-venezuela-churns-2016-11, last access 11 Jan. 2021.
16 Schiller, Naomi, Channeling the State: Community Media and Popular Politics in Venezuela (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), p. 58Google Scholar.
17 Ibid.
18 La Hora, 1 Nov. 2016. La Hora's capacity to reach an ever-broader sector of the Venezuelan population was enhanced because the show was broadcast on a nation-wide network of radio stations, or ‘cadenas radiales’, which Maduro boasted would allow him to ‘speak directly to the regions […] to announce [public] works’ (La Hora, 11 Nov. 2016).
19 La Hora, 11 Nov. 2016.
20 Schiller, Channeling the State, p. 10.
21 Ibid.
22 For some excellent examples of Chávez's use of music in Aló Presidente, see Marsh, Hazel, Hugo Chávez, Alí Primera and Venezuela: The Politics of Music in Latin America (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The use of music to sway the course of national politics was not solely a tactic employed by the political Left. In 2011, for example, the US-based National Endowment for Democracy ‘funded rock groups in Venezuela to record songs promoting democracy’ in an effort to ‘undermine the rule of Hugo Chávez’. See Joe Parkin Daniels, ‘Sing a Song of Subversion: US funded Venezuela rock bands to dent Chávez’, The Guardian, 27 May 2020, available at www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/27/venezuela-us-funded-rock-bands-hugo-chavez, last access 11 Jan. 2021.
23 Duany, Jorge, ‘Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of Salsa’, Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música Latinoamericana, 5: 2 (1984), p. 206Google Scholar.
24 Peter Manuel with Bilby, Kenneth and Large, Michael, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995), p. 78Google Scholar.
25 Waxer, Lise, ‘Llegó la salsa: The Rise of Salsa in Venezuela and Colombia’, in Waxer, Lise (ed.), Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 223Google Scholar.
26 Manuel et al., Caribbean Currents, p. 79.
27 Waxer, ‘Llegó la salsa’, p. 226. See also Rondón, César Miguel, El libro de la salsa: Crónica de la música del Caribe urbano (Caracas: Ediciones B, 2015), p. 43Google Scholar.
28 See Washburne, Christopher, Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York City (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008), p. 31Google Scholar.
29 María Isabel Sánchez, ‘Dancing Through Scandal’.
30 Establishing connections between social class and political affiliation/movements in twenty-first-century Venezuela is exceedingly difficult due to the heterogeneous make-up of both the supporters of Chavismo and those who oppose it. Thus, while Maduro overwhelmingly directs his message to ‘el pueblo’ and ‘trabajadores’ (workers), and he denounces those he styles as ‘ricos’, ‘elites’ and especially the ‘oligarquía’, the political reality of Chavismo is not simply one of haves and have-nots. This is because the social programmes enacted under Chávez's rule improved the lives of many desperately poor Venezuelans while simultaneously provoking a mass exodus of Venezuelans of means, even as Chavista social programmes created their own economic elites, the ‘boligarquía’ and ‘boliburguesía’, terms that reflect new alliances on both sides of Venezuela's political divide. See Ellner, Steve, ‘Social and Political Diversity and the Democratic Road to Change in Venezuela’, Latin American Perspectives, 40: 3 (2013), pp. 63–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 It is noteworthy that while salsa songs with political themes became especially popular in the 1970s, the practice of writing these songs began earlier, in the 1960s, with musicians like Eddie Palmieri and Ray Barretto. For more information on this history, see Flores, Juan, Salsa Rising: New York Latin Music of the Sixties Generation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 La Hora, 1 Nov. 2016.
33 Ibid.
34 For a description of a ‘locutor’ in the Panamanian context, see Bellaviti, Sean, Música Típica: Cumbia and the Rise of Musical Nationalism in Panama (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 191–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 The words descarga and sabor are terms used in salsa to mean a jam (as in ‘jamming’) and flavour (as in tasty or delicious).
36 La Hora, 5 Nov. 2016.
37 La Hora, 15 Nov. 2016.
38 See La Hora, 11 Nov. 2016.
39 Rob Rosenthal and Richard Flacks characterise the tendency on the part of some people – popular music scholars among them – to prioritise song lyrics as the source of musical meaning as ‘the absurdity of the L = ARM (lyrics equal audience received message) equation’, adding: ‘Artistic transmission is very complex, drawing from a wide range of factors. Lyrics are only one part of the content transmitted, and content isn't necessarily synonymous with a performer's intended message − assuming she even has a message she wishes to convey.’ See Rosenthal, Rob and Flacks, Richard, Playing for Change: Music and Musicians in the Service of Social Movements (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2011), p. 66Google Scholar.
40 Hutchinson, Sydney, Focus: Music of the Caribbean (New York: Routledge, 2019), p. 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 La Hora, 11 Nov. 2016.
42 Ibid.
43 At the time of writing, Venezuela's Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (Supreme Court of Justice) ordered that Ramos Allup and six other members of the Asamblea Nacional be prosecuted for their role in the failed uprisings that took place in April 2019.
44 FARC stands for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a left-wing Colombian guerrilla force.
45 La Hora, 16 Nov. 2016.
46 For example, the late Ismael Rivera and Tito Rojas both cultivated very strong followings among working-class Venezuelans while, in contrast, Oscar D'León is a great favourite of members of the country's upper-middle classes.
47 La Hora, 1 Nov. 2016.
48 Ibid.
49 La Hora, 11 Nov. 2016.
50 La Hora, 15 Nov. 2016.
51 More than the music championed by Hugo Chávez − especially during episodes of Aló Presidente, most notably joropo from the llanos or plains of Venezuela − Alejandro Velasco suggested that it was the former president's love and politicisation of baseball that most resembled Maduro's own turn to salsa as a means to give expression to his political views and aspirations. The parallels between the two are indeed compelling: like salsa, baseball is a form of popular culture that traces its roots outside of the country (namely, the United States) and has been enthusiastically embraced by Venezuelans of all social classes and political leanings. That Maduro would follow in the footsteps of his mentor and choose a politically contradictory and certainly fraught, albeit symbolically rich and widely loved, cultural artefact as his principal performative vehicle suggests an intentionality that, as Velasco pointed out, lies at the heart of Chavismo's claims to popular culture.
52 La Hora, 1 Nov. 2016
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 See Rondón, El libro de la salsa, p. 49.
56 See Sean Bellaviti, ‘Salsa’, Oxford Bibliographies in Music, 25 March 2020, online only, available at www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199757824/obo-9780199757824-0274.xml, last access 28 Jan. 2021.
57 See Waxer, ‘Llegó la salsa’.
58 La Hora, 1 Nov. 2016.
59 These unflattering memes typically included a photoshopped image of Maduro dancing against a background scene of everyday misery in Venezuela, including people standing in long queues to obtain basic goods or sifting through rubbish heaps to find something to eat. See, for example, the following tweet and meme that was posted by Henrique Capriles’ twitter account: https://twitter.com/hcapriles/status/799580178259263488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E799580178259263488%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Felcooperante.com%2Fel-meme-de-maduro-bailando-que-compartio-henrique-capriles-2%2F, last access 28 Jan. 2021. For additional memes, see www.tucucu.com/2016/11/07/asi-reaccionaron-los-venezolanos-ante-programa-salsero-maduro/, last access 11 Jan. 2021.
60 Beginning in late 2016, the Vatican took a decisive lead in trying to negotiate a diplomatic solution to bring an end to the growing political tensions and violent protests that had given rise to a severe humanitarian crisis. However, with the opposition insisting on nothing less than a referendum on the presidency and the release of political prisoners, few held out hope that Maduro would capitulate to such demands. And even so, on 30 Oct. 2016, both sides agreed to a fragile truce. Yet by 6 Nov. 2016, a clearly dejected papal envoy, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, warned ominously that if the talks failed, Venezuela could well be on a path to ‘bloodshed’ (see ‘Venezuela podría seguir un camino de sangre, dice un enviado papal’, Reuters, 6 Nov. 2016, available at www.reuters.com/article/politica-venezuela-mediacion-idESKBN1310D5, last access 11 Jan. 2021). And, indeed, by 17 Jan. 2017 the Vatican initiative had come to nothing, with each side casting blame on the other for the failure.
61 La Hora, 16 Nov. 2016.
62 See Hutchinson, Focus, p. 239.
63 Maduro's claim that Venezuelans had a right to happiness finds many parallels in Latin American socialism. For an example of the practice of Cuban ministry officials ‘to reward those who support revolutionary ideals and endeavours’ by organising neighbourhood dances, see Moore, Robin, ‘¿Revolución con Pachanga? Dance Music in Socialist Cuba’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes, 26: 52 (2001), pp. 151−77Google Scholar. Similarly, the willingness of Panamanian left-leaning strongman president Omar Torrijos to helicopter in popular conjuntos (dance bands) to the remote asentamientos campesinos (cooperative farms) that were one of the hallmarks of his revolutionary programme is discussed in Bellaviti, Música Típica, pp. 87–9.
64 La Hora, 11 Nov. 2016.
65 For an example of the simultaneous expressions of support and accusations of dereliction of presidential duties elicited by Maduro and Flores’ dance routine, see Catherine E. Shoichet, ‘Venezuela's President Slammed for Salsa Dancing as Country Faces Crisis’, CNN, 3 Nov. 2016, available at www.cnn.com/2016/11/03/americas/venezuela-nicolas-maduro-salsa-show/index.html, last access 11 Jan. 2021.
66 La Hora, 21 Feb. 2017.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Coronil, The Magical State, p. 3.
70 Sánchez, Dancing Jacobins, pp. 7, 148–66.
71 Ibid., p. 198.
72 Ibid.
73 At the time of writing, Willie Colón, Willie González and Jerry Rivera are among a small albeit growing group of salsa musicians who have also taken to criticising the Maduro regime on their social media platforms.
74 Duany, ‘Popular Music in Puerto Rico’, p. 204.
75 Ibid., p. 205.
76 Lise Waxer. ‘Memoirs of a Life in Salsa: Catalino “Tite” Curet Alonso’, in Waxer (ed.), Situating Salsa, p. 198.
77 Blades’ Facebook post is available at www.facebook.com/27079109778/posts/presidente-maduroel-imperialismo-como-el-totalitarismo-posee-muchas-manifestacio/10154701460989779/, last access 28 Jan. 2021. See also ‘“Pablo Pueblo jamás reprimiría a su gente”: Rubén Blades en una carta a Maduro’, El País, 19 May 2017, accessed online at www.elpais.com.co/mundo/pablo-pueblo-jamas-reprimiria-a-su-gente-ruben-blades-en-una-carta-a-maduro.html, last access 11 Jan. 2021.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 Here and throughout this article I am again indebted to Alejandro Velasco for encouraging me to think of salsa − and popular culture more generally − as more than a response to or expression of Venezuelan politics, but as constitutive to its development.
Bellaviti supplementary material
