CACEROLAZO:

Case Studies of Protest Music in Puerto Rico and Chile

A project by Cora and Phoebe

On October 27th, 2019 in Santiago, over 150 musicians performed “El pueblo undo jamás será vencido” in memory of those killed by the Chilean government in the intense protests which had begun less than 2 weeks prior. “El pueblo unido”, written by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayún, is one of the most famous songs of the nueva canción movement, and people chant its chorus in leftist protests around the world.
But what makes a piece of music remain just as powerful and relevant as it was over 46 years after its composition? Where are the protest songs of today? and how might we as lovers and makers of music attempt to carry on the legacy of protest music? Here we focus on Puerto Rico and Chile because they both have experienced powerful social revolt in the last year, and because both have some excellent examples of contemporary political music.
We named this project after the practice of banging pots and pans in protest because as an arguably musical practice, the cacerolazo functions very similarly to a protest song. Noise demos, chants, and protest songs all draw attention to the issues at hand and bring people together in defiance of established norms.

(Photograph: Daniel Espinoza Guzmán.)

“Un Violador en tu Camino” is a song and accompanying dance made by the Valparaíso based group Las Tesis in the midst of the “estadillo social”, or the uprising beginning in October of 2019. Appropriately participatory, catchy, and powerful, the piece quickly spread to communities around the world, especially in Latin America. The chant is a strong indictment of rape culture and patriarchy, made stronger by its connection of sexual violence to the state— a point that sets it apart from liberal feminist songs. It is especially relevant while police in (Chile and elsewhere) have reportedly been sexually assaulting people protesting against a system that routinely allows and enacts violence. What began as a smaller performance about systemic sexual violence became a viral protest song in just a few weeks.

(Eric Rojas/AFP/Getty Images)
The 2019 “Ricky Renuncia” protests are another in a long history of anti-government resistance in Puerto Rico. Boricuas have never been shy in voicing their dissatisfaction with government, most notably in the mid-1950s with a series of uprisings by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, or the PNPR. The PNPR were a political party whose ideas centralized on Puerto Rican independence. Upon the ascension of Pedro Albizu Campos to the party’s president, they became much more radical in their approaches, leading to consequent persecution by US forces.

The gathering support for the Nationalist Party posed a threat to the US’ colonialist rule on the island. In 1948, a Puerto Rican congress dominated by the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) passed the Ley de la Mordaza, also known as the Gag Law. This forbade any speech, assembly, or patriotic tunes in favor of independence on threat of arrest. 

Essentially, the law deprived Boricuas the freedom of expression, namely, sonic forms of resistance in the form of song or spoken word. Nationalist Puerto Ricans did not accept this legislation, and protested widely, leading to multiple massacres and widespread police brutality. The law was finally repealed in 1957 due to its unconstitutionality, but Albizu Campos’ death in 1965 effectively brought about the end of the PNPR. 

Puerto Ricans have always made noise to voice their dissatisfaction with oppressive governmental bodies. In 2019, Bad Bunny, iLe and Residente, 3 of the most popular Boricua musicians of all time, released a protest song-turned-diss track, Afilando Los Cuchillos.

“Ricardo Rosselló es un incompetente/Homofóbico, embustero, delincuente

A ti nadie te quiere, ni tu propia gente/Vamo' a prender en fuego a tu gabinete.”

(“Ricardo Rosselló is incompetent/Homophobic, fraud, criminal

Nobody loves you, not even your own people/We’re gonna set fire to your cabinet.”)

Bad Bunny delivers a scathing indictment of governor Ricardo Roselló in the aftermath of a controversy which landed Roselló and several top aides in hot water when vulgar, homophobic, sexist text messages were leaked to and made public by news agency Puerto Rico Center for Investigative Journalism in 2019. In addition to vulgarities about such Puerto Rican public figures as San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and singer Ricky Martin, the message logs revealed plots to control the media, smear political opponents, and political corruption regarding hurricane relief funds. 

Protests erupted all over the island, uniting Boricuas under one slogan: “Ricky Renuncia” (Ricky Resign). Puerto Rican celebrities such as Ricky Martin, reggaeton artist Bad Bunny, and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda all took strong stances against the governor on social media, and many celebrities took to the streets with hundreds of thousands of protestors.

Afilando los Cuchillos is the very model of a modern protest song. Widely circulated all over the internet- amassing 2.5 million views within a day- the song fueled the frustration of the Puerto Rican people with the use of Puerto Rican traditional rhythms created by and for Puerto Ricans. Complete with a reggaeton beat, the song is a perfect union between pop, trap, hip hop, and reggaeton, with fiery, explicit political lyrics.

Puerto Rico is a hotbed of political contention, due to its hazy status as a US commonwealth. In the plainest terms, Puerto Rico is a colony, and its citizens are becoming increasingly fed up with the colonizers. Both recent and older history have proven that Boricuas are willing to make noise when faced with injustice.

Image Credit: @Destinytesera on Twitter
Bomba, along with closely related plena, is a complete form of performance. Characterized by a repetitive sonic form that moves people to dance, bomba is also defined by the accompanying dance itself. The roots of bomba are in Afro-Latinidad, dating back to the colonial days of Puerto Rico in the 1600s, when enslaved Africans chose political and spiritual expression in the form of bomba. Resistance is key in this art form, as lyrics conveyed themes of anger, collective identity, and rebellion. Bomba was the music of slave uprisings. 

Bomba was also influenced by indigenous traditions. One example is in the instrumentation; bomba performances often hear the sound of the güiro, a hollowed gourd instrument scraped with a multi-pronged tool. Other instruments used in bomba include panderetas (drums), maracas, and the cuá (two sticks that produce sound by striking wood or the side of the drums). 

To put it lightly, race in Puerto Rico is a very touchy subject, due to the complexities of intersectional racial identity. Colonialism by Spain, the indigenous Taino population, and the Atlantic slave trade all contribute to the racial diversity and hybridity of people in Puerto Rico. Anti-Black racism is rampant and often internalized among Boricuas. 

According to scholars at the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), racialization works differently in Puerto Rico. Race in Puerto Rico is analyzed by different metrics than those in the continental US; to think of racialization in the context of the continental US is nonsensical due to the hybridity and colonialism that persists on the island. 

A dominant narrative surrounding the race politic in Puerto Rico is that Boricuas are “all mixed.” This serves to invisibilize Blackness as a social category, and to erase colorism. In one AAIHS study conducted on the island, “the results...showed that, the darker the self-reported skin color, the more likely respondents were to report experiencing racism.” 

The Black Lives Matter protests that swept the planet in the summer of 2020 were a complex cultural matrix in Puerto Rico. San Juan, like so many major cities all over the world, conducted a series of protests in response to the murder of George Floyd and the pandemic of police brutality. 

It is important to note that the continental US and Puerto Rico are intimately connected by diaspora. Major diasporic communities include contingents in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York City; however, the rising number of Latinx peoples in the continental US means that other cities are garnering large populations. One such community is Kansas City, where a Puerto Rican dance group called Cuerpo de Baile Areito Kansas City performed a bomba inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Another viral video on Twitter of bomba performance amassed over 70k retweets and 252k likes. In the phone-recorded footage, a young Black girl at a Black Lives Matter protest in Loíza, Puerto Rico, performs a bomba played by offscreen musicians. 

In Loìza, Puerto Rico they are protesting for Black Lives Matter with bomba, the islands traditional music which is rooted in Boricua’s African heritage pic.twitter.com/IKk1RKvbOq

— La Taína (@Destineyteresa) June 3, 2020

Bomba is essential to Afro-Boricua expression. On an island where Blackness is devalued, bomba has always remained a form of Black performance, traced over years of oppression external and internal. From the slave ships to Black Lives Matter, bomba is Black resistance.