Prelude
The backs curve, the knees bend, and the footwork shuffles to the swaying melody of the accordion. The hands twist into sharp and angular signs representing la cruz de sus parroquias: M for Monterrey, I for Colonia Independencia, V for Villanitas. In el baile de gavilán, whether your hands show affiliation to the city, a neighborhood, or a gang, you will be moving to the right, pasito a pasito, following the footsteps of other Colombias, while others follow you. One after the other we shuffle to the right, led by the chik-chika-chik-chika-chik of the guacharaca, creating a large circle of bodies in motion. The dance floor is now an ocean, and at the center, like a school of fish, bodies are gracefully tossing, turning, and shuffling in unison riding the slow tumbado of the cumbia rebajada. If for Hannah Arendt the political realm where power and the space of appearance come into being, rises directly out of the “sharing of words and deeds” for the Colombia’s it rises out of communing in motion, out of the collective pride de ser colombia.
I.
In the 1950’s Colombian cumbia and vallenato music landed in Monterrey, Nuevo León via Mexico City. Due to Monterrey’s geographic position which marks it as a crucial migratory point, mas pa’ allá que pa’ acá, the afro-caribbean rhythm found a home on its way to Houston, Texas, and other U.S. border cities. Rapidly, Sonidero’s popularized hits such as La Cumbia Sampuesana and La Pollera Colorá. The popularity of colombian cumbia and vallenato music led to the formation of a subculture that prevailed for decades and eventually became an essential part of the cultural makeup of the Northeastern of Mexico.
Socio-economic inequality is particularly palpable in the industrial city of Monterrey given that it houses Mexico’s largest multinational companies, as well as the richest neighborhood in Latin America: the luxurious and conservative San Pedro Garza. This stark disparity, combined with the city’s proximity to the United States, its violent history as a Drug War epicenter, and its position as a migration point, has made of Monterrey a place rife with racial and economic disparity, discrimination, and segregation. Given that the Colombia movement is mostly integrated by impoverished and working class people who live in precarious conditions within Monterrey, classist and racist policies and social norms have attacked Colombia culture since its inception. In these conditions of marginalization, Colombia culture has created a social practices and actions that battle isolation: “Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act (Arendt, 188).” Thus, the ser Colombia, translated to “being Colombia” became not only a crucial cultural identity formation, but an important source of power for working class regiomontanos.
In the early 2000’s Colombia culture went through a crucial aesthetic transformation. Young Colombia’s created a new form of sartorial expression which mixed Cholo aesthetics, DIY garments, religious accessories, gel-heavy hairstyles, and the Regio-Colombia musical tradition. This aesthetic expression was quickly rejected by the dominant Regio culture, which criminalized and thus further marginalized Colombia youth. Colombias aesthetic and cultural actions have solidified an important cultural political practice within the city of Monterrey. By the late 2010’s, the aesthetic phenomenon within Colombia’s, known by foreign entities as Cholombianos, had been “eradicated” thanks to the lethal combination of criminalization, marginalization, and violence.
Although it is rare to find the youth of Colonia independencia flaunting the looks that brought them together in the early 2000’s, Colombia culture is still thriving. Thus, I wonder, what is the political significance of popular cultural practices? In this particular case, how can we understand the political power within manifestations such as the Colombia’s in Monterrey? What does it mean to gather in motion and in music in a city which is constantly seeking your eradication? Or to echoe Judith Butler, “What does it mean to act together when the conditions for acting together are devastated or falling away? (Butler, 23).”
According to Etienne Balibar political action must be understood in terms of strategies (Balibar, 16). Thus, I’d like to break down two of the main strategies which conform the political spectacle which makes the Colombia’s phenomenon possible. For the purpose of this short essay I will briefly focus on the aesthetic and the choreographic, which can be understood in terms of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly respectively.
“If we consider why freedom of assembly is separate from freedom of expression, it is precisely because the power that people have to gather together is itself an important political prerogative, quite distinct from the right to say whatever they have to say once people have gathered. The gathering signifies in excess of what is said, and that mode of signification is a concerted bodily enactment, a plural form of performativity. (Butler, 8).”
To powerfully assert one’s identity by claiming prideful ownership of aesthetic preferences which have been classified as “tacky”, “poor”, “vulgar” is to appropriate the assertion and delineation of one’s difference. The understanding of identity I posit here aligns with Etienne Balibar’s understanding of identity as a transindividual formation, meaning its construction depends on both the individual and the collective (Balibar, 27). These practices, which are always profoundly bound to practices of resistance and politics of excess, tend to be originated within communities which have historically created culture that is first rejected and then appropriated by hegemonic cultural producers. The aesthetic choices of the Colombia’s, which I understand mainly as their sartorial practice, have facilitated the creation of an alternative polis. “The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be (Arendt, 198).” This process of identification and recognition must be understood as a fundamental political practice of marginalized communities which use their self-fashioning as a form of claiming visibility and occupying public space which is often denied from them.
Lastly, and more importantly we must focus on the choreographic assembly of the Colombias. Because as Judith Butler notes, “forms of assembly already signify prior to, and apart from, any particular demands they make. (Butler, 8).” The assembly of marginalized youth which identifies with Colombia culture has a noteworthy choreographic strategy which consists in forming a large circle when they’re dancing. Unlike other forms of popular dance, where the circle is formed in order to provide space for a moving body which will occupy the center, this circle does not prioritize the space at the center. The purpose of the circle is not the centering of an individual but the circumference itself. This choreographic action embodies a collective political practice. It is a choreographic structure which allows everybody to claim individual identification, which is expressed via hand signs and shout-outs, while remaining within a collective structure. This choreographic practice reminds us that: “No one body establishes the space of appearance, but this action, this performative exercise, happens only “between” bodies, in a space that constitutes the gap between my own body and another’s. In this way, my body does not act alone when it acts politically. Indeed, the action emerges from the “between,” a spatial figure for a relation that both binds and differentiates (Butler, 76).”
It is important to conclude with a reminder that the Colombia practice of the early 2000’s which I speak off was quickly eradicated by the lethal combination of local criminalization and the violence of the Drug War that profoundly attacked the social fabric of Monterrey. Today, the Colombia’s have found new forms of expression. Like many cultural practices, its survival has depended on its ability to transform. I end on this note to remind the reader that historically cultural and aesthetic practices which have been targeted in this way present a danger to the state of domination of the status quo. Therefore, it is a civil duty to protect and respect practices like the Colombia’s, as in doing so we will be protecting political practices which are essential to the social fabric. We will be protecting those bodies that “dance on the line.” We will be protecting the Colombia assembly which enacts “by the embodied form of the gathering, a claim to the political (18).”
Key Words
1. Assembly
2. Precarity
3. Choreography
Video:
1. Colombias:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9gXXysH3_Y&list=PL4xdu6yKN6IoJvx2-ToE7kDurK0YQ_6CV&index=8&t=0s
2. Angélica Rivera, Declaración Casa Blanca EPN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4_Tk9wtDQ