Pop Culture
As many of these stories of transmigration attest, the sights, sounds, and flavors of popular culture can forge and maintain relationships in the diasporic community just as powerfully as the economic, political,
and social forces that brought them into being. Spectacle and entertainment can help to transcend location, foster identity, and create community. For newly arrived Latin Americans to the US, and the enduring Latinx communities that have always been here, cultural identities are grounded in everyday activities. Though Latin/x Americans have long participated in sports, entertainment, and the arts in the United States, Jim Crow laws in Hollywood allowed for legal segregation in the film industry for the first half of the twentieth century, a practice that still bears a legacy in the disproportionate representation evident today. Early representations of Latin Americans in US media were either highly stereotyped, or conducted by white actors in brownface, or both.
The neoliberal era globalized media communications, expanded access to technology, and facilitated an uptick in the flow of cultural productions. The “Latin Explosion” of the late-1990s pop music scene brought new faces, beats, and languages into the mainstream US cultural diet. Shakira, Ricky Martin, J-Lo (née Jennifer López), Gloria Estefan, Marc Anthony, and Christina Aguilera all became household names (Selena just missed ascending this rocketship by a few short years, Q.E.P.D., but her fans included her in the
Karol G performing at Coachella 2022 (Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Coachella)
canon posthumously). The music industry recognized that the growing demographic market was not only constrained to Spanish-speaking audiences, that the Grammy awards show structure could not confine them to a single category, inaugurating the first annual Latin Grammy Awards in 2000 as its own event. More recently, at the 2022 Coachella music festival, Colombian breakout star Karol G erupted in a medley of covers of boom-era Latin classics, including a tribute to Selena, to the resounding approval of the crowd, bringing the next generation of Latin music lovers full circle. Nowhere was the consolidation of the iconic status of 1990s Latin musicians more clear than the 2020 Superbowl halftime performance done by Shakira and J-Lo, in Spanish, in the crucible of the most quintessentially American pastime: football.
One Day at a Time TV show
Since the turn of the 21st century, media diversification has allowed for increased representation in television. For example, the ABC network sitcom Modern Family enjoyed an 11-season run (2009-2019) featuring Colombian model Sofía Vergara as the highest-paid American television actress, purveying her parody of the Latin bombshell. But more nuanced programs emerged that steered away from Carmen Miranda’s “tutti-frutti hat” legacy and brought the more complex dynamics and regional diversity of the Latin
American diaspora into the conversation. Ugly Betty successfully translated a Colombian series to a US context, One Day at a Time centered around a Cuban-American family and featured Puerto Rican West Side Story legend Rita Moreno, and Jane the Virgin was an uproarious sendup of the Latin American telenovela tradition.
Latin American culinary traditions are another domain of popular culture that have gained increasing visibility and reception in the US, due to the growth of the Latinx population, liberalization of trade in the region, and food-and travel-based media exposure. Gentrification, or the development of investment capital into neighborhoods traditionally inhabited by working class ethnic communities, brought tacos, empanadas, and pupusas onto the plates of upwardly mobile new residents. The wider appreciation for Latin American foodways has had a dual impact on the communities that brought them into being–on one hand, ingredients and venues are now more readily available and promote identity formation. On the other hand, the shift of Latin American food into highly commodified and exclusive dining practices has channeled higher-quality ingredients away from the masses and into the kitchens of celebrity chefs. Even as foodies in the US rhapsodize about handmade tortillas crafted from heritage strains of corn, traditional diets in Latin America are becoming saturated with processed, industrialized snack food as part of the balance of NAFTA trade policies.
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