Violence generated by pop-culture artifacts in Latin America

Violence in all human history, apart from territorial and conquest interests, has come with a

racial, hate or discrimination component. Mostly, this component is developed through a

period of years by the expose of a popular culture artifact to population that changes their

point of view and influences them. This violence can be manifested in many ways, such as

social margination, labor exploitation, insults, physical violence, rapes and even murderers. Is

common to see this pop-cultures being socially unacceptable when protests begin, and things

lose control. A few examples of this is racism against Afro-American people in the last century

and the hate against LGTBI community in the past years. So, we can see that people´s opinion

on pop-culture artifacts can change overtime, positively or negatively.

The artifacts chosen for this project are Reggaetón song “Me Reclama” (“She Claims Me” in

English), reggae legend Calito Soul and “La Paisana Jacinta” TV character, which will be

developed one by one in the text´s below.

First, I want to analyze reggae and reggaetón legend Calito Soul, one of the first Spanish reggae

and reggaetón founders in the 70’s. Introduced in the 1960 in Jamaica, reggae in a Spanish

form arrived at Puerto Rico and rapidly caught the attention of a young audience. Then, this

Spanish reggae denoted as Reggaetón, expanded trough Latin America and the world

maintaining its young audience, as years passed we will see how as this music changes

audience changes too. By this years (60’s to 80’s), Reggaetón provoked consciousness and

change among their audience about topics like crime, economic scarcity, racial discrimination

and political violence.1 In the beginning, artists like Calito Soul started expressing their music in

public locations like streets or buses, later when they became more famous and as technology

advanced, their main way of content distribution was via Radio and CD’s.
Furthermore, locating us in the 21’s century, a classic reggaetón sample is the very popular

song in Latin America “Me Reclama” (“She Claims Me” in English). It has a lot of controversy

because of its violent and misogynist lyrics. This song is from the famous Latin musicians Ozuna

and “Mambo Kingz” and it has a lot of popularity among teenagers in Latin America, which is

the main audience.2

In the last decade, it became popular among people in Latin America, it was music with good

rhythm and funny lyrics mostly accepted by the community. Over the years, “Reggaetón”

musicians realized that the more violent the songs were, the more famous they became. What

we have now, is explicit content (videos and lyrics), normalizing the violence and denigration

against women. This content is being consumed even by kids, and some parents encourage

this or don’t mind. But nevertheless, other percentage of the population, reject and are

against the mass production of this kind of music, that hit millions of views on YouTube, and

are played at the radio at any minute. So, we can clearly see that the change of the

“Reggaetón” music has also impacted on the audience, increasing it, but also gaining some

controversy, “haters” and making population more aggressive.

It seems that these musicians are not willing to change their style, I think is mainly because

they earn millions with every song they make, and their actual audience is “hungry” for more

songs. Their excuse against the people who reject this kind of music is that their song is all

about “entertainment,” but it seems that is more than that, because society is getting more

violent against woman, and their music might be a factor.

“It's that she prefers them, dirty mouths. She wants me to beat her hard with my

foreskin. She got on all fours, she wants me to get in where she poops, open those

legs” (“Me reclama,” ft. Ozuna)

This extract of Ozuna’s song reflects what they are teaching to society, and the new audience,

supports this kind of lyrics. It might be true that the lyrics may not make someone aggressive
directly, but it is well known that they have influence on some people, and build hate,

denigration, and violence against women. 3 This may also be related to the increasing rape

cases in the past years trying to imitate or live the life of their “idols.”

This song generates a lot of controversy because of their degrading and violent content

towards women. Reggaetón music is easily distributed via internet(YouTube) and radio, while

there are groups (mostly parents) which criticize this mass distribution of sexual, violent and

denigrating content, no actual authority answers this request. It seems that the huge

Reggaetón industry has so much power and more lovers (especially young people) than haters,

so this music circumvents censorship requests for its content. The problem is not about the

content, but the easy access through internet and constant exposure of kids and teenagers to

it. Another issue is that the community against this free distribution of violent Reggaetón is

very limited and they are not well organized, so actually the producers of this music have no

“enemies” and they continue to upload their content freely, with no state or internet

censorship.

There are some countries that prohibit some Reggaetón songs and control their distribution,

such as Cuba in Latin America, or North Korea in Asia. 4 But if we talk about liberal economic

and democratic countries, there is no direct censorship as in North Korea, the only filter this

kind of music must pass is YouTube’s no nudity politics. After this, mostly in Latin America, no

one controls its distribution.

If we talk about the countries that censor this content, audience has a really hard time trying

to find it because of its fame and virilization, but because of the wonders of internet and

globalization it is easy for popular music to surpass this censorship and reach its audience by

illegal distribution. In the other hand, in countries where everyone has easy access, a simple

parental control for familiar internet won’t prevent kids and teenagers from consuming this

content. On TV, radio, cellphone internet, commercials, and even in restaurants some of this
controversial Reggaetón music is distributed. Therefore, the harm this freely distributed songs

does to the society is mainly focused on young people, who idolize these “stars” and try to

imitate their lifestyle full of drugs, alcohol and objectifying woman. 5 The only control, is little

campaigns created by school parents trying to create awareness of this Reggaetón contents. 6

Finally, “La Paisana Jacinta” is a character from a Peruvian TV show created in 1996 and

produced until 2017, who is the re-creation of a woman from the mountain range and new to

the big city. The main audience is regional (Peruvian), and mostly they are socioeconomic class

A and B families. These women are known in real life of not being well educated and culturized

because lack of estate presence in these areas, and sometimes they don’t speak Spanish very

well because it’s not their native language. So, this show has been mocking and ridiculing these

women and teaching the audience to be racist against them. It shows denigration and explicit

racists insults such as saying they smell bad, they are ignorant or saying they are useless, and

kids and teenagers are learning this. This was even streamed on family hours, until it was taken

out from TV because of protests, but the creator found a way to get back to it, and even a new

movie about this is coming out! 8

This show destroys the multicultural union we have as a nation and segments the different

races we have by creating hate. This hate manifests also through violence, high social-

economic classes tend to exploit them, insult them and have a feeling of superiority against

them. So, yes, this show normalizes the denigration of these poor people, and gives them an

inferior social status, so they are often harmed and suffer racist violence (verbal and physical).

It’s important to mention that since 1900 native communities have suffered racism from the

people living in the capital, people that conquered these lands (descendants of the Spanish

conquerors), where territory does not belong to them but to the native people. 7 And this
racism has persisted, besides the rights and citizenship these people received in the 1950-s,

the centralized state still doesn’t give them better life conditions.

Nowadays, itis normal for people (especially high socio-economic class) to make fun of these

mountain range people, and in the future, it could get worse.

In addition, this artifacts related to violence, can also be related to social and economic class

issues. High class in Latin America, especially in Peru, tends to look to low socioeconomic

classes ass less than them, mostly because of their look and the music they listen to

(Reggaetón)
Resources:

1
Penagos, Y. (2012). Lenguajes de Poder. La música reggaetón y su influencia en el estilo de

vida de estudiantes. Manizales: Universidad de Manizales. From:

http://ridum.umanizales.edu.co:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/6789/1354/404_Penagos_Roja

s_Yesid_2012.docx?sequence=1

2
PERU21 (2017). No solo es Maluma: ¡Estas otras canciones también agreden a la mujer!

From:

https://peru21.pe/espectaculos/maluma-canciones-agreden-mujer-67618

3
Gomez, M. and Perez, R (2016). Violence against woman in music: a methodological

approach. Spain: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. From:

http://www.redalyc.org/html/4415/441545394015/

4
Shah, S. (2018) Does North Korea have internet and smartphones? An inside look at the

wacky tech in Kim Jong-un’s hermit kingdom. From:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6156327/north-korea-internet-smartphones-technology-kim-

jong-un/

5
Valencia, P. (2010). Creación y producción en diseño y comunicación. Vol 32. Palermo:

Universidad de Palermo. From:

https://fido.palermo.edu/servicios_dyc/publicacionesdc/vista/detalle_articulo.php?

id_articulo=6118&id_libro=163
6
Sociedad (2015). Impactante campaña contra el reaggeton en Colombia .From:

https://losandes.com.ar/article/lanzaron-una-fuerte-campana-contra-el-reggaeton-en-

colombia

7
Peru Info (2014). El periodo Colonial. From:

https://verne.elpais.com/verne/2017/09/05/mexico/1504647278_137441.html

8
Red internacional de estudios interculturales (2014). LA PAISANA JACINTA, EL PERSONAJE

QUE RIDICULIZA A LA MUJER ANDINA, VOLVIÓ A LA TELEVISIÓN E INCLUSO SE ALISTA PARA EL

CINE. Lima: PUCP. From: http://red.pucp.edu.pe/ridei/noticias/la-paisana-jacinta-personaje-

ridiculiza-la-mujer-andina-volvio-la-television-e-incluso-se-alista-cine/

9
Publimetro. (2014). La paisana Jacinta ¿Simboliza el racismo en el Peru? From:

https://publimetro.pe/entretenimiento/noticia-paisana-jacinta-simboliza-racismo-peru-23143

10

Other Resources:

“Me reclama”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuBNc54Q4hw

“Nunca me amó”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJjvg7PbE4w