Trump at the Latin Club
Carlos Egaña on Anuel AA, J Quiles, + Nicky Jam’s support for Trump
“We need you,” said the reggaeton icon Nicky Jam to Donald Trump in front of an array of people (right after Trump introduced the renowned reggaetonero by proclaiming “isn’t she hot!?”…clearly having no idea who - or what gender - he is).
“I back you ‘cause I feel you’re the most honest president we ever had,” said J Quiles, Anuel AA to his side, at another rally. In his efforts to galvanize Puerto-Rican and Hispanic voters, Trump has found allies in urban artists whose music is usually frowned upon in religious circles in Latin America – whose tunes are frequently danced and sung by Spanish-speaking undocumented immigrants.
I guess some might be wondering, how could this happen? How could these artists who have identified with life on the streets stand proudly with a man who links Latinos and criminality in his speeches often? Isn’t this ironic? Could their art, reggaeton music, itself explain some of this?
Growing up in Caracas, going to an all-boy Catholic school, it was evident that parents and teachers weren’t big fans of reggaeton. Before Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina made it mainstream, the Police and Education Departments of Puerto Rico, where the genre first flourished, were allied in criminalizing the genre. In an era with “outrageous unemployment rates of up to 65% in some towns, failing schools, government corruption, and widespread drug violence,” the country’s “government officials tried to blame the music for many of the island’s problems.” The explicitly sexual content and unceremonious language present in reggaeton songs has led many, conservatives especially, to say that the genre demeans women, spreads the use of broken Spanish, or glorifies life on the streets.
Now, although nobody can possibly deny that songs like Alexis & Fido’s Mala Conducta – “Yo quiero azotarte, domarte / Pero lo malo es que te gusta / Castigarte por tu mala conducta [I wanna whip you, tame you / But what’s bad is that you like it / Punish you for your bad behavior]” – are quite, let’s say, hardcore, in my experience, it’s women who typically know reggaeton lyrics the best, who more actively seek clubs that play the genre. And as Ivy Queen comments In LOUD, a podcast on the genre’s history, once artists made dembow beat the defining rhythm of the genre, “Estábamos perreando, it became sexier. Porque ahí es donde incluyen a la mujer.” She suggests that reggaeton’s beat promotes female empowerment, sexual liberation, and that it is women who protagonize the dance floor when it’s in the background. It’s almost as if the bouncy rhythm overrides the lyrics’ potency towards indignation.
Or perhaps the proper verb isn’t overrides, but frames. And alongside the beat, the credits at the end of most reggaeton songs – with artists naming the people that worked on the song, just as movies end with credit rolls and plays end with actors bowing before the audience – are part of this framing process as well. we are to understand that what was just heard is a work of fiction. This might be the reason why the crass lyrics of many tunes are not taken as an offense by many; perhaps, reggaeton is a vehicle for catharsis in a similar way Aristotle thought an ideal performance should be – although these cathartic episodes allow for action in the dance-floor and aren’t limited to passive contemplation. Watching A Clockwork Orange or Pulp Fiction, finding either a fucking fantastic movie, does not mean you condone ultra-violence; movies that some watch for moral guidance – soulless Oscar bait or religious propaganda, usually – tend to be extremely boring, no?
Nonetheless, we all have probably met edgy folks, straight-up shitty and cruel dudes even, that would love to be Tarantino characters – that try to perform the scenes and malice of what they’ve seen in their everyday lives. The irony that underlies the process of watching your fears and whims is lost on some, or “laughingly” embraced by some with expressions like “I’m such a Bojack, lol,” Yet, in our extremely-cyber-conscious today, Instagram meme accounts show how intentionally surfing irony, using it as a method of communication, without committing to its typical intention, has become a staple to humor and the ways political movements organize online. I’m referring, particularly, to post-irony, the very ironization of irony: the need to make fun of a certain issue to radically affirm it, wielding sarcasm in a non-sarcastic way.
Within the cultural and mental context of post-irony, reggaeton songs may move from providing spaces to purge and connect with our bodies, to becoming confessionaries or wishing wells. We might be able to consider Anuel AA as someone who works along those lines – in a similar manner to Tarantinoesque IRL bros. Yes, he was imprisoned for carrying weapons illegally, but his dad was Vice President of A&R at Sony Music in Puerto Rico until he was 15. It seems to me that if we take his music as a reflection of his lifestyle or beliefs – understanding, of course, that Anuel AA’s songs are probably the least sanitized reggaeton tunes with a mainstream audience today – this was a result of choice, of actively seeking to perform life in a certain way, of wanting to play a character. Thus, we could say the imaginary in his songs, rendered ironic through dance in many clubs, aim to channel as well, in his case, an honest ideal.
And couldn’t we see this ideal in Donald Trump – couldn’t we consider him also a post-ironic character? The use of hyperbole regarding promises and results by the presidential candidate leaves many wondering if he’s being serious, and allows his supporters to frame his words in an ambiguous way, to justify them as mere jokes if taken at face value, and vice versa. Many have seen Trump’s purported commitment to working-class Americans as paradoxical considering his upbringing, but I think it’s quite that many working-class Americans, especially White Americans, indeed see him as a symbol that defends their interests and comprehends their experiences; something, I believe, happens with Anuel AA’s music and the millions of underprivileged Hispanics that blast it in their homes.
So, is reggaeton per se conservative, dare I say Republican? I don’t think so. But even if it generally defies traditional Latin-American morals and customs, it can certainly be a vehicle for male-centered, populist politics, even if it seems unserious. (Just as it can be a vehicle for the contrary, as Bad Bunny’s Yo perreo sola, among other of his songs, shows.) The genre’s tone and its practice on the dance floor are tilted with irony, but in these meme–devouring times, irony itself has expanded to allow for humorous and impactful contradictions. In any case, Anuel AA, J Quiles, and Nicky Jam’s open support for the current GOP is not a random, alienated gesture, but one whose effects we will see in both the November elections and the future of reggaeton and its representatives.
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But then, perhaps, this speculation is just that, speculation. An obsessive attempt to explore reggaeton’s literary qualities with Anuel AA, J Quiles, and Nicky Jam’s surprising appearances in Trump rallies as an excuse. Perhaps we can take a simpler road to grasp these events.
After all, after watching J.D. Vance’s debate with Tim Walz, it seems slightly obvious to me why some Hispanic families could support the Republican party in these times. Maybe many U.S.–based Latino movements have tried to center our culture in indigenous roots and knowledges, in what some would call a decolonial manner, but the majority of Latin-Americans are Catholics – if not, Protestants. (I dare say colonialism is way more widely criticized in the States than in most of Latin America, but that’s a different story.) And what Vance defended onstage was not really new, not that different from what I’ve heard many Catholic men like himself growing up in Venezuela, including the whole “Son, shut the hell up for 30 seconds about Pikachu” bit. Many who have fled my country, Nicaragua, and Cuba traumatized by so-called leftwing governments, deeply skeptical about rhetoric similar to the one misused by their past governments; who come from a region used to protectionist policies no matter the party in power, can find in a movement that includes the vice-presidential candidate a sound place for them to be.
Heck: although the Latino community seems – and this I say with admiration – quite unified in the U.S., although Pan-Americanist ideas have existed since the independence of most of the region, tensions within Latin America, between communities from different countries of the region, are not rare. The cases of xenophobia against Venezuelans in Colombia and Perú are very well known. Before the scandalous remarks of both Trump and Vance about haitians eating pets, Abel Martínez, who was a candidate for DR’s presidential elections this year, accused haitians of eating cats and snakes. And while I certainly think the way Trump and Vance refer to migrants, even documented ones, is in no way justified, these types of comments have never been exclusive of white U.S. citizens.