Cultures of the City: Mediating Identities in Urban Latin/o America

Notes

217 intRoduction: mediating uRban identities 1. Studies in urban anthropology include the work of James Holston on Brasilia (1989), Teresa Caldeira on São Paulo (2000), and Setha Low on San José, Costa Rica (2000). From more humanistic perspectives, the Mexico City studied by David William Foster (2002) is drawn from representations of the Mexican capital in contemporary cinema, and the New York explored by Juan Flores (2000) is concerned with Puerto Rican constructions of identity, mainly through popular music. 2. See, for example, Susana Rotker’s edited volume on urban violence (2002), or the volumes in Spanish edited by Mabel Moraña (2002) and by Boris Muñoz and Silvia Spitta (2003), although representations of the city in literature predominate in the latter two. 3. See, for example, several of the essays in Moraña (1997). Rama’s book has also become something of a watershed, with a need to move beyond the “lettered city,” both conceptually and historically (Rama’s analysis stops at the early twentieth century), signaled by more recent publications (see Franco 2002 and Muñoz 2003). 4. Notable urban cronistas from various periods of twentieth-century Latin America include: Enrique Gómez Carrillo and Roberto Arlt for Buenos Aires; Salvador Novo, Elena Poniatowska, and Carlos Monsiváis for Mexico City; Pedro Lemebel for Santiago de Chile; and Enrique Bernardo Núñez for Caracas. 5. This use of performance comes, of course, from the linguistic theory of speech acts (see Austin 1975, 1–11) and has acquired wider currency in social discourse, notably through studies such as Judith Butler’s inquiries into representations of gender and identity (see Butler 2000). havana in the nueva tRova RepeRtoiRe of geRaRdo alfonso This chapter reprints lyric excerpts with the stated permission of Gerardo Alfonso. 1. For further information on the many cultural/musical changes associated with the revolution of 1959, see Moore 2006 and Pacini Hernández and Garofalo 2004. notes young and holmes text-5.indd 217 11/1/10 10:08 AM 2. The majority of basic biographical information on this artist has been gleaned from Web sites listed in the references, as well as verbal commentary from Alfonso on his Recuento album. 3. See Portalatino.com at http://www.portalatino.com/platino/website/ew/alternativo/ acerca.jsp?fvuid=600952052280&secid=716042659280&ptitle=Acerca%20de. 4. During the food shortages associated with the Special Period, Havana became known for its paladares, or clandestine restaurants that served food in an underground black market economy. Some of these home restaurants have been legalized in more recent years, but they tend to be taxed so heavily by the state that many have become clandestine again. 5. This refers to the fact that motorized transportation is in very short supply in much of Havana and that bicycles are thus used for nonconventional activities such as transporting a family of four (using extra seat attachments) or moving a mattress and box spring to a new apartment across town. 6. For more information on López Lledín, see http://www.cubagenweb.org/misc/paris .htm. 7. Alfonso wore dreadlocks for many years, though he has since cut them off. last snapshots/taKe 2: peRsonal and collective shipWRecKs in buenos aiRes 1. I describe these experiences as haptic (associated with feeling and touch as opposed to the visual) because they translate visual epithets, rendering them metaphors for a nonvisual sensorium. 2. Baudelaire is self-consciously cited by one character. 3. Fags is British slang for cigarettes, corresponding to the slang term faso. 4. This fantasmatic circulation represents perhaps the haunted flip side of another, more visible circulation that also abolishes time—that of the commodity, as suggested by Sarlo: “Time has been abolished in the market commodity, not because the commodity is in any way eternal, but because it is entirely transitory” (1994, 31). 5. The interview cited in this chapter appears in written form on the Spanish DVD edition of the film. buenos aiRes and the liteRaRY constRuction of uRban space The analysis of El sueño included in this chapter is a revised version of a text first published in Hart and Young, ed. (2003), 301–4, and is reprinted by permission of Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. bodY aRt and the RemaKing of meXico citY 1. This visual “practicing” of space recalls Michel de Certeau (1988), but also Salvador Novo’s insistence, in the 1940s, on the need to ejercer or “practice” the city in order to understand it (cited in Gallo 2005, 36...