The shortcomings of identity: Champeta, culture, and inequality in Cartagena, Colombia

Abstract

This paper explores the connections between the culture and living conditions of Afro-descendants in Colombian society. The specific object of study is Champeta, a Black urban music associated with social resistance. The text analyzes Champeta’s evolution in Colombia’s multicultural frame. It concludes with an analysis of these multicultural premises’ shortcomings, especially regarding the material improvement of Black Colombians’ living conditions. This text contributes to current debates on cultural diversity in Latin America.

Introducing Champeta

The following events occurred in Cartagena, a port on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, on the evening of May 15, 2017, during Mother’s Day celebrations. A group of young local artists (“Nando Black” and “Twister,” among others) performed at a concert that, according to local criteria, was a great success. It involved an audience of several thousand, state-of-the-art lights and sound, and dozens of logistics personnel. In the background, like imposing monuments, were gigantic speakers that locals call Picós issuing sounds so loud that everybody’s ears felt about to burst. Little by little, what had started moderately became ever louder and charged with a distinctive energy. Hips started swinging in a frenzy, the soundscape became more and more deafening, and the music, produced by drums, electric guitars, and synthesizers, began to alter moods so that the bodies of the humble Black people attending (informal workers, taxi drivers, and dockworkers—all subjected every day to systemic poverty) started liberating themselves. The more relaxed they felt, the more the party intensified. Despite scattered outbursts of violence, the evening seemed under control.

Yet, as usual in such circumstances, the police soon appeared, since Cartagena’s authorities always feel threatened by a Black agglomeration letting loose in dance, especially in a city with an intensely racist history. That evening, however, police aggressiveness was more intense because these “undesirables” were performing in Cartagena’s Old Bullring, a space normally reserved for the elite. Feeling their privilege being profaned, they experienced the event as social disorder. In no time, the police appeared, ostensibly out of concern for the building, under the assumption that the gathering could quickly turn into vandalism. Despite participants rejecting that assertion, the police officers remained, unwanted. For a tense moment, the concert seemed over; but despite the police presence, the performers and their audience continued. Soon, the music became even louder and the dancing more frenzied until the gathering ended several hours later than when the promoters had planned.

This above reflects on conditions nobody in Colombia has so far wanted to discuss: anti-Blackness and how Black culture is both the target of discrimination and a barrier against racism. This article considers the current scenario of prejudice and resistance through the lens of Champeta, a music type that has gained academic attention because it connects with broader debates about pluralism and cultural inclusion.

A large part of Colombia’s racism problem derives from the notion of Mestizaje and how, by denying race (and therefore racism), it has become a fertile ground for naturalizing inequality. Colombia, like other Latin American countries, is plagued by myths of racial democracy which hide and invisibilize disparity by denying racial distinctions. Champeta complicates this for two reasons. Firstly, its everyday challenges demonstrate the falsity of the alleged harmony of intergroup relationships. Secondly, it allows Black people the possibility of self-recognition—not a trivial phenomenon in context of Mestizaje ideologies that are fundamental in blocking any process of ethnic self-awareness and mobilization. Today, with the days of the “we all come from the same mix” beliefs being superseded, Black Colombians are increasingly aware of their place in Colombian society’s race-class hierarchies.

Created in the Black slums of Cartagena, Champeta has been fundamental to understanding and fighting against these hierarchies: it derives from a blend of folkloric Black-Colombian music (bullerengue, mapalé, zambapalo, and chalupa) with commercial rhythms from different areas of the Caribbean and the Black Atlantic during the 1960s (soukous, highlife, mbaqanga, and juju, together with ragga and Haitian compass). Seen by the administration, the police, and the city’s well-off residents as a promoter of social unrest and criminality, producing, distributing, and consuming Champeta has always been tricky due to the authorities’ open hostility (Cueto Quintero 2017).

However, its producers and artists have been smart witted enough to venture into the commercial world, carving a niche for their Picós (giant sound systems) that function as Champeta’s most significant diffusion platform. Remarkably, like the Jamaican sound system, the Picó comprises a group of audio technicians, disc jockeys, and MCs playing with turntables and massive speakers to liven up what were initially local street parties. Given their increasing importance over the last three decades, Champeta and Picós have become meeting points for Black underprivileged young people, spaces full of rich social and cultural meanings. For those who live in the most challenging conditions, the music has become a tool for respect and self-love, especially in the face of enduring anti-Blackness. Without Champeta, it seems, racism would prevail. It is thus unsurprising that concerts such as that Mother’s Day celebration, which moved from street party to stage performance with splendor and very cool gear, have become crucial for Black people’s identity construction (Cueto Quintero 2017).

For that reason, I now return to the immediate barrage of classist and racist comments the elite made after the event. Weeks had passed, but the authorities still described the concert in negative terms. Some asserted that this music was responsible for the city’s deterioration; that, for their middle-class mentalities, it meant a cultural debacle.1 Others, however, had a different take, suggesting that having the concert held in a previously exclusive place could only point to a growing tolerance. Disagreement on the subject prevailed. A journalistic note published on May 25 reported Louis Towers, a Champeta musician, stating that once again, the events had served as an opportunity for the usual detractors to expose their hatred without stopping to analyze the city’s segregation. It was followed by more racist and classist rants.2

Towers’ statements point to a current controversy. The concert, and what is happening in Cartagena, show why Champeta is at the center of two conflicting visions of culture. While elitist standpoints promote scorn and what they call the racist use of public space, Champeta performers champion Black self-recognition and agency. Particularly troublesome here is that the concert occurred at the Bullring, a space previously accessible only to the elite and now preferred also for tourists. When such events happen in the slums’ streets, everything seems kept at bay; but when they break into an elite closed space, they become a subject in a duel for the city’s identity. For Black city dwellers, Champeta enables them to resist the typical rejection of all things African, and to contest White-washed depictions of the city.

How has Champeta come to evolve to provide this identity resource for Black Colombians? Subsequent to Colombia’s 1991 Constitution, an Afro-descendant movement arose, with Champeta and other rhythms receiving ever more attention—attention that explains some academic arguments that Black music has defeated its initial marginality (Cueto Quintero 2017). Yet, although Champeta has gained prestige in the music world, its journey from the ghetto to champion of Black Colombian culture must be reconsidered. One needs to ask how it is thought of and come to be described as a form of agency. There has been an overstatement of its positive aspects and an omission of those less positive; and that overstatement must be avoided because, although it mobilizes culture against racism, it also permits a contradictory development of Champeta. On one hand, Champeta’s market is growing and no Colombian can deny its rising star. Yet, this condition is also paradoxical and deceitful: that is because most Black people inside Champeta’s circuits of production and circulation do not benefit from whatever that success means.

This situation makes the rhythm privileged for discussing the paradoxes between growing fame and persisting destitution. Nowadays, Champeta is at the crest of a wave of official promotion, with stimulating Champeta being a means for the Colombian state to pursue its anti-racist duties. The music’s validation derives from its capacity to represent Black culture which, in turn, expedites legal and monetary support. The logic seems to be that if Champeta wins, Black people, the state, and the whole society win. But this is problematic since most Black Colombians do not seem to win much. Why are the gains from Champeta’s visibility not providing more for the people that produce it? Culture, at least in Colombia, enables minority groups to make political claims—and the state’s celebration of Champeta provides an excellent example. Yet the same case reveals the existence of a contradiction, ostensibly in the very heart of the culture’s vindication. Those who praise the music’s social awareness (and its purported social drive) have failed to recognize the problematic positions of Black culture in Colombia. From this standpoint, it becomes clear that Champeta’s growth could be playing against providing for people’s basic needs and aspirations despite its capacity for representation.

Ecologies of exclusion in Cartagena

The notion of “ecology of exclusion” comes from Wangui Kimari (2021) who has described how, through seclusion and removals, the elite which controls a city’s cultural, economic, and social life can block the development of that city’s deprived majorities. In such a scenario, she shows poor urban dwellers’ needs remain invisible and unmet, despite city-wide economic growth. Thus, she argues, there is a “planning of neglect and force” (142) which requires considerable violence to isolate poor people from social advantages. Kimari’s concept is helpful for recognizing the complementarity of economic and political phenomena in creating and reinforcing Cartagena’ segregation and poverty. To see the city through the lens of an ecology of exclusion explains the tension between the privileged social sectors, whose members disguise their contempt behind a veil of public concern, and the city’s racialized and deprived people trying to carve out a place in a racist world.

To understand this tension, we need to recognize how, as tourism became the city’s economic axis, that, in turn, created an unfair racial geography. While the process started in the 1950s, it was consolidated by the city’s election as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. This event initiated a development model almost totally focused on tourism and saw Cartagena’s political and economic leadership redesigning the city as a world-famous destination that would be a Caribbean getaway. This brought about a profound morphological change in water, sanitation and electrical infrastructure, the installation of other services, and public-space beautification. The process also brought about an image blatantly excluding the city’s Black majority (Mosquera Rosero-Labbé and Provansal 2015). As stated by Joel Streicker (1997: 122), “for the most part, Blacks appear in the tourist literature merely as part of the pictures for tourist fun, taking a secondary role even to the city's beaches and colonial architecture.”

Moreover, for Cartagena, recent pre-pandemic figures show that being a showcase pays poorly. They show that the formal employment opportunities offered by the tourism industry were insufficient (just one-third) for the city's current demand (Santamaría Alvarado 2018; De la Rosa Solano 2018). Covid 19 exacerbated that sending thousands more workers back down the social ladder (Faiola 2021). The consequence is that, post-pandemic, the city’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of 20% of the population (many of them foreign hotel owners or managerial tourism workers), while, according to figures from the National Department of Statistics (Dane), 42.5% of the population is currently living in multidimensional poverty (about 80 US dollars per month). Even more telling is that seven out of ten people Cartagena residents are undernourished, most of them concentrated in areas with very high proportions of Black people. Poor city dwellers, primarily informal workers, thus get little from the alleged benefits of the city’s fame. Meanwhile, the city’s capacity to offer social services has almost collapsed.3

The above data reflect Champeta audiences’ harsh lives. But they do not explain why the music is central to their daily struggles. Michael Veal (2012) conceives diasporic rhythms as nets of movements and feelings that contain messages about the hardships of being Black; that musicality and rhythm are more than sound and dance since they convey a social consciousness. More than acoustic phenomena, Champeta is a living experience that influences mentalities and behaviors. The Mother’s Day concert events show that Champeta is clearly not only about music. The audience understood that defending their right to recreation had deeper meaning; that the concert was part of a history of resistance.

This capacity for resistance goes back to the origins of Champeta and its early figures in the 1980s. There are many legends of old-school Champeta, but I want to mention Viviano Torres and Joe Arroyo. Torres and his group, Anne Swing, were pioneers in a crucial sense: they were the first local musicians to sing in Afro-Creole, a trend that Arroyo would follow, in turn, with his cover of Yamulemao, a Wolof song recorded in Senegal in the early 1980s. These musicians articulated a cosmopolitan sense of Blackness in Cartagena at a time when, owing to Colombian Mestizaje’s race denialism, many Afro-descendants did not recognize themselves as such. A great example of an interest in the meaning of Blackness is the success of Joe Arroyo’s song, “La Rebelión” (The Rebellion), which became a hymn of freedom throughout the Caribbean. The song tells the story of an enslaved man who rebels against a Spanish settler for mistreating the man’s wife:

Un matrimonio africano, esclavos de un español, que les daba muy mal trato… y a su negra le pegó...Y fue allí, se rebeló el negro guapo [angry, in local jargon]), tomó venganza por su amor, y aún se escucha en la verja: ¡No le peque a la negra!

An African couple, enslaved by a Spaniard, who treated them very severely and beat the woman... Then the furious Black man rebelled and took revenge for his love! His scream can still be heard: Don’t you dare lay a finger on my woman!4

The piece shows where Champeta’s potential resides. Strongly connected to Black history, Champeta’s practices and worldviews crash against the orthodox ideologies of Latin-American race mixing and the general idea that racial discrimination and segregation are absent in the region. By refusing regionally hegemonic canons in favor of a Black-centered sense of aesthetics, fashion, and beauty, Champeta practitioners upend the dominant myth of racial democracy and the values that support it. Amid ever-mounting hardships, more and more Black, underprivileged youth use Champeta to re-signify their life stories. However, the most visible change caused by Champeta and Picós in Cartagena is perhaps in the city’s recapture through sound with the spaces where the parties now take place breaking with pre-arranged, colonial urban layout hierarchies. With music originating from the ghetto streets now sounding around the city’s more wealthy, White-populated areas, the affluent must share the same soundscapes as the poor. It also provides a nonspatial way to exercise spatial and symbolic control (Streicker 1997).

As such contact increases social tensions, however, Champeta has become an arena of countercultural struggle in which the meaning and use of urban space are fundamental. It is not surprising, then, that several institutions have highlighted the strategic importance of Champeta in such struggle. A meaningful example is the recognition by the UNDP of the NGO, “Corporación Champeta Criolla” (Corporation for Creole Champeta), which uses education and cultural empowerment to fight poverty. Another is the UN’s 2011 declaration of Champeta as a tool for Afro-descendant social inclusion.

Consequently, the music has endured, despite various barriers. Indeed, its persistence has begun to crack the structural racism that has kept Black culture in the subsoil of national promotion and funding. Nevertheless, Champeta’s boom is ironic. Hotels now play the music they used to deprecate, and many in the touristic industry that so openly called it a debacle have appropriated the rhythm as an attractive revenue-generating tool. One visible case is the famous Champetú parties, celebrated in a colonial museum in Cartagena, where the prices and location are oriented to visitors from the global north searching for the “native” city experience. This fame has already crossed the seas. During the 2020 Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show in the USA, Shakira, a world-famous singer, entertained millions with a sample of Colombian music in which Champeta occupied a central role. Yet this new uptown version of Champeta, now packed with exoticized Caribbeanness, closes its doors to people who still continue to experience racism, poverty, and police hostility toward their street-party celebrations.

Multiculturalism and the business of Champeta

According to Hall (2013), groups’ differentiated access to the production and consumption of cultural representations and signifying practices is the main reason behind gaps in representation and political participation. The situation in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, is an excellent example. Although Champeta expresses Black agency, ignoring existing material and representational inequalities is impossible. For that reason, one needs to analyze how maintaining unequal social relations and promoting Champeta as Black culture work simultaneously. To do that requires addressing how industry and policy-making have treated recognition of identity claims and meeting otherwise unmet needs as one and the same.

Champeta Picós have ceased to be merely local expressions of resistance by a discriminated against population since they have become both a music market and a political tool of the Colombian state, especially in the context of the nation’s multicultural turn of the 1990s—one in which, as Goldberg (2002) states, interethnic statehood and citizenship are important for alleged post-racial democracy. Nowadays, to speak about Champeta in Colombia is to talk about money-making and Black enfranchisement. To understand this, it is necessary to go back to the origins of Colombia’s multicultural policies.

For about two centuries, the illusion prevailed that racial mixing (mestizaje) had abolished racial distinctions in Colombia. However, the other side of the myth of the so-called racial democracy—a supposed “no race, no racism” scenario—was the poverty and exclusion of people of color. The state was allegedly color blind and the lie of meritocracy rendered any discussion about structural racism pointless.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, that situation had changed. This had begun with the passing of the 1991 political Constitution which marked a milestone in Colombia’s history. That Constitution rendered Colombia to be a self-proclaimed multi-ethnic and multicultural state whose laws recognize minorities’ collective rights. This new legal order also opened the doors of legislation and investment opportunities to the universe of Afro-descendants’ traditions (Paschel 2016). Among the goal of the legislation was protection of historically undervalued music. Champeta is consequently now gaining strength due to the national interest in protecting whatever is considered autochthonous culture. The most peremptory expression of this is an attempt, in which the state is strongly involved, to have UNESCO recognize Champeta as intangible cultural heritage. Currently, the Institute of Heritage and Culture of Cartagena (IPCC) has invited private citizens, official institutions, and NGOs to participate in a Special Safeguarding Plan (PES) for Champeta, in line with national programs for heritage protection.5

Champeta’s recent visibility is related, in turn, to its economic success which follows a logic of mutuality: fame comes from profitability; profitability grows through celebrity status. According to the Cultural Satellite Account (2020), a government tool for the economic measurement of cultural industries, the Colombian music field has experienced general growth due to proliferation of virtual platforms. Thanks to the relative ease of such technology, there is a boom in traditional music’s production, circulation, and consumption. That in turn constitutes the main factor for Champeta’s slow but increasingly robust growth (Abril and Soto 2004), which is, today, reinforced by efforts to preserve Champeta by securing its worth as “a cultural good” (Novoa Buitrago 2009; Paulhiac 2011).

That notwithstanding, a focus on albums and Picó events, like the 2017 Mother’s Day concert, has resulted in a business model based on copyright and internet streaming. One good example is the success of “the king of Rocha” (El Rey de Rocha), a very famous Picó and perhaps the most critical Champeta platform, one that has become the label “Musical Organization King of Rocha (O.M.R.).” The royalties of this label and the entire market signify the emergence of a well-established industry (Paulhiac 2011).

However, as happens with the rest of Black Colombian music, the economic and social problems of Colombia’s deprived communities worsen at the same rate as the Champeta market grows. What should we think about this? Raju Das (2020) reminds us of the risks underlying the omission of class relations in policy-making regarding cultural empowerment. If the living conditions of the communities out of which cultural products arise do not benefit from increased visibility and support for their culture, then the positive effects of the so-called multicultural promotion are much less than expected. Indeed, experiences within the world of Champeta right now are a sad reminder of how economic and cultural injustices can never be separated. Instead, they reinforce one another dialectically (Fraser 1995).

The shortcomings of identity

Underlying the problem is the prevalence of essentialist visions that overvalue Champeta as an expression of identity while remaining oblivious to the minimal access ordinary people have to the gains of its flourishing. This obliviousness arises from an assumption that the inclusion of Champeta as recognized cultural heritage equals all Black people’s advancement. To break such old essentialist-thinking patterns, we need to stop understanding Black agency as reflecting a pre-ordained set of actions and attitudes and to look instead at on-the-ground practices and circumstances. The risk arising from abstract, homogeneous identity politics is that it fails to recognize that significant micro-level socio-economic dynamics are extremely nuanced. The problem in Cartagena and Colombia is that it is political-economic exclusion that needs to be addressed, not simply cultural exclusion. Neither Champeta’s status as the music of Black people nor its fame and rentability, advantages, or benefits historically neglected people. Five-star hotels now sell Champeta as cosmopolitan music, but concerts in the slums continue to be besieged by distrusting authorities. While business prospers, ordinary people remain poor.

Researchers interested in what is currently happening with the Champeta scene should be asking more about why and how material inequalities are reproduced, even on the horizons of symbolic empowerment; and why the Black, deprived majorities are not getting their share. While investment in cultural manifestations grow under a premise of Black betterment, there is no serious policy for the sustainable development of those parts of the city (and the country) where most Blacks live. In the slums that have formed in the wake of creating tourist-area concentrations, only 4.6% of Champeta fans (including its producers and artists) have access to drinking water, and only 2% have a sewer system; this while the newspapers convey alarm that insufficient funds are allocated to maintain monuments and beaches.6 Part of the problem is the authorities’ disregard for people’s circumstances that consequently normalizes Black poverty while simultaneously instrumentalizing culture. For Champeta and the Colombian multicultural state, recognizing this contradiction might enable a start to revising the bias inherent in identity claims and how we should understand them.

This is not to belittle the role of Black music. The conquest of Afro-descendant political rights and the simultaneous invisibilization through denial of Afro-descendant culture are undeniable. However, contradictions exist, and persistent Black poverty’s presence confirms it. As illustration of the contradiction: During Colombia’s 2018 presidential campaign, “Mr. Black,” a musician from the poor side of Cartagena, and perhaps the most representative Champeta exponent, appeared in videos supporting the (successful) conservative candidate’s campaign. Yet, by the end of his term, that president left office with the highest disapproval ratings in Colombia’s history.7 The social crisis his administration caused impacted predominantly on the sectors from which Champeta artists, such as Mr. Black, come. When political campaigns use Champeta to reach out to voters whom they later defraud, when current Champeta promoters and artists enter the game of profit while leaving aside the critical capacity of the music they play, the fighting powers many people attribute to Champeta seem to vanish. Again, what these identity-centered logics continue to evidence are shortcomings concerning the poverty of ethnic minorities. Champeta’s trajectory reminds us that empowerment scenarios all too often sustain the apartheids they assert to fight.

Closing remarks

Multiculturalism, at least in the Colombian context, is a political conception of minority rights expressed through legal frameworks. How, and whether, the exercise of these rights addresses the economic disadvantages of ordinary people, who constitute the country’s majority, occupies a secondary place. The current Colombian scenario shows how visions of structural inequality disappear when economic laissez-faire principles become dominant. This is due to an ideological omission. Multiculturalist thinking is born of liberal theory and it assumes that (neo)liberalism is the standard framework in which identity is constructed. Access to identity-based cultural rights can be guaranteed, but multicultural liberalism has a more challenging time criticizing economic disparities. Thomas Piketty (2014) asks if we can imagine political institutions capable of controlling the growing inequality of today’s capitalism. Similarly, Black Colombians could ask for the function of cultural policy to extend toward securing a better life now that their social mobilization has secured their right to self-expression.

Equal access to goods is a liberal principle. However, from a multiculturalist perspective as practised in Colombia, the goods referred to seem more oriented to worldviews and lifestyles than to health education and life’s material necessities. This worsens in marginal contexts like Cartagena, Colombia, where we now see a panorama of identity and hunger. Peter Mclaren (1997) has suggested a different type of multiculturalism—one that both defends non-hegemonic subjectivities and fights against capitalist exploitation. Moreover, he denounces policies of cultural rights as a false pluralism. What his suggestions imply is that society needs to integrate legal multiculturalism with economic justice, which also implies the invention of an equal society by redressing inequality and its sustaining structures. Black music such as Champeta undeniably contains and expresses anti-racist beliefs and practices that can be mobilized to achieve an egalitarian society. While the achievement of Afro-descendant political rights struggles and the current visibility of Afro-descendant culture have been positive for Colombian society, it is necessary to address the persistent contradictions that failure to consider material inequalities creates and no longer to hide the social crisis of which those unrelenting inequalities are a clear manifestation.