“La mestiza”: yucatecan realities with cuban flavor. Reception and reinvention of the cuban musical genres inthe Yucatan peninsula as a vehicle of a new regional identity

Abstract

This research paper discusses the arrival, adaptation and apropiation of the Cuban musical genres in the Yucatan peninsula and how this genres were used as forms of transmision of the new local socio-culturual identities. The most important of these stereotypes was “La mestiza”. Through this stereotype, the upper social clases tried to build a bridge between different social agents in a society divided by racism: a “white” oligarchy, and a dispossessed and dominated “india mayan” and “mestiza” population. The interesting aspect is the use of foreign musical genres (in this case Cuban) for the consolidation and difusion of such stereotype. This last point was, with no doubt, strongly promoted by the peninsular upper class, also responsable (in many ways) for the importation of music and the hiring of musicians from Cuba to the Yucatan peninsula. It is possible to identify how all the referred statements converge through the analysis of the guaracha “La mestiza” of the yucatecan composer Cirilo Baquiero “Chan Cil”.