Argentine actress, Libertad Lamarque Bouza (and crew), singing Eliseo Grenet’s “Ay Mamá Inés” in Blackface. The song became a signature of AfroCuban singer and actress Rita Montaner, who also performed on Cuban stages and Mexican-produced movies in Blackface, such as “Angelitos Negros.” Blackface was common in Cuban Zarzuela.
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The song later became the jingle for Puerto Rican coffee, Yaucono, with the original “Todos los Negros tomamos café,” modified to “En Puerto Rico tomamos café.” Complete with the Black mamie imagery. This stereotype is not only limited to the U.S., it is supported and reified by popular Latin American sayings like “trabaja como negra, para vivir como una blanca,” (work like a Black woman, to live like a white woman), A Black woman for work, a mulatta for the bedroom, and a white woman for marriage and “Negro/a PERO fino” (Black BUT refined, as the condition of Blackness is deemed inhuman and incapable—per the casta system as African ancestry was unredeemable in the social hierarchy). It’s all connected and continuously perpetuated in media and academia, societal imaginations, and normalized through everyday social interactions and attitudes on micro and macro levels.
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I’ve seen Mamie imagery in every country in Latin America, usually on food packaging, and anything alluding to domestic and sexual labor. The objectified& hypersexualized body, illustrated in the big-breasted, ample-assed, Red-lipped, “Negra” costume (yes, literal costume) seen in Cuba, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and others.
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The song talks of looking for Belén whom is thought lives in Jesus Maria but actually lives in El Manglar. Both were areas outside the city walls of Old Havana where AfroCubans were relegated to live in deplorable conditions. El Manglar was literally swamps and mangroves that later became part of the Jesus Maria district. Jesus Maria is still predominantly Black, marginalized and subject to flooding during heavy rains.
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FUN FACTS: In Panama (lmk if it’s true in other countries as well!) it’s believed drinking a lot of coffee will make you dark or “too Black.”
Grenet composed music for a Josephine Baker production. •
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Coffee pic courtesy @d_renee7
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amandla
