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Más allá del fútbol: La Bomba, the Afrochoteño Subaltern, and Cultural Change in Ecuador’s Chota-Mira Valley

Ruggiero, Diana Mabel
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1273711996

Abstract Details

2010, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Spanish and Portuguese.
Based on a 2007 Fulbright funded documentary film project; this dissertation concerns the highland Afro-Ecuadorian communities of the Chota-Mira valley. The afrochoteños are the direct descendents of enslaved Africans brought to the region by Jesuits to labor the local sugar-cane plantations during the seventeenth century. Their particular history, cultural traditions, beliefs, customs, and ways of life distinguish them from Ecuador’s indigenous, mestizo, and coastal black population. Despite their contribution to the nation’s development and identity as a pluri-cultural state, the afrochoteños face extreme social, political, and economic marginalization as a result of their displacement and origins with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, subjugation and oppression as slaves, uneven integration, and continued exploitation and discrimination post emancipation. As such, the afrochoteños are made invisible in representations of the nation’s history and culture, save only for their presence on the national soccer team. While academic interest in topics concerning Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Andean communities is growing, much work remains in not only documenting, but critically exploring these subaltern histories and traditions in terms of the stories of oppression, struggle, resistance, and hope they tell. I thus examine the afrochoteño song and dance genre known as La Bomba in relation to the socio-historical development and struggles of the afrochoteño communities as a means of illuminating afrochoteño culture and their condition as subalterns. Though marginalized for much of the twentieth century, La Bomba is today recognized nationally as a symbol of afrochoteño identity thanks in part to a revival spurred by the cultural preservation efforts of the Afro-Ecuadorian socio-political project and movement known as etnoeducación. This initiative seeks to validate and strengthen afrochoteño identity in reclaiming local traditions and educating afrochoteño youth about Afro-Ecuadorian history and culture. Renewed interest in La Bomba is introducing stylistic changes, however, as afrochoteño youth incorporate foreign instruments, rhythms, and genres such as congas, salsa, and reggaeton. While some afrochoteños see such changes as a threat to the integrity of La Bomba and afrochoteño identity, others, in particular the youth who listen to and produce these newer Bomba fusions, see no such conflict and strongly identify with La Bomba as an expression of their distinct cultural identity. Though La Bomba’s recent development raises questions concerning the impact of globalization on afrochoteño culture, it also provides a means of seeing how the afrochoteños’ struggle as subalterns is implicated in the process of cultural change. Building on post-colonial and subaltern theories, I explore the ways in which La Bomba registers the afrochoteño experience of and response to racism, exploitation, and marginalization in Ecuador. In its revival and transformation, we can see how afrochoteños resource tradition and engage memory and global flows in their contestation of the epistemological hegemony that produces their subalternity. I argue that La Bomba’s transformation is best approached in terms of agency rather than cultural loss or retention. Examined in this way, we can begin to understand change in this context not as an inevitable consequence of globalization, but as the means by which La Bomba and afrochoteño identity persist.
Ileana Rodriguez (Advisor)
Lúcia Costigan (Committee Member)
Samuel Amell (Committee Member)
149 p.
Latin American History; Latin American Literature; Music
Bomba; Chota-Mira valley; Ecuador; afro-Ecuador; Ecuador; African Diaspora; music; dance; subalternity; globalization; cultural change; blackness; Afro-Hispanic; Afro-Andean; race; racism; interculturalidad; etnoeducaci&243; n

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ruggiero, D. M. (2010). Más allá del fútbol: La Bomba, the Afrochoteño Subaltern, and Cultural Change in Ecuador’s Chota-Mira Valley [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1273711996

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ruggiero, Diana. Más allá del fútbol: La Bomba, the Afrochoteño Subaltern, and Cultural Change in Ecuador’s Chota-Mira Valley. 2010. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1273711996.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ruggiero, Diana. "Más allá del fútbol: La Bomba, the Afrochoteño Subaltern, and Cultural Change in Ecuador’s Chota-Mira Valley." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1273711996

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1273711996
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.