ABSTRACT
In Latin America, there is a body of literature on the use of music in national narratives.1 Deborah Pacini (1991) asserts that Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic adopted Dominican merengue as a major symbol of national identity. Peter Wade has noted how the revival of Costeño music in Colombia responded to a shift in the official redefinition of the national identity toward images of the Caribbean and tropicality (Wade 2000, 228229). Likewise, but this time from the bottom up, salsa has historically given voice to nationalist claims of Puerto Ricans (Quintero Rivera 1998, 121-122).
