ABSTRACT
Ruben Blades’ move was timely: just weeks before the exchange, Nicolas Maduro had appeared on television dancing salsa once again, at the very same time as troops under his command were wounding and even killing protesters on the streets of the Venezuelan capital. One of the most famous images to emerge from the street violence was of a young musician, twenty-three-year-old violinist Wuilly Arteaga, playing his instrument while surrounded by troops shooting rubber bullets and clouds of tear gas. Both Hugo Chavez and Maduro centered their policies and claims to legitimacy and progress in large part on critiques of US neocolonialism in Latin America, and both drew on locally rooted musical styles to display their anti-imperialist orientations. Demagogues use music and dance to control people and economies; citizens use the same tools to subvert and resist. Caribbean people – among others – have been using the way music impels listeners to move, to sing along, to do something, for centuries.
