González’s remark is hardly the raving of a lone music fan. His attitude is typical of working-class Caleños of his generation, who embraced Cuban and Puerto Rican sounds during the 1940s and 1950s. While the music they love is hardly “sacred” or “holy” in the literal sense (especially given its initial rise in the city’s red-light district), it certainly is revered as both the root of contemporary local tradition and the glorious musical emblem of a bygone era. González’s recollection of his youth as a time when “holy music rained down on Cali” points to a widespread Caleño origin myth in which the arrival of música antillana is constructed as a virtual genesis of the modern city. Indeed, his remark invokes the Old Testament book of Genesis, in which holy rain figures not only during the Creation, but also during the biblical flood that washed away the old and renewed the Earth again (Genesis 2:7 and 7:12).
Origin myths are a vital part of cultural beliefs, whether in the context of nations, ethnic groups, or subcultural scenes. They are intricately tied to discourses about authenticity and purity, anchoring subjectivity and social identities through a number of codes, representations, and practices.2 In this chapter I explore the roots of Cali’s contemporary origin myths by looking at the city’s history in regional and national contexts, linking this to the development of música antillana and its influence in Colombia and Cali from the 1920s through the 1950s. I situate the emergence of música antillana as a widespread cosmopolitan dance music in Latin America, analyzing the political economy that led to the predominance of Cuban genres in música antillana but also made space for Puerto Rican elements and artists to be included. The transition from música antillana to salsa is explored through the influence of two pivotal groups that, not surprisingly, had a great impact in Cali—the Sonora Matancera and Cortijo y su Combo. I also explore the role played by música antillana in the formation of Colombian música tropical (“tropical” dance music based on Atlantic coast genres) and look at the ways in which both música antillana and música tropical competed for attention in Caleño musical life in the middle of the twentieth century—later replaced by the origin myth about música antillana’s predominance. This chapter contextualizes how struggles over local, national, and cosmopolitan identities in Cali set the stage for many cultural practices that I analyze in the rest of this book.
Cali in the Regional and National Context
Cali is located in southwest Colombia, two hours’ drive inland from the Pacific coast, in a broad valley between the western and central ranges of the Andes Mountains. The old part of the city lies on the banks of the Río Cali, a western tributary of the Río Cauca. As the main artery and primary waterway of the Colombian southwest, the Cauca River flows thousands of kilometers to the north, coverging with the Magdalena River to empty into the Caribbean Sea. Urban expansion in the middle of the twentieth century filled in the pasture and swampland between Cali’s historic downtown and the docks (now demolished) on the Cauca, and Cali now extends from the western mountain foothills eastward to the banks of the Cauca. The construction of luxury condominium towers and sprawling shopping centers during the economic boom of the 1980s and early 1990s has further expanded Cali’s urban landscape, yet the city retains the lush tropical climate and pleasant, tree-lined ambience that have been its hallmark for generations. Average year-round temperatures hover around 78° F (25° C), and every afternoon the midday heat is dispersed by a refreshing breeze that blows in from the Pacific coast over the mountains that line the city’s western reaches. Indeed, the celebrated congeniality of Caleños is often attributed to the tempering effects of the tropical sun and the delicious afternoon breeze.
Founded in 1536 by the Spanish explorer Sebastián de Belalcázar, Cali was established as a secondary administrative center during the colonial era, linked to the governor’s seat in Popayán, 150 kilometers to the south. Through the sixteenth century, warrior bands from the various Carib-speaking tribes that lived in the Cauca Valley3 made repeated attempts to oust the encroaching Spaniards but were finally quelled through military force. The names of tribes and caciques, or native chiefs, remain as geographic place-names throughout the area (e.g., Jamundí, Calima, and Petecuy); indeed, the name “Cali” is thought to be a derivation of the name either of the Lilí or the Calima people. During colonial times, the principal economic activity in Colombia’s southwest was based on gold extraction from the mines and rivers of the western cordillera and Pacific lowlands, sustained by the labor of African slaves brought into the country through Cartagena.4 To feed this indentured work force, large haciendas were established in the Cauca Valley around Cali, where the fertile soil proved ideal for cultivating a variety of fruits, grains, and vegetables, as well as livestock. Also maintained through slave labor, the haciendas differed from the plantations set up in the Caribbean in that agricultural activities on the former were based on mixed-crop farming for an internal market, rather than on monoculture or cash-crop farming for an export market. The colonial gold mines and haciendas paid tribute to the regional administrative seat of Popayán, not the viceroyal capital of Santafé de Bogotá. As a result, economic and political ties to the interior were relatively weak.
The dual hacienda-mine system peaked in the second half of the eighteenth century and began to wane after independence from Spain in 1810, weakened by the declining gold market and also the increase of cimarronaje as rebel slaves fled to freedom. Through the middle of the nineteenth century, many cimarrones (escaped slaves) organized land invasions of hacienda properties in the Cauca Valley. Such invasions continued after the abolition of slavery in 1852 and formed the basis of the Afro-Colombian minifundio (small-plot) peasantry that prevailed in the region surrounding Cali from the late 1800s until the middle of the twentieth century.
Still a small provincial town in the early years of this century, Cali began to grow after the construction of a railway line linking the interior to the Pacific coastal port of Buenaventura in 1915–17.5 Completed shortly after the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914, this railway enabled transport of all products from Colombia’s southwest interior to the port and greatly opened Colombian foreign trade, which until then had been conducted mainly through Cartagena and Barranquilla on Colombia’s Atlantic coast. For the zona cafetera (coffee-growing region) north of Cali, the railway provided easier access to international trade arteries than the previous route north through the arduous waterways of the Magdalena up to Barranquilla. Coffee exports through Buenaventura increased fivefold from 1916 to 1926, and with the construction of further railway links in the interior, by 1944 nearly 60 percent of all Colombian coffee was exported through Buenaventura. As the midway point for coffee transported by steamboat down the Cauca River and loaded onto trains bound for the port, Cali became the business headquarters and central clearing house for major coffee exporters (Posada-Carbó 1996: 160–61).
Although coffee served as the basis for Cali’s initial urban expansion in the first part of the twentieth century, it was sugar—the favored sweetener for this caffeinated brew—that consolidated Cali’s agroindustrial boom and second wave of urbanization from the 1950s through the 1970s. The fertile lands and sunny climate of the Cauca Valley provide one the most ideal zones on earth for cultivating sugarcane. Friends informed me, as we drove through countryside checkered by dazzling emerald-green canefields, that new crops are sown and harvested throughout the year.6 After the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent U.S. blockade of Cuban sugar, the United States turned to Colombia and other Latin American countries to satisfy its sweet tooth. Already the hub of Colombia’s national sugar industry, Cali quickly expanded with the influx of laborers required to work in the expansion of sugarcane cultivation, harvesting, and processing. Migration from surrounding regions—caused in part by the bloody strife of La Violencia7—further contributed to Cali’s rapid urbanization in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, the establishment of a regional hydroelectric authority in 1954 enabled the construction of dams and power plants along the region’s principal waterways, consolidating a nearby energy source for industrial and urban development. In addition to the sugar industry, others such as paper and cardboard products and cement were established; the traditional agricultural base of mixed crop and livestock framing also continued, for local and regional consumption.