Enriquillo's revolts: A resilience archetype within Latin American music

Abstract

Through the análisis of "La Historia de las Indias" - "The History of the Indies", by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, this essay will expose how Enriquillo became a symbol of stoic Latin spirit within Caribbean music. Fray Bartolome de las Casas was a Spanish priest that served theological purposes at Dominican Republic during its Spanish Colonization era, around the early 1500s. During his time at La Española, he wrote "The History of the Indies", a documentary narrative of Enriquillo's revolt against the Spanish colonizers. Enriquillo's narrative will serve as the entry point to illustrate a textual and cultural study of the text itself within Caribbean and Central American contemporary music. The narratives within songs such as, "Buscando América", by Rubén Blades, and "This is Not America", by Rene Pérez Joglar, will serve as an example to examine the dichotomy that every Latin American immigrant embodies. Blades, born in 1948, is a Panamanian Jazz singer who depicts Latin American stories in a troubadour character. Pérez Joglar, born in 1978, is a Puerto Rican rapper whose lyrics often condemn and criticize Latin American territories' injustices at the expense of alien forces. In search of a better future, every immigrant confronts an identity crisis in which the latter becomes a subjective duality composed of an existing nationality and a second perspective acquired from the immigration process. The indigenous figure that Enriquillo embodies has founded an overcoming precedent that enacts racial vigor within the Caribbean Taíno. There have been many stories akin to Enriquillo's trajectory. Enriquillo was one of the many indigenous leaders that eventually confronted Spanish colonizers and, in doing so, reattributed much candor and dignity to their land. This essay will celebrate how Enriquillo's character is an archetype of Hispanic resilience against supremacist and imperialist systems in the modern atmosphere.