Please read Bruno - Yo la bomba no la bail la bomba yo la viv I Didnt Just Dance Bomba
Page 93-106
Please state the main point the author is trying to make the reader understand key point/key takeaway main idea brief detailed summary the cultures etc….
Transcribed Image Text: 3:55
il la bomba yo la viv I Didr
ANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY
RESEARCH ARTICLE
"YO LA BOMBA NO LA BAILÉ, LA BOMBA YO LA VIVE"
(I DIDN'T JUST DANCE BOMBA, I LIVED IT):
THE PEDAGOGY OF DAILY PUERTO RICAN LIFE, BLACK
FEMINIST PRAXIS, AND THE BATEY
Sarah Bruno
Abstract
After Hurricane Maria had passed, Puerto Rico
found itself in the eye of a media whirlwind due to
governmental scandal and earthquakes; still, bom-
beras (women bomba practitioners) would continue
organizing. This article examines how in the wake of
catastrophe, and since its inception on sugar planta-
tions in Puerto Rico, bombeando (practicing bomba)
offers individual healing and prompts the mobilization
of Afro-Puerto Ricans on the island and in the States.
Bomba is thus a system of mutual relief, which offers
a model of structural repair. I examine how bombera
pedagogy is more than something to be applied to a
genre of music and dance but a lifestyle and practice
that acknowledges, repurposes, and releases wreckage
of the embodied experience of colonial trauma.
Drawing on practices of care in the Black feminist
tradition, I deploy ethnography to render how bomba
allows scholars to collectively reimagine and address
interpersonal and infrastructural violence. [Black fem-
inism, affect, dance, Afro-Latinidad, Puerto Rico]
She won't remember the routine wreckage she
used to walk through barefoot here. She sands
it out.
-Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Spill
I came to Puerto Rico to study the role of
bomba among Afro-Puerto Rican women in the
wake of Hurricane Maria.' At the start of my time
in the field, the historic protests that would result in
the ousting of the former Puerto Rican governor
Ricardo Rosselló happened. Then a state of alert-
ness was issued due to the high rates of gender-
based violence happening across the island. Then
the earthquakes along Puerto Rico's southern
coast continued to cause anxiety in a society that
remembers the trauma of Hurricane Maria now
more than ever. Finally, as COVID-19 changes how
people come together and sustain culturally rele-
vant practices across the world, bomberas are
navigating how the batey, or dance circle, spreads
across oceans and in the age of social distancing.
Through it all, I have seen figuras remain constant
in ensuring that the batey continues to be a sacred
ground rich with memory and creativity for
bomberas, despite how it adjusts to the constant
chaos and catastrophe that seem to have followed.
since the conquistadors arrived. Figuras are not
only movements within the dance circle or batey
but also bomberas who have taught me and count-
less others how to move within the batey and
throughout our everyday lives. Figuras are politi-
cal actors whose embodied historical legacies are
acted out in the ways in which they continue to
live in the inheritance of Black femme freedom
and care. Their corrective care is demonstrated
not only for one another on an intimate interper-
sonal level but also through extension of their care
to correct governmental agencies on an infrastruc-
tural level.
With the intention of welding Puerto Rico to
practices of Blackness within a Black studies perspec-
tive, I offer figuras to mediate through current ten-
sions happening in contemporary discourse. José
Luis González (1989) states that the first real
Puerto Ricans were the ones who practiced bomba
-that they were Black. I follow González's redi-
rection and center bomba, and consequently
Puerto Rico, within Black intellectual genealogy
Transforming Anthropology, Vol. 30, Number 2, pp. 93-106, ISSN 1051-0559, electronic ISSN 1548-7466, © 2022 American
Anthropological Association.
DOI: 10.1111/traa 12242.
and geography. My bomba teachers and elders
have taught me not only how to move within the
batey but also how to navigate life as a colonial
subject when the drum stops playing. Before recent
decades, women in bomba were largely ornamental
(Maldonado 2019). In this article, I draw on the
work of my figuras as part of my Black feminist
horizon. Figuras are (1) my elders and those who
hold me accountable and (2) the various postures I
make in the batey to be intelligible to the principal
drummer. The figuras Melanie and Julie demon-
strate how bomba attends to both individual and
infrastructural recovery. They force us to ask:
What is the difference between healing and repara-
tions? What are the stakes under each? I then
examine Diasporic Rican figuras Ivelisse, Alyssa,
and Julie, who practice bomba in order to reinvigo-
rate their dispersed or displaced condition. Diaspo-
ric figuras use bomba as a way to circumvent
government-sponsored relief systems and provide
aid to those in need. They allow us to ask: How
does bomba become a balm for destierro (exile or
dispossession) and also a salve for imperial neglect?
These Afro-Puerto Rican woman figuras demon-
strate what I call "emotional dexterity" and recon-
figure the impact of colonialism and destierro
through bomba practices Emotional dexterity
points to the flexibility required or BLACK PORTIO
Black feminist practical application to rectify the
deficiencies that are noted."
I met Melanie by a very popular quiosco
(kiosk) called El Boricua in Piñones. We discussed
my interest in bomba and my graduate program
over plantain fritters and beer. She told me about
her own time in a graduate program. Her eyes saw
past my anxiety and shone with the passion she
lives her life with. Her curly hair blew in the sea
breeze as we walked to El Ancon, where the bom-
bazo would be taking place. She was excited that
someone else was taking up scholarly interest in
bomberas, past and present. But more than any-
thing Melanie felt familiar. It wasn't until I was
the first volunteer for the acupuncture therapy on
the side of the road, when I said, "this is my first-
time g." that she confirmed she was also a Chi
Rican, or a Puerto Rican from Chicago. It was
one of several moments we shared on that very
long and impactful day that cemented our sister-
ship. Loiza's bombazo was beautiful. People of all
ages came out and participated in watching the
capoeira Angola and dancing and singing in the
bombazo. Afterward, Melanie invited me to
another baile de bomba (a birthday party). I was
enthusiastically down to go. She even offered to
drive me to my arandparents' house so I could
change and go with her. She made sure I was safe
80
Check for updates