University of Pittsburgh Press

Sounding El Paquete
Author(s): MIKE LEVINE
Source: Cuban Studies , 2021, No. 50 (2021), pp. 139-160
Published by: University of Pittsburgh Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/27082003

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/27082003?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Pittsburgh Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Cuban Studies

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
MIKE LEVINE

Sounding El Paquete: The Local and

Transnational Routes of an Afro-Cuban
Repartero

A B S T R AC T
Cuban authorities have accused reggaetoneros of creating “vulgar” and “distasteful”
music since the musical style’s introduction to the island two decades ago. As a result,
the artists’ work is mainly excluded from both state television and radio broadcasts.
Despite these restrictions, reparto, a reggaeton subgenre that originated in outlying Ha-
vana neighborhoods, ranks today as one of the most popular musical styles in Cuba. Its
broad reach is due to the style’s prominent inclusion on el paquete semanal. El paquete
semanal is an informally distributed digital media platform that provides participants
with a means to find and create music, and to connect with a transnational network of
music fans outside of the purview of the Cuban state. Using archival material from
personal interviews and other forms of digital data collection, I address the addition
and removal of the music of popular reparto artist Chocolate MC from the paquete as a
direct consequence of the shifting decisions of a network of matrices, paqueteros, and
subscribers. I argue that Chocolate MC’s mediated path through the paquete sounds a
shifting border between acceptable and unacceptable modes of racial representation
amid a moment of heightened change in Cuba.

RESUMEN
Las autoridades de Cuba han acusado a los reggaetoneros de crear música “vulgar” y
“de mal gusto” desde la introducción del género musical a la isla hace dos décadas.
Como resultado, el trabajo de estos artistas es excluido de las transmisiones estatales de
radio y televisión. A pesar de dichas restricciones, reparto, un subgénero del reggaeton
originario de vecindarios de la Habana, es actualmente uno de los estilos de música más
populares en Cuba. El amplio alcance del reparto se debe a su inclusión en el paquete
semanal, una plataforma de medios digitales de distribución informal que provee a los
participantes un medio para encontrar y crear música, así como para conectar con una
red transnacional de melómanos sin la injerencia del estado cubano. Utilizando material
de archivo proveniente de entrevistas personales y otras formas de recolección de datos
digitales, examino la adición y eliminación de la música del popular artista de reparto
Chocolate MC del paquete como consecuencia directa de las decisiones cambiantes de
una red de matrices, paqueteros y suscriptores. Mi argumento es que el trayecto me-
diado de Chocolate MC a través del paquete suena una frontera cambiante entre modos

139

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
140 : Mike Levine

aceptables e inaceptables de representación racial en medio de un momento de cambio

pronunciado en Cuba.

The song was one of the first files listed inside the “Música—Nacional,”
“Música—Unrelease Cubano” and “Musicales Video Clip” folders of the
“Crazyboy” edition of el paquete semanal released on June 18, 2018. Hun-
dreds of other tracks were inside the folder, but none of these would become
as popular as “Bajanda.” Within a few weeks, it seemed as if the reggaeton
reparto song by Chocolate MC (whose real name is Yosvanis Arismin Sierra
Hernández) was heard everywhere in Cuba: neighborhood parties, sound sys-
tems set up at local parks, fixed-rate almendrones, and private taxis. Walking
around Havana’s repartimiento districts during December 2018, I heard young
people incorporating lyrics like “super asfixiao” and “botan pa’ la calle” from
the track into their daily speech. “Bajanda” would become one of the nation’s
most popular songs during the summer of 2018, emblematic of reparto’s grow-
ing reputation as the soundtrack of Cuban youth.
Young Cuban music fans avoid reparto’s ban from national radio and tele-
vision by relying on el paquete to listen to new songs like “Bajanda.” Consid-
ering the polemical relationship that reparto shares with the Cuban state, the
musical style’s unlikely rise in popularity through this informal media net-
work signals a shift in public discourse. Does this shift portend what Latin
Americanist Devyn Spence Benson (2016, 247) calls “a new revolution inside
of the revolution” for Afro-Cuban artistic representations, or does circulation
through the paquete require that reparto artists hide behind such a degree of
self-censorship in their public behavior and lyrics as to make any effect on
the public sphere minimal? I address the question using data gathered during
time spent with paqueteros, artists, and music fans while conducting fieldwork
in Havana in 2018, coupled with a digital ethnography that highlights how
content connected to the controversial repartero Chocolate MC is circulated
both through the World Wide Web and the paquete. In his negotiations of na-
tively Cuban and Afro-diasporic musical elements, the path that Chocolate MC
takes in his digital journey through the Cuban diaspora provides a compelling
case to discuss the margins of acceptable content circulated through this media
network. I first focus on the distribution of the paquete from the view of the
matrices, paqueteros, and music fans who move his content daily inside of
Cuba, and then look at the artist and his connection with the paquete and the
World Wide Web in the Cuban diaspora. Placing the paquete’s circulation of
reparto within a broader circulation of technology and Afro-diasporic musical
practices located throughout the Cuban diaspora, I argue that reparto’s medi-
ated path through the paquete sounds a shifting border between acceptable

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 141

and unacceptable modes of racial representation amid a moment of heightened

change in Cuba.

Reparto and the Public Sphere

For all its popularity, reparto (sometimes referred to as morfa, radamorfa, or
rastamemba) is a relatively recent stylistic development.1 Unlike other styles of
Cuban-based reggaeton that came to the country through Santiago de Cuba on
the eastern shore of the island during the 1990s, reparto music emerged from
the barrios of Havana earlier in the early 2000s. The musical style is named
for these outlying barrios, or repartimientos. An article in El Toque last year
called the style “el reguetón de los pobres” (Curbeo 2018). Chocolate MC,
for instance, grew up in the mainly Afro-Cuban, working-class repartimiento
of Los Sitios. During interviews, he frequently discusses the difficult time he
experienced in the neighborhood as a child. He currently lives in Miami.
Reparto contains reggaeton’s trademarks (e.g., dembow backbeat, rapped
and sung lyrics, pan-Latin identity expression) and is regularly listed as reggae-
ton both in the paquete and on YouTube, but it is also infused with expressions
from idioms spoken exclusively in the repartimiento wards, clapped rhythms
taken from rumba guaguancó, and distorted melismatic vocals suffused with a
liberal amount of auto-tune.2 Music videos also display something new. Unlike
older subgenres of Puerto Rican imported reggaeton, men now dance as often
as women. The style is popular throughout Cuba, but its artists are predomi-
nantly Afro-Cuban, male, and from low-income neighborhoods across Havana.
As Abel González (2018) explains of the style in Vistar: “La lógica implacable
de los barrios, el reguetón callejero.”
A statewide prohibition on almost all public performances of reparto,
however, stems from a history of complaints lodged against reggaeton’s ar-
tistic value. The daily newspaper of the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC,
or Youth Communist Organization, the youth wing of the Cuban Communist
Party), Juventud Rebelde, referred to reggaeton in 2005 as “anticultural, banal,
vulgar, and trashy” (Boudreault-Fournier 2008, 337). That same year, Orlando
Vistel Columbie, president of the Cultural Ministry’s music institute, banned
reggaeton almost entirely from radio and television, declaring that “neither
vulgarity nor mediocrity will be able to tarnish the richness of Cuban music”
(Bennett 2015). Most recently, the government went a step further. With the
passage of Decreto 349 in December 2018, the Cuban state requires all street
musicians to professionalize before receiving permission to perform in pub-
lic spaces. Failure to follow these rules results in fines and possible arrest.
Many musicians consider the law a direct attack on reggaeton (14ymedio 2018;
­Bellaco 2019).3

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
142 : Mike Levine
These prohibitions make it difficult for reparteros to disseminate music
throughout the island. As Havana-based música urbano and reparto producer
DJ Unic articulated in the documentary Reggaetón Revolución: “When you
have the support of television, logically you get more promotion, it’s the fastest
media form that exists. But right now it (reggaeton) has a bad reputation” (Chu
2016).4 Because of these concerns, reparteros primarily circulate work in Cuba
through underground distribution channels. Many artists feel they have no
choice but to pursue alternative paths of circulation outside of official media.
Reggaeton is less acceptable even than other historically controversial Cuban
music genres. The musicologist Geoff Baker (2011, 21) claims that compared
with contemporary musical styles like hip hop, reggaeton occupies an espe-
cially contestatory space: “Given the alliances between hip hop and the state,
both ideological and practical, it may be in the sphere of reggaetón, surpris-
ingly, where underground carries more of a contestatory charge, even if (para-
doxically) it is framed in resolutely apolitical terms. Underground reggaetón,
with its broad focus on hedonism and materialism, occupies a distinctly more
antagonistic position than rap in respect to official socialist ideologies.”
Owing to these prohibitions, the anthropologist Alexandrine Boudreault-
Fournier (2008, 345) claims that most reggaetoneros do not attempt to regis-
ter their music for copyright: “Although artists are aware of issues related to
copyright, they rarely register their songs with the local ACDAM (La Agencia
Cubana de Derecho de Autor Musical, or The Cuban Agency for Musical Au-
thor Copyright).”
For reparto’s audience, the “underground” means consuming new mate-
rial weekly through the paquete’s offline “sneakernet.”5 Through the paquete’s
far-reaching distribution circuit, the musical style now ranks among one of the
most popular youth-oriented genres in Cuba today. According to paqueteros I
have interviewed, and measuring by a collection of the contents of several pa-
quetes released in 2018, reggaeton is the most highly represented genre of mu-
sic on the paquete.6 Chocolate MC and other Afro-Cuban identified reparteros
typically make up the bulk of the artists listed within the paquete’s “Música—
Unrelease Cubano” folder. In addition, reparto tracks are promoted further
by their placement at the top of file listings inside of the “Música—Nacional”
folder (see Figure 1).
The requirement of distributing music within unofficial channels places
artists into narrow trajectories, but prominent presentation on the paquete also
offers an ample perch to communicate within Cuba’s public sphere. The widely
traded media network offers the most expansive informal distribution model in
Cuba’s post-1959 history. According to a study conducted by the Association
for Computing Machinery (Dye et al. 2018), the “community led information
network is the primary medium by which Cubans receive and engage with lo-
cal and international media, news, and entertainment.” Even if its public sphere

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 143

FIGURE 1. Screenshot displays data compiled from a paquete released on April 9, 2018, and
produced by the matriz Crazyboy. Typical of this folder’s contents, almost every song featured is
in the reparto musical style.

is virtually mediated and dubiously legal, the exposure that reparto receives
through the paquete’s reach and distribution has never before existed for an
Afro-Cuban music genre.
Reparto flourishes within the paquete because of, not in spite of, its plural-
ist and virtually mediated public sphere. The media network’s files and fold-
ers bring together recording artists, studios, distributors and audiences into
close (if virtual) contact. In effect, the platform serves as a digitally mediated
public sphere that reflects what sociologist Manuel Castells (2008) theorizes
as a network society. In network societies, individual- and community-level
awareness, adaptability, and innovativeness compete for space in a pluralist
organization without committing to any ideologically fixed manifesto or po-
litical program. This parallels Sujatha Fernandes’s (2006, 3) work in Cuba
Represent!, which theorizes the engagement of multiple contemporary Cuban
art forms around artistic public spheres. Artists in public spheres engage with
alternative expressions of society alongside (but not necessarily opposed to)
the Cuban state’s positions on arts and culture. Artists and audiences engaged
in the paquete’s far-reaching virtual communities mark a similar shift away
from the centralized power of the Cuban state and toward a varied set of ideo-
logical choices. Several competing agendas come together that determine both
how one hears new music and which music is heard. The pluralistic approach

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
144 : Mike Levine
to content curating challenges the musical tastes of consumers but also allows
for a fair degree of experimentation in what content is circulated from week
to week. This experimentation includes the music that reparteros create, but it
also embeds the shifting tastes of the Cuban public.

Distributions of Reparto Inside of Cuba

The unusual circulation of Chocolate MC’s music distributed on a sample of
paquetes in 2018 provides a useful case study in how matrices, paqueteros, and
audiences together decide which content to move through the paquete’s infor-
mal media channels. Unlike the spread of content via the World Wide Web, the
paquete’s distribution model charts a winding path between censorship and
consumer appeal. Media consistently disappears and reappears from weekly
and daily releases depending on what the state deems offensive or counter­
revolutionary, or what content matrices fear will attract scrutiny that paquete-
ros and other distributors would rather avoid.
Under normal conditions, matrices package new songs promoted by art-
ists, labels, and distributors on upcoming editions of the paquete. These songs
are then moved down the hierarchy during the distribution process to paquet-
eros and their subscribers. This process generated one of Chocolate MC’s big-
gest hits, “Bajanda.” It was added to paquetes on June 18, 2018, two weeks
after the song’s initial release on YouTube as a static video (El Paquete 2018a).
In addition to its aforementioned inclusion inside the “crazyboy” edition of the
paquete, two remixes of the song were also released as mp3 files in a folder
labeled “[22–06–18] VIERNES\[22–06–18] !VIERNES OMEGA\Musicales
Videos Clip [Exclusiva]\! Noticias & Chismes [Nacional]” inside the June 22
“omega” edition of the daily paquete (El Paquete 2018b).7 Unlike YouTube,
users accessed the MP3 from this folder without any commentary or metrics
listing how many other users had previously viewed the same clip, or what
they thought of its contents. Instead, they found the file listed as a string of
text marked “ ```Estreno CrazY_BoyZ-17-Chocolate Mc—Bajanda_Prod_by_
AdvAnceD_StudiO” placed next to dozens of other file names sorted alpha-
betically within the same folder (see figure 2). The filename gives credit to the
matriz that originally premiered the file. In addition, three backticks placed to
the left of the filename ( ```) function as a low-tech hack to move the file to the
top of the folder in which it is contained. Backticks or exclamation marks, as
other examples of this file are labeled in their filenames, come before the letter
A in alphabetically arranged file listings.
Fans have accessed a number of Chocolate MC’s songs from the music-
­oriented folders of the paquete since the artist’s first single, “Guachineo,” in
2015. Chocolate MC has become such a popular artist, in fact, that he also fre-
quently occupies the fan-based folders “Pelemicas Y Chismes-Nacional E Inter-

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 145

FIGURE 2. Screenshot of the June 18 “Crazyboy” Edition of the Paquete opened to the search re-
sults for “bajanda.” (Taken from http://paquetedecuba.com/listado​-del-paquete-semanal-resumen​
-del-paquete-crazyboy-18–06–2018/).

nacional.” Inclusion in this folder signals an interest beyond the artist’s music,
extending to his personal life. This contrasts with the amount of space allotted
in paquetes for other content. Movies and video games, for instance, are typi-
cally categorized in folders that list only file names (and are more often of for-
eign origin). Music fans, however, are interested not only in listening to reparto
songs; they also want to learn about artists’ personal lives. What are artists talk-
ing about during interviews with popular Miami-based ­YouTube ­personality
Alex Otaola, who is engaged in a tiradera (or rap battle), and who is dating
whom?8 These are questions that expand the field of attention for reparto’s au-
dience to include folders dedicated to capturing the intimate details of artists’
private lifestyles. Despite the fact that reparto music is banned from almost all
state-run television and radio broadcasts, Chocolate MC and other reparteros
remain a consistent staple both in this folder and in the paquete’s many genre-
and subgenre-categorized music folders in each new release.
Having your music and lifestyle become a consistent object of interest can
also result in added scrutiny. During March of 2018, Chocolate MC’s music
was temporarily removed from el paquete for this reason. Although the ac-
tual method of removal remains unknown, a paquetero who made a live video
feed claimed that he deleted the artist’s music from the paquete because of
­Chocolate MC’s “malas palabras, consumiendo drogas y usando armas” (“bad

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
146 : Mike Levine
words, drug consumption, and weapons use”) (Salinas 2018),9 reflecting the
golden rule in paquete’s distribution that, according to Ted Henken (2017, 3),
requires that contents contain “no politics and no pornography.”10
The coded lyrics of “Bajanda” are permeated with political significance.
Verses center on the lives of skinny mice and sewer rats that party when the
carnivals begin (“empiezan los carnavales y la comparsa”). Their actions
are juxtaposed to those of powerful cats who aim to sweep the troublesome
mice away. Unlike the mice, these cats possess the power of the word: “Gato
dice: miau, miau, miau.” Throughout the song, according to Latin Americanist
Justo Planas (2019), Chocolate MC pleas for those in power to allow his com-
munity space within the constricting geographic and cultural boundaries of
Havana’s marginal neighborhoods.
The “bad words” to which the paquetero is referring might also reflect
discomfort toward other recent events occurring in Chocolate MC’s personal
life. These include the artist’s arrest for kidnapping and charges of domestic
violence in June 2017. The case was eventually settled out of court, but cover-
age of the events was captured on social media for at least a year following the
initial arrest (Nacher 2017). In March 2018, US immigration authorities ar-
rested the artist for questions about his visa (Cubamax Tv Digital Media 2018).
He was released after eleven days, but other controversies soon followed.
Given these provocative events, distributors felt uncomfortable placing the
artist’s music within the paquete during several months of 2018. Searching
through the metadata of paquetes released between March 11, 2018 (when
Chocolate MC first accused the matrices of banning his music from the pa-
quete), to November 14, 2018 (when his songs begin appearing regularly
again), the text string “Chocolate MC” is missing from almost all search re-
sults. This marks a significant shift from his previous popularity. Before the
second week of March 2018, Chocolate MC’s music was found in almost every
weekly edition of the paquete. Following this date, his name comes up in a
significantly less number of releases. The following chart (figure 3) captures
the relative lack of content stored under the name “Chocolate MC” from mid-
March until July 2018.
In the chart, “El Kokito” (a Havana-based repartero of comparable popu-
larity to Chocolate MC) is used as a control to compare the number of files
listed for Chocolate MC during the dates recorded. El Kokito released music
during the same period, and his music continues to appear semiregularly in the
paquete throughout 2018, whereas Chocolate MC’s songs mainly disappear.
In addition, data from YouTube during this period shows that Chocolate MC
continues to appear in videos released on the popular video-sharing network,
revealing a gap between the content that audiences inside and outside of Cuba
consume.
When asked about these trends, Leo Paquetero (the pseudonym for a pa-

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 147

100
80
60
40
20
0
1/14/18 2/14/18 3/14/18 4/14/18 5/14/18 6/14/18 7/14/18 8/14/18 9/14/18 10/14/18 11/14/18
Chocolate MC Kokito YouTube

FIGURE 3. T  he number of files that match the text strings “Chocolate MC” and “Kokito” in all
folders taken from a sample of paquetes. (Only results where the text string indicates relevant
content are included.) This number is measured against the number of relevant, nonduplicated
“Chocolate MC” files added to YouTube between January 2018 and November 2018. (Data com-
piled from paquete metadata taken from http://paquetedecuba.com/.)

quetero I interviewed and spent time with during a trip to Cuba in December
2018) replied:

Distributors can decide what is and what isn’t in the weekly package once they buy it
from others distributors or from the sources themselves (matrices). Matrices become
angry at them (distributors) when they change things in the music folder. Matrices
know about the music, not the distributors, but I can do nothing about it because once
they buy the package it is theirs and they can do whatever the hell they want with it.
(Leo Paquetero, e-mail message to author, June 16, 2019)

Leo receives the paquete from distributors (or submatrices) who work di-
rectly for matrices. These distributors, however, alter which content appears
on new releases of the paquete according to decisions that include the tastes of
their customers along with the political necessity for self-censorship. Leo does
his best to maintain the same set of content as the matrices within each new
edition of the paquete that he distributes:

I always try to publish the version that is closer to the source. I have changed my pro-
vider and sometimes one version is different from the other, but there is no big differ-
ence. People from other provinces of Cuba appreciate my work because they can see
versions closer to the source, thus they make demands to their local distributors regard-
ing why this or that content didn’t come in the weekly package. (Leo Paquetero, e-mail
message to author, June 17, 2019)

The quote highlights the many hands that the paquete passes through on its
way to subscribers, Leo’s own attempts to maintain a package that represents
the content that the matrices initially provide, and the potential for content to
change as the paquete makes its way through a complex hierarchy. Sometimes
Leo is unable to maintain the same copy of content as the matrices at the top of

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
148 : Mike Levine
the hierarchy. This reflects pressures placed on Leo from the matrices and dis-
tributors working above him, and the customer base to which he distributes.
Leo Paquetero’s “middle management” role, positioned between the con-
cerns of both producers and consumers, is made visible by his relationship
with reparto music. Leo does not personally listen to reparto (when asked
about his feelings toward the music he often expresses a distaste for reparto’s
“vulgarities and the fact that children dance to the music”), but he is aware
of the immense appetite for the music shared by a large portion of his cus-
tomer base. Because of this demand, his job requires that he interact daily both
with artists seeking to place their music on the following week’s paquete, the
matrices and other distributors who decide which content is added, and how
that content is organized. He also monetizes his role in the circulation of the
paquete by maintaining an active web presence to alert consumers about new
content coming out in the following week’s package. His personal website
contains links to pages that list metadata identifying content found in each new
release of the paquete. According to Leo, customers pay for internet access
either through Wi-Fi or 3G networks. They then browse his website for new
content by scanning through the current paquete’s metadata.
The website helps customers decide if they want to buy the paquete for the
latest week, and from which matriz they are interested in purchasing. Leo also
adds music videos for artists he is promoting to prominent positions placed
around his website. Artists and promotion companies pay him for hosting these
videos and rely on traffic to his website to publicize new content. Leo’s liveli-
hood requires that he distribute content he considers offensive, but he also
holds a certain amount of agency when deciding which content to distribute:
he chooses which content to promote on the website and takes his subscribers’
preferences, along with his own, back to the matrices to let them know which
content his customers prefer.
Reparto fans also express their wishes to Leo Paquetero by providing
him with information concerning which music they are circulating privately.
In response to questions regarding Chocolate MC’s circulations over the past
year, Alberto Correa (a pseudonym for a music fan and personal friend who
lives and works in the Guanabacoa township of Havana) informed me that
when the artist’s music is not found on the paquete, the content continues to
be exchanged via privately held USB sticks and through the offline file-sharing
phone application Zapya. Cuban youth use Zapya mainly to send files privately
to one another through Bluetooth technology (Alberto Correa, WhatsApp mes-
sage to author, June 13, 2019). As long as users stand within close proximity
of one another, they can easily send large files back and forth to each other’s
mobile devices. Networks like Zapya and Xender have supplemented sneak-
ernets inter­nationally. Some estimates measure the impact of these “device-

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 149

to-device” applications to include more than four hundred million registered

users (Scott 2016). In Cuba, these applications represent a growing source of
connectivity for peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. With increased connectiv-
ity through 3G available, it is likely that opportunities for private file sharing
will increase over the next several years.
Private file sharing considerably multiplies the effects of the paquete’s
network. The content choices shared through private social networks influence
which files matrices add to future editions of the paquete. As Thomas Astley
(2016, 21) states, “Many Cuban musicians, filmmakers and writers are willing
to disseminate their music via these non-official means as a way to stoke inter-
est and establish an audience.” For many young Cubans, trading content stored
on privately held USB memory sticks with a select group of family and friends
is a routine daily pattern. Private circulations of content, however, also perform
a significant role in determining circulations of content on future releases of
the paquete. The media choices of all members of this hierarchy, combined
with the biases of the Cuban state, decide what is released and what is left off
the paquete. In the next section, I examine the critical role that artists perform
in these decisions.

Distributions of Reparto in the Cuban Diaspora

Chocolate MC’s choices are often a lightning rod for political and musical de-
bates. He released a cover version of Silvio Rodríguez’s 1992 song “El necio”
in October 2018, for instance, and the appropriateness of his reparto adapta-
tion of the well-known nueva trova song was hotly debated over social media.
He also frequently broadcasts live video streams where he rails against gov-
ernment censorship to his 150,000 Instagram followers, denigrating apolitical
reggaetoneros as chivatones (a term negatively denoting an informant for the
Communist Party of Cuba). In particular, Chocolate MC has heavily criticized
popular Cuban reggaeton group Gente de Zona after the duo sang for president
Miguel Díaz-Canel in June 2018.
While he remains a controversial figure to many, Chocolate MC has
learned that these issues come at a cost. As previously mentioned, his work
was removed from the paquete by at least one paquetero during the past year.
Matrices have also left his music from the media network several times over
the same period.
In response to these and similar events, the artist has recently committed
to changing his public behavior. In an interview aired on Telemundo in March
2019 (Telemundo 51), Chocolate MC discusses his life in Miami (to which he
moved in 2017) and expresses appreciation for his Cuban audience. He also
commits to toning down his controversial lyrics, claiming during the interview

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
150 : Mike Levine
that he has received a lot of pressure to change his words and has decided to act
more carefully moving forward. Chocolate MC performed a duet with popular
Cuban música urbana singer Lenier Mesa in January 2019. The song and video
the two artists recorded together, “A Veces,” was viewed almost eight million
times on YouTube and placed on the paquete shortly afterward by three of the
most popular matrices. Chocolate MC’s inclusion on the song reflects a desire
to take advantage of the international success of música urbana and reach the
pan–Latin American audience that Lenier Mesa accesses regularly through his
own releases. Chocolate MC’s music has now returned to the paquete. His
work appears almost daily in both music and gossip-oriented folders, reflecting
reduced scrutiny of the artist and greater acceptance of his work.
The episode demonstrates the transnational circulations of Chocolate MC’s
music and career. Like many reparteros, the artist works within a transnational
field to produce enough income needed to fund his career. This is indicative
of larger trends facing Cubans today. Citizens are increasingly encouraged to
become cuentapropistas (self-employed entrepreneurs) to supplement the del-
eterious effects of Cuba’s reduced social programs. Many of these jobs provide
services for visiting tourists. But well-paying jobs in tourism predominantly go
to fairer-skinned white and creole Cubans, and Afro-Cubans are increasingly
forced to turn to both dangerous and physically demanding vocations, includ-
ing prostitution, folkloric music performance in rumba and batá, and gambling
(Perry 2015; la Fuente 2016; Hansing 2018; see also Cearns, this issue). The
arrangement provides Afro-Cubans with a place in Cuba’s shifting economy
but marginalizes their public role. In the arts, Afro-Cubans frequently perform
the role of “authentic” pre–Cuban Revolution music and dance to participate
in the tourism economy. As the sociologist Marc D. Perry (2015, 14) surmises,
“the tourism industry has enabled a commodification and vending of Afro-
Cuban cultural forms for consumption by foreign tourists and the Cuban state
alike.” Afro-Cuban genres including salsa and son cubano are generously en-
dowed with state sponsorship (Buena Vista Social Club is a popular example),
while contemporary popular Afro-Cuban genres, including reparto and trap
Latino, remain mainly outside formal recognition.
Reparto music also shares musical and cultural associations with timba,
a contemporary Afro-Cuban musical style that mixes together elements from
salsa, US hip-hop and R&B, and son montuno. The genre, according to the
sociologist Nora Gámez Torres (2012), shares a history of racialized debates
that predates (and predicts) many of the arguments since deployed by the state
against Cuban-based reggaetoneros. As the anthropologist Umi Vaughan (2010,
38) states, “This love-hate relationship with black music and black people has
helped shape timba, which, like any good son of son, has grown and claimed its
space despite initial rejection.” The same argument could be applied today to
the growth of reparto. Both before and after the rise of morfa, the Afro-Cuban

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 151

community has long experienced patterns of economic disenfranchisement.

These patterns led to the rise of timba, and they similarly animate many of the
pressures faced by the reparto community today.
This contrasts with the development of rock and hip-hop in Cuba. There
is disagreement regarding the degree to which rock and hip-hop have attained
mainstream success in Cuba, but these genres have certainly made inroads to-
wards official representation and sponsorship over the past twenty years. State
organizations including the Agencia Cubana de Rap (founded in 2002) and
Agencia Cubana de Rock (founded in 2007) today control funding and dis-
semination for hip-hop and rock music on a national level. The funding model
and wide mandate of these agencies allows artists a means to fund the produc-
tion of their music, while curtailing dissent through guidelines that set politi-
cal limits on acceptable artistic discourse. Reparto, however, continues to be
regarded as contra la Revolución.
Chocolate MC is better able to take advantage of his cubanidad outside
of Cuba where he performs and sells music publicly. His residence in Mi-
ami places the artist into what historian Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (2008, xv–
xvii) calls a “transnational social field” where the artist-in-exile continues to
share discourses of nationality and citizenship across national boundaries. The
­Miami-to-Havana transnational “commute” solves the problem of mobility
while complicating the role of the nation. The transnational lifestyle promotes
a materialist position and social liminality running counter to revolutionary Cu-
ban values, challenging definitions of citizenship for subjects. Living abroad is
also less common for black Cubans. According to John Vertovec (2018, 354),
“The majority of Cubans living abroad are white and disproportionately send
remittances to white Cubans.” The African American studies scholar Alexan-
der Weheliye (2005, 147) notes the pluralist national attachments for artists
working in the Afro-diaspora: “global developments necessitate concepts of
citizenship that allow for multiple spheres of belonging, rather than merely
designating the parameters—both material and discursive—of a particular po-
litical community, although clearly we should not neglect the still very much
alive strictures of national attachment.”
Chocolate MC articulates a plural concept of citizenship later during the
interview with Telemundo (Telemundo 51). The artist makes the comment that
“the future is decided by the people, and not communism.” Text on the bot-
tom of the screen reads that Chocolate MC “asks that Cubans take the deci-
sion in their own hands” (“pide a los Cubanos que tomen la decision en sus
manos”). The provocative quote reveals the openness with which he is now
discussing political matters from his home in Miami, outside the jurisdiction
of the Cuban state. Chocolate MC’s comment, of course, also takes direct aim
at Cuban leadership, as it challenges the symbolic force of the Cuban revolu-
tion by detangling national identity from the socialist project. The sociologist

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
152 : Mike Levine
Velia Cecilia Bobes (2003, 24) makes the point that national identity is his-
torically tethered to Cuba’s socialist government in the popular imagination,
stating that “in the symbolic realm, from the standpoint of political culture, the
most important change for the construction of the nation—and one that had
enormous implications for the understanding and exercise of citizenship—was
the redefinition of national identity in function of its identification with the
socialist project.” Chocolate MC’s provocative public stance has not resulted
in his music’s removal from the paquete, but the interview itself was not added
to any farandula folders.
The artist’s career and residence produce new categories of belonging
that decouple Cuban identity from revolutionary values while re-enforcing a
transnational bridge with the African diaspora. This brings up larger issues
related to movement within the black Atlantic. Paul Gilroy (1993, 193) writes
that “the history of the black Atlantic, continually crisscrossed by the move-
ment of black people—not only as commodities—but engaged in various
struggles toward emancipation, autonomy, and citizenship, is a means to reex-
amine the problems of nationality, location, identity, and historical memory.”
Reconsiderations of identity and citizenship also animate questions related to
Afro-­Cuban music’s recent history. One of the first Cuban hip hop producers,
Pablo Herrera utilized his “apartment-cum-studio” (which, like many reparto
studios, included only a digital beat machine, monitor speakers and an elec-
tronic keyboard) to produce the 2001 compilation disc Cuban Hip-Hop All
Stars, Vol 1. The album, according to Marc D. Perry (2015, 86), was the first
commercial compilation of Cuban hip hop artists, many of whom were local
to Havana-based neighborhoods. Herrera views his lineage as intimately tied
to the values of the Cuban revolution, but also tied to transnational routes of
blackness “by way of hip hop.”
Reparteros (and reggaetoneros more generally) also tie their work to a re-
lationship that includes both Cuba and the African diaspora but calls attention
to urban forms of blackness disassociated from nationalist models of music
performance. In writing about Puerto Rico–based reggaeton, the anthropol-
ogist Frances Negrón-Muntaner and sociologist Raquel Z. Rivera (2008, 9)
claim that “reggaetón calls attention to the centrality of black culture and the
migration of peoples and ideas in (and out of) Puerto Rico, not as exotic addi-
tions but as constitutive elements. If Puerto Ricans and other Latin Americans
have historically celebrated Spain as the ‘motherland,’ reggaetón redirects the
gaze towards Africa’s diasporas.” Reparto expands on this claim by calling at-
tention to the centrality of black culture in Cuba’s urban spaces while similarly
redirecting the gaze toward Africa’s diasporas.
Natively Cuban and Afro-diasporic rhythms are fused together directly
within the music. Reparto uses the guaguancó rhythm borrowed from Cuban
rumba. Its backbeat typically features the rhythm as a looped pattern (usu-

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 153

ally played with digital claps, or an electronically modified form of timbales)

repeated against the Jamaican dembow pattern common to most reggaeton
tracks. While the guaguancó pattern sounds a direct connection to Afro Cuban-
based music from the habanera to the danzón and salsa, the dembow backbeat
pushes its boundaries outward toward Jamaica and other destinations of Afro-
diasporic origin. The juxtaposition of rhythmic forces sounds a counterpoint
between the guaguancó pattern that identifies native Cuba and the backbeat
that pushes reparto’s musical forces outward into the Caribbean and farther
across the black Atlantic.
Reparteros also add a liberal degree of auto-tune to their vocal mixes.
Although the effect is traditionally used to subtly correct pitch, it is frequently
utilized by reparteros to noticeably extend the boundaries of the human voice
past the limitations of the flesh (Katz 2010; Provenzano 2018). Better known
reparteros, such as Chocolate MC, Chacal, El Kokito, and El Yonki share a pen-
chant for smooth vocal deliveries reminiscent of salsa and timba performances.
During the recording process, producers graft digitally rendered auto-tune al-
gorithms onto vocal recordings to add a “robotic” quality to otherwise legato
passages. These textures come together to form a highly mediated aesthetic
that sculpts the voice of “Chocolate MC.” Detractors point to the pronounced
use of auto-tune in music as evidence of a lack of vocal skills, but the heavy use
of auto-tune is also frequently criticized on racial grounds. The ethnomusicolo-
gist Catherine Provenzano (2018) argues that the effect has become associated
with popular black music and is often despised by the general public.
Even lyrically, arguably the area most used as an indictment against the
quality of reparto music, artists often utilize the Afro-Cuban originated prac-
tice of choteo to play with poetic conventions and engage with the absurdities
of daily life in Cuba. Chocolate MC engages with humor in his music as a
strategy to challenge political boundaries and reassert subjectivity in otherwise
challenging situations. Although a number of his detractors focus their criti-
cism on lyrics containing vulgar euphemisms and displays of moneymaking
and lovemaking prowess, there is also political impact in lyrics that directly
call attention to Afro-Cuban identity. The title of Chocolate MC’s popular song
“El Palon Divino” for instance, embraces stereotypes of black male sexual
prowess. At the same time, the title alludes to Afro-Cuban religion in a humor-
ous doble sentido (double meaning). Lyrics like “Soy negro, soy feo, pero soy
tu asesino” (“I am black, I am ugly, but I am your assassin”) from the chorus
of the song likewise center black identity while poking fun at racial stereo-
types. In an essay for El Observador (2018), the Cuban linguistics scholar Luis
Campo Yumar similarly analyzes many of the doble sentidos found through-
out “Bajanda,” suggesting multiple interpretations for the title of the song
that challenge the application of any individual meaning for the term, vulgar
or otherwise.

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
154 : Mike Levine
Choteo has a long history in Cuba of framing biting critiques of author-
ity (Firmat 1984; Muñoz 1999; Laguna 2017). The Cuban American queer
theorist José Esteban Muñoz (1999, 141) reflects that choteo is useful in
“both celebrating what can be emancipatory about crossing borders and iden-
tifications and mocking this very practice, foregrounding what can be poten-
tially disastrous, ridiculous, and even toxic about these connecting strate-
gies.” Alan West-Durán (2004, 4) connects this custom to the Afro-diasporic
practice of signifying: “Like signifying, it is imbued with a democratic spirit
in trying to equalize the powerful and the powerless through humor and
mockery.”
As these characteristics show, reparteros utilize historically Afro-diasporic
practices but also embrace a proudly Cuban identity. This creative self-fashion-
ing challenges political boundaries, and boundaries of public taste in the sonic
realm. Circulation of their media is only possible thanks to the recent acces-
sibility of home recording studios, instruments, and digital technologies that
allow informal production and distribution to take place (Baker 2011; Torres
2013). As Nora Gámez Torres (2012, 354) asserts: “critical to the developing
of the reggaeton scene was the emergence of an informal music economy net-
work boosted by the relative increased availability of music production and re-
production technologies such as MP3s and CD players.” New media platforms
like YouTube and the paquete mark only the latest platforms through which
Cuban artists decide how best to connect with audiences.
Each of these platforms provide a particular set of conveniences, limita-
tions, and affordances that determine transnational expressions of Cuba and
the African diasporas. Chocolate MC usually premieres his work by uploading
new songs with a static image as videos on YouTube. Comments left under
the artist’s video streams, however, are mainly negative. They range from the
political: “Eso es para que lo dejen ir a cuba” (“That is so they let him go to
Cuba”), to an argument about copyright payments regarding his unlicensed
use of songs he has covered, to several commenters insisting that reparto ruins
music (La Farandula Cubana 2018). The criticism expressed in these posts is
never far from racially tinged polemics.
Through the implementation of the paquete’s USB memory stick-based
circulations, artists find a means to circulate music directly to audiences with-
out anonymous, racially charged comments placed alongside their content. Un-
like music uploaded either to YouTube or other content platforms on the World
Wide Web, locally distributed circulations of the paquete allows the device
a more direct relationship between the community it serves, and the content
choices provided by a complex hierarchy of matrices, distributors, and paque-
teros. The offline storage of common file formats ensures that participants are
allowed free sharing of new songs with friends and family through the conve-
nience of a small, pocket-sized USB flash drive. Users are not required to share

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 155

personal information, acquire subscriptions to music and video streaming

services, or view advertisements to interact with content. Further leveling the
browsing experience is the lack of sexualized imagery associated with reggae-
ton CDs and DVDs traded in previous decades. All users see while browsing
content are folders and filenames, allaying ethical concerns that graphic cover
art might otherwise cause consumers. In short, the paquete’s model addresses
concerns of both individual privacy and community sharing.
Unlike YouTube, however, where anyone with an account can upload new
work to their channel and comment on other artists’ work, the paquete’s hi-
erarchical ecosystem requires that multiple parties decide which music is ap-
propriate to distribute. The music of Chocolate MC is allowed into semipublic
and mediated spaces only when the paquete’s widespread assortment of artists,
paqueteros, matrices, and the Cuban state together decide that it belongs in
its folders. Music otherwise continues to circulate privately among citizens,
leaving open the question of the extent to which Afro-Cuban artists living and
working across transnational boundaries can rely upon the paquete to make
their music heard. Far from existing in Cuba and for Cubans alone, a negoti-
ated set of tastes coexist within the paquete’s community. These tastes stretch
across a transnational space that Jennifer Cearns labels the “Mula ring,” where
“circuits of material flow both mirror and actively shape formulations of Cuban
identity” (Cearns 2019; see also Cearns, this issue).

Reparto and Borders of Technology

In discussions on the paquete, the conversation usually centers on the question
of whether the media network represents an ideological break from the Cuban
state or simply duplicates existing biases within a new outlet operating under
a “lowered frequency” model of ideological policing, to borrow a phrase from
Robin Moore (2006, 131). Does reparto’s underground circulations through-
out Cuba signal larger social and political shifts, or simply a safety valve that
allows citizens to continue circulating “vulgar” music within the semilegal
boundaries of the paquete’s distributions? Likewise, does the tenuous position
of artists like Chocolate MC signal the limitations of the informal network
in broadcasting controversial content or a genuine effort by citizens to nego-
tiate emerging boundaries of taste over a grassroots virtual network? These
questions highlight many of the concerns asked today in Cuban digital studies
(Venegas 2010; Henken 2017).
Reparto’s mediated path through the paquete sounds a border between
acceptable and unacceptable modes of racial representation in Cuba, but this
border continually shifts. The routes taken by Chocolate MC through the pa-
quete over the past year reveal a complicated and constantly shifting set of
conditions that ultimately determine which content is added to new releases of

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
156 : Mike Levine
the paquete, which content is left off, and who makes these decisions. Choices
in deciding new content are never made by one person alone. Pressure for
these decisions is shared between the Cuban state, matrices, paqueteros, and
the subscribers consuming its content. The outcome is a mixed arrangement
of new music, movies, and other media that reflects a changing Cuba, along
with the questions this brings up regarding what is appropriate to consume and
what is not.
Chocolate MC’s circulations through the paquete also showcase the in-
creasingly transnational routes in which Afro-Cuban artists travel. Accessing
“Bajanda” from the paquete while in Cuba, viewers discover an artist perform-
ing from outside of Cuba, looking homeward from a diasporic positionality.
The digital mediation of reparto music brings the music of Chocolate MC
closer to Cubans while constructing new public spaces that challenge revolu-
tionary models of citizenship and open the door to new trajectories across the
trans-Atlantic Cuban diaspora. The consequences of a greater number of musi-
cians living and working outside of Cuba means that “as significant numbers
of singer-songwriters have joined the diaspora and in recent years, the process
of reimagining Cuba and Cubanness has taken on a new urgency,” according to
the musicologist Susan Thomas (2010, 211).
The paquete’s digital ecosystem both challenges and reinforces racial-
ized categories of music. These racialized categories echo a larger history of
sonic technologies. Jennifer Lynn Stoever (2016, 5) remarks on technology’s
powerful historical role in framing bias in The Sonic Color Line, stating, “Its
development and trajectory were indelibly shaped by and through the sonic
color line’s sonification of race and the racialization of listening.” Similarly,
Alexander Weheliye (2005, 19) highlights technology’s role in constructing
black music, calling the process sonic Afro-modernity: “If we are to analyze
a sounding black modernity, we should strive to understand how technologies
have affected the production, consumption, and dissemination of black popular
music, and vice versa, an endeavor that is even more pertinent today due to the
increasing globality of black musical practices.”
Afro-Cuban artists performing as reparteros escape constricting bound­
aries of nationalism through the creative deployment of novel digital strategies.
While embracing a shared sense of cubanidad, they participate in actions that
minimize the role of national borders in determining mobilities. Their posi-
tionality is discussed instead through lyrics that are untethered to place, while
proudly displaying community solidarity with the barrios from which they
hail. Similarly, the paquete’s trade operates independently from either govern-
ment or corporate oversight. Its distribution and content storage model differs
significantly from both state-sponsored media (e.g. Mi Mochila) and popu-
lar music and video sharing sites like Spotify and YouTube (see also Henken,
this issue). Subjects that listen to music through the paquete share a listening

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 157

practice located outside of either of these network models. As Cubans further

embrace digital connectivity, these practices promise to contribute to expanded
notions of what it means to be both Cuban and connected amidst an increas-
ingly globalized internet community.

NOTES
1. It should be noted that the terms reparterismo and reparto predate their contemporary uses
as labels for the musical traditions morfa and reparto. According to the Spanish-language scholar
Amauri Gutiérrez-Coto, the expressions are historically rooted in racially coded terms utilized
in Cuban bufo theater in the early twentieth century. The designations acquired new meanings
following the difficult Período Especial that began at the end of the Cold War. Since the 1990s,
reparterismo has become closely identified with bad behavior and a lack of education in music and
popular culture more generally (Gutiérrez-Coto 2017, 159). Musicians performing reparto music
today regularly claim and contest these associations in their music.
2. According to ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall (2008, 148–49) in “Dem Bow, Dem-
bow, Dembo: Translations and Transnation in Reggaeton,” dembow “now refers simply, at least in
Puerto Rico, to the distinctive boom-ch-boom-chick of reggaeton, a rhythmic framework derived
from dancehall reggae and specifically from well-worn riddims such as the dem bow, which has
long been localized as a Puerto Rican product and, in particular, as a beat associated with court-
ship, coquettishness, and sex.”
3. According to reporting from 14ymedio (2018), Chocolate MC’s name came up several
times during public meetings between artists and government officials where the passage of De-
creto 349 was debated.
4. The short documentary connects the careers of reparto artists in Cuba to home recording
studios, underground music scenes, and el paquete’s distribution model. It includes interviews
with several reggaetoneros, music fans, and producer DJ Unic.
5. Sneakernet is an informal term referring to the transfer of electronic information by physi-
cally moving media such as floppy disks, compact discs, USB flash drives, or external hard drives
from one computer to another; rather than magnetic tape transmitting the information digitally
through a computer network.
6. Interviews conducted both during fieldwork conducted in Havana during December 2018
and via email conversations conducted between March and June 2019.
7. Omega is the name of one of the matrices whose content is distributed via el paquete se-
manal. The matriz ranks among one of the most popular matrices in Cuba, along with Deltavision
and Crazyboy.
8. A term often used in the paquete for files listed in these folders is farandula, which is
usually used to describe the gossip and fan culture surrounding the lives of popular musicians. For
popular reparteros like Chocolate MC, Manu Manu, and El Kokito, their private lives are continu-
ally reported upon both in video and print publications.
9. In response to his content’s removal from the paquete, Chocolate MC released a video on
his Instagram page in March 2018 in which he repeatedly exclaimed “Fuck el paquete,” explaining
that he did not need its distribution as his music is already popular in the United States.
10. There are a number of examples of dissident political content finding its way onto the pa-
quete’s platform (e.g., subversive content published through the PDF versions of Vistar magazine
and the music of Willy Chirino), but there are an equal number of examples of cultural products
forcibly removed from it weekly. These include the music of Chocolate MC and episodes from the
popular Mexican narco soap opera El señor de los cielos that feature content critical of the Cuban
government.

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
158 : Mike Levine
REFERENCES
14ymedio. 2018. “Chocolate, el más oído y el más odiado.” 14ymedio, December 30. https://
www.14ymedio.com/destacamos/Chocolate-reguetonero_0_2568343156.html.
Astley, Thomas. 2016. “The People’s Mixtape: Peer-to-Peer File Sharing without the Internet in
Contemporary Cuba.” In Networked Music Cultures: Contemporary Approaches, Emerging Is-
sues, edited by Raphael Nowak and Andrew Whelan, 13–30. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Baker, Geoff. 2011. “Cuba rebelión: Underground Music in Havana.” Latin American Music Re-
view 32, no. 1 (Spring–Summer): 1–38.
Bellaco, Daniel. 2019. “Cuba prohíbe el reggaeton por sexista, machista y violento.” Digital
Sevilla, March 11. https://digitalsevilla.com/2019/03/11/cuba-prohibe-el-reggaeton-por​-sex​
ista-machista-y-violento/.
Benson, Devyn Spence. 2016. Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution. Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press.
Bennett, Jessica. 2015. “Forget Retro: The Men of Havana Embrace the Reggaeton Look.” New
York Times, August 14. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/fashion/mens-style/forget​
-retro-the-men-of-havana-embrace-the-reggaeton-look.html.
Bobes, Velia. 2003. “Ciudadanía, identidad nacional y narrativas de la sociedad civil: Una ex-
ploración en torno a las sucesivas (re)constituciones de la nación cubana.” In La transición
invisible: Sociedad y cambio político en cuba, edited by Velia C. Bobes and Rafael Rojas,
13–45. Mexico City: Océano.
Boudreault-Fournier, Alexandrine. 2008. “Positioning the New Reggaetón Stars in Cuba: From
Home-Based Recording Studios to Alternative Narratives.” Journal of Latin American and
Caribbean Anthropology 13 (2): 336–60.
Castells, Manuel. 2008. “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Net-
works, and Global Governance.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 616 (1): 79–93.
Cearns, Jennifer. 2020. “The ‘Mula Ring’: Material Networks of Circulation through the Cuban
World.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 24 (4): 864-890.
Chocolate MC. 2015. “CHOCOLATE ► GUACHINEO (OFFICIAL VIDEO).” Filmed
[2015]. YouTube Video, 3:40. “URBAN LATIN,” January 20. https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=evdtMZhrsqU.
“Chocolate MC—El Palon Divino (Audio).” 2017. YouTube video, 3:40, “ChocolateVEVO,” Jan-
uary 30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq9QeQDw3ek.
“Chocolate MC, Lenier—A Veces (Video Oficial).” 2019. YouTube video, 3:26, “Chocolate­
VEVO,” January 17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CB9b2UYyLY.
Chu, Brian. 2016. Reggaeton Revolución: Cuba in the Digital Era. Brian Chu, MP4. From Vimeo.
MPEG, 9:42. https://vimeo.com/173759040.
Cubamax Tv Digital Media. 2018. “Última Hora: Chocolate Mc Es detenido por las Autoridades
de Inmigración ICE. Miren los Detalles [+VIDEO]—Cuba Tv Online.” March 29. https://
cubatv-online.com/2018/03/29/ultima-hora-chocolate-mc-es-detenido-por-las-autoridades​
-de-inmigracion-ice-miren-los-detallesvideo/.
Curbelo, Jesús Jank. 2018. “Reparto: El reguetón de los pobres.” El Toque, July 3. https://eltoque​
.com/reparto-regueton-cubanos-pobres/.
de la Fuente, Alejandro. 2016. “Race and Income Inequality in Contemporary Cuba.” NACLA
Report on the Americas 44 (4): 30–33.
Dye, Michaelanne, David Nemer, Josiah Mangiameli, Amy S. Bruckman, and Neha Kumar. 2018.
“El Paquete Semanal: The Week’s Internet in Havana.” In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Con-
ference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18), 2018. New York, Association for
Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174213.

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Sounding El Paquete : 159

El Paquete. 2018a. “Listado del Paquete Semanal—Resumen del Paquete Crazyboy 18–06–2018.”
June 18. http://paquetedecuba.com/listado-del-paquete-semanal-resumen-del-paquete​-crazy​
boy-18–06–2018/.
El Paquete. 2018b. “Listado del Paquete Semanal—Actualizacion Diaria Omega Viernes 22–06–
18.” June 22. http://paquetedecuba.com/listado-del-paquete-semanal-actualizacion-diaria​
-omega-viernes-22–06–18/.
Fernandes, Sujatha. 2006. Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power and the Making of New Revo-
lutionary Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Firmat, Gustavo Pérez. 1984. “Riddles of the Sphincter: Another Look at the Cuban Choteo.”
Diacritics 14 (4): 67–77.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
González, Abel. 2018. Vistar Magazine. “¿Quién tiene la corona?” September 4. https://vistarma​
gazine.com/quien-la-corona/.
Hansing, Katrin. 2018. “Race and Rising Inequality in Cuba.” Current History 117 (796): 69–72.
Henken, Ted. 2017. “Cuba’s Digital Millennials: Independent Digital Media and Civil Society
on the Island of the Disconnected.” Social Research: An International Quarterly 84 (2):
429–56.
Hoffnung-Garskof, Jesse. 2008. A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.
Katz, Mark. 2010. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Oakland: University
of California Press.
La Farandula Cubana. 2018. Chocolate Mc—El Necio ! Otra Bala ! Estreno. YouTube. MPEG,
3:55. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrM25odbVkY.
Gutiérrez-Coto, Amauri. 2017. “Negociando en la TV: Miami y La Habana.” Camino Real: Estu-
dios de las Hispanidades Norteamericanas 46, no. 3: 149–64.
Laguna, Albert Sergio. 2017. Diversion: Play and Popular Culture in Cuban America. New York:
New York University Press.
Marshall, Wayne. 2008. “Dem Bow, Dembow, Dembo: Translations and Transnation in Reggae-
ton.” Lied und populäre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture 53: 131–51.
Moore, Robin. 2006. Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Oakland: Univer-
sity of California Press.
Muñoz, Jose Esteban. 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Nacher, Jose. 2017. “Acusan al reguetonero Chocolate MC de presunto secuestro y violencia
doméstica.” CiberCuba, June 2. https://www.cibercuba.com/videos/noticias/2017–06–02​
-u157374-e157374-acusan-al-reguetonero-chocolate-mc-presunto-secuestro-y.
Negrón-Muntaner, Frances, and Raquel Z. Rivera. 2008. “Reggaeton Nation.” NACLA. March 13.
https://nacla.org/news/reggaeton-nation.
Paquetero, Leo. 2018. Interview by author. Personal interview. Havana, December 5–18, 2018.
Perry, Marc D. 2015. Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Planas, Justo. 2019. “Ella guachinea: Chocolate y los objetos abyectos del reggaetón cubano.” In
Sonic Boom: Cuban Soundscapes. Chicago: Modern Language Association.
Provenzano, Catherine. 2018. “Auto-Tune, Labor, and the Pop-Music Voice.” In The Relentless
Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music, edited by Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zach-
ary Wallmark, 159–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Salinas, Hervin. 2018. “Liminan a Chocolate MC del Paquete de la Semana en Cuba.” Cubaita
Now, February 17. https://noticias.cubitanow.com/eliminan-a-chocolate-mc-del-paquete-de​
-la-semana-en-cuba/.

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
160 : Mike Levine
Scott, Colin. 2016. “Crowd Powered Media Delivery: Facilitating Ubiquitous Device-To-Device
File Transfers.” In Proceedings of the 7th Annual Symposium on Computing for Development,
2016, 31:1–31:4. Nairobi, Association for Computing Machinery.
Silverstone, Roger. 1994. Television and Everyday Life. London: Routledge.
Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. 2016. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening.
New York: New York University Press.
Telemundo 51. 2019. “Chocolate MC revela sus conflictos legales y personales.” Telemundo 51,
June 10. https://www.telemundo51.com/noticias/destacados/Chocolate-MC-revela-sus-con​
flictos-legales-y-personales-507150781.html.
Thomas, Susan. 2010. “Musical Cartographies of the Transnational City: Mapping Havana in
Song.” Latin American Music Review 31, no. 2 (Fall–Winter): 210–40.
Torres, Nora Gámez. 2012. “Hearing the Change: Reggaeton and Emergent Values in Contempo-
rary Cuba.” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana 33, no. 2
(Fall–Winter): 227–60.
Torres, Nora Gámez. 2013. “Technology Domestication, Cultural Public Sphere, and Popular Mu-
sic in Contemporary Cuba.” In Cuba in Transition, 351–62. Miami: Association for the Study
of the Cuban Economy.
Vaughan, Umi. 2010. “Timba Brava: Maroon Music in Cuba.” In Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic
World, edited by Mamadou Diouf and Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, 234–55. Ann Arbor: Uni-
versity of Michigan Press.
Venegas, Cristina. 2010. Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Vertovec, John. 2018. “Utilizing Intersectionality to Analyze Social Diversity in Cuban Self-
­Employment.” In Cuba in Transition, 239–51. Miami: Association for the Study of the Cuban
Economy.
Weheliye, Alexander. 2005. Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
West-Durán, Alan. 2004. “Rap’s Diasporic Dialogues: Cuba’s Redefinition of Blackness.” Journal
of Popular Music Studies 16, no. 1 (April): 4–39.
Yumar, Luis Ramón Campo. 2018. “La Ciencia Detrás de la Canción Bajanda (I).” El Observador,
December 10. http://elobservador.cubava.cu/la-ciencia-detras-de-la-cancion-bajanda-i/.

DISCOGRAPHY
Hernández, Yosvanis Arismin Sierra. “Bajanda.” iTunes audio, 3:34. June 12, 2018. https://music​
.apple.com/us/album/bajanda-single/1441550397.
Rodriguez, Silvio. “El Necio.” iTunes audio, 4:33. Jan 1, 1996. https://music.apple.com/us/album/
el-necio/589344184?i=589344773.

This content downloaded from

92.154.31.98 on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:40:45 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms