The Perils of Perreo

This chapter analyzes the debates surrounding the 2002 Anti-Pornography Campaign spearheaded by Senator Velda González. The campaign targeted representations of women who danced perreo in reggaetón music videos. This chapter analyzes the various positions taken by the campaign’s supporters (including government officials, cultural and social critics, and the public) and detractors (such as reggaetón artists and producers, cultural and social critics, the public, and music video dancers). The campaign centered perceptions of black women’s hypersexuality as a potentially corrupting agent within Puerto Rico that threatened the moral education of the island’s youth. In the end, the chapter demonstrates how the campaign promoted stereotypes of black female hypersexuality in order to reinforce the hegemony of discourses of racial democracy that were challenged by reggaetón’s racial politics.