Salsa's Dirty Secret: Liberated Women, Hairy Hippies, and the End of the World

Chapter 3 examines how the performance of a Nuyorican subjectivity by Willie Colón and Héctor LaVoe rested on the repudiation of effeminate manhood and a representation of the feminine that both consolidated and threatened the performance of masculinist subjecthood. Through close readings of song lyrics, the chapter traces the expulsion of women who undermine the capitalist imperative of dual partnership and monogamy. Women who talk too much, spend too much time in the street, or reveal the economic context of romantic relationships are disciplined, discarded, and replaced. Just as the accumulation of women’s bodies are necessary for the performance of virile masculinity, so too is the disposal of women who exceed the limits of patriarchal intimacy.