Doing Antiblackness in the Hemispheric Fold: Blackface Performance in Miami in the Age of Obama

Chapter 2, “Doing Antiblackness in the Hemispheric Fold: Blackface Performance in Miami in the Age of Obama,” analyzes Yeyo Vargas, a blackface figure of the Spanish-language late-night television program Esta Noche Tu Night, who was invented in 2008 as Barack Obama rose to power. Conjured by and for Miami’s Cuban diaspora, Yeyo is a negrito who negotiates the rise of the first black president of the United States, discourses of postracialism, and hemispheric formations of antiblackness and whiteness in the city. The chapter argues that Yeyo mediates geopolitical changes in the Americas and forges a sense of belonging across diasporic tensions and national differences in the hemispheric fold.