The folk, the commoner and the democratic: “aguante”, cumbia and politics in argentine popular culture

Abstract

Although the work of Jesús Martín Barbero seemed to be, by the end of the eighties, a great prompt for new and radical studies about popular cultures in Latin America, the neoconservative age showed a radical withdrawal: the disappearance of the category itself (“the popular”). Those who insist on using the concept, are witnesses of a renewed staging:
methodologically varied, empirically enriched, but still deprived from the strength of those theories proposed by Martín Barbero in the eighties.

This article will present three topics of inquiry, that will reveal issues in terms of theory and methodology: first the one that has to do with soccer and it’s “aguante” ethics; the one that exhibits the diversity of the cumbia scene; and finally, the difficulties of building a folk-national democratic, statewide, rebel and subordinate voice, in the discussion on new communication laws in Argentina.