Michelle Santiago Cortés

I am not, but I'd like to be.

It really does feel like, oh, she played Latina for a while and now she's tired of it and she's moved on.

I mean, I think the decision making is happening at a systemic level, an industry level, a record label level, a marketing level, but she is...

the person who benefits from it the most and she's the one who's in as good a position as anyone to stop it or halt it.

And then the context and the timing of it has been like all of a sudden when being visibly Latino can get you in an ICE detention center, all of a sudden she remembers she's from Spain.

All of a sudden, like we're not wearing grills anymore.

We're not wearing long nails.

We're not doing the baby hairs.

All of a sudden, it's like Spanish Catholicism core.

We don't exist in a world where like what artists do is like separated from the political and historical context of it all.

I think it's kind of a stretch to like accuse it of being like any kind of orchestrated master plan thing of like her capitalizing on Latinidad and then dropping it because it's getting dangerous.

But it's like.

they're all happening on the same screen.

Like it's the same phone that's showing me the ICE detention videos and her pivot to white girlness.

No one can separate these two realities.

Like you pointed out below, like she was imported into the North American market.

as part of this second wave Latin boom.

She was marketed as a Latine artist.

Audiences received her or were encouraged to receive her as a Latine artist.

And for better or worse, she played into that actively.