of the name either of the Lilí or the Calima people. During colonial times, the principal economic activity in Colombia’s southwest was based on gold extraction from the mines and rivers of the western cordillera and Pacific lowlands, sustained by the labor of African slaves brought into the country through Cartagena.4 To feed this indentured work force, large haciendas were established in the Cauca Valley around Cali, where the fertile soil proved ideal for cultivating a variety of fruits, grains, and vegetables, as well as livestock. Also maintained through slave labor, the haciendas differed from the plantations set up in the Caribbean in that agricultural activities on the former were based on mixed-crop farming for an internal market, rather than on monoculture or cash-crop farming for an export market. The colonial gold mines and haciendas paid tribute to the regional administrative seat of Popayán, not the viceroyal capital of Santafé de Bogotá. As a result, economic and political ties to the interior were relatively weak.
The dual hacienda-mine system peaked in the second half of the eighteenth century and began to wane after independence from Spain in 1810, weakened by the declining gold market and also the increase of cimarronaje as rebel slaves fled to freedom. Through the middle of the nineteenth century, many cimarrones (escaped slaves) organized land invasions of hacienda properties in the Cauca Valley. Such invasions continued after the abolition of slavery in 1852 and formed the basis of the Afro-Colombian minifundio (small-plot) peasantry that prevailed in the region surrounding Cali from the late 1800s until the middle of the twentieth century.
Still a small provincial town in the early years of this century, Cali began to grow after the construction of a railway line linking the interior to the Pacific coastal port of Buenaventura in 1915–17.5 Completed shortly after the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914, this railway enabled transport of all products from Colombia’s southwest interior to the port and greatly opened Colombian foreign trade, which until then had been conducted mainly through Cartagena and Barranquilla on Colombia’s Atlantic coast. For the zona cafetera (coffee-growing region) north of Cali, the railway provided easier access to international trade arteries than the previous route north through the arduous waterways of the Magdalena up to Barranquilla. Coffee exports through Buenaventura increased fivefold from 1916 to 1926, and with the construction of further railway links in the interior, by 1944 nearly 60 percent of all Colombian coffee was exported through Buenaventura. As the midway point for coffee transported by steamboat down the Cauca River and loaded onto trains bound for the port, Cali became the business headquarters and central clearing house for major coffee exporters (Posada-Carbó 1996: 160–61).
Although coffee served as the basis for Cali’s initial urban expansion in the first part of the twentieth century, it was sugar—the favored sweetener for this caffeinated brew—that consolidated Cali’s agroindustrial boom and second wave of urbanization from the 1950s through the 1970s. The fertile lands and sunny climate of the Cauca Valley provide one the most ideal zones on earth for cultivating sugarcane. Friends informed me, as we drove through countryside checkered by dazzling emerald-green canefields, that new crops are sown and harvested throughout the year.6 After the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent U.S. blockade of Cuban sugar, the United States turned to Colombia and other Latin American countries to satisfy its sweet tooth. Already the hub of Colombia’s national sugar industry, Cali quickly expanded with the influx of laborers required to work in the expansion of sugarcane cultivation, harvesting, and processing. Migration from surrounding regions—caused in part by the bloody strife of La Violencia7—further contributed to Cali’s rapid urbanization in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, the establishment of a regional hydroelectric authority in 1954 enabled the construction of dams and power plants along the region’s principal waterways, consolidating a nearby energy source for industrial and urban development. In addition to the sugar industry, others such as paper and cardboard products and cement were established; the traditional agricultural base of mixed crop and livestock framing also continued, for local and regional consumption. During this time Cali’s population more than doubled, expanding to nearly a million by 1973.8 On the crest of this industrial and economic wave, in 1971 Cali hosted the Pan-American Games, a key moment for international recognition of the city. The Pan-American Games stimulated urban development along the city’s southern flank, resulting in the growth of new neighborhoods that nearly doubled the geographical span of the city in the 1970s. In addition to the long-standing Caleño passion for swimming, track, basketball, and especially soccer, the Pan-American Games also helped to consolidate sports and physical recreation as an important basis of local cultural identity alongside salsa music (Gómez 1986: 284).
Another white powdery substance—cocaine—is said to have been the basis for Cali’s third wave of urbanization during the 1980s and early 1990s, as the Cali cartel grew in power and began to pump inordinate sums of money into the local economy. Real estate projects (condominiums, town-houses, and shopping malls) mushroomed, new businesses opened, and the local market was flooded with luxury consumer items. The city’s population nearly doubled as migrants poured in from other regions of the country seeking jobs and better economic opportunities. By 1985 Cali’s inhabitants numbered 1.4 million; by 1994 there were 1.8 million.9 Unofficial sources estimate Cali’s current population at over two million. In the early 1990s Cali surpassed Medellín to become the second largest city in Colombia; the economic influence it wielded was subordinate only to that of Bogotá. Most important for musicians, however, the cartel bosses reputedly patronized salsa bands and encouraged the formation of new groups. There was a constant demand for live music in the many new nightclubs that were appearing on the scene and at lavish parties held at private mansions and country estates. (In chapters 3, 4, and 5 I discuss the effects of this “third wave” of urbanization on Cali’s salsero culture.)
Of key importance in understanding Cali’s contemporary salsa scene is the role of the annual December Feria, or fair, in providing a focal point for Caleños to affirm their assertion as the world salsa capital. Held from 25 December to 30 December, the Feria is to Cali what Carnival is to Barranquilla, Rio de Janeiro, and Port of Spain. Although conducted in more modest circumstances than these carnival celebrations (for one, the extravagant parades central to those events have never been realized at the Feria, and processionals with costumes and floats are a minor feature of the festivities), Cali’s Feria is certainly carnivalesque. City residents and tourists alike have spoken to me in glowing terms of the five days of nonstop rumba (merrymaking) that mark this time, when people indulge in a spree of drinking, dancing, concertgoing, and club-hopping. Unlike in other parts of Colombia (and Latin America, for that matter), fiestas patronales, or patron saint days, are not widely observed in Cali. Rather, the Feria has become the city’s representative celebration and parallels the emergence of contemporary popular identity after Cali began to expand in the middle of the twentieth century. (In chapter 6 I examine the position of the Feria in local popular culture, focusing on its critical role in shaping the city’s salsero identity.)
Salsa music has influenced not only Caleño subjectivity, but also the image of Cali that is widely held in the rest of Colombia. Caleños are renowned for their inclination to partake of a rumba, that is, a party or festive gathering (not to be confused with the specific Afro-Cuban musical tradition of the same name). Since at least the 1960s, Cali has promoted itself with catchphrases such as la ciudad pachanguera (the “partying” city), la ciudad alegre (the happy city), and el sucursal del cielo (heaven’s outpost). These slogans illustrate the inclination for revelry and the all-important rumba that have become essential to Caleño social life—elements shaped through decades of listening and dancing to salsa and música antillana.
Music and Region in Colombia
In his study of salsa in Cali, Alejandro Ulloa cites the lack of a local musical tradition as one of the principal factors contributing to salsa’s adoption and popularity in this city
