“This Is Not America”: Restagings of the Cold War through Embodied Memory

This paper explores resonances of Cold War resistance to dictatorship in Latin America in the work of Puerto Rican activist and artist, Residente. By analysing a music video, This Is Not America, released in early 2022, I explore the ways in which political projects of the Cold War are brought to life through embodied performances of memory. In the video, bodies reinforce a shared political subjectivity by choreographing and performing social struggles from across the continent since its invasion and colonisation in the 16th century, with a particular focus on the Cold War period. The video’s conceptualisation of the Latin American struggle is defined through shared historical experiences of oppression, regional heroes and martyrs, and decolonial Latin American and Global South-driven visions for the future. In bringing certain bodies of the past to life and into dialogue (or not) with the present, the video positions the prefigurative political visions of more recent Latin American social movements within a longer history and genealogy.