Blackface in Miami: Impersonation and Racial Inclusion

• In Event: Racial Performance and the Politics of Hemispheric Inclusion

Abstract

Between 2008 and 2012, the blackface character Yeyo Vargas appeared on MegaTV’s nightly show “Esta Noche Tu Night” with host Alexis Valdes. Played by a Cuban actor, Yeyo Vargas was a Dominican who proclaimed himself president of ULPO (Latin Union Party), the righthand man of Obama and the representative of the interests of all Latinos. Decentering the U.S minstrel tradition as the progenitor for all blackface forms, this essay grounds Yeyo Vargas in the negro catedrático figure of Cuba’s teatro bufo tradition and assesses Yeyo’s
deployment as a stand-in both for Domincanness and for blackness. How does racial impersonation render blackness the available site for the mediation of the politics of racial inclusion?

Given that the show caters to the predominantly white Cuban audience in Miami, this essay considers how Yeyo indexes the particular relationship between white Cubans and constructs of blackness both in relation to immediate constructs of latinidad and also in relation to
the U.S first black president. What does Yeyo Vargas and his particular rendition of blackness tell us about the place of latinos within the U.S racial polity and concurrently the place of blackness within constructs of latinidad? How might impersonation also be working to negotiate tensions between U.S Miami Cubans and the Obama U.S administration?

Author

• Danielle M Roper, University of Chicago