Eight women who are DJs, selectors and sound engineers from different colonies are collectivizing throughout Mexico City and in the outskirts through their love for music and dance. This is the collective Tropical Rumba who found the space to achieve this in the Guerrero neighborhood.
“TO Nezka Selectressa very good sound system and reggae selector with whom we shared music, came up with the idea of bringing together women who also did it and invited one of the Sound MusesMarisol Mendoza, who has a very large support network of women. The latter is integrated and they start calling us all, even though we knew each other from other collectives and struggles, we had not been together doing this Rumba Tropical project,” she says. Arizbeth Vargasone of the eight members.
They started on January 4th of this year in the Guerrero colonyin a place called Chela Ring“where there are also several groups selling pulques, beer, and tacos.”
“In this project we seek to make events, parties with zero violence and zero harassment for women. We do women’s thursday“We don’t allow any men to be in our sessions, or sing, or anything.”
Still, Arizbeth acknowledges that there are men who go to these sessions because They feel safe going dancing Even if they are alone: “They tell me ‘it’s great to come on Thursdays because I take it as mental rest‘, because we have tried to keep the place very safe for everyone.”
He adds that it has also resulted beneficial for many people with anxiety problems because they know that there Nobody is going to violate them: “This is something that usually happens a lot in dance places and with alcohol, men with very high egos and with machismo that are not treated begin to provoke others because they brought the pretty girl or because they see her or things like that and that may be situations that do not even happen.”
In addition, the group seeks to spread the work of colleagues who are not part of the established circuits: “We started to share the space with other women we have seen who are not invited to play. At all the events there are only men, they are always the same, The signs are always the same At most, every month, maybe you’ll find a woman on a poster among all the posters for all the men’s parties. That’s exactly why we started thinking what is happening on the stagesat mass concerts,” says Arizbeth.
Discrimination in posters
Rumba Tropical entered the Collectives and Collectives Program Culturales Comunitarios de Ciudad de México and began to hold a series of conversations with women and with other collectives such as Chingona Soundthe Showmaster and Musas Sonideras to seek gender parity on stage.
In addition, they are about to launch a demonstration in which “We seek fair laws for women and to be on the posters, on the stages, not only at private events, but also at concerts, at mass events, where we see the lack of women on stage.”
The selector says that discrimination prevails: “This year we have had a number of female guests that I do not see on other posters, and the men They continue to invite only the bride or the bride’s friend, but that’s it. They are the same ones you can see on the posters for reggae, electronic, rock, cumbia sessions. So we also take as a reference a struggle that is taking place, the Amparo Ochoa Law (looking for the gender parity “on the stages)”.
Rumba Tropical also wants to end the criminalization of her work: “It’s terrible because you go out to play, to do what you like, but you have to problems with the family Because you are the bad mother, the one who goes to parties every weekend, then you are already a bad woman for this reason.
At the Cosmos Lighthouse
United by music
The Rumba Tropical collective is made up of Marisol Mendoza, Mamá Duende, Princesa Duende, Zaly Indub, Xilonen Selectress, Nezka Selectress, Poliester Kat and Arizbeth Vargas. This Friday, September 27th, they will perform from 4 to 5 PM at the Faro Cosmos during the closing of the program of Community Cultural Collectives and Collectives of Mexico City. In addition, every Thursday they play at Chela Ring (Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas almost on the corner of Degollado) from 4 PM to midnight.
“And we are not thinking precisely about all the situations that come after going to an event, which is also the fact of seek security for all the women who attend these places, whether to party or to play, and that they can return home safely. That is also why we are focusing on doing these Parties free of harassment and violence”.
The little markets
Azalia Cisneroswhose DJ name is Zaly Indub, takes the floor to comment that the payments are so lowwhich can be of the type “we invite you to the beers” and for this reason they all have other jobs, in addition “we study or mother.
“Another important part of Rumba Tropical as a bastion is create also solidarity economiespromote markets, bartering, because unfortunately we have always been the sector hardest hit economically. economic violence As a woman, it is our daily bread.”
The DJ says that Tropical Rumba In addition to being a space to get together to talk, share music, dance and de-stressit is also for Promote dynamics between womenwho have been the hardest hit by economic violence and the ravages of the pandemic: “We were already marginalized, but after this unfortunate global event we fell even further.”
In her work, the Curatorship It is an important aspect both in the music and in the products they offer in the little markets:
“The fact that the time has come collective Rumba Tropical is important because we have met other women who producewho create, who cure because we like to look for special garments to offer. It is a job and it needs to be paid because at the end of the day we do it for love of artbut we also do it for a need”.
Liz OsornioXilonen Selectress, intervenes: “And for that part of searching fair wages We women are coming to these events, because what they pay a male DJ is not the same as what they pay or offer a female DJ. Sometimes they even say: ‘Well come and we’ll give you the beers’, how do you think? If I don’t drink and even if I did it doesn’t matter, I need a fair payment, at my house in the morning my children They are not going to have beers for breakfast. We don’t live off of likes or what we upload to our network.”
Arizbeth adds that they want fair wages, safe places and exits, and again, that people Stop stigmatizing women and to all people: “And that despite all these problems that we have today as women, of having 12 missing a day or 12 feminicides a day, they still come with the question of ‘well, she went to a party, look what she was wearing’.
“No, we have the right to the streets, we have right to safe placesthe spaces are ours. We are also demanding to go out, take spaces and hold events and played in the street because it is ours, it belongs to us.”
Of course, safe spaces include children That is why they offer workshops for girls, boys and adolescents because there are women who ask if they can take them to the events: “Of course (they can), there is no problem because we are going to take a space but There will be a workshop of clay or we are going to give a stamping workshop or there will be a storytellera story with origami. It is fair, not excluding women who mother and above all opening the space for childhood “in that way too.”
Rumba Tropical has created a community with other groups, such as Tepito New Tenochtitlan. “We also really liked that. We just had an event with another collective of deaf-mute people with which we play and with the collective Tepito Nueva Tenochtitlán, they also gathered and they made the link with this deaf-mute community, so that is what we are generating, it is what the community has done to us and I believe that the community will make us free”, Arizbeth concludes.
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