For various reasons, including geographical limitations for communication and trade, since the eighteenth century began to weaken what became one of the biggest empires in history, that is, the Spanish Monarchy, so that the intervention of Spain was becoming less and less in what is now known as America, which at one time even occupied a large part of what is now U.S. territory. More and more unassisted and less controlled by the declining Hispanic Crown, and therefore more and more free, the societies of the colonies evolved according to their own social patterns, internal organization and cultural production, including, of course, the musics and the dances.

The criollos, although descendants of Spaniards but who had had the "bad luck" of having been born in these lands, were despised and marginalized by the natives of Spain. It was in this way that the criollos, by force of being victims of a great injustice, developed their own cultural identity from their roots and from the particular human and geographical landscapes of their nascent American homelands. And so they created their own ways of relating with the body, their own and that of others, and of moving it, even to the rhythm of the music they also created. A good part of the musical repertoire of Latin American nations was created by the criollos.

The Spaniards and the Portuguese, -remember that Portugal was also an Empire and colonized that vast territory that today we call Brazil-, had brought very few women to America for which necessarily it produced the union of gene between conquerors and conquered. Thus, the number of mestizos grew, a new race that fuses European and indigenous ancestors. A mestizo is the son of a white father or mother and an Amerindian mother or father.

The architecture, the writing, the music and the dance, the gestures, that is, the art and the culture, of the Hispanic America reflect this cultural mixture. At the end of the colonial period, the mixture of the indigenous and black population with the Spanish and Portuguese, mestizos and mulatos, was the majority in many of the colonies. The name of mulato is used to refer to someone born of the union between a white person and a black person. A good part of the so-called Afrodescendant music is a product of the taste of the mulato.

This mortar of ethnicities and cultures contributed to design one of the most striking characteristics of Latin America as a whole. As the American colonies acquired more political and economic independence, therefore Hispanic Americans began to consider themselves less linked to Spain and to feel something new, unprecedented in the entire universe. As early as the 19th century, the local bourgeoisie in the colonies cultivated their own, living, nationalistic forms of music. In the same way, the common people, composed mainly of mestizos and mulatos, made their contribution. And this melting pot gave rise to genres such as habanera and danzón from Cuba, cueca from Chile, cumbia from Colombia, merengue from the Dominican Republic and joropo from Venezuela.

𝖠 𝖿𝖾𝗆𝖺𝗅𝖾 𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀𝖾𝗋 𝗈𝖿 𝗃𝗈𝗋𝗈𝗉𝗈 𝗍𝗎𝗒𝖾𝗋𝗈, 𝗂𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖼𝖺𝗌𝖾 𝖺𝖼𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗉𝖺𝗇𝗂𝖾𝖽 𝖻𝗒 𝖺 𝖼𝗎𝖺𝗍𝗋𝗈 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖺 𝗀𝗎𝗂𝗍𝖺𝗋, 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗎𝗌𝗎𝖺𝗅 𝗂𝗌 𝖺 𝗁𝖺𝗋𝗉 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗆𝖾𝗍𝖺𝗅 𝗌𝗍𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀𝗌 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖺 𝗉𝖺𝗂𝗋 𝗈𝖿 𝗆𝖺𝗋𝖺𝖼𝖺𝗌.

Well, stop talking... and start dancing ;-)