"Cien porciento tico tico": Reggae, Belonging, and the Afro-Caribbean Ticos of Costa Rica

Abstract

“Puerto Limón hands in the air!” The DJ shouted into the microphone in Spanish inflected with a West Indian accent. It was reggae night at Ebony, a San Jose nightclub, in January 2012, and the DJ was calling all limonenses to raise their hands and celebrate their hometown on the dance floor. This form of address had additional significance. In Costa Rica, the Caribbean coastal province Limón—whose capital is Puerto Limón—has historically been associated with the country’s Afro-Caribbean population: the descendants of immigrant laborers mostly of Jamaican origin. Although today Limón is racially mixed, the historic formation of the province, widely referred to as el caribe (the Caribbean), is such that in the popular imagination to claim limonense is also to claim black racial identity and Afro-Caribbean culture. That night, the DJ was invoking both black and Caribbean identities in the multiracial, though predominantly white, space. As excitement built, a black dancer (I will call him Anthony in keeping with the English names Afro-Caribbean people tend to have) entered an empty space in the middle of the crowd and began to display his skill in dancehall reggae-style dance. Inciting improvisational challenges is central to dancehall performance practices and gives competing dance collectives and individuals the opportunity to display their ingenuity and win the admiration of spectators. In keeping with this performance practice,