iEI que no se ria es cafre!

It is illustrative of changes in Hispanic Caribbean societies that one hundred years after the Dominican popUlar singer, Juan Antonio Alix, wrote this décima advising white Caribbean women against dancing with light-skinned mulattos ('though yellowish, with the black behind his ear’), it was, precisely, a yellowish mulatto who became most famous for his advice on manners. In 1987, the new comedy program Sunshine's Capé. with ils many sketches on manners, achieved the highest ratings in advertising surveys for Puerto Rican television.) Comedian Emmanuel Logrono, significatively nicknamed Sunshine, was already quite notorious for his participation in popular street theater - Anamú, la yerba que el cabro no mastica (Anamú, spiny grass that not even goats chew) - and for his musical talents in Nueva Truva (left-wing sociopolitical song) and in avant-garde (John Cage-style) music. Though he rapidly became quite a popular character, and Anamú's performances were well received by trade unions, ecologists and other popular social movements, he was mainly appreciated at Ihat time by progressive intellectual circles. In 1987 he shocked even those circles with a humorous TV program which was considered by many ‘too vulgar’ and in ‘bad tasle', chahacano. Nonetheless, popular acclaim was widespread, especially amongst young people (people in their late teens and young adults) from the middle and lower-middle social strata.

Sunshine's Café combined satirical music with theatrical sketches, dealing with everyday situations, laughing primarily at established taste and manners. One of the most popular characters Logroiio created was Iván Fonteeha. named after a notorious socialite - Iván Frontera - who wrote magazine accounts of upper class social gatherings. Through this character, Logrono created and popularized a distinction between what he called avantismo or cache (avant-garde, refined taste), caricatured by Fontecha, and cafreria (taste - or manners - conventionally considered bad by the dominant culture, characterized by striking colors and vulgar kitsch).