Let it be said that the promo picture tells it all: la raza cosmica, gran familia, rainbow Latin American family narrative is RIPE in this one. It is never said outright. And, to be clear, there are probably more Black characters in this Disney animated film than I’ve seen in a Disney film my whole life (probably the most Black cartoon characters I’ve seen in a Disney movie since Princess and the Frog; and Soul is a Pixar film, but sure, we can count that too). But is race or racism discussed or even hinted at? Not at all. Never mind that the film is set in very Black and Indigenous Colombia, a major site of the African slave trade to the Caribbean and South America.
Do I expect this in a Disney movie? Not sure I do. Which makes this a perfect genre for Miranda who has not had the best track record on this topic. After all, Disney created an entire fictional country and ethnicity for Prince Naveen rather than give Tiana an unambiguously Black masculine love interest (because a first Black Princess AND Black Prince would be too much). If Mirabel is in that same tradition, essentially a Princess whose kingdom is the Encanto and whose castle is an enchanted casita, then setting the film in a real place (Colombia) with at least an attempt at accurate representation as far as phenotype, dress, hair, food, and music is actually a step up. A step up from the dirt floor, but still a step.
So then why, do you ask, am I even watching this flick, much less letting my children watch it over and over and over like they have been.
Because I’m not going to keep screaming into the ether about the Lin-Manuel Latinx liberal Puerto Rican mulataje media complex. That shit is exhausting.
Because he is clearly fueled by the hate he gets because he keeps making brilliant ass songs, almost by accident (he really called “Surface Pressure” reggaeton though; bruh. It’s a very hot pop song and clearly hitting the femme-identified BIWOC siblings in our chests, but how is it reggaeton?).
Because this movie is an eye worm and my children can’t stop watching and dancing, sucking in the Black and non-white representation, the Caribbean drumbeats, the brass, the energy.
Because Isabella is a literal Black Barbie doll. Because of Luisa’s gender transgressive super strength. Because the animators committed to detail when drawing Felix’s hair texture. Because “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is a BOP (more on that later).
But especially because I am a working mother of two whose radicalism stops at needing a break to think or breathe or pee without one of the Solar Babies needing something and sometimes that means screen or TV time. If I told you the readily accessible options in the 0-3 year old bracket are slim, you wouldn’t believe me. If I tell you the options get slimmer when you want to avoid anything with guns, “Officer Friendly,” or animation at strobe-light speeds, the list get even shorter. And if I tell you I can count on two hands the readily accessible shows in the 0-3 year old bracket that don’t try to train my children to be cops or ninjas and also feature humanoid child characters who are NOT white, the number of shows I can turn on drops to a literal handful. The shows with Black characters drops further. The ones with Black characters with dark skin I can pretty much list—Akili and Me (YouTube), Karma’s World (Netflix), Ada Scientist (Netflix), Motown Magic (Netflix), and Doc McStuffins (Disney). And that just isn’t enough supply to meet the demand.
For all of the reasons above, I keep getting stuck watching Encanto. So I’m not going to fight with the Lin-Manuels of the world anymore about what is and is not problematic about their fantasy of Latinidad. Instead, I’m going to take what I can use and leave the rest. And this is what I’m taking. This is what I’m telling my children about this movie today and as they get older. In six (short) parts.
*** Spoilers ***
1. Caridad del Cobre
Colombia is so much the Caribbean. Its history, the African roots, the location. When Abuela starts telling her story about fleeing her home as it is being attacked (for undisclosed reasons) and witnessing her husband’s death by faceless assailants at the river, an act of violence which unleashes the encanto in the form of a glowing, golden candle, my mind immediately jumped to the legend of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. Now the patron saint of Cuba and understood by some to be syncretized or be a representation of the African and African diasporic deity Oshun, the story behind her appearance on these shores is also on the water. According to legend, usually pinpointed as occurring in 1612, three boys (two Indigenous and one African) were caught in a storm in the Bay of Nipe. When they prayed for deliverance, the storm cleared and they found floating in the water a statuette with the words “Yo Soy la Vírgen de la Caridad” inscribed on it. A shrine was built to her there (although moved later) and her following was born.
So I’m telling the Solar Babies that Colombia is part of Caribbean and we are looking at maps. I’m telling them about the legend of La Virgen which means I’m telling them about Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republica and entangled histories of Indigenous and African resistance and collaboration in the face of Spanish colonization. And I’m telling them about African systems of belief which leads to….
2. Oshun
River. Gold candle. Glowing golden butterflies (although bees would probably have been more accurate). La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre is already here so we might as well get into Oshun. Which means I’m telling them about Regla Ocha, Lucumí, Santería, Candomble, Ifa, and Yoruba. Which means I’m telling them that the old gods of Africa didn’t wait for us to rediscover them to join us on the other side of the Atlantic. No, we brought them here and when we were in our darkest hours we prayed to them and they had the power to fight back for us.
This is an easy one. We discuss Oshun often in this house. Maferefun.
3. Palenque
Which brings us to the encanto itself. Colombia, in the African diasporic historical pantheon, is unique in that enslaved Africans not only ran away, they were able to create colonizer-recognized free African townships. This history and tradition is still celebrated today and appears in tourist brochures for San Basilio de Palenque. So the palenque, as a place, and the palenquerx, as a fugitive or maroon enslaved person, are iconic parts of Colombia’s identity—especially its Black identity.
So I’m telling the Solar Babies the encanto isn’t just some random magic that happened just for Abuela (as individualistic and exceptional as a rose under glass or a kiss from a frog). No, this is the power of African resistance, of Black fugitivity at work. I’m telling them about the palenque and about marronage as a practice and about the historic ways Africans escaped and formed new worlds of their own just like the encanto created for Abuela. I’m telling them about the ones who could not escape, as well, who were left behind. And I’m telling them that the kinds of family frictions we see in the Madrigal clan are an echo of what coalition and marronage can also cost in our kinships with each other (especially when we try to replicate empire which is what I see Abuela doing in so many ways, even if it is with the best intentions) and how importnat it is to do the work of remembering who the encanto is really for.
But I’m also going to tell them that all encantos end at some point. And so let’s talk about what we need to be prepared for when the mountains aren’t high enough to keep the palenque safe. What are we taking with us? How will our gifts serve us? which brings me to….
4. The Gifts
The gift of healing. The gift of energy or controlling the vibes in a space. The gift of prophecy. The gift of strength. The gift of dissemblance. The gift of shapeshifting. The gift of deep listening. The gift of interspecies relationality. In Encanto, these are magical placements. But we are talking about these as gifts that any one of us have, not just because of the encanto.
So we are talking about and thinking about what are the gifts that come naturally to us and what are the ones that we want to tool up on. What are the gifts that don’t look like gifts (prophecy) and what are the gifts that look like they are amazing (strength, dissemblance) but can be brutal if they aren’t put to constructive use? And how do we recognize gifts in others?
5. We Don’t Talk About X
Listen to “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” on Spotify and tell me that isn’t the anthem of a Latinidad that says it doesn’t talk about race, BUT race, race, race, negrita, gringa, mulata, pelo malo, crime, Trump, Black Lives Matter, etc etc etc etccccc.
So we are talking about how we talk about it all here. Blackness. Race. Gender representation. Sexuality. Sexism. Class. Empire. We are talking about things we agree on and things we don’t as a family practice. And we are talking about how when someone or a group says “we don’t talk about X” then like Dolores we need to listen harder and hear the rats in the fucking walls.
6. Radical Empathy is a Gift
I skipped a gift above because it something I am kind of salty about. In the end, Mirabel doesn’t get a “gift.” And, yes, this is the triumph of the movie because she is proof that gifts don’t make you better—you are your best gift. But also, this is a Disney movie, a princess film for all intents and purposes, and I wanted to see her get a gift!!
More than that, I wanted her actual gift to be recognized in magical form. And her actual gift is obvious almost from the very beginning, in her engagement with the children of the encanto and her conversation and affection for her cousin Antonio. Mirabel’s gift is radical empathy. An ability to truly listen and feel what others are experiencing without judgement, without solutions, without trying to fix anything or change them. The ability to SEE others in all of the flaws, wholeness and humanity. And in fact, when she and Bruno think they have found the solution to saving the encanto, and they discover that it involves Mirabel embracing Isabella, the family member she is least aligned with, it is Bruno who encourages her to reach past her own reluctance and reminds her of this gift. “The vision isn’t about her. The vision is about you,” he says, when Mirabel is walking through all of the ways that Isabella won’t embrace her back. Radical empathy doesn’t require or demand that the other person be empathetic too. And yet it does have the power to save the encanto. “How do you save a miracle?,” Bruno says at one point. Well, you hug a sister.
I wish this could have been visualized in some magical form, but that won’t stop me from telling my children that radical empathy is a gift. And if you don’t have it, it doesn’t mean you can’t recognize it when it is being used on you. And it doesn’t mean you can’t try to cultivate it or emulate it. And as their siblingdom advances, these two stubborn, strong-willed, and defiant children of mine, I’ll be pushing them to find the radical empathy in themselves and use it often. They need to learn sooner or later that they can be as pissed at each other—or at me—as they want to, but at the of the day, we’re a gang so hug to save our miracle and keep our encanto growing.
So that’s what we have. Six ways I’m using Encanto despite it all. Again, take what you need. Leave the rest.
Now you've done it. I was planning to ignore, but I think I will now consume the eye-worm. And I was born in the 1960s so I consumed a lot of darned near exclusively white programming. I am overdue. I even, to my sometimes chagrin, liked the problematic crows in _Dumbo_. (Maybe it even gets added to the "Watch This" part of the Discussion Board for "Caribbean Cultural History" class. Thanks for the teaching assist.)