HSitting on a scooter, helmet on his head, a young man drops off his sweetheart in front of her house. As she kisses him as a diversion, she puts a big stroke of blue chalk on the passenger seat. Later, when her companion comes back to pick her up, she notices that the mark has disappeared and asks, casually, if it had, really by chance, been carrying someone else. At this question, the man ran away, pursued like a frightened doe. Behind this humorous sketch, posted on TikTok in July 2022, a couple of young Colombians, nicknamed “Los Toxicos de Buga”, or “the toxics of Buga”, named after a town near Cali, Colombia. Followed by more than 732,000 subscribers on the platform, they produce humorous capsules on the theme of romantic relationships, making fun of the role played by “Toxica”.
The “Toxic” is an archetype frequently portrayed in Latin American culture. Or a woman responding to a classic distribution of roles, who, faced with an unfaithful husband, adopts a strategy to stand out from the crowd: becoming toxic. To do this, she does everything she can to show that she has “character”.
A quick search on Spotify with this keyword is enough to bring up several hundred results for songs to his glory. American singer Mariah Angeliq, of Puerto Rican and Cuban origin, made this model his business by appropriating it like a protective shell, promoting a form of self-confidence. And a Spanish clothing brand has made sweatshirts bearing the image of this archetype, on which is printed “Toxica pero bonita” (“toxic but pretty”).
Dangerous continent
Melodramatic gossip queen (“que chismosa!” » – « what a gossip! “), she does not hesitate to get into “her man’s” bacon. At the slightest suspicion of infidelity, this passive-aggressive woman assertively asks tough questions. Ingenious, she uses extreme means to trap him by spying on him at work or snooping through his phone.
Sometimes heavy to bear, the clichés can also give rise to self-deprecation. So, in 2023, during the Screen Actors Guild Awardsactresses Jenna Ortega, heroine of the Netflix series Wednesdayand Aubrey Plaza, revealed by The White Lotus, who both have Latin American origins, find themselves in a twisting situation. While awarding a prize, they raise their faces and wonder why they were put together, since they really didn’t “nothing in common”. In an article from Los Angeles Timesthe columnist of Puerto Rican origin Suzy Exposito notes a real snub thrown at the expected stereotype of a Latina woman, supposed to be warm, but also pleasantly “spicy”.
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