ANNIE CORREAL: The video for “Soy Yo” or “That’s Me,” released by the Colombian band Bomba Estéreo last month, got a million views in its first days. It now has more than six million. It was featured all over, from NBC News to Fusion. It spawned a hashtag, schoolchildren’s art, and animated GIFs, which in turn became memes.
“Soy Yo” seemed to appear at precisely the right moment — a defiant, and adorable, rebuke to the anti-Latino rhetoric of the Trump campaign, and haters in general. “Don’t worry if they don’t accept you,” goes the song’s chorus, in Spanish. “If they criticize you, just say, ‘That’s me.’ ”
The video resonated particularly with Latinas. Rarely in American life, especially in an era of ugly debates over immigrants, had popular culture created a young, brown, working-class character so heroic, free of victimhood, full of straight-up dignity.