The landscape of Latin American celebrity representation, typically understood through the theoretical lens of cross-over, is undergoing significant shifts. The Colombian rockero Juanes's career, press reception, and participation in the transnational public sphere have established him as a celebrity diplomat. Read against the star texts of previous cross-overs, Juanes's economic success and the international attention his political efforts have garnered suggest a dynamic shift in the agency and representational strategies available to Latin American celebrities. His ability to succeed in this realm is contingent on a performance of hegemonic heterosexual masculinity. A critical discourse analysis and transnational feminist approach traces the production, circulation, and discourse of the music, press reception, and production of Juanes's celebrity and philantrophic/political efforts.

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“Checking the Box: A Journey Through My Hybrid Identity” is a performance piece, examining the social construction of ethnic identity and the sociopolitical processes that are brought to bear on self-definition and group identification. Deploying autoethnography, this multivocal text explores the historical conditions and political and economic exigencies that have shaped my experience of hybridity—as a multiethnic individual, negotiating my identity in contemporary U.S. society. I map my journey, through competing discourses, histories, and media-generated memories, arriving back at the beginning. Ultimately, the piece seeks to highlight the strategic logic employed by those caught “between” dominant representations and capture the experience of navigating that terrain.

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