Rumberas film

The Rumberas film (in Spanish Cine de rumberas) was a film genre that flourished in Mexico, in the so-called Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. Their main stars were the called Rumberas dancers of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. The genre is one of the most fascinating hybrids of Cinema of the world and finds their roots in various film genres. Today, thanks to their unique characteristics, is considered part of the Cult film. The Rumberas films and the Luchador films, were one of the contributions of the Mexican cinema to international cinematography. The Rumberas film represented a social view of the world of the women of the night in Mexico during the 1940s and 1950s which confronted the moral and social conventions of their time, and exhibit a more realistic look of the Mexican society of their age. This were melodramas about the lives of these women, which is redeemed through the exotic dances.

Etymology

The "Rumberas" were the dancers and actresses that danced Afro-Caribbean rhythms in the Mexican Cinema in their Golden Age in the 1940s and 1950s. The term "Rumbera" comes from the so-called Cuban rumba that became fashionable in Mexico and Latin America between the late XIX century and the 1940s in the XX century. The first rumberas danced this music genre. Eventually arose new tropical rhythms such as the mambo and the Cha-cha-chá which quickly displaced the Cuban rumba as the most successful Latin music genre. Eventually, the rumberas adopted these new rhythms, and later used in their films.