¡pooh bear, yo le conozco apenas!

as some attentive, clicky readers might have noticed in my last post about the exploding latin american youtubosphere, i finished by asking how to say "omg!" in spanish, pointing to yet another video that leads to dozens of videos. that one, however, goes well beyond the "yasuri yamileths" out there, demonstrating -- with well-known cartoon and kids-show characters no less (para niños!?!) -- the latest dance craze to sweep latin america, or at least peru: the "perreo chacalonero"!

now, many of you are probably familiar with the perreo, the aptly-named doggy-style dance that goes hand-in-hand (torso-in-torso?) with reggaeton. scandalizing older generations and bucking middle-class mores, the dance was apparently banned for a short time by the PR govt, a move which seems only to have popularized it further. plenty of clubbers will recognize the dance as simply the sort of grinding or freaking that has been a staple of (american, if not global) club culture for some time now.

at any rate, the perreo chacalonero is a variation on the perreo which features far more explicit moves, if that can be imagined. it's about as public an example of simulated sex as one can get. according to this news clip (whose exxxplicit footage requires one to be registered on youtube to see it -- tho this one doesn't), the perreo chacalonero has become an "escandalo" in peru and, if one goes with the sensationalist rhetoric, is provoking moral panic in chile and argentina. (as one can see from the comments on that vid, it has also offered an opening for a class-tinted, historically-fraught flame war between chileans and peruanos, among others -- and there's more along those lines in various other comment threads. [thx to galeb numa for the navigation and explication!])

interestingly, like so many other viral video dance crazes, the perreo chacalonero appears to be tied to a specific track (by papa chacalon and/or his son, chacalon jr -- still tryna track that down), though there seems to be a wider genre of recordings which seem to inspire this sort of drrty drrty dancing. the phenomenon thus represents yet another localization of the reggaeton template, bringing in andean/cumbia elements and making connections to other local pop (though, admittedly, i need to listen and learn a lot more before i make any more grand musical-analytical statements -- any especialistas out there want to offer an opinion?).

videos of the latest forbidden dance have also, as with yasuri yamileth and chacarron, elicited no small number of parodies and DIY take-offs, including versions featuring legos and plenty of gleeful homoeroticism.

but the pooh bear footage takes the cake. ¡aydiosmio!