Dancing with Death

This chapter traces the many lives of musician Celia Cruz’s catchphrase azúcar (literally, sugar). Cruz used the discourse of azúcar, defined here as a relentless dedication to sweetening the present moment, up until her death in 2003, and fans continued to use it after she died. The chapter follows this discourse from Cruz’s music, to her wake in Miami, to the aftermath of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre. It argues that azúcar came to exist as a discourse on queer racialized time that helped queer Latinx mourners make sense of their pasts, presents, and futures in the face of continual trauma. Queer fans used azúcar to navigate everything from right-wing Cuban exilic nostalgia to the massacre of forty-nine people in an Orlando gay club.