Madrid show Beyond the stereotypes of Latin women in popular culture

From the cha-cha-chá dancers of the 1950s to the fruit-heavy turbans of Carmen Miranda, the golden age of Mexican cinema to the emergence of salsa stars such as Celia Cruz, the world has not lacked powerful symbols of Latin womanhood.

- Sam Jones

But a new exhibition in Madrid is inviting visitors to look past the clichés and stereotypes and reflect on the myriad ways Latin women, their bodies and their stories have been presented in popular culture.

The 500 items on display - including posters, records, clothes and magazines - are drawn from the legendary Gladys Palmera collection, the world's largest private archive of Latin American music and related memorabilia.

Although the exhibition, at the Casa de América in the Spanish capital, is titled Latina: Woman, Music and Glamour in the Gladys Palmera Collection, the show is an invitation to look beyond and beneath all the layers of expertly packaged glamour.

For Andrea Pacheco González, one of the exhibition's two curators, many of the familiar notions that have historically been attached to female Latin artists - such as exoticism, hyper-sexuality and diva behaviour - were well overdue a little interrogation.

"That whole narrative is very problematic," she said. "I think that's the main lesson of this exhibition. It's not 'the story of women'; it's the story of how women have been represented.

Yes, we've got all the big stars, from the time they were most controlled by the industry, right up to the time when they were more emancipated... But it's the story of how women have basically been represented in the white, male, mainstream gaze."

Pacheco's co-curator, Tommy Meini, said they were "more interested in how some of these women were swimming against the tide; we like artists who fight for their place".