Salsa music "Salsa" means 'sauce' in the Spanish language, and carries connotations of the spiciness common in Latin and Caribbean cuisine. In the 20th century, "salsa" acquired a musical meaning in both English and Spanish. In this sense "salsa" has been described as a word with "vivid associations". Cubans and Puerto Ricans in New York have used the term analogously to swing or soul music. In this usage "salsa" connotes a frenzied, "hot" and wild musical experience that draws upon or reflects elements of Latin culture, regardless of the style. Various music writers and historians have traced the use of "salsa" to
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party fraternal solidarity with the enemy. On May 11, 1930, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos was elected president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party maintained that, as a matter of international law, the Treaty of Paris following the Spanish–American War could not have empowered the Spanish to "give" to the US what was no longer theirs. Under Albizu Campos's leadership during the years of the Great Depression, the party became the largest independence movement in Puerto Rico. In the mid-1930s, there were disappointing electoral results and strong repression by the territorial police authorities. The party staged some