What quixotic so sharply turned the erotic south to be exotic for most westerners only at the end of the century? Postmodern sensualities predated modern sex appeal. Sex came to the city and transculturalized generations before magic realism in Gabriel García Márquez, border crossings in Gloria Anzaldúa or Carlos Vives’ Grammies. Love’s psychic, social and cultural terrains were recharted by composer Alberto Domínguez, arranger Xavier Cougat, performer Lupita Palomera and others. Nearly a century of imaginative techniques (poetics) in lyrics, music and dance hispanicize, latinize and ethnically filter some 250 versions of “Perfidia”. This romantic bolero’s patriarchal sexual pessimism is lyrically re-translated into post-coital optimism (“love with a laugh”). For both sexes, a social imaginary of desolation about capricious romance, is re-performed as confidence in vibrant, consumer choice. Gender, lyrics, instrumentation and arrangements re-signify post-sexual crises of possession. Spanishspeaking subaltern performances preserve verses by revising lyrics through hip poetic re-inventions.