A cinquillo is a typical Cuban/Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 rhythmic cell

Cell (music)

The 1957 Encyclopédie Larousse defines a cell in music as a "small rhythmic and melodic design that can be isolated, or can make up one part of a thematic context." The cell may be distinguished from the figure or motif:...

, derived from the contradanza

Contradanza

The Cuban contradanza was a popular dance music genre of the 19th century.- Origins and Early Development:...

 and the danzón

Danzón

Danzón is the official dance of Cuba. It is also an active musical form in Mexico and is still beloved in Puerto Rico where Verdeluz, a modern danzón by Puerto Rican composer Antonio Cabán Vale is considered the unofficial national anthem...

. It consists of an eighth, a sixteenth, an eighth, a sixteenth, and an eighth note. Placing this rhythm in a 2/4 measure, it obtains a strongly syncopated

Syncopation

In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...

 character from the sustained note which replaces an articulated one on the first quarter of the second beat. The figure is shown twice below. The first one merely displays the note values. The second one is a so-called orthographic notation, which gives an impression of the syncopated character.

When followed by four unsyncopated eighth notes, it is known as the baqueteo. Like the clave

Clave (rhythm)

The clave rhythmic pattern is used as a tool for temporal organization in Afro-Cuban music, such as rumba, conga de comparsa, son, son montuno, mambo, salsa, Latin jazz, songo and timba. The five-stroke clave pattern represents the structural core of many Afro-Cuban rhythms...

, this forms a pair of measures, syncopated and unsyncopated.

Reference

• Mauleón, Rebeca
  Rebeca Mauleon
  Rebeca Mauleón is an American pianist, composer, arranger and writer, specializing in salsa and other Latin American and Afro-Caribbean music.-Career:...
  
  . Salsa Guidebook: For Piano and Ensemble. Petaluma, CA: Sher Music, 1993.