The racial question, and thus class struggle, of course, I think they are processes which necessarily are intersecting all the time. I understand that there are moments they disassociate, but in the end they are things that go walking together practically all the time.
European militants recognize Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the Mexican militants followed their example and legitimated his work because the Europeans said, "Hey, Mumia Abu-Jamal is relevant in the US. I, the European, am telling you. I am your political guide, your icon, your mentor for political references. I am telling you that you should support the relevant causes."
When you arrive really inside the discussion of race, practically they institute a Mexican-ness, a Latin-ness, a racial community that just isn't true. So, we know who are the people that have the majority of power, access and privileges in Mexico, and they are white Mexicans.
I think that in the colonial imaginary of the average Mexican, in how it drives us, the economic dependence on the US, and in some cases cultural dependence, is quite palpable, very strong.
The countries made themselves independent from Spain, but only changed owners, who stayed in positions of power were the criollos, the Spanish descendants who were the new administrators of power and wealth in the country. And those families for generations have maintained themselves in positions of power. Latin America founded itself on everyone being equal, but in reality we aren't.
I believe in terms of the work that I do, in establishing dialogue about race relations in Latin America, steps on one of the most relevant themes today.
A white leftist Mexican activist isn't the same in the media as the son of a farmer in Guerrero, they aren't worth the same. In the same imaginary of the Latin American Left exists a racism, a racism that corresponds to processes of colonialism internal to almost all countries in Latin America.
The Latin American Left, the criollos, direct descendents of Spaniards, they don't want to accept that they are the whites of Latin America. They don't want to talk about race. The discussion for them is based on class struggle, rich against poor, but doesn't offer the possibility of a dialogue about racial questions.
I believe the advantage music has is the capacity to multiply itself, the capacity to keep itself in space and access itself at different times and in different processes and to make profound analyses, analyses that through musicality would be able to connect with people who don't necessarily have the energy or wish in any exact moment to connect to well-read or critical analysis.
I think in terms of the themes that I have worked on most is establishing questions of race in the context of Latin America. This is a theme that makes uncomfortable a lot of people, and it obviously makes the Latin American Left uncomfortable.
If I stop today at a protest and I read a speech, it is a speech that remains in that moment, and whoever captures it does, and whoever doesn't, doesn't, and just keeps walking. It is very sterile, and it can seem even inaccessible and boring for a community.
It isn't like we don't work with you because you are white, or not want anything to do with you. It is more like you have to check your privileges, the whites have the responsibility to put themselves at attention with the form they operate in with people of color and try to always lay out that pattern to connect with people and say, "I am conscious of my privileges and I am accounting for myself."
I believe that music offers us possibilities for analysis, at least in my case, more profound in many ways, but at the same time that profundity is an accessible profundity that has atemporal repercussions.
I believe that white people need to check themselves, account for their privileges, and undergo whatever interaction with communities of color with that understanding. They have to add up all those processes and articulate those privileges to try to equalize the historical process.
I believe that also it should be stressed and made clear that our antagonistic position is not to say "I don't like whites" for the simple fact of not liking white people. It's like, our fight is not against the white person per se, but against the exercises of white supremacy and the form in which whiteness and the politics of whiteness operates.
It is not like the white Republican, the conservative, who clears it up for you and says, "I don't like you", to your face and then you know immediately he is an antagonist. Racism operates in a lot of ways, and so I live it every day.
Every day of my life I have been in situations, not just in Mexico, in the US too, in which I identified the form of operation as racism. There are situations in which a smile, a laugh, a greeting are racist exercises.
A lot of the exercise of embracing identity as a political affirmation is not just simply parked in the question of skin color or culture, but more it is a political affirmation with all these implications and more.
I am conscious of how my body signifies in every space. In every place of the world our body has a different significance.
I can't marry myself to one idea or one form of doing politics or one form of understanding politics. I believe that we have to play the game of strategy, and understand how to move the pieces because this is how the political spectrum functions.
I believe the example of the Zapatistas is a very relevant historical example. I would say it is one of the forms at the idea level, and through the work they have achieved, one of the most dignified historical examples that has happened in the history of the world.
Power, as it is, has a whole apparatus operating that goes about cutting down, closing doors, so that protests, exercises, platforms, and organizations, such as the Zapatistas, can't grow further in the barrio.
MTV and the culture industry never are talking about community relevance, hood organization, they aren't talking about ethical codes, they aren't talking about forms of political organization, they don't speak about codes inside the jails. What they talk about are superficial things.
I believe a lot in the subject of the power our own bodies have as marginalized beings to be able to change the sense of things.
I believe a lot in gangsta rap, I see in it a lot of positive things as it is. I believe it is only about doing politicization work. Revolutionary change will come from there, it won't come from conscious rap.
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