I can’t marry myself to one idea or one form of doing politics or one form of understanding politics.
BOCAFLOJAAnd 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.
More Bocafloja Quotes
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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.
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I believe gangsta rap, as such, in its foundation is simply anti-systemic and transgressive.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What is MTV doing and what is the hegemonic culture industry promoting in gangsta rap? It is the glorification of violence for the sake of violence.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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Racism operates in a lot of ways, and so I live it every day.
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I believe the example of the Zapatistas is a very relevant historical example.
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We should remember what a rapper like Tupac Shakur was doing, to a certain degree, who came from an experience of politicization very close to being a “Panther Baby”.
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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.
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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.
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I am conscious of how my body signifies in every space. In every place of the world our body has a different significance.
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There are situations in which a smile, a laugh, a greeting are racist exercises.
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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.
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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.
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I think in terms of the themes that I have worked on most is establishing questions of race in the context of Latin America.
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On the aesthetic level, decolonized music presents itself as a direct antagonist to the traditional values promoted by the culture industry.
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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.
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So, we know who are the people that have the majority of power, access and privileges in Mexico, and they are white Mexicans.
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