Racism operates in a lot of ways, and so I live it every day.
BOCAFLOJASo, we know who are the people that have the majority of power, access and privileges in Mexico, and they are white Mexicans.
More Bocafloja Quotes
-
-
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
We have to remember that the experience of gangsta rap as such in its foundation is an anti-systemic experience primarily.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
So, we know who are the people that have the majority of power, access and privileges in Mexico, and they are white Mexicans.
BOCAFLOJA -
I can’t marry myself to one idea or one form of doing politics or one form of understanding politics.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
The racial question, and thus class struggle, of course, I think they are processes which necessarily are intersecting all the time.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
I believe the example of the Zapatistas is a very relevant historical example.
BOCAFLOJA -
Like Syria, like other parts of the Middle East, including conscious Islamic-American rappers that are representing an international political agenda for the United States through cultures more affable for people of color in other parts of the world.
BOCAFLOJA -
There are situations in which a smile, a laugh, a greeting are racist exercises.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
On the aesthetic level, decolonized music presents itself as a direct antagonist to the traditional values promoted by the culture industry.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.”
BOCAFLOJA -
I am conscious of how my body signifies in every space. In every place of the world our body has a different significance.
BOCAFLOJA -
The Latin American Left, the criollos, direct descendents of Spaniards, they don’t want to accept that they are the whites of Latin America.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA -
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.
BOCAFLOJA