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”.
BOCAFLOJALike 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.
More Bocafloja Quotes
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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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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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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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There are situations in which a smile, a laugh, a greeting are racist exercises.
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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 the example of the Zapatistas is a very relevant historical example.
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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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This is a theme that makes uncomfortable a lot of people, and it obviously makes the Latin American Left uncomfortable.
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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 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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They have to add up all those processes and articulate those privileges to try to equalize the historical process.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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The Latin American Left, the criollos, direct descendents of Spaniards, they don’t want to accept that they are the whites of 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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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 can’t marry myself to one idea or one form of doing politics or one form of understanding politics.
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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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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 understand that there are moments they disassociate, but in the end they are things that go walking together practically all the time.
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The racial question, and thus class struggle, of course, I think they are processes which necessarily are intersecting all the time.
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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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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.
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