Puerto Rican rapper Residente took a blowtorch to U.S. imperialism and its expropriation of the phrase “América” in a brand new music titled “This is Not America.” It is a bloody historical past lesson in U.S. intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean at a time when the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shed a harsh mild on the lengthy historical past of colonialism in what the U.S. considers its yard.
The island has been preventing for self-determination for many years, however this has fallen on deaf ears in Washington.
The observe options the French Cuban twins Ibeyi and a video directed by French director Gregory Ohrel. It is an anthem to what America is — two different continents, 35 different nations in addition to the U.S., from Tierra del Fuego to Canada, current lengthy earlier than the U.S. co-opted the identify.
“América is not only USA, papá,” Residente raps. “Long before you arrived, the prints of our shoes were already there.” Saying America is barely the U.S., he sings, “It’s like saying that Africa is only Morocco.”
The thread tying Residente’s phrases and pictures collectively — what he factors to as the peak of colonialism — is his evisceration of the U.S. for championing self-determination in different international locations (Ukraine) whereas denying the identical for its colony, the oldest within the hemisphere — Puerto Rico.
The photographs are searing, and they’re layered one after one other with a penetrating, staccato beat. Like the pages of a historical past guide, they inform the story of U.S. imperialism, the extermination of Indigenous folks, corruption, violence sponsored by the narcos and the state and company U.S. greed. All of that are the footprints of colonialism.
The Ibeyi refrain that intercuts Residente’s rage says all of it: “Aqui estamos, siempre estamos, no nos fuimos, no nos vamos; aquí estamos pa’ que te recuerdes, si quieres mi machete te muerde.” (“Here we are, we have always been, we’re not leaving, we will not leave; here we are to remind you, my machete bites you.”)
“You don’t need to speak a word of Spanish, really, to get to the heart of this declaration of presence,” Amy Selwyn, a U.S. artist, advised me after she watched the video. “It’s a day of reckoning, a brilliant witness to a multitude of crimes.”
The video begins with an ode to Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar’s “A Logo for America,” a gritty define of the North, Central and South American map. Jaar’s work stems from the belief that the identify “America” was used incorrectly by folks within the U.S. to discuss with their nation and to not all the continent.
From there the photographs and symbols, lots of which individuals within the U.S. most likely wouldn’t acknowledge, come on the viewer like bullets from an Uzi.
It is a brutal litany: the killing of Túpac Amaru, the final monarch of the Neo-Inca State, every limb being held by 4 law enforcement officials within the video (representing the 4 horses he was sure to); folks, together with a child, in a cage at what seems to be a detention middle; troopers with their boots on a hill of corpses (harking back to the images of U.S. troopers within the Iraqi jail Abu Ghraib); an Indigenous little one sitting atop a pile of espresso cups; an Aztec temple — in what seems like Chichen Itza — in the course of Manhattan skyscrapers.
The strongest picture is when Residente takes a figurative swinging machetazo to Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” video and the sequence of a hooded man being shot at the back of the top. In Residente’s take, it’s Victor Jara, a Chilean poet, singer-songwriter and socialist political activist who was tortured and executed in 1973 within the nationwide stadium in the course of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. “Gambino, my brother, THIS is America,” Residente raps.
But Residente at all times brings the narrative again residence. Puerto Ricans watch perplexed because the U.S. and the world demand Ukraine’s independence whereas ignoring U.S. historical past in Latin America and Puerto Rico’s colonial standing.
Puerto Rico has been a colony of the U.S. for the reason that latter invaded the archipelago in 1898. Today, boricuas endure the implications — an unpayable $70 billion debt; an imposed fiscal management board whose head is the U.S.-born Ukrainian Natalie Jaresko; cuts to training, pensions and well being providers; the aftermath of Hurricane Maria; earthquakes; corrupt governments; a pandemic; and now the gentrification of the island, which threatens to marginalize Puerto Ricans of their homeland.
The disregard for the island by the U.S. was entrance and middle when, after Hurricane Maria, then-President Donald Trump visited. “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you threw our budget a little out of whack. But that’s fine,” he mentioned. And let’s not overlook that in response to former Department of Homeland Security chief of employees Miles Taylor, Trump talked about buying and selling Puerto Rico for Greenland as a result of “Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.”
The island has been fighting for self-determination for decades, but this has fallen on deaf ears in Washington.
“To plead for Ukrainian sovereignty and ignore Puerto Rico’s is like asking for virtuosity in your neighbor’s house when you are living with a mistress,” Puerto Rican geologist Oscar L. Fontan advised me. “As my abuela used to say, daylight on the street and darkness at home.”
Residente more than spells this out with the video’s first image — an attractive and well-dressed woman with bright red lipstick holding a Luger pistol and taking deep breaths. She represents Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebrón as she was getting ready to lead three men in an attack on the U.S. Capitol in 1954, protesting Washington’s colonial hold over Puerto Rico.
In the video, Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican flag are present throughout: draped on the back of a young protester blowing smoke in the face of a riot cop, waving in the background of clashes with riot police and in what appears to be a machete pendant on the chain around Residente’s neck — a symbol used by the Boricua Popular Army, also known as The Macheteros, a militant organization supporting independence for Puerto Rico.
“This is Not America”can also be a love letter to girls, particularly to the younger girls throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, who’re spearheading the struggle for structural change in work, training, marriage and faith. They are the feminists on the entrance line of social justice.
“The heart of revolution in Puerto Rico is women,” Residente said in a recent interview. “That is why I put Lolita Lebrón. She is one of them.”
As the video ends, the message to remove is that denying Puerto Rico its freedom whereas legitimizing the rights of different nations to be free is the peak of colonialism, as is hijacking the phrase “America” to imply solely the U.S.