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.

We have to remember examples of many artists of conscious rap who have been coopted by the Department of State of the United States to be cultural ambassadors in different parts of the world, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.