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.

I believe in terms of the work that I do, in establishing dialogue about race relations in Latin America, steps on one of the most relevant themes today.

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. There are situations in which a smile, a laugh, a greeting are racist exercises.

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.

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 can't marry myself to one idea or one form of doing politics or one form of understanding politics. 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.

We have to remember that the experience of gangsta rap as such in its foundation is an anti-systemic experience primarily. And it is an anti-systemic experience that is not in some cases politicized, but in general results in a much more transgressive, much more uncomfortable music for the structures of power, than conscious rap or political rap.