In Oaxaca, a group of female rappers channel an intersection of gender, economic and social injustices in Mexican life. By calling out the problems that affect everyone in the food chain, and by being a supportive rap collective where MCs don’t battle or dis each other, they live a joined up, communal model for change in Mexico. Their rhymes skewer both problems and potential in the country’s present and past.
I was born a woman in
the times of breast cancer
When machismo killed
many sisters
When lesbians were
hunted as witches
Amongst secret
abortions, AIDS and sex trafficking
And life advances
Existing in an arid
land with a tragic history
Keeps us alive and
living is hope
Mare Advertencia Lirika
- ¿Y
Tú Qué Esperas? (What are you Waiting for?)
& Mi
Gente (En vivo) SiempreViva (My People Always Live)
An intersection
From one direction flow key topical realities of the
country: crime, gangs, murder, kidnapping and rape in Ciudad Juárez and the
US-Mexico border (and elsewhere), domestic violence and feminicide, and
Western/American neoliberalization of the economy and culture and resultant
inequality. From another direction flows the good and bad of traditional
culture – the power and dignity in the street culture and of a collective
society living off the land, but also the oppression, patriarchy, machismo,
domestic violence and social and institutional control of women’s roles and
everyone’s sexuality that came (comes) with that.
The stats in these particular areas of Oaxacan life,
Mexican life, are getting worse (lockdown has done wonders for domestic
violence worldwide). Feminicide has doubled since 2015, with the number of
women killed daily in Mexico rising from 7 to 10 between 2017 and 2019. As Mexico has moved into a world of foreign
investment and privatization, wife beating farmers have become wife beating
factory workers or service sector employees, or wife beating sub employed men.
Women cannot win – domestic violence is higher still for more economically active women - beaten, it seems,
because they go out to work and belittle their husband’s role as bread winner.
Ingrid was 9th February 2020, after an argument with her
partner about his drinking.
Fatima was actually 2 days later. The 7-year-old had
been taken from outside her school, delivered by a woman to a man who’d asked
for a young bride (she figured taking a stranger would let her own kids off the
hook). He put her in a dress and painted her nails, raped her and tortured her.
The woman then suffocated her.
This is a world, no, these are districts, where women
get disappeared – grabbed straight out of the subway or off the street, and
taken to be gang raped, beaten, tortured, burned to death. In the Ecatepec
barrio of Mexico City it’s been a ratio of at least a woman a week since 2012.
We are becoming a
society without rule
This is a time when
there is stalking outside our house
We allow everything
when the rules end
When the violence is
thrown into the city
The priority should be
to stop this
Pandemic of forced
disappearance
That attacks anyone
Mare Advertencia Lirika
- Se
Busca (Wanted)
Sometimes women haven't quite died by the time the
police find them, tied up and sizzling after being burned. Good enough to fuck
but not good enough to live, apparently. Sometimes the police note that these
women were not respecting gender roles with their lifestyles.
Women are killed by spouses, they are killed by
strangers (and over 70% of feminicides are the work of strangers). Men from all walks
of life, whether headless cartel gangs who’ve gone rogue since the cops busted their boss,
or tanked up teens on drinks and drunks, or violently disaffected men with a
bloody grudge.
It’s not so much that these fuck awful things are
connected but that they are COMMON. Now over 10.5 women a day are being killed in Mexico.
They are raped, they are mutilated, they are burned alive. On average across
Mexico, 5 men a day will kill their intimate partner.
Ni una menos - Not one (woman) less
In a country where sexism dials all the way up to that level of violence, gangsta rap’s dominant masculinity and lyrical treatment of women… snags. The bad boyish charm of guns, prowess, and execrably sexist rhymes that maybe/maybe don’t make a political point about treating women as badly as how the system treats men, is even more uncomfortable here.
Mare Advertencia Lirika, Doma Press, and the other female Oaxacan rappers that make occasional appearances in US and UK media have adopted the confident, articulate flow of western rap, but they’ve dropped the gender domination and rampant self-made individualism. If gangsta expresses masculinity through an MC bigging himself up, these rappers express femininity through their allegiance to womanhood, and beyond into indigenous and Mexican rights.
You better see nuances
I'm not here to be famous
I’m serious, bitch, I
am the queen and I am a goddess
And pay attention to
what I come to say giving a response
But I did not come to
compete
For me the essence of
the mike is to share
Doma Press - La
Escena (The Scene)
The communal approach stops rap becoming another Americanization that damages Oaxacan culture. They might brag about being the smartest and sickest with their flow, but these women don’t annihilate peers in rap battles or drive bys, or wax about their parties, clothes, jewelry, money. They see that kind of individualism as culpable for the problems in Mexico, and for women. Mare:
If governments and businesses enjoy and promote a culture of empowered individualism, reaping the benefits of the resultant purchasing power and atomized society with no dominant mass movements rocking the boat, rap’s a product of that.
Mexico’s economy since the ‘80s has increasingly stripped communal assets and looked to individualist, neoliberal models for wealth creation. Largescale agreements like NAFTA, the PPP (Plan Puebla Panama) and Proyecto Mesoamérica set the scene for miles of freeway, oil lines, dams and airports - infrastructure which would have once been publicly owned - being built by private companies on once collectively owned farmland.
Everything’s funded by foreign loans and investment,
with a general understanding that Mexico in turn deregulates its markets and
privatizes its resources. Instead of
having a joint stake in your farm or community, you’re free to get as rich as
you like (or as poor as you like).
Free trade meant subsidized American agriculture could export to Mexico and undercut indigenous produce. After NAFTA was signed in ’94 Mexico’s agriculture shrank by 2 million jobs, and the country shifted from being a net exporter to a net importer of food. The service sector now dominates the economy at 70% of GDP and over 60% of the workforce. More women have found themselves in work when communities migrated or were moved off the land.
For my people there may
be no money
But there is always
atmosphere
We know how to enjoy
even if everything is spoiled
We know how to live
even if we live oppressed
They wanted to remove
our roots
But we are still the
people of the country
Mare Advertencia Lirika
- Mi
Gente (En vivo) SiempreViva
Oaxaca has Mexico’s largest indigenous (largely Zapotec) population (2.02 million - 48% of the state’s population). 77% of Oaxacans are considered poor, with nearly 40% unable to read or write and 58% of young people suffering from malnutrition. Mexico’s healthcare system has long treated indigenous women as culturally backward. There were sterilization programs in the ‘90s. Indigenous women seeking reproductive care continue to have their support programs ransomed if they do not agree to sterilization. In 2013 27% of indigenous women using Mexico’s public health services were sterilized without their consent.
We were born free but
we live on our knees
We make up our wounds
in pink tones
No respect, no dignity,
in our lives
That is why our
struggle is not over yet
Mare Advertencia Lirika - ¿YTú Qué Esperas?
Oaxaca is highly rural and communal - a legacy of
postrevolutionary land reforms back in the 1930s. Farmland from large estates
was redistributed for people to own in the ejido (common tenancy) model. Over 75% of the state is socially owned, split between communal lands and
ejidos. When we say ‘for people’, it was given back to the men.
As the agricultural economy disintegrated in the ‘80s
and ‘90s women helped fight for indigenous communities and the UCIZONI organisation. They facilitated marches and meetings, particularly
during the armed EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) uprising in
Chiapas in protest of NAFTA in 1994. Beyond logistics, however, they were
excluded from community leadership, whether that of the indigenous movement, the justice system, communal
property, or religion.
Most of Oaxaca’s municipalities are run by indigenous governments that only men can vote for. While Mexico’s constitution can supersede indigenous politics where it discriminates on gender, women are still often left off voter lists and barred from office. In 2004 Guadalupe Ávila Salinas, the female candidate for mayor of San José Estancia Grande in southern Oaxaca, was assassinated by the sitting mayor.
I’m like you, I knew what violence was
And I also saw what respect costs
But I decided to change all that shit
And now I'm just asking, what are you waiting for?
I don't want to wait for myself or for my sisters,
I don’t want to be dominated
Today I raise my voice against all the lies
And I invite you, woman, to raise your fist
Mare Advertencia Lirika - ¿YTú Qué Esperas?
With gender roles heavily prescribed, Oaxacan women
were carrying double the amount of water from wells
to homes in 2020, trying boost sanitization during Covid. Ayutla in the eastern
mountains has been without running water since 2017 when armed men took control
of the spring, also razing homes and farms – 23 of which belonged to women.
Being a more isolated and highly rural state, education in Oaxaca falls behind the rest of Mexico. The region doubles down on older cultural traits, particularly machismo and patriarchy. Societal forces like the church and wider gender prescription also survive stronger here. Women preserve family honor by remaining pure.
President López Obrador, AMLO, is keen to diagnose the
deadly treatment of women in Mexico as being less about gender and more the
product of neoliberal policies that preceded him. Monied
elites and corruption, which contribute towards an increasingly isolated
culture in which people vent ‘grievances’, are what need fixing. Feminism, he
says, is not the route. His support for a candidate accused of raping and beating
women continues to undermine his stance this year.
The indigenous culture the rappers experience is neither 100% noble nor 100% backward. Their lyrics fuse all the above to show Oaxacan women facing oppression from both within indigenous culture, excluded from land ownership and political power, and from without, with Mexico’s economic changes and outright attacks on indigenous culture undermining the people.
These women represent a far more modern Oaxaca, or a more modern economy in Mexico. They are working women, students, young mothers, activists. They attend university and study medicine, art, design. They grew up on Oaxaca’s music markets, mixtapes, poetry and stencil graffiti. Doma Press’s website showcases her artwork and where her journey of self-expression began: “That is my particular vision of Rap, it is manifestation, union, criticism and brotherhood, for me sorority.”
These women are rooted as much in hip hop and graffiti as they are Zapotec heritage. Their message promotes Oaxaca’s indigenous culture, but with a voice for change. They draw strands from hip hop, feminism, progressive politics and traditional culture together, rekindling a passion for the better parts of native culture (community, richness of street culture, people power). They take this over neoliberal economic initiatives that set everyone on an individualist consumer bent. They run rap workshops to educate and enable musicians, they hosted the first events for the fledgling scene, they do social work. It’s rap as a second job, and with a conscience. It may be an American import, but it comes with a local, educated filter.
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