Grammy- and Latin Grammy-winning Puerto Rican rapper Residente’s newest music, “This is Not America,’’ is an anthem for people who understand that imperialism and forced immigration cannot be separated from environmental issues.

Both social and environmental crises are shown in bloody realism throughout the music video, currently trending at #11 for music on YouTube. “This is Not America,’’ featuring Afro-French Cuban duo Ibeyi, takes aim at police brutality as well as pollution from environmentally extractive industries that force Latin America’s Indigenous communities from their ancestral lands.

“Aquí estamos, siempre estamos. No nos fuimos, no nos vamos. Aquí estamos pa’ que te recuerdes. Si quieres, mi machete te muerde,” the refrain says. “Here we are, always are. We haven’t left, we won’t leave. Here we are, so that you can remember. And if you want, my machete will bite you.”

Many of Residente’s anti-imperialist songs point out machetes, maybe a connection to his fixed critique of Puerto Rico’s standing as a U.S. colony, one thing he discussed in interviews following Hurricane Maria in 2017. His music is a reminder that having a Caribbean identification, having a Latin American identification, comes with lots of baggage.

“Desde hace rato, cuando ustedes llegaron, ya estaban las huellas de nuestros zapatos,” Residente raps. “For a while before you arrived, the footprint of our shoes were already here.”

“America isn’t just the USA papá, it’s from Tierra del Fuego to Canadá.”

The video opens with an ode to Lolita Lebrón, a member of the Puerto Rican nationalist party who shot a pistol during a House of Representatives chamber assembly on March 1, 1954, alongside different nationalists calling for Puerto Rican independence. Her assault on the governing physique got here only a few years after the El Grito de Jayuya, or the Jayuya rebellion of 1950, a revolt in opposition to U.S. imperialism within the city of Jayuya and in a number of different cities throughout the island. The deceased Lebrón is now a leftist hero.

In the video, an actress representing Lebrón shoots into the air, and close by cops begin operating towards her.

What follows are scenes of protests in opposition to closely armed police, folks forcibly separated (together with a mom breastfeeding her baby via a fence), and what seem like college students lined up with bullet holes of their heads. The backdrop options bomba beats, an Afro-Puerto Rican type of music that always symbolizes resistance in opposition to oppression and was a strong device for expression throughout the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

In one scene, an Indigenous baby sits on a tower of McDonalds-style quick meals containers; different pictures present Indigenous youngsters on piles of disposable espresso cups and Amazon packages. A person with Eurocentric options in a swimsuit is consuming steak with a glass of pink wine. After taking a chunk, he turns to wipe his face with a big Brazilian flag as one other Indigenous baby appears to be like on.

The steak-and-flag scene is the video’s least delicate reference to local weather justice and Indigenous rights. I interpreted it as a nod to the socially and environmentally harmful insurance policies of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. When the person wiped his face, I assumed for a second that I used to be taking a look at Bolsonaro himself.

Under Bolsonaro’s management, tens of millions of acres of the Amazon rainforest have been set on fireplace and illegally cleared for cattle and crops—prime export merchandise for the nation—in only a handful of years. Indigenous forest defenders and allies who work with them are sometimes displaced and even murdered in order that there will be extra land for agricultural manufacturing. In 2021, the Brazilian Senate committee created a draft accusing Bolsonaro of crimes in opposition to humanity, together with genocide. He’s made it clear time and time once more that it doesn’t matter if persons are displaced and the surroundings destroyed, so long as industries flip a revenue.

“This Is Not America” is an impactful and graphic condemnation of unfettered company greed and the cruelty of these in energy. It’s additionally a warning that lots of the victims of are preventing again.

Residente reminds us that there are casualties from fashionable imperialism. Just as a result of it doesn’t seem like ships arriving on the shores of a supposedly undiscovered land, doesn’t imply that imperialism is a factor of the previous. Residente tells us that it occurred then, and it’s taking place now.

The U.S. and different rich nations outsource our trash and our air pollution to susceptible communities. The long-lasting devastation that ensues is simpler to disregard if we don’t know the place the our bodies are—and this video goals to place these corpses entrance and heart. It ends with our bodies being laid out to kind the phrase “America.”