"The only thing the privileged can do is divest themselves of their privilege. The only thing the slavemaster can do is stop being a slavemaster. But the slave has still gotta break his own chains"

Towards the middle of November, CLAMOR asked me if I would be interested in doing an interview with New York - based band Ricanstruction. My initial response was not the most promising. I explained that I would only be interested in such a project if the band is heavy on the content. If not, the band would really need to be extraordinarily experimental. I told them that I had no desire to discuss riffage and personal trifles for the entertainment of some bands fans; but that I was open to reading the lyrics, listening to the CDs, and giving it a try. I had never done a band interview before, and most I had read were hardly worth the whole press run of the magazine. I usually find them to be self-indulgent and or aimed to please the folks who have the bands record and are looking to buy a new one. With all those threatening words, I was unsure if CLAMOR would still consider me the person for the job. They responded by being even more convinced that I was a fit for this interview. They sent me Ricanstruction’s two CDs and some interviews that they had previously done. I realized that the issues this band addresses are as urgent as they are neglected. So I undertook the interview with the hope that it would turn out like any good article for CLAMOR - giving voice to an underrepresented struggle. This interview was conducted with Alano Baez a.k.a. Not4Prophet, vocalist from Ricanstruction.

One very characteristic thing about Ricanstruction is the fact that the band claims to be "anti-politically political", and to be generally leery about "mwssing with politricks". At the same time, you speak mostly about issues that are overtly political. Why not just "fess up" about being an ‘in-your-face’ political band? Why even bother with trying to obscure or mystify Ricanstruction’s overtly political content?
 
We’ve never tried to obscure or mystify where we’re coming from.  We don’t define ourselves as an "in your face political band" in accordance with the shitstems American heritage dictionary, just as  we also refuse to accept the slavemasters definition of us as slaves.  As Marcus Garvey said, "it’s now necessary to see ourselves through our own bifocals".  And what we see very clearly, is that we have always had someone elses politics in OUR face. Our 500 plus year colonial condition is someone elses politics in our face. Our imperialization is their politics. Our enslavement is their emancipation. Our color is their capitalism. The genocide we survived, the poverty and homelessness we endure, the racism we face, the ghettoization and starvation and sterilization, the drugs we sell or the food we steal, and the bombs they drop, are all someone elses politics. We have neither the privelege or the power to perceive ourselves as some "in your face" political punx who are gonna save us from ourselves.  The fact is, we’re just tryna save ourselves. Right now,  the only thing that we have is the ability to react and the neccessity to resist. Ours is a life of self defense against someone elses politics. We defend ourselves, and we resist, and some of us even attempt to disrupt or destroy these "politricks". What’s politics for you is resistance for us. We’re not on some (self) righteous crusade. The fact is that babylon is killing US.

Can you give us a brief education about the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement? And could you tell us what is at stake for the people of Puerto Rico in the context of this struggle for liberation?

 What’s at stake is for Puerto Ricans is their very existence.  Puerto Rico’s colonial condition means the destruction of the land, the decimation of the culture, and the death of the Puerto Rican people. Puerto Rico was invaded by the  United States in 1898 during the Spanish American war, and since that time, Puerto Ricans have endured, resisted,  and survived the exploitation and downpression that goes hand in hand with the process of colonialism and imperialism. Puerto Ricans were granted, without their request, US citizenship in 1916, just in time to be sent to fight in world war I in disproportionate numbers. Since then, they have been cannon fodder in every war, "conflict", or invasion that the US has engaged in. Meanwhile, these  "US citizens" who have an inalienable right to be killed,  don’t have the right to vote in US presidential elections or to politically decide their own fate. Any decisions of consequence, from who will rule their country, to whether or not Puerto Ricans have a "right" to be independent, is decided by the US congress.  Puerto Rican Land has also been seized by the US government to be used for tourism and as military installations where war games are conducted, bombs are dropped, waters are contaminated, and Latin American dictators are trained. The cancer and suicide rates in Puerto Rico are some of  the highest in the "US", as is drug addiction and unemployment; and the poverty level is the highest in the US. Radiation experimentation has been conducted on political prisoners, and sterilization campaigns have been carried out on Puerto Rican woman without their knowledge. Most of Puerto Rico is owned by US businessmen who make huge profits off of Puerto Ricans who are captive consumers for US goods, and the US owned tourism trade rakes in billions of tax free dollars for US businessmen while providing little more than jobs as waiters, maids, and prostitutes for Puerto Ricans. Currently, one third of the Puerto Rican nation lives in exile outside of Puerto Rico in order to survive. But we too in the diaspora are met with the same ills that plague Puerto Rico.   Back in the day, the Puerto Rican revolutionary, Pedro Albizu Campos said, in referring to Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the US,  that the US wants "the bird cage without the bird". This has proven to be true.

At the time of this interview, there is an explosive 'media scandal' surrounding the Bush/Gore presidential election.  The US, the so-called 'greatest democratic power', cannot even count its votes.  Before this election, I used to tell people that the popular choice in a presidential election is always overruled by the choice of the electoral college.  I tried to explain that there have already been three elections in US history where the candidate chosen by the people differed from the one chosen by the electoral college. In those three cases the people's choice of president lost the election, because direct democracy was written into the constitution as an impossibility. Anyway, most of the folks who I would tell this to would either be perplexed by this, or they would flatly reject it as a lie.  As you know, both Gore and Bush have decidedly regressive, right wing agendas and agree on foreign policy, capital punishment, and military development-- And Gore is NOT, as many people don't even realize, for abortion (he rejected a bill which would have provided some federal funding to poor women seeking an abortion and he supports stricter 'parent-notification' laws-- both of which mean that he is only 'for' a women's right to choose if she has a disposable income and is over 18!) and for environmentalism (he would rather drill for oil in Colombia, on the lands of indigenous peoples who survive off of that land, than in Alaska where our own precious scenery is deemed more valuable.  So, it seems that the only good thing that may come from this 'media scandal' is an education about our lack of real democracy.  People may be forced to learn the math of how elections run, and how they fail to represent the interests of the people.  What is the response of the excluded Puerto Rican 'citizens' who are forced to watch this oligarchic circus without being given a vote?  Do you think that any real change can come from the ballot box?

The Puerto Rican liberation movement has always had a pretty healthy and clear view of  US politricks. It’s the policy of the movement not to engage in any activity where the US government is involved, because to do so would be to legitimize the illegal occupation and colonization of Puerto Rico. Even the "legitimate" Puerto Rican Independence party is shunned by the real independentistas because it has chosen to engage in US sanctioned "politics" as a means of gaining independence for Puerto Rico. If we even mention the fact that Puerto Ricans don’t have the right to vote, it’s merely to put our colonial condition in a perspective that might be more understandable to those who refuse to accept that, in this day and age, the US still owns a colony.  In terms of whether or not any real change can come out of the ballot box, the fact that less than half the voting eligible population of the United States bothers to participate, is a clear indication that in the US itself the people don’t believe that any real change can come through this process. I think whether we’re talking about those who are abused by this shitstems politics and our in the ghettos somewhere simply trying to survive, or those who feel outside of this systems politics and are out in the streets demonstrating and agitating for change, or those who think this systems not all it should be and are on the campuses trying to move people towards alternative parties, or those who hate the system and are throwing stones through the windows of Nike, we are gaining a clearer understanding every day of what this shitstem is all about. Just like there are a lot of folks who didn’t  know what the electoral college is, there are also a lot of people who are anarchist and don’t know it yet.

First of all, I have a pretty high idea of anarchism, and I am not sure what you mean when you say that "there are a lot of people who are anarchist and don't know it yet". Anarchism has always struck me as an extraordinarily conscious and self-aware philosophy. Do you really think that people can be anarchist and unconscious of the fact that they are?  Secondly, it seems to me that the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement has almost no visibility in the US, and that it is even in the margins of radical American communities. Yet, since the US is the colonizer of Puerto Rico, much of the work towards this cause must take place here, in the heart of the colonizing force. Blacklisted from the mainstream media, what kind of activity can we take up here in the US to strengthen the cause of Puerto Rican Liberation?

In answering your second question first. The Puerto Rican liberation movement is not on the margins of the radical Puerto Rican community in the US; it’s on our minds every second of every day.  We feel it and we know it. This is our reality. We also fully understand that the "mainstream" North American media will never publicize or glorify the reality of Puerto Ricos colonial condition and liberation struggle. After all, we’re not some far off issue in some far off land; we’re not a colony of the "evil" Chinese, or the "bad" communists. We are, as Jose Marti said, "in the entrails of the monster, and our weapon is Davids sling". But, just like David the punk, we rely on other means to get our message across. The underground, politically minded media is an important collaborator in helping put the message of this struggle out to the masses. After all, isn’t that the purpose of periodicals like Clamor. But at the same time, those in the Puerto Rican liberation movement carry no illusions that ours is a glamor issue that the "liberators-come-lately" will embrace and rally behind. But of course, non-Puerto Rican activists and sympathizers  are more than welcome to take to the streets in the struggle to free Puerto Rico. It’s as simple as that. After all, when we look at the righteous struggles against the WTO, the republicrats, the fight to free and conserve the land, the battle against racism, sexism, the aids crisis, injustice, exploitation, capitalism, imperialism… all roads lead back to the oldest colony in the world.  But in the meantime, we will continue to occupy US military bombing zones, squat US government owned land, demonstrate, agitate, disobey, seize the statue of liberty, seize minds, seize the time, be the fly on the elephants ass, and maybe one day, turn this whole shitstem on its fucking head.
As far as the question of Anarchism is concerned,  I can’t speak for high minded philosophers, high brow intellectuals, or higher education high rollers, either, but when you get passed all the obstacles of ideology, the doldroms of doctrin, and the passports of protocol, then anarchy becomes action. So when you’re dealing with people who can barely read, but are feeding, clothing and sheltering each other and creating autonomous zones that exist outside of the shitstem, then you’re dealing with action. When you’re dealing with folks who don’t know the difference between Bakunin and bombs, but are, thru resistance and existence, slowly chipping away at the machine and attempting to create a world without masters or slaves, presidents or paupers, leaders or or liars, corporations or corpses,  then your dealing with action. But you know, the fact is, we don’t have to call it anarchism, or communism, or socialism, or even terrorism. Fuck isms and scisms, we just gotta do what we gotta do.

It is an interesting phenomenon (although entirely predictable) that the US media has covered the East Tibetan struggle only because it is a struggle against China, and not against the US.  Of course, with the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement, since it is a struggle that directly addresses US imperialism and colonization, there will be no large-scale attention here.  Luckily, we do have things like punk and Clamor that allow us to give voice to such issues- enabling us to educate, mobilize and activate resistance.  We also have things in the not-so-distant past, like when revolutionary peoples from all over the world assembled armed militias in 1936 to fight against Franco’s fascist army in Spain.  I suppose a question that every activist (or any person concerned with radical social change) is forced to face at some point is, ‘How much progress can be caused through peaceful, nonviolent actions?’  I sense that you have considered this question yourself, since some of your citations of revolutionary action involve matters of force. Could you explain what role, if any, forceful or violent action could play in the furthering of the Puerto Rican cause?
 

The Puerto Rican liberation struggle has utilized both non-violent action, as we’re currently seeing in the struggle to remove the US military from Puerto Rican land, and revolutionary violence, as we’ve seen in the actions of Puerto Rican clandestine armed units such as the Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN), and the Puerto Rican Peoples Army- Macheteros (EPB), to engender a revolutionary consciousness in the people. Or, as Bob Marley put it, to help us "emancipate ourselves from mental slavery". But it should always be remembered that we’re up against the most powerful, treacherous, and violent, empire in the history of mankind, so the impact of these tactics on the slave master are not always so clear to the eye. I think that history has shown us that we need both non-violent struggle and revolutionary violence if we’re going to free ourselves. But it should be understood that this violence, or revolutionary violence, is a necessary reaction on the part of the slave to the downpressive violence he has been subjected too at the hands of the slavemaster.  As Fanon said "colonialism is built on systemic structural violence which eventually triggers a violent reaction". But, as Fanon also pointed out, that violent reaction can also serve as a catharsis because it "can dissolve the inferiority complex of the colonized ... which has been inscribed on the body during a lifetime of violent oppression".
 
People in so-called 'developing' countries all around the globe have been kicking and screaming about the disastrous effects of WTO, World Bank and IMF policies for over the past 20 years.  Yet, none of these organizations even flinched until grassroots activity in the Western World flared up during the past three years.  Now, they are suddenly changing their rhetoric to address the issues raised by protestors in America, Prague, Germany and France.  Still, it is doubtful
that we could get anything better than rhetorical changes from these pilots of the global economy.  But earlier you said that the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement would welcome the support of dedicated North Americans.  Do you think that the solidarity of people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of this exploitation with the people in the movements of the directly "downpressed" is required to get the kind of radical change we need?

The only thing the privileged can do is divest themselves of their privilege. The only thing a racist can do is become a race traitor. The only thing the slavemaster can do is stop being a slavemaster. … But the slave has still gotta break his own chains.
 

This leads me to a question about Ricanstruction's music. In various interviews with Ricanstruction, you've talked quite a bit about punk. Also, you talk a little bit about various other forms of music such as Afro-Carribean music and salsa. Your musical interests are rather diverse, yet punk is amongst the most white male dominated music scenes that one could ever find. Of course, there are numerous exceptions to this, but they are still exceptions to a pretty shameful 'rule'. If Ricanstruction is about the kind of resistance we've been discussing, then why form a band that fits within the punk community and gains most of its support from a punk constituency? The people who need to be mobilized the most, by your own account, are the smallest population in the hardcore/punk community.  Why not infiltrate a scene that could better mobilize marginalized peoples?

We never believed in being a part of any "scene", but we don’t neccessarily mind when we’re refered to as "punx" because it tends to come from a perception of our attitude and politics, or should I say anti-politics, and punk has a rich and pretty impressive history of  dissent, DIY, and dirt under its fingernails . And, if punx "rule" still is one of "White male domination", then punk needs us more than we need punk.  But really, "race", just like genrification, is a construct that came about for no good purpose. The trick isn’t to be categorized, the key is to confound catergorization, create new terms for freedom, and ricanstruct perceptions. . Your head may be free, and your record collection may be alphabetized, but when you go into your neighborhood reca sto’, there’s still all sorts of categories and sub-categories. Ricanstruction wasn’t formed to fit into any particular constituency. We grew up listening to music, plain and simple, and never categorized it. From So-called punk, to so-called salsa, to so-called reggae, funk, jazz, mambo, salsa, bomba y plena, hip hop, be bop, folk and folklorico. We were and are open to it all. We never cared whether Jimi Hendrix was rock or soul, or Bad Brains was hardcore or reggae, or whether Coltrane was jazz or even punk.  Just like we never called ourselves a political band, but instead simply made music about our lives, which others called political. We’ve played so-called Hip Hop shows for Mumia, so-called punk shows for the Zapatistas, merengue block parties for the hell of it, and we might even play jazz clubs if the cover wasn’t so high. We’ve done shows where "anarcho-punx" are slammin’ with Santeros, and hardcore hip hop heads are ragin’ wit’ rastas. This to us feels like revolution. Yeah, it’s a given that we gotta unify if we’re gonna make change, but, after all is played, and played again, each of us still has our own chains to break. But for a start, if we can do away with concepts of what is "Black" and what is "White", we might actually be well on our way to writing the soundtrack for that revolution we all talkin’ about.  After all, when the revolution come, it will sound like everything you’ve ever heard and nothing you’ve ever heard.

I was wondering about the other members of Ricanstruction.  Some band's like to say that each member speaks through his or her instrument—that that is how their voice comes into the band.  I have always found that to be a romantic load of crap... The idea that they don't have any other words to convey or anything to say about the band and what it represents.  Too often, the other members end up being reduced to a back-up band for one person... and in the worst situations, they don't even have their hearts in the words that the vocalist is singing... they just want to rock, and to not be bothered by issues.  I don't want to ask you to speak for them, but inasmuch as this is a Ricanstruction interview, you already are.  Where are they, and how do they interact with Ricanstruction's anti-political politics?

Well, I can’t speak for other bands or other people as to why they do what they do, nor do I consider myself to be an authority on what is "romantic crap" and what is not, but when Ricanstruction came to be, we were just four Puerto Ricans from the same innercity ghetto, who knew what it is to beg, borrow, and steal to survive, and who believed very strongly in the freedom of our homeland, Puerto Rico. We’d been part of the squatters movement, we wrote on private property,  smoked the holy sacrament, been harassed or brutalized by the pigs, had shit jobs or were unemployed or "unemployable", and broke the occasional window. We’d all read "the Autobiography of Malcolm X", "The Wretched of the Earth", "The Bolivian Diaries",  "The Art of War" and  "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed", and we all wanted freedom for Mumia and the rest of the Black liberationist, and Leonard Peltier, and the rest of the Indian Nations. We’d all been beaten down, but not out, by racism, and we all knew that slavery was still in effect. We made music as an outlet for our anger, our suffering, our deferred dreams, and our dashed ideas. But also for our joy and pride, and love, and to set ourselves free, if only for that moment. We made music because to us it sounded like revolution, and yes, we occasionally made music simply  to "rock". When we started making music, we didn’t have to ask each other if we were dancing to the same drummer. We knew we were. When we started writing, we didn’t have to ask each other if we spoke the same language. We did. We never gave much thought to interviews and who would do ‘em, and we never considered ourselves to be spokespersons for anything in particular. When we did do interviews it was because we were approached by a cool ‘zine like Profane Existence or Jersey Beat, who tended to approach me because I was perceived as the voice of Ricanstruction since I was the "throat", and maybe because I was the most "approachable". Although that’s doubtful. Anyway, somewhere along the line, I got elected, without any electoral college, to the position of "Minister of Information", or as I’m otherwise known, "Not for Prophet of Rage for the Ricanstruction anti-Army". Anyway, that’s the way it is, and at this point in time, whoever don’t like it, shouldn’t really bother to talk to us at all. But, you know, I think this is kind of a stupid question… so perhaps I’m not the best person for the job.
 

Hopefully, you wont find them as "stupid" as the last one.  I was just trying to understand a little bit more about Ricanstruction, I know that the band is not just you, and you've explained that you all came together on the grounds of common interest, a common sense of purpose, and common experience.  I think you'll agree that all these things have a lot to do with the foundation of the movement, and so I DO think it's important.  In any case, if I remember correctly, you used to do spoken word performances before Ricanstruction.  I don't know if you still do them now, but could you explain some of the benefits and shortcomings of spoken word as compared with Ricanstruction?  For the sake of building resistance through education and provocation, how does spoken word compare to playing music?

I’ve found that both forms of expression can be effective tools for provocation and education.  People come to art for different reasons, and they come to "political" art from different avenues. So what will move and motivate them, will depend on where their heads are at at the time. Some like the more intimate, and often more personal, soul searching of spoken word, while others prefer the catharsis of a kind of a full on sonic sabotage. I’ve had people say they couldn’t get into Ricanstruction because they couldn’t hear the lyrics, but others wanted, or needed, the power and release of the music and didn’t really give a shit what I was saying. Which is not to say that one is any more  "politically" minded then the other; it’s just the different ways of  gettin’ your revolutionary groove on. For me, personally, I like the power of this thing that some call "punk rock". To me it sounds like liberation. And I prefer the band format because it allows me to interact with my brothers in a way that I wasn’t when I was the lone "poet" on a bare stage.  I found that I needed that "artistic" and collective interaction, and that through our music each one of us was collectively speaking volumes. Which may be why I couldn’t quite get with your question about where the other members of Ricanstruction’s heads were at.  But in terms of the movement and the struggle, it really is bigger than hip hop, or Punk, or spoken word, or all the other genres and styles and categories. You can bang on an oil can or bang on the doors of the WTO, or scream on the stage or scream on the (wall) streets, or play a guitar or play war (games), or make entertainment, or make the necessary tools to tear down the walls of Jericho. The key is to do something.
 

Revisiting your full-length CD, Liberation Day, there is something that I just can't ignore... It barely comes close to adequately representing the depth and vision of your political objectives.  Basically, you get the music and the lyrics, and admittedly amazing cover art.  Having grown up around punk, I'm sure you've seen some elaborate packaging for music.  Revolutionary music from Crass to Submission Hold has done its best to give us as much as it can for the sake of 'Its Movement'.  Surely, you know that you could have given us more content to accompany your music and lyrics... As it is, we don't have any of your elaborations on the lyrics or detailed commentary on the present issues at hand in the Puerto Rican Liberation movement.  I don't bring this up to make a cosmetic point about 'packaging': Ricanstruction clearly has a hell of a lot more to say than thousands of other supposedly political bands, and the lyrics (by themselves) don't even give us what we can get in a short interview... And not everyone is going to get to read the interviews.  My question is- for the sake of building an informed resistance, why not use your releases to share more of what you have to offer?

Our simple songs are not a manual or a manifesto, nor are they intended to be, and we’re not a "shining path" or the "Puerto Rican Peoples Army" . We are, to the best of our ability, reporting and reflecting on the nature of society, ourselves in that society, and the nature of the human soul and its resistance to babylon.  But we know that we are not some kind of "leader-liberator-lyricists" with all the answers on how to get free, and it would be  presumptuis for us to define the struggle, or the path, or the "ideology" of  revolution for others. As Che Guevara said, "there’s no such thing as liberators, the people will liberate themselves".  So its no longer about following the "leader",  or the organization, or the pamphlet, or the program, or the booklet, or the bible, or the "man" with the answers and the plan.  We’ve been in the organization, and we’ve read the pamphlet, and the booklet, and the bible, and seen the program, and followed the "man", and the plan, and all our leaders were false, and all our icons were crucified, and the only real answer we got was to look to ourselves. Yes, read everything, hear everything, see everything, do everything, be everything, take from everything and everyone, and, as Amiri Baraka said "leave the bitter rotten white parts alone." What people need is to have their imaginations challenged, and their heads freed. There’s a great deal to be gained from allowing people to think for themselves, and draw their own conclusions, and make their own decisions, and decide their own way to liberation day. We believe that as people arrive at an individual consciousness, it will become a kind of collective consciousness, and at that point, who feels it knows it.   What did LKJ say:  "do we need another Moses to take we across the sea, and say gwarn, walk cross, we now free, we now free, as we enter the 21st century. Are we long past that era, that there stage, and it’s each and every one that has to rise now to meet the dawning of a different age."