Guatemalan hip-hop artiste Rebeca Lane is featured in the UK Guardian in an article on how Latin American women are changing the face of hip-hop.

Challenging the machista culture of hip-hop, her 2012 song “Bandera Negra” (“Black Flag”) takes a swipe at Latino MCs who use misogynist and homophobic language to insult one another, or who make puerile boasts about their huevos (eggs, meaning balls): “I’ve got a million eggs in each ovary. That doesn’t make me any more of a woman, or you less of a man,” raps Lane. “The level of gender violence in freestyle rhyming battles, and in mainstream rap, can be horrific,” she adds.

Her aunt disappeared in 1981, one of 200,000 Guatemalans killed during almost four decades of bloodshed. “We’ve had peace accords in Guatemala,” says Lane, “but we’ve never had any peace, or justice.” The hip-hop scene, she says, has played a healing role for some of the postwar generation: “It gives young people ways of organising beyond armed conflict, beyond military or gang violence.” Hip-hop itself was born in a similar atmosphere, Lane notes, “in the Bronx in the 1970s, once the gang wars had subsided.”

Above is the official video of her great track ‘La Cumbia de la Memoria‘.

You can read the full article here.

Categories: Gender, Genocide, Video