Immortal Technique on Venezuela

Immortal Technique is a radical rapper my brother introduced me to last year, and whom we both admire a lot. Here's an interview with him, via Hands Off Venezuela. As usual I think he's incredibly sharp and good natured:



As a person in the States, with no concrete links to Venezuelans or Latin Americans to give me first-hand accounts, I find it really difficult to navigate news about Venezuela and Bolivia. Immortal's critique of the Venezuelan media and the U.S. media as being driven by bourgeois interests makes sense and sounds really plausible to me. But there's something in the back of my head that makes me say, "hey, no, what if this is propaganda and Chavez is actually Stalin incarnate?!" Ok, maybe not that extreme, but I do have a hard time knowing what to believe, when I'm getting everything through sources with vested interests. And it's not that I think Immortal would deliberately deceive me either, it's that I'm afraid he's fooling himself because he wants it to be a good thing and he wants Chavez to be a good guy. Is that just what the capitalists want me to think? Or am I right/smart to be a constant skeptic about both sides?

Anyway, check out some of his music when you get a chance. Not exactly a toe tapping good time, but it does what he said he hopes. It really gets you pumped up about revolution.

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