Tag Archives: antifascist

Their anti-rape performance went viral globally. What next for LASTESIS?

LASTESIS was part of a progressive movement in Chile. Then voters rejected the country’s new constitution. So now what?

Sibila Sotomayor, Dafne Valdés and Paula Cometa, members of LASTESIS, in Valparaiso, Chile | Courtesy of Maca Jo

This article was written by Naomi Larsson Piñeda and published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.


Back in November 2019, a group of women took over the streets of Valparaiso, Chile. Moving their bodies in unison, they chanted words that would go on to resonate with hundreds of thousands of people across the world.

This performance by the collective LASTESIS (The Thesis) became a global feminist anthem within days. Blindfolded and wearing the green scarves of the Latin American abortion rights movement, they called out patriarchal and state violence against women. “It’s not my fault, not where I was, not what I wore… the rapist is you. It’s the police, it’s the judges,” they cried.

These words are “absolutely global”, LASTESIS tell openDemocracy over a blurry WhatsApp call. “When people asked us why we think this performance went viral, we say we don’t know, but probably because patriarchal violence, and specifically the sexual violence that we denounce in this performance, is everywhere.”

‘Un violador en tu camino’ (‘A Rapist in Your Path’) spread across Latin America and very soon the rest of the world. Performances took place in Poland, Kenya, to the UK, even outside the trial of convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein. It’s believed that it was performed in about 200 cities globally, with the countries translating LASTESIS’ words into their own languages.

They add: “It’s incredible for us to see, despite our cultural and linguistic differences, that we can always connect.

“The way of approaching the subject may be different, or how we relate, but the problem is the same. On the one hand it makes you feel part of a much broader, transcultural, cross-border, underground community, but on the other hand it is very depressing to see that the work needs to be done everywhere.”

‘Un violador en tu camino’ performed in Valparaíso in November 2019 | Courtesy of Camila R. Hidalgo

In the wake of ‘Un violador en tu camino’, and while shut inside their homes as the pandemic closed the world down, LASTESIS wrote their first manifesto, ‘Quemar el miedo’ (‘Set Fear on Fire’). It is a fierce, raw testimony of what drives them as a collective, but also an angry account of the violence and struggles they face as Chilean women, as Latin American women: they are daughters of political refugees, they have had illegal abortions, they have raised children alone, they have been abused, they have been persecuted for speaking their minds. But like their viral performance, the manifesto speaks to an intersectional, cross-border struggle.

“[We show] that there’s a feminist network with its own causes and its own fights, but also with common causes. We can communicate in different ways but we can work together to solve things together,” they say.

LASTESIS are speaking to me as they sit together in a corridor between panel talks at a New York University. Daffne Valdés Vargas, Paula Cometa Stange, Sibila Sotomayor van Rysseghem (a fourth member, Lea Cáceres, left the group a few years ago) are in the United States to celebrate the launch of ‘Set Fear on Fire’, the new translation that will bring their feminist writing to the English-speaking world. As a collective, Daffne, Paula and Sibila prefer to speak as one. In their book, they write as “we”, not as individuals, which backs up their call for a unified feminist struggle.

They’re all close friends, having met years ago while studying; but their relationship feels exactly as you would define ‘collective’. It is one of mutual respect and love, but they also have a level of understanding and ease between one another that feels deeper than many familiar relationships.

All artists and creatives, they formed LASTESIS in 2017 to engage feminist theory and activism through art and performance. Their work is based on feminist thinkers such as Silvia Federici, who critiqued the joint forces of capitalism and patriarchy that feed off oppression. ‘Un Violador en tu Camino’ builds on the work of Rita Segato and Virginie Despentes and their exposure of sexual violence as a political issue.

“We chose this way of expressing ourselves and working because we believe in art as a tool for social transformation,” they say, adding that the medium of performance “allows you to transmit ideas, transmit demands, but also pass them through the body. Not all people can relate to words in the same way, but the language of the body… is another form of communication.”

The performances (which can be most simply explained as the expression of themes and ideas through lyrics and movement) are clear and powerful, dissecting issues such as police brutality, to the complexities of abortion and fight for reproductive rights.

‘Set Fear on Fire’ includes the lyrics of past performances, and although every word written then is still relevant, so much has changed. The world of 2019 feels very distant – especially for many Chileans.

LASTESIS first performed ‘Un violador en tu camino’ within the context of a historic social uprising that saw people of all ages and identities across the country protest against inequality.

Read also: ‘The Violator Is You’ Women In Chile Perform A Protest Chant

For a time, millions were trying to erase the neoliberal and violent hangovers of its past dictatorship. There were glimmers of hope: the right-wing billionaire president Sebastián Piñera was replaced by leftist millennial Gabriel Boric. The protests demanded the rewriting of the country’s Pinochet-era constitution, and the proposed alternative was viewed as one of the most progressive in the world. But it was rejected by 62% of the citizens last year.

“We’re in a much more depressing time now, but the ideas in this book are still topical,” they say.

“There’s a whole chapter dedicated to the abortion rights that the new constitution was going to guarantee. But that was then rejected, and now we’re starting again at ground zero.”

This month, Chile launched a fresh attempt – less inclusive and with an expected more moderate outcome – to come up with a new constitution, with a group of experts appointed by the Congress to work on a preliminary draft of 12 constitutional bases within the next three months. This document will set the groundwork for a 50-member constitutional council to be elected by popular vote in May. The council should achieve a final text for a vote of approval or rejection in December.

Since the 2022 repeal of Roe v Wade, the ruling that had enshrined the right to abortion in the US, “we’ve seen more losses of rights than gains… As feminists we have to always be alert,” they add. “On the other hand, in Argentina, for example, abortion was legalised. So we’ve also had an important victory, but it derives from a very powerful level of organising they were doing for almost 15 years.”

The book’s English version acknowledges this international, shared struggle; the group’s calls for safe and legal access to abortion and their criticisms of the capitalist structures supporting patriarchal violence resonate beyond borders. But the movement of these ideas has another level of significance. As they write in the updated prologue: “Our bodies remain in the South, but our convictions and many of our uncertainties migrate to the North.”

“With all the criticisms we have of the English-speaking colonial linguistic hegemony, it’s equally a reality that this [book] will allow our ideas to migrate north… when most translations come from the North to the South,” they say. “So this movement also seems important for the feminist struggle in the South.”

The fact that they were invited to New York to celebrate the launch of ‘Set Fear on Fire’ feels especially significant, particularly as Latines. “Our ideas travel here but in the meantime there are many people who are physically emigrating and are not well received – they’re received with precisely all of this violence that we denounce in this book,” LASTESIS say. “So it is a bit of a statement knowing that this book was going to reach the north and reminding them of the policies of exclusion and violence that are happening at this very moment on its borders.”

LASTESIS want to leave open the “invitation for people to get a bit more angry”, as indifference sustains the status quo, they argue. “The lack of empathy allows everything to continue as it is, reproducing this violence and oppression that have simply been normalised. And thanks to rage we can mobilise ourselves, and also mobilise the world.”

Retromania and resistance: Record label MaJazz Project reissues new dawn for unsung Palestinian pioneers

This article was written by Benjamin Ashraf and originally published by The New Arab.

In what became a cult classic of musicology, Simon Reynolds’s Retromania describes a Western culture intent on self-cannibalism.

Exhausted by consumerism and technological acceleration, the book claims the West has become a Zeit without a Geist; where the recurrence of older styles has replaced the possibility of innovation. Ideals are defeated by pastiche and futures are stunted by late capitalism’s urge to reminisce.

But while Reynolds can level such a charge at the Global North, can the same be said for the Global South?

“In each cassette reel and crackled vinyl lies not only forgotten Palestinian melodies but the fractured lives of its listeners”

More specifically, can the same really be said about cultural production in Palestine, where to exist is to resist? And can the very things Reynolds labels as problematic – remixing, reissuing, resampling, and reproducing past trends – instead keep the memory of and hope for a Palestinian nation alive?

This is the intriguing story of the 1980s Palestinian folk group Al Fajer, retold by the Palestinian sonic archive, research journal and record label MaJazz Project.

Out of time and place

Mo’min Swaitat, the founder of MaJazz Project, cuts a unique figure among London’s record label owners.

Surrounded by a faceless haze of ‘world music’ aficionados and diggers, Mo’min’s MaJazz Project – a Palestinian-owned label releasing Palestinian music – is a welcome departure from the saviour types that own the repress market.

We all know them. Went backpacking in [insert exotic country here] only to fall in love with the music, returning home with a limited catalogue of the classics. And whilst it’s not our place to judge their motives, it raises concerns about the co-option of imported sounds to a wider, whiter audience.

One look at MaJazz’s releases instead reveals a discography dense with anecdotal histories, sourced by a child of the country with a stake in its future. Its first album reissue, Riad and Hanan Awwad’s The Intifada 1987 proves this identity case and point.

Produced one week after the First Intifada began in 1987 – the first album released after the outbreak of the uprising – The Intifada 1987 was a family effort; utilising keyboards and synthesisers then synonymous with funk to express a DIY initiative now natural to the Palestinian cause.

Despite distributing 3,000 cassettes of the album on the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, the Israeli Army confiscated all the copies they could, with most continuing to remain in military archives today.

Had it not been for the fortuitous work of Mo’min and friends the cassette would have been lost. Mahmoud Darwish’s involvement as a co-writer on the album would have also been forgotten and with it a wondrously rhythmic example of Palestinian cross-pollination.

These instances of cross-pollination preserve the Palestinian experience post-Nakba and so inform the releases MaJazz Project puts out.

Whether field recordings of the Palestinian Black Panthers jamming in the mountains of Jenin or the label’s upcoming release – a compilation of Kuwait-based Palestinian folk group Al Fajer – MaJazz Project is not only tied to the separation of space and place but how music can provide a glimpse into shared Palestinian consciousness.

So as The New Arab sat down with MaJazz and Al Fajer, the idea that in each cassette reel and crackled vinyl lies not only forgotten Palestinian melodies but the fractured lives of its listeners seemed somewhat appropriate.

A rightful revolution

In an article essentially about the merits of old and new, it was fitting that The New Arab interviewed a 1980s folk band over Zoom.

Now in their 50s, the long-disbanded group were once the darlings of the Palestinian diaspora in Kuwait, with their regional success branching out to festival-packed performances across Europe and the Middle East. “Not bad for a bunch of amateurs,” laughed Jamil Sarraj, the group’s oud player.

Ironically, Al Fajer’s rejection of the then ‘trend’ contributed to their initial success.

At the time of the band’s peak, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a surge of accessible electronic instruments enter the Arab market.

For Al Fajer – Arabic for The Dawn – such sounds were to be avoided. Each band member cherished the soul of the oud and shebbabeh too much to be enticed by the digital wave, with Al Fajer member Dr Bashar Shammout commenting that “amid such chaotic circumstances, we wanted… and felt people needed… a calming classical influence.”

Jamil (left), Sima (centre) and Bashar (right) of Al Fajer performing at East Germany’s Festival of Political Songs, Berlin, 1989 [photo credit: Mahmoud Dabdoub]

The circumstances that Bashar alludes to were of course the First Intifada. Sparked by the Israel Army’s murder of four Palestinians in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, the Intifada shook off the shackles that bound Palestinians and sparked a revolutionary mobilisation that would last six years, the ripples of which continue to be felt.

And much like the nida’ – or appeals – of political pamphlets distributed among the streets, musicians and artists alike would galvanise the public in their own way, as Edward Said wrote in Intifada and Independence, to create “a focused will”.

Whether Sliman Mansour’s artistic interpretation of sumud, Naji Al-Ali’s stirring caricatures or Al Fajer’s calming call to endure, each had to role to play.

“When we established the band during the First Intifada there were two streams of music in Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora,” Bashar explained to The New Arab.

“On the one hand, you had the stuff authorised by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which was ultra-nationalistic and in your face about revolution and resistance.

“On the other hand, you had bands like us and Sabreen who adopted a different mindset. Our thinking was ‘how can we get our message of a confident Palestinian identity across in a subtle, implicit way?’ You don’t need to be loud to distribute your message, you can avoid the Israeli authorities and stir the audience in your own way.”

One look at Palestinian music today and Al Fajer’s vision seems somewhat prophetic. With time, Palestinian music has evolved from sounding hyper-political to more mundane reflections of daily life. With it, more organic notions of nationhood have emerged.

The legacy then of Al Fajer lies not only in their talent but in the message they carry. Sima Kanaan, Al Fajer’s lead singer agreed: “That’s why I think re-issuing our album on MaJazz is so timely. We realised early on that the Palestinian struggle for liberation was also about a global struggle for human rights.

“Our struggle will always be about the land, but the Palestinian narrative today has increasingly shifted towards rights. It’s satisfying to know that our thirty-year-old message continues to resonate.”

A series of unfortunate events

Al Fajer’s perennial messaging and music would take them all over the world, playing to festival goers in their thousands. In particular, their involvement in East Berlin’s 1989 Festival of Political Songs drew special acclaim and is remembered fondly.

“You need to remember; we weren’t professional musicians. Our success was spontaneous. Yet here we were performing in Berlin…it was remarkable really,” said Jamil. “After we performed our song Halalalaya, the 5,000-strong audience shouted ‘Zugabe’ which we figured meant encore.”

Al Fajer’s folk frees us from a modern Palestinian history tainted by Israeli aggression whilst acting as an antidote for Palestinians living under day-to-day occupation”

Bashar also chimed in with an anecdote from the East German festival: “Backstage after our performance, the popular German musician Esther Béjarano came to greet us. She was known as one of the last survivors of Auschwitz and for her involvement in the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz.

“She loved our performance so much she wanted us to sing together. We agreed but only if she sang in Arabic, so we sat there teaching her a transliteration of our lyrics. That festival and that performance was a special moment for us.”

For Palestinians today, Al Fajer epitomise a calming and confident expression of Palestinian identity [photo credit: Mahmoud Dabdoub]

However, as Palestinians are all too aware, moments of euphoria are often followed by periods of strife. “The fall of the Berlin wall changed everything. One day we were accepted as heroes, the next we were pariahs,” lamented Bashar, who now lectures on cultural heritage in Germany. “East Germany was sympathetic to our struggle and supported us [the Palestinians] with cultural and political funding. Since reunification, the policies of the German Government toward the Palestinians have become very antagonistic.”

Jamil continues. “Then Iraq invaded Kuwait. So in one year, we’d gone from playing festivals to being without a place we could call home.” The two events dealt a hammer blow to Al Fajer and the group disbanded soon after, with the band members now scattered around the world.

In reissuing Al Fajer’s work, MaJazz Project has not only given a new life to their music – dormant now for over 30 years, but to past conditions where Al Fajer’s music had been publicly celebrated.

As Bashar alluded to, Germany today treats Palestinians quite differently. Palestinian memorials and Nakba demonstrations are pre-emptively banned under the pretext of anti-Semitism, and visible symbols of Palestinian identity are routinely targeted. This has led to a consistently hostile environment for Palestinians and their allies.

Conversely, Al Fajer’s music gives us an insight into what Kuwait meant for Palestinians during the late 1980s. “It’s very important to mention that Kuwait was an oasis for the Palestinian resistance,” remarked Sima. “The heads of the PLO – including Arafat – used to live in Kuwait, and there were around 400,000 of us living there at the time. It’s important to link our music to this community, people were attached to our music because they were attached to the resistance. In other countries, Jordan for example, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Reissued and reunited

Listening to the album pre-release, it’s no surprise that Al Fajer continues to be flooded with messages. Jamil’s chords have a nostalgic feel that suspends the listener in his grasp, whilst Sima’s vocals both soothe and compel.

What Reynolds’s Retromania, therefore, failed to consider was the possibility that rather than being enslaved by the past, there are certain realities in which it sets you free. The tragedy of Palestine is one of them.

Al Fajer’s folk frees us from a modern Palestinian history tainted by Israeli aggression whilst acting as an antidote for Palestinians living under day-to-day occupation. And it is precisely this message of confident compassion that will scare the Israeli authorities the most. An amateur Palestinian group: a Professor, an HR expert, and a World Bank official has had a lasting positive impact on the national psyche.

Whilst Al Fajer indeed became a victim of their times, MaJazz has breathed new life, and optimism, into the group. “Palestinian music should be given another life,” said Mo’min. “But this time we release it on our terms. We no longer need to explain ourselves; our story is our story.”

Together, they are proof that music is an artform not primarily about social and political authority but a means by which a community can engage itself in a generous, non-coercive and attainable way. And as we’ve learnt from Al Fajer and MaJazz, it is then possible to turn victimhood into celebration. 

Benjamin Ashraf is The New Arab’s Deputy Features Editor. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies.

Follow him on Twitter: @ashrafzeneca

Cover image retrieved from MaJazz’s Soundcloud page.


4 Bangin’ Antifascist Albums For The End Of Summer

Future You by The Mommyheads

The Mommyheads are an indie-prog-pop band who were signed and sacked by a large record label in the late 90’s and who developed a pretty big cult following during that same decade. They split. They got back together. Now they are just about to release a new album, their twelfth effort, and supposedly it is quite the political piece. In any case, it is a stunningly entertaining album. I caught up with Micheal from the band and he said that this political roll they are on started two albums back:

“Our second-to-newest album, Soundtrack to the World’s End, is full of warnings about the profound sickness of industrialized society, and its destruction of the Earth. Our newest album, Future You, expands on those societal and environmental alarms, and adds political ones, by feeling into the fascist, nationalist currents creeping across our world.”

“Our new, political songs aren’t polemics that hit you over the head with one-dimensional messages. They are thoughtful explorations of contradictions in contemporary life that hope to arouse complex questions and emotions, not give easy answers.”

The Mommyheads will be touring Scandinavia and the eastern part of US this autumn so stay tuned through mommyheads.com.

Drowning In Shit by Spichard Rencer

This album has four tracks totaling a length of 2:14 minutes. This is extremely powerful grindcore. More importantly it drips empathy and anger towards the state of the world today. Check this band out if you’re into this sort of thing. If you can’t handle the music, read the lyrics and count your blessings that there are creative people out there standing up for the rest of us.

Avoc – Hassis, Flows and Schlappen by Absoluth

This album is a year old but we just had to include it when we heard the old school style, bangin’ hip hop beats with political German spoken lyrics. This band is pure joy. Blast this for your end of summer fiesta and never look back.

Pull The Plug EP by Jow Goddard (ft. Kool Keith)

“AF Trax’s message is very simple. The far right ultimately wish for the destruction of our way of life and indeed the lives of many of the people we love. The message is love. The message is solidarity. The message is No Pasaran – They shall not pass. It is a call to stand together, it is a call to stand up, it is a call to ACT. Individually we may be powerless, but together we are strong.

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!

All label profits will be donated to Hope Not Hate (www.hopenothate.org.uk) which campaigns to counter racism and fascism. ” – from the album’s Bandcamp page