Tag Archives: protest

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.”

Rappers Around The World Are Getting Jailed, Facing Legal Consequences (Videos)

According to our colleagues at Freemuse, in the 3.5 years the organisation has been monitoring authority abuse on rappers around the world, they have found at least 60 international rappers to have been detained, harassed, jailed and now facing legal consequences.

Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi is one of these people. Freemuse accounts that he was detained and later released on bail, but now facing charges for “spreading propaganda against the [Iranian] state. In his song Normal Life he addresses worker’s strikes, corruption and imprisonments in his country.

Nokrolik is a 22 year old rapper from Belarus and another victim of authoritarian oppression against artists. Recently he was sentenced to spend a year in jail for questioning the president’s intelligence in one of his new songs. This appearantly scared the little president man very much. Enough so that when Nokrolik will have finished his sentence he will be deported out of Belarus.

Please share the music of these artists and help spread their word. Find out more about Freemuse’s campaign to raise awareness about oppressed rappers via their tRAPped campaign

Cover photo credits: Евгений Петров. Фото: Гомельская весна

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The History Of Protest Songs In Tunisia And Their Link To Popular Culture

By Alessia Carnevale

Music genres such as rap have become the primary artistic means for expressing the discontent and aspirations of a new generation of activists in Tunisia. But the heritage of protest songs from decades before is still held in the collective memory of young leftists.

From the mid-1970s and throughout the 1980s, during the regime of Habib Bourguiba, the protest song in Tunisia developed as a countercultural music scene. This is a period characterised by economic instability and waves of protest and political contestation.

The protest song was the product of the cultural work of Tunisian leftist parties and organisations, which were particularly active in the student movement and influential among grassroot unionists.

Why was such a popular art form important for the cultural work of the Tunisian left? In my research I argue that leftist activists found in popular culture – and in songs in particular – a powerful tool. It could raise awareness among young people, galvanise activists and spread socialist revolutionary ideas. These songs become a link in the longer chain of resistant cultural practices in the country.

Art and politics

In Tunisia, the protest song is called al-ughniya al-multazima in Arabic, or chanson engagée in French. Both literally mean “committed song” and put an emphasis on the political and social aim of this genre. Art, in this case music and poetry, was a vehicle to convey a message.

In the 1970s and 1980s protest song groups formed and artists were increasingly visible. Among the pioneers of this genre there were the songwriter Hédi Guella and the group Imazighen. They performed on university campuses and at unionist venues, animating political gatherings and events. They exhibited in cultural centres and some participated in important cultural festivals. Their songs were rarely broadcast on TV or radio, but tape recordings circulated widely among activists and students.

The songs were mostly typical of the Arabic musical tradition, created on instruments such as the oud, the nay and the darbuka.

Their political and cultural framework distinguishes these songs from previous popular chants of protest (for example against colonialism) as well as from patriotic songs (praising the nationalist regime).

A new popular culture

The 1970s and 1980s protest songs were expression of a counterculture that was at odds with the ideology propagated by the regime of Bourguiba, who died in 1987.

Bourguiba had come to power in 1956 as the leader of the nationalist movement against French colonialism. Educated, middle-class and rather Western-oriented, he promoted a modernist and reformist ideology. In the last two decades of his regime, he was losing consensus among the population at large and among the new cultural and intellectual elite.

The Tunisian radical left was increasingly influenced by Maoism and Arab Nationalism. They recognised that a connection with the working class would be impossible without an appreciation of the Arab-Muslim identity of the Tunisian people.

The left engaged in cultural work for the creation of a new national-popular culture. This needed to be rooted in the people’s culture but also be an expression of a progressive and socialist ideology. Marxist theorists such as Antonio Gramsci had become influential. His ideas on cultural work, hegemony (the dominance of one group over another) and common sense had penetrated the Arab intellectual world.

Songs were one of the most efficient tools for implementing this project. They were easy to propagate with the new and cheap technology of audio cassette. Concerts were organised on a small budget, attracting hundreds of people.

The oasis and the mine

Among the many interpreters of the protest song in Tunisia, two popular singing groups stand out.

Al-Bahth al-Musiqi (The Musical Research Group) hailed from the southern Mediterranean city of Gabes, which lies beside an oasis and has, since the 1970s, hosted a massive chemical industry complex. Awlad al-Manajim (The Children of the Mines) were from Moulares, a village near Gafsa, situated in a phosphate mining basin.

Both groups, still active in Tunisia today, were born from places where industrialisation and the exploitation of natural resources deeply transformed the once rural environment. This industry would ultimately impoverish and harm the resident population.

The members of al-Bahth al-Musiqi were university students active in the student movement. The members of Awlad al-Manajim were workers who supported the workers’ struggles in their hometown.

Both groups were cherished by leftist activists and unionists for their performances and for the strong revolutionary message of their songs.

Both groups created a popular yet revolutionary cultural product. To do so they drew from modern Arabic poetry, for example singing poems by Mahmoud Darwish supporting the Palestinian people. But in particular they drew on themes and styles typical of Tunisian folklore and vernacular poetry. They responded in an original manner to the need to create a new, popular, socialist culture for the masses.

They took inspiration from other Arab experiences. Composer and singer Marcel Khalife (Lebanon), experimental musical group Nass el-Ghiwane (Morocco) and especially the duo of musician Sheikh Imam and vernacular poet Ahmed Fouad Negm (Egypt). This musical production represented a new, revolutionary and genuinely popular culture.

Hence, al-Bahth al-Musiqi produced songs like Hela Hela Ya Matar (Come Down O Rain), Nekhlat Wad el-Bey (The Palm Tree of Wad El Bey) or Bsisa (a traditional southern dish). These juxtapose rural imagery with national symbolism and revolutionary slogans.

Similarly, Awlad al-Manajim’s repertoire includes local songs about the harshness of life in the mining region, like Ya Damus (The Tunnel), and songs calling for workers’ solidarity and Arab unity against imperialism, like Nashid el-Sha’b (The Hymn of the People).

A heritage of resistance

The popular protest song scene in Tunisia declined with the rise of the Ben Ali dictatorship in the 1990s. But it never disappeared. After the 2011 revolution forced Ben Ali from power, some of the old singing groups reunited and claimed their space in the newly democratised cultural scene.

In Tunisia today, protest music takes many forms, from rap to electro. However, the old protest songs are still chanted at political gatherings, commemorations and festivals.

Despite being scarcely documented and studied, the Tunisian protest song of the 1970s and 1980s is an integral part of a resistant collective memory. It is loaded with emotional and political meaning for a generation of political activists and unionists.

The study of this experience may offer a new perspective on Tunisia’s cultural and political life under authoritarianism. It sheds light on the continuing and constant presence of dissent and revolutionary culture in the country – one that paved the way for the events that, in 2011, eventually overthrew dictatorship.

Alessia Carnevale, PhD candidate, Sapienza University of Rome

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.