Close to the Edge

by Sujatha Fernandes

  “No chamo [kid] from the barrio could afford the expensive spray cans to do this kind of graffiti. And they’d be chased out of here in a minute.” Duque had read my thoughts. “So it’s mostly the middle-class kids that do it.”

  But why would the country club permit kids—even middle-class kids—to paint its outside walls with hip hop graffiti? When I looked closer at the graffiti, I noticed that some of it was political. There were images of the Venezuelan flag and slogans urging people to sign a petition for a recall referendum that would oust Chávez from power. “With your signature you decide,” read the block letters. Those tags were signed “Primera Justicia,” one of the main opposition parties, which must have commissioned the graffiti. Large sectors of the middle and upper classes—like those who lived in La Lagunita and played golf at the country club—were opposed to Chávez and his campaign of radical redistribution. Opposition parties had participated in the short-lived coup against Chávez in 2002 and were now hoping to get rid of him through the recall referendum.

  It was a far cry from the graffiti pioneers in New York City who jacked spray cans, scaled the steel beams to elevated subway stations and train yards, and created their pieces under the cover of night. Here, kids from wealthy families were being paid to deface the walls of one of the most prestigious clubs in the city. And they were using the defiant styles and language of hip hop to defend their enclaves of privilege.

  From the east of the city we made our way over to the west, to the parish 23 de Enero where Duque lived. El Veintitres, as it was known, was a strong contrast to the ostentatious wealth of La Lagunita. The parish consisted mainly of high-rise projects, constructed by the dictator Marcos Pérez Jimenez in the 1950s for rural migrant workers coming into the city. We passed one entrance at Avenida Sucre, where there was a mural of the Argentine rebel Che Guevara next to a masked guerrilla with the message “Welcome to 23 de Enero.” Duque pointed out the bullet marks in the facades of several buildings, a reminder of the tragic days following the 1989 Caracazo riots when barrio folk rose up against increasing costs of transportation fares and the army was deployed to the streets of the capital to quell the disturbances.

  We took another entrance to the parish by the metro stop Agua Salud, which let out at a busy avenue. Street vendors sold newspapers and fresh fruits, hawked trinkets, and offered telephone services. Buses and cars choked the busy street and collected waiting lines of passengers, headed for the sector called Monte Piedad.

  As Duque drove up the road to Monte Piedad, a housing project of fifteen-story buildings set against hills and bulbous clouds came into view. Laundry hung from the windows, fluttering in the breeze. The road wound up toward the top of the hill as we approached Monte Piedad Arriba. Here, a cultural organization, the Coordinadora Cultural Simón Bolívar, had its headquarters in an abandoned building. Facing the building was a wall that bore a series of fierce images of indigenous chiefs. There were also murals of young men from the barrio who were killed in combat with the national guard. The murals of fallen comrades, and bullet holes in the facades of the buildings, gave the sense of being in a war zone.

  Duque explained that El Veintitres had been a focal point for the guerrilla movement that emerged during the 1960s, when the dictatorship ended and a highly constrained democracy was put in place. Inspired by the Cuban revolution, leftists and revolutionaries in the barrios began to form guerrilla units. Duque grew up in the midst of this developing urban insurgency. As a kid, he would see the urban-guerrilla snipers on the rooftops of the project buildings and would join in by throwing stones at the cops.

  By the time Duque was a teenager, the combat between urban guerrillas and the security forces had been replaced by conflict between gang members and the police. As crack circulated in the poorer neighborhoods in large quantities during the 1980s, several former guerrillas left behind militant politics and entered the drug trade. Leftist activists with experience in expropriating territory, using arms, and planning military operations began to use these techniques to their own benefit, setting up small drug cartels in the barrios and staking claim to their territories.

  A new generation of urban youth was drawn into the drug trade at a time when other options, such as manual labor and education, were increasingly unavailable. Young barrio males were attracted by the rebellious and cool image of the malandro —an archetypal figure who was an outlaw or gangster. Venezuelan rappers like Guerrilla Seca reworked the folk symbol of the malandro just as American gangsta rappers drew on the vernacular figure of the “badman,” as a representation of anti-assimilation, black insurgency, and stylized violence.6 But the lifestyle of the malandro was also a death sentence, condemning young men to violent futures on the streets.7 During the 1990s the state formed paramilitary units trained for urban combat. In 1994 they created urban squads known as the Angeles Guardianes (Guardian Angels), based on civil security forces that formed at the end of the 1970s in the US. The phrase “Plomo Contra el Hampa,” or War Against Delinquency, became part of every politician’s repertoire and a justification for violent death and incarceration at the hands of the state. There were numerous parallels between histories of law enforcement in North and South America and the cultural tropes that developed in response. There was a reason why barrio youth in Caracas were drawn to American gangsta rap, and it was not just the rhythms. The bleakness and despondency of the music echoed the deteriorated social fabric of their lives.

  As the white middle and upper classes in La Lagunita and Altamira barricaded themselves within their gated fortresses, calling for more severe penalties against delinquency, rappers taunted them with songs like Guerrilla Seca’s “Llegó el hampa” (The delinquents have arrived). The track begins with an upbeat all-female chorus announcing, “Murderers, murderers, the murderers have arrived,” followed by a fast-paced rap: “Die! Don’t mess with us because we are guerrillas.” The rappers play on white fears of violent blacks’ descending from the dreaded cerros, or hillside shanties: “It makes you nervous when you see this black coming down from the cerros shooting,” and “You know that I am your nightmare.” The song ends with the chorus “Nobody escapes from Guerrilla Seca. Careful, the delinquents have arrived!”

  Gangsta rappers in Venezuela clearly had some things to say. But unlike the middle-class kids who were doing graffiti, poor kids from the barrio didn’t have resources. Where did they get the money to buy the samplers to make beats? How did they have the connections to distribute their CDs?

  Subterránea Records—Underground Records in English— was not how you would imagine the home of an underground record label in a poor country. Juan Carlos Echeandia, the founder of the label, was not how you would imagine the founder of Venezuela’s most popular underground hip hop label. The offices of Subterránea Records were in a tower complex in Altamira. Duque and I entered the cool, air-conditioned offices and found art deco chairs and tables, panoramic views of the city, and a professional staff. Echeandia, a young, clean-cut, white Venezuelan in an Ecko shirt, came over to introduce himself. While we talked, his attention was constantly being diverted by phone calls and requests from the staff.

  “I am a publicist,” Juan Carlos explained to us. “This is my profession. But I was bored with being a publicist, producing commercials for television, always doing the same thing. I knew this guy called Bostas Brain, one of the members of the first hip hop group in Venezuela, La Corte. I told him that I had the urge to do something personal, artistic. It could be a documentary. Bostas told me, ‘Do it on hip hop.’ He told me about a place here in Caracas where all the rappers, gangstas, graffiteros, and DJs meet. It’s called the Paseo los Próceres—a park that’s a monument to all the heroes of independence. So I went. I liked it. In truth, I liked it because I was attracted to the ‘look’ of the rappers, their baggy pants, their bandannas.”

  Juan Carlos continued, “So I started out by investigating the culture, and then I made a documentary, Venezuela subterranea: cuatro elementos, una m
úsica (Underground Venezuela: Four elements, one music). That was where I joined with DJ Trece, the protagonist of the documentary. After that I was inclined to work with Trece, and we produced the disc Venezuela subterránea. We produced the disc in a bathroom that we converted into a studio—that was where we recorded the voices. The bedroom was our base of operations for the sound engineer. Something completely under.

  “The disc went to the streets and it was a huge success. It had a national impact; people started listening to it in many cities of the interior. Here there is a strong market in piracy, which is clearly really hard for those of us who have the initiative to enter into this market. But at the same time it’s given us a lot of opportunities. Piracy multiplies your work; it makes the groups known. When we go to cities like Maracaibo, Valencia, Barqui-simeto, people know our songs and you’d never guess that they would. After the success of Venezuela subterránea, I left my work as a publicist and I dedicated myself to producing CDs and managing rap groups. I started up Subterranea Records, and we produced two more discs, La realidad mas real, by Guerrilla Seca and Papidandeando, by Vagos y Maleantes, the two groups that were featured on Venezuela subterranea”.

  He went on: “It also so happened that the entry of the movement of hip hop here in Venezuela coincided with a range of political changes. In some ways the popular masses begin to have voice and vote. Within these changes the poor majority begin to have much more importance in political and social life. And this is also what happens vis-à-vis the discs. That is, the marginalized now have opportunities to express themselves via the music. The rappers identify their own narratives of poverty, violence, and social difference with the political discourse of President Chávez.”

  Juan Carlos confirmed what I had expected to find in Venezuela: that gangsta rap here—much like the “classic gangsta” of the West Coast in the States—had a political message, and gangsta rappers were part of the movement spurred on by Chávez.8 So what if that message was being brought by white publicists in Altamira? Wasn’t that how things had always worked for black artists?

  “In the US there is a distinction between commercial and underground rap,” Juan Carlos added. “Rap has become a decadent movement. It was born from a very noble spirit and now prostitutes itself as a money-making machine, independent of talent. But in Venezuela we can’t talk in the same terms. If the mass media and sales of discs determine whether any group is considered underground or commercial, then my groups have become commercial. But I think that a group such as Guerrilla Seca is more underground than any other in the sense of content. If you talk about realities that are not known by the mass public via music, I think that this is respecting the message of hip hop, although commercial distribution is helping to bring that message.” And with that he was whisked away by his secretary, a young woman with manicured nails who wore a tailored suit.

  Venezuelan rappers from the barrio were reliant on middle-class publicists and producers to produce their music and to help them access the market. Drug money was too erratic to finance the expenses of album production. There were few community-outreach arts programs. And because Caracas was not on the tourist circuit, there were no foreigners to bring samplers and other equipment. But perhaps another reason why gangsta rappers turned to these middle-class professionals was because they wanted to make money. The rappers saw the commercial potential of exploiting their ghetto realities for profit, and they ran with it.

  In person Pedro Pérez, aka Budu, of Vagos y Maleantes was a sweet, brown-skinned, round-faced young man. Nothing like his album cover image of a traditional gangster packing a 9mm handgun. Carlos Madera was a tall, lean guy with a thin moustache. Madera’s stage name, El Nigga, was borrowed from American gangsta rap vernacular, where the term has been pervasive and often controversial. Robin Kelley says that gangsta rappers’ spelling of the word as nigga, rather than the the derogatory nigger, points to a new collective identity shaped by class, police repression, and poverty.9 That might suggest why it resonated with barrio youth. Budu and El Nigga had grown up in Calle Carabobo of the barrio San Jose de Cotiza, known ominously as la boca del lobo, or the mouth of the wolf. They listened to Ice-T, Afrika Bambaataa, Run-DMC, and Snoop Dogg, and while they enjoyed the music and the rhythms, they didn’t understand any of the words. The lyrical content of rap music traveled to them via Puerto Rico, and rappers such as Vico C, who rapped in Spanish. Vagos y Maleantes was also heavily influenced by salsa brava, a bass-heavy, jazz-inspired form of salsa, popularized by groups in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Hector Lavoe, Eddie Palmieri, and the Fania All Stars.

  Budu and Nigga of Vagos y Maleantes. Cotiza, Caracas, 2003

  Budu and Nigga of Vagos y Maleantes. Cotiza, Caracas, 2003

  Budu first became involved in hip hop through b-boy culture, which arrived in Venezuela in the early ‘80s. He belonged to a crew and would spend all his time at b-boy battles in the towers of Parque Central and in Sabana Grande. The next phase to come along was hip hop videos and rap. “The first group that I bought in vinyl was Run-DMC,” said Budu. “They were the first ones to impact me with their song ‘Walk This Way,’ with Aerosmith.” As Budu was talking, I thought back to my own first music cassette in Australia—Hits of Summer 87—and how the same Run-DMC song had grabbed my attention as a teenager.

  “The moment arrived where I thought that hip hop culture would be implanted here in Venezuela. Then it disappeared in the nineties, I don’t know what happened,” explained Budu. “But hip hop culture always remained with me,” he continued. “I would buy the discs, dance in my house, and I always had the faith that this movement would return. I continued in the streets, in my own thing, but I always listened to hip hop music, as well as salsa, jazz, and funk. El Nigga was a poet. His father was in the mafia, and I remember there’d be gatherings of those mafia types. They called El Nigga to do his poetry for his father’s friends, all of them drunk. One day we saw these panas [friends] from the group El Corte, and we liked the way the audience moved, the presence of the rapper, the music, and we realized that we liked it. He and I began to write. We began to make music and we began to record.

  “One day we got a call from DJ Trece. He invited us to his studio to record a song. We went, and I think we were the first group here in Venezuela to do gangsta rap—talking about the doctrine of the streets, something that had a strong impact in the Caracas underground and in all of Venezuela. The song had an impact. We thought we’d be able to record a disc, but, no, it was all for nothing. The disc didn’t come out. Trece fought with his manager. The group dissolved, and the disc was not produced. So we went back to the bottom, to the streets again.

  “We were thinking, there’s no one who’ll support us, nobody can pay for a studio for us. Well, let’s sell drugs to pay for our own production. So we took turns standing on the street corner below. They’d say, ‘Hey, deliver this for me,’ and so on. And in this way we recorded six songs, paying for them ourselves, until the day that Juan Carlos Echeandia came with his proposal of a documentary, Venezuela subterráanea. He must have been sent by God. We were practically ready to go into jail, because the police would see me, recognize me, and they’d say, ‘We’re going to take you, we’re tired of this.’ They had shut down my bodega. I had a business and they shut me down.”

  Vagos y Maleantes, as Budu and Nigga called themselves, was a play on a 1956 law known as Ley sobre vagos y maleantes (Law for vagrants and criminals). The law was devised during the military regime of Pérez Jiménez in order to imprison dissidents and later those considered undesirables by the authorities. But in reality Budu and Nigga didn’t want the life of vagrants and criminals. They wanted the stability of work and family that was always out of reach. “In the barrios there’s a lot of violence, every day more violence,” said Budu. “But what we want is to end delinquency. What we want is more sources of work. What we want is for our children to have an education.”

  After hearing DJ Trece mentioned several times, I was curio
us to meet him. I barraged Duque with questions. What was Trece’s background? How did he get started? Where did he get the equipment to produce beats? Duque just shrugged his shoulders in response.

  Juan Carlos arranged for Duque and me to appear on DJ Trece’s weekly hip hop radio show. We took the elevator up to the tenth floor of the Ateneo de Caracas, an arts center close to downtown. The doors opened onto a small lobby where some rappers were sitting on a couch. Outside speakers carried the perky voice of the R&B singer Kelis: “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard / And their life, it’s better than yours. Damn right, it’s better than yours.”

  We could see DJ Trece speaking into a microphone in a studio inside. He was a tall white guy with longish brown hair. He lined up another song, and then his assistant ushered us in. Trece rose, shook hands with us, and spoke in English, “Hey, yo, what’s up?” Duque rolled his eyes at me; he didn’t understand any English.

  As we settled into the seats, Trece continued addressing us in English. It seemed that Trece was trying to upstage Duque in front of the foreigner, show him to be just another guy from the barrio, while Trece flaunted his international credentials. I tried to steer the conversation back to Spanish, so that Duque wouldn’t feel left out. But Trece was determined to speak in English.

  Trece proudly told me that he was born in New York, while his mother was doing a PhD at New York University, and he grew up in Greenwich Village. He studied visual arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, later transferring to the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduating from college, he became involved in hip hop culture and moved to Mexico to become a DJ. In Mexico he learned how to make beats, then returned to Venezuela to become a producer. He began working with Guerrilla Seca and Vagos y Maleantes. “These guys coming from the streets were malandros,” he said. “They wanted to be an artist like me, but they grew up in a different environment that wasn’t so artistic.”