Justice & Revolution with Immortal Technique - Felipe Coronel

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Felipe Coronel - Immortal Technique | Photo 02

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Talkin’ Justice and Revolution with Immortal Technique a.k.a. Felipe Coronel

KK: When did you move to Harlem?

Coronel: I was three years old and my father moved here pretty much because the economy collapsed in Lima, Peru. In that particular suburb and there was a violent exchange between the Maoist guerillas and not just the military but factions of the paramilitary squads by the CIA. They were entrenched in a very vicious insurgency and consequently a counter insurgency that took the lives of a lot of innocent people. Crushed the faith in the government and developed into an excuse to bring in a dictatorship. I think that made my father want to get the hell out and we began the process of moving half the family.

KK: Why do you think the CIA was involved with the politics of Peru?

Coronel: Because it was a strategic position for them to be in. Ecuador sometimes when they lean to the left they want to make Columbia move to the right, it’s a balance of power down there. Unfortunately unless people do not fall into the same traps of gimmicks about believing whatever propaganda is given to them, then it is just going to continue.

KK: Do you mean left as in liberal?

Coronel: In South America it is not so much in the factions of liberal or conservative, it is just communist and socialist and capitalist.

KK: Would you consider yourself a socialist?

Coronel: I think there is a certain level of socialism that humanity is incapable of existing without. In terms of believing the actual doctrine of Marx, I have several ideological issues with hat. In other words I am not completely married to it. In terms of socialism, you have no further to look then the post office or the police department and as much as this country talks about hating communism, if you are a member in the military you are living in just about as close to a socialist structure as you can possibly be in. Your medical bills are paid for by the government, your housing, your food- all the government, then you get that small stipend.

KK: So all these ideas and beliefs you have came from the violence you dealt with in Peru?

Coronel: No. When I arrived here in America, there was plenty of violence in Harlem in the eighties.

KK: Because of the crack epidemic?

Coronel: Crack epidemic, gang violence. Hip Hop wasn’t just rap, it was a culture. It wasn’t just about rhyming, I was also writing graffiti and some of my friends were beatboys. Graffiti wasn’t just about tagging your name up, it was about respect so if somebody crossed you out, that meant you all had some drama. I definitely got into my fair share of that.

KK: You spent your 21st birthday in prison, may I ask why?

Coronel: I had multiple assault charges. I had a good head on my shoulders but I had no direction. What good is an education with no direction? So I had some idea that this world was corrupted and there are things I should do to make it better but I had no direction at the time. So I was just lashing out at whatever was in the way.

KK: Where did you find that direction?

Coronel: When I got out of prison I was faced with the economic reality of having to support my family, I was looking for a job and I took some of the rhymes I wrote while I was locked and I said to myself, I gotta do some sht with this. So I started putting them together and making songs and eventually I had an albums worth of material. Everybody in the underground is putting out vinyl singles and 12 inches and I thought I got a whole album, why don’t I put this out? So I called it Revolutionary Volume 1 because there will be another one after this. That was 2001.

KK: You haven’t signed to any label but you have had several opportunities.

Coronel: I didn’t sign with them because of the amount of control they wanted to influence over what I had. Some of them just offered me terms economically that I just found weren’t conducive to my best interest. I had a friend that had a very small record label with a very limited release. It was called Viper records, so I came on and I started as Vice president then I became president.

KK: You cited Fred Hampton as one of your influences. Hampton was in the Black Panthers and he was killed as part of the COINTELPRO (1) program that the CIA ran back in the sixties. I was wondering if you think something like COINTELPRO exists today?

Coronel: I think in some way shape or form. There is no excuse for COINTELPRO. In the past the excuse was they didn’t want black leaders to join with left wing factions around the world and develop some sort of global threat to American interests. And now I think it is that they don’t want people to become influenced by some need to fight against what are interests are on the war on terrorism.

KK: Do you get death threats?

Coronel: Sure.

KK: By who?

Coronel: They don’t usually sign them.

KK: Have you ever played a show where somebody is outright angry at what you say?

Coronel: There has been a couple of times where people have tried to approach me but I think the word got around that you might really get fcked up doing something like that. So now if we have some sort of ideological differences we will just address that and I will discuss that with them. If they come to me respectfully I am willing to commence with them about lots of stuff.

KK: Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino was cited as one of your influences.

Coronel: He was a Central American revolutionary that was very influential in revolutionary politics. He didn’t start out with left wing minded structured Marxism but he was just opposed to American imperialism. He thought that he would be able to defeat the military that was sponsored by the US at the time, through guerilla warfare. He was very successful at the time at causing a lot of damage and a prolonged struggle. Eventually they called him in for a compromise where they promised him a lot of the things that he wanted and when he got there they machine-gunned him to death.

KK: In his tactics didn’t he threaten families of people he was against?

Coronel: In revolution I think there is something we should never lose sight of and that is that revolution is never perfect. You can claim that he did that, and someone can just throw that statement out there but unless we know somebody that was there and even if we do and they say that he did, we would have to investigate their local politics, maybe there biased about it. Every time I read something about Israel and Palestine, I always want to know who the writer is. I want to know where there family is from so I can understand there political bias.

In terms of Sandino, his issue was not just the threatening of people because I think that was something he was obviously reacting to. He was reacting to them threatening peasants so he felt him and his guerilla force needed to fight not just the military but intimidate them in any shape way or form. He probably did intimidate their families.

KK: You are a revolutionary?

Coronel: That’s what I try to be brother.

KK: What particular revolution did you have in mind? What do you think needs to be changed?

Coronel: I think in terms of how it begins…How it begins should be in the mind of course. We need to change the way we think, we need to change the way we look at history, ourselves, our legacy, our conquest, slavery, inequality and class in general.

KK: So you want equality?

Coronel: It’s not just a question of equality or equal representation. It is a question of fulfilling some old debts.

KK: Do you think that people that came from slaves should be given reparations?

Coronel: Yah, I do believe in reparations. I don’t believe in just handing out blank checks, or not having people accept personal responsibility and I know that it is a very racially divisive issue. There are white Europeans that say ‘I didn’t oppress anybody, why should money be taken out of my taxes to give to other people?’. I always laugh because I think if you motherfckers had any idea what your tax money went to, you’d probably shoot yourself in the head.

I think we have to reexamine a lot of things about ourselves in terms of the historical perspective that we are placed in. The fact that we can’t even acknowledge some things in our history without having some national issue played out in the media. The Reverend Wright for example with Obama said that America was funded on the back of genocide and slavery. I mean, I’m sorry if that makes people uncomfortable but that’s exactly what it was funded on. I think that not just Indians and blacks but we have to maintain a clear perspective and understand that a lot of white people that came to this country were sold into indentured servitude so they could afford the ticket over here…and during that indentured servitude sometimes they were bred along with black people to make what they call a mulatto. Mulatto (2) in Latin is a mule, the combination of a horse and a donkey, the horse being the elegant creature that is treated better then a person in Europe and the donkey symbolizes the African slave that is meant to just work and die because that is what a donkey does. The mule is very impotent, incapable of ever being able to produce a child, so here comes this idea that nothing good could ever come from mixing races and it is a theme that is still being played out in classical Hollywood – the tragic Mulatto. That is a very racist term but nobody understands the connotations to it.

It’s like saying the coast is clear. What that phrase really symbolizes is during the Reconquista, Spain was uniting Aragon and Castile to overthrow the Moors who had occupied Spain for over a hundred years. What they did was push them to the brink to Grenada where the last Moor stronghold was. Moors being black Muslims. Once they removed them they said, ‘there is no more niggers on the coast, the coast is clear’. Clear in Spanish being clara. What they meant was the coast is white, there is no more blacks and all the black people that were left behind were enslaved, the Jews were expelled or forced to conversion.

KK: Where did you learn all this?

Coronel: Just got to read brother.

KK: Mumia Abdul Jamal. I understand he was accused of killing a white cop in Philadelphia and he is on death row right now and you think he should be free.

Coronel: I think a lot of the evidence was tainted. Witness tampering. There is a lot of racism involved in the case that is never talked about in the media. And of course White conservative people in that area are very pro-police officer. So even if you have a video of somebody in that area getting the sht kicked out of them by a cop, they always have some sort of excuse. Its never just that ‘hey this person is under a lot of stress and they fcked somebody up when they shouldn’t have.

KK: So you think that’s what happened?

Coronel: I am not sure what happened but I guarantee you that what they said happened didn’t happen.

KK: Well, the cop that died was pulling over Mumia’s brother at the time, right?

Coronel: I think what eventually happened is that the cop and his brother were caught in a scuffle. There were several witnesses there and the majority of those witnesses have come back and said that they were forced to say something different. It is continuously a theme that turns itself over and over in the so-called justice system that we have some grasp of what justice should be and yet it always escapes us with Sean Bell in New York and Mumia in Philadelphia.

KK: You have a new album?

Coronel: Yes it just came out and its called Third World. Check it out at myspace.com/immortatechnique.

Interview and photos by Kent Kessinger

More photos at www.kentkessinger.com