1 Rebeca Eunice Vargas Tamayac “Hip-hop from the perspective of Cultural Studies” Stories don’t have happy endings here in the maws of these gray cities where gray murals hide the sad gray lives of unhappy men and women for whom justice never arrives because it is mute and deaf, as well as blind, refusing to see everything that I see. And I see oppression, repression, exclusion - I see marginalization and exploitation I see some in grief and others picking through waste Because that is the base of this fucking system Fragment of “Lo que veo” (What I See), song from Bacteria Soundsystem Crew, 2010 Over the last ten years, hip-hop has become a reference for thousands of youth to identify, speak for, and organize themselves. In the case of Guatemala and of Latin American countries, hip-hop finds its base in the so-called marginal areas of the city, made up of precarious settlements, sometimes normalized, but generally materially and symbolically differentiated from the dominant culture. In order to understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to analyze it from different points of view. The objective of the essay is to address hip-hop in Guatemala City as an object of study from the perspective of Cultural Studies. I start from a concept of urban, youth and popular cultures in order to understand hip-hop as a contemporaneous phenomenon of cities around the world and end with a proposal on how to make a multidisciplinary analysis of cultural creations of those who identify or can be identified within this group. Approaching the topic I begin by considering hip-hop as a subculture. Subculture is understood as a: “cultural minority that occupies a subaltern position in relation to the dominant culture or to a parental culture. Youth cultures are subcultures in both senses.” (Feixa, 1999: 271). From this perspective, hip-hop is a subculture. However, it is not my objective to see hip-hop as a sub-product of life in the city, and to relegate it to secondary happening, based on a central dominant culture. Although I understand that the development of hip-hop takes place thanks to the condition of subalternity, when I refer to hip-hop, I do so as a culture1. 2 To approach the study of hip-hop, I propose to use four perspectives: as urban culture, as youth culture, as popular culture, and from the relationship of hip-hop with industrial culture. I will finish by detailing my proposals as related to hip-hop in Guatemala. Hip-hop as urban culture Since their emergence, cities have been organized around the social differences of the groups that make them up. The fully urbanized part of the city is occupied by middle and upper classes. While the middle and upper layers are located in the areas of greater urbanization, the less favored social and economic layers are relegated to the marginal areas of the city. In Guatemala City these are situated, for the most part, ...

1. 1
Rebeca Eunice Vargas Tamayac
“Hip-hop from the perspective of Cultural Studies”
Stories don’t have happy endings
here in the maws of these gray cities
where gray murals hide the sad
gray lives of unhappy men and women
for whom justice never arrives because it is mute and deaf,
as well as blind, refusing to see everything that I see.
And I see oppression, repression, exclusion - I see
marginalization and exploitation
I see some in grief and others picking through waste
Because that is the base of this fucking system
Fragment of “Lo que veo” (What I See), song from Bacteria
Soundsystem Crew, 2010
Over the last ten years, hip-hop has become a reference for
thousands of youth to identify, speak
for, and organize themselves. In the case of Guatemala and of
Latin American countries, hip-hop
finds its base in the so-called marginal areas of the city, made
up of precarious settlements,

2. sometimes normalized, but generally materially and
symbolically differentiated from the
dominant culture.
In order to understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to
analyze it from different points of
view. The objective of the essay is to address hip-hop in
Guatemala City as an object of study
from the perspective of Cultural Studies. I start from a concept
of urban, youth and popular
cultures in order to understand hip-hop as a contemporaneous
phenomenon of cities around the
world and end with a proposal on how to make a
multidisciplinary analysis of cultural creations
of those who identify or can be identified within this group.
Approaching the topic
I begin by considering hip-hop as a subculture. Subculture is
understood as a: “cultural minority
that occupies a subaltern position in relation to the dominant
culture or to a parental culture.
Youth cultures are subcultures in both senses.” (Feixa, 1999:
271).
From this perspective, hip-hop is a subculture. However, it is
not my objective to see hip-hop as
a sub-product of life in the city, and to relegate it to secondary
happening, based on a central
dominant culture. Although I understand that the development
of hip-hop takes place thanks to
the condition of subalternity, when I refer to hip-hop, I do so as
a culture1.

3. 2
To approach the study of hip-hop, I propose to use four
perspectives: as urban culture, as youth
culture, as popular culture, and from the relationship of hip-hop
with industrial culture. I will
finish by detailing my proposals as related to hip-hop in
Guatemala.
Hip-hop as urban culture
Since their emergence, cities have been organized around the
social differences of the groups
that make them up. The fully urbanized part of the city is
occupied by middle and upper classes.
While the middle and upper layers are located in the areas of
greater urbanization, the less
favored social and economic layers are relegated to the marginal
areas of the city. In Guatemala
City these are situated, for the most part, in the ravines and
slopes of the Asunción Valley. With
its particular geography, Guatemala City is a vertically
organized city, which an X-ray of the social
division of wealth would demonstrate.
As I have already mentioned, these marginal urban zones create
the conditions from which youth
identify with hip-hop culture, due to their marginal origin and
countercultural expressions. In
the material sense, poverty is evident in homes at constant risk:
irregular electrical and water
distribution, very poor health conditions, and difficult physical
access. Here, education and
health are forgotten. Vertical social mobility is but an illusion
that creates few prospects for
young people’s futures. In these settlements, people live in

4. extreme poverty, surviving with the
little that the almighty marketplace leaves to the informal
economy.
1Culture here means a homogeneous nucleus of coherent
beliefs, products or social behaviors
that belong to a group, community or nation where homogeneity
and coherence are emphasized
(Garcia Canclini in Castaño, 2007: 214).
The dominant culture often stigmatizes youth from the
settlements and blames them for
violence. Although it is true that extortion, organized violence,
and youth gangs tied to drug
trafficking operate in marginalized zones, prejudice contributes
to the continued cycle in which
poverty justifies violence, and vice versa. It is dangerous to
make generalizations, because the
generalization of these prejudices has been the main way that
marginalized youth have been
excluded from jobs and educational opportunities.
What social and cultural effects do these lived conditions have
for the inhabitants of marginalized
zones? Above all, at issue here is this: how are young people
responding culturally when faced
with marginalization?
Clearly, forming gangs is not the only response undertaken by
marginalized youth. Exclusion can
lead youth to seek out other means of approval, as a means of
assimilating dominant
conservative values. This is the case for some youth who form
young families, or who take refuge
in fundamentalist religiosity. Taking refuge in conservative

5. institutions such as the family and the
3
church can operate as parallel alternatives to gangs. These seem
like “controlled” responses, in
the sense that they are not only an effect of structural economic
conditions, but they are also the
images that have been created of the poor, and of the limited
possibilities that are imposed on
them by the dominant culture.
Without a doubt, non-controlled responses also exist. Hip-hop
culture is one of them. Breaking
with its condition of subalternity, youth who identify
themselves with hip-hop show their social
discontent and annoyance through cultural practices that reveal
the contradictions of our
society. This not only happens in the case of Guatemala City,
but in all of Latin America. Hip-hop
is a voice that denounces and opposes dominant economic and
cultural systems.
To analyze this point, we must consider the way in which the
conditions of vulnerability and
stigmatization subjectively shape the identities of young people
in marginalized urban areas. This
challenge goes far beyond quantitatively measuring or
describing poverty.
The frailty that exists in Latin America, in terms of hegemonic
national identities, can be explained
in part in this way. What identity can young people really
acquire in a society that punishes them

6. with indifference and exclusion, and a State that denies their
existence? The fault lies in that the
term marginality should not connote a minority population. In
many Latin American cities,
poverty is the norm and not the exception. In the absence of a
sense of national identity, the
identity of young people in conditions of marginality moves
towards those who they see as their
equals in other cities. Wanting a national identity, they identify
the way they express their
discontent over the conditions in which they have had to live.
Here is a connection with the
following perspective of study of hip-hop.
“The identities of urban youth imply a formal or informal
organizational structure, which tie
group values and ethics, codes of conduct, ways of dressing,
and of communicating (visible signs
of identification and differentiation)”. (Piña Narváez, 2007:
169)
Hip-hop as youth culture
Sociology has used the term “urban tribes” to explain the
multiplicity of identities that young city
people have adopted, and have thus given this name to youth
cultures. The simile of “tribal” is
used as a metaphor to give an account of the different and
multiple groupings appearing in
globalized cities and streets, with a very strong emotional load
and the emblems of a clan or a
tribe. (Nateras, 2005: 7). The study of urban tribes has been
carried out above all in the United
States and in European countries, as they have appeared in their
cities since the 60s and 70s.
Among them groups such as the hippies, punkers, mods,

7. Rastafari, and skinheads, etc., have been
widely studied. Initially, these groups were local, born in very
specific contexts, such as the punk
rockers who were born in factory worker communities in
England.
4
Some decades later, with globalization in full bloom, these local
cultures have become trans-
nationalized. Some more than others have been converted into
marketable entities and have
entered the logic of a consumer-generated identity, subsumed
into the dominant culture.
Others, as is the case of Latin American hip-hop, have been
nationally and regionally expressed,
maintaining a confrontational posture of protest against the
dominant culture.
There are no rigid borders between one possibility and the
other. The experience of hip-hop in
the United States has demonstrated how ably the market can
take an expression of protest and
converting it into a product of cool consumption. It should be
mentioned that these “micro-
identities” or “micro-groups” in the contexts of globalization
are called juvenile neo-tribalisms.
The return to the tribal is born from a reaction from young
people to the social complexity
generated by a globalized society (displaying the contradictions
of the system on the world
stage). Young people seek to return to the collective in
defiance of the consumer society’s

8. exacerbation of individualism. In the presence of cultural
commodification, the return to the
tribe is also a vindication of difference. The tribe is
represented as an “existential refuge,”
without which young people cannot live in society today.
Hip-hop out of popular culture
Historically, the dominant culture has conceived the masses to
be devoid of culture. From the
perspective of centrality, the mass and that which is of the
people are uncultured and ignorant.
Even in Marxism, the masses are considered to only reproduce
the ideas of the dominant class.
However, the popular space is a source from which cultural
productions and manifestations are
signified and re-signified, be it out of tradition and custom,
from cultural industries, or from the
mixture of both.
I conceive hip-hop from the aspect of the popular as a cultural
creation, with the understanding
that it generates a sense of community and belonging to a group
that has been othered by
political postures and ideologies imposed by the dominant
culture. Above all, it is able to create
significance through its artistic and cultural manifestations.
While there are important elements
that have been introduced from the cultural industry for the
purpose of consumption, they are
also reconfirmed re-signified and expressed with their own
social practices pertinent to local
culture.
Another fundamental element is that, despite the fact that those
who subscribe to this way of

9. life are found in marginalized zones and therefore considered to
have only local influence, these
groups who do consider themselves part of hip-hop culture are
territorially, regionally, nationally
and internationally interconnected.
5
However, one fundamental criteria for me to emphasize when I
consider hip-hop as culture has
to do with the fact that those who consider themselves part of
hip-hop live it as a philosophy,
not only as a way of symbolic expression or as a fashion trend
or by means of consuming cultural
products, but also as a method of collectively organizing
themselves and relating to others. They
are groups with a common identity, who manage to subsume
their ethnic and national
differences without denying them.
In the specific case of Guatemala, indigenous peoples have
taken a lead role in the appropriation
and significance of hip-hop. Contrary to countries in which the
Afro-descendant cultures find a
marginalized ethnic link in hip-hop that helps them to
appropriate it, in the case of our country,
the link has originated from a generalized subalternity: being
poor, marginalized and native.
Currently it is common to find artists in hip-hop who express
themselves through their mother
tongue, connecting the worldview and spirituality of their
indigenous peoples to their practices.
Hip-hop and industrial culture

10. Whether we name young people who identify with hip-hop as
neo-tribes, as a youth culture, or
as an urban-marginal culture, we must consider that these are
categories for analysis and that
the reality is much more complex. Part of this complexity comes
from the role that industrial
culture plays in shaping these identities.
Industrial culture generates consumer processes, and hip-hop,
especially American hip-hop, has
been commercialized and released to the market as a "cool"
product. For youth, there is a
symbolic appropriation of what the market has launched; a
process that García Canclini has
named as cultural consumption. This helps us explain how the
style of hip-hop has been adopted
in each country, according to its own characteristics and
limitations, especially because in Latin
America, hip-hop develops in the most impoverished classes.
Hip-hop style is consumed symbolically. Regarding this, Piña
Narváez says: "Young people from
popular sectors appropriate of mass media goods in another
socioeconomic context. Therefore,
there is a different appropriation and re-signification of the
goods consumed (in comparison with
young people from middle sectors). This accounts for the
process of mediation carried out by the
popular sectors, which according to the social environment and
living conditions, make use and
significance of the appropriate goods and seek ways either to
access that sold-out cultural
pattern, or to separate from it. In this way, these young people
create peculiar characteristics of
the youthful and the sense of being young ". (Piña Narváez,

11. 2007: 167)
With this understanding, I would suggest studying the style of
hip-hop culture in Guatemala,
based on the mediations occurring between industry and the
cultural consumption. We
understand style as "the symbolic manifestation of youth
cultures, expressed in a more or less
coherent set of material and immaterial elements, which young
people consider representative
of their identity as a group" (Feixa, 1999: 97). Although style is
visible (clothes, hair arrangement,
6
accessories, etc.), objects on their own do not create a style and
one cannot simply hold industrial
culture responsible for the proliferation of different forms of
youth culture. What makes a style
is the organization of objects with activities and the values that
reproduce and compose a group
identity. Among the cultural elements worth noting to study this
style we should mention:
• Language: an important element of group differentiation is the
language they use: A type
of slang generates identity among the members of the group
through specular
identification, and as an element of differentiation. The
language used by hip-hop in
Guatemala emerges within the context of marginality, and many
of its expressions are
also used by youth gangs. There is a mixture between popular
local expressions, and

12. modifications of the Spanish language with Anglicisms, in
which the strong influence
migrations have had in the diffusion of hip-hop is evident.
• Music: in hip-hop culture, music is a nodal element for group
identity, cultural creation,
as well as for organization and group formation. In fact, three of
the four elements of hip-
hop have to do directly with music: the MC, the break-dance
and the DJ. To begin with, it
is the music of hip-hop, rap, which first travels from culture to
culture, and with which
some young people identify with and begin to make their own
projects. Within the
culture of hip-hop music is consumed, disseminated and
exchanged. It is perhaps the
cultural creation of hip-hop that is most telling, since it uses
popular language to describe
its environment and express its dissatisfaction with the
dominant culture. It is also from
music that the largest concentrations of young people in this
culture are generated: MC
rehearsals, concerts, and battles, break-dance training and
battles.
• Aesthetics: perhaps it is the aesthetics of hip-hop that have
been most commercialized:
Extra-large t-shirts, wide pants, handkerchiefs and caps, Nike or
Adidas sneakers.
However, poverty has contributed to the origin of the "look" of
hip-hop, since young
people inherited the big clothes from their older brothers or
cousins. Young people who
have adopted the aesthetics of hip-hop in Guatemala do so with
their own limitations,
since they mostly trade clothes, or buy them in sales of used

13. clothing from the United
States. But, it is not only the aesthetics, but also the phobias of
the dominant culture are
imported - this look is also what has stigmatized them, because
people fear they are
related to youth gangs. I posit that this is an imported phobia,
because this is a fear that
belongs to the North American society. In Guatemala, the
aesthetics of youth gangs is
different. But "the other" is always lumped together.
• Cultural productions: Hip-hop is publicly expressed in a series
of cultural productions.
These productions serve to reaffirm the boundaries of the group.
We mentioned there
are elements within hip-hop that are differentiated by the type
of cultural production
taking place, around which subgroups are organized. There are
the DJs, the b-boys and
b-girls (who break-dance) and the graffiti artists. In these
cultural productions is where
we can explore how young people in hip-hop culture think and
express themselves. Later
we will discuss how to study each of them.
• Focal activities: subcultural identification is delimited based
on the participation in certain
determined rituals and focal activities. In the case of hip-hop,
each element has its focal
activity, since they require skill and technique. In Guatemala
the most important events
above all have been those that bring all the elements of hip-hop
together, like a hip-hop

14. 7
festival reached its fifth year in 2010. Central American groups
of all elements participate
in it. Furthermore, it is also a space to articulate different
regional expressions.
Now, I must emphasize that Latin American hip-hop style has
not yet been coopted by the
market. I say yet, because the tendency of the market is to seek
that popular among the masses
and to convert it into a consumer product. It is evident that
year after year more young people
are incorporated into hip-hop culture. However, there are some
elements of this culture that do
not yield easily to commercialization. One is its rebellious
character. Dominant cultures in Latin
America are quite conservative and the ruptures within it would
have to be deep for this style to
be considered cool. Additionally, young people who follow
hip-hop have a strong class identity
which is evident in the cultural productions and its messages.
It is also important to note that reggaetón has been
commercialized and converted into a product
of global consumption. This type of music and style marked by
deep machismo and sexuality,
which has made it a more viable product of popular
consumption. The market definitely
prioritized the commodification of a marginalized urban musical
genre that is not rebellious and
that lends itself very well to the commodification of the
aesthetic. Maybe this is has delayed the
commodification of Latin American hip-hop. Without a doubt,
this topic is worth exploring in
depth.

15. Hip-hop in Guatemala
In the present essay, I have offered some avenues for studying
hip-hop as a culture coming from
various perspectives of analysis. In this last part, we are going
to integrate these perspectives to
make a specific analysis of the case in Guatemala.
1. The history of hip-hop in Guatemala, (with information from
Gerardo Galicia, from the
founders of the hip-hop movement).
The hip-hop culture is now in a stage of expansion and has great
drawing power. The first
rap group “Alioto Loko” (Crazy Alioto) takes its name from the
settlement from where it
arises: Mario Alioto Lopez Sanchez. This is around 1994.
During the 90s and the first half
of the 2000s, small groups in various marginalized urban
settlements, and in Guatemala
City’s historic center began to practice some hip-hop and to
identify themselves with the
culture. This is probably linked to the influence brought back
by young people who
migrated to the United States. Nevertheless, we must point out
that young people
identified better with Latin American hip-hop than American
hip-hop. Maybe the reason
why hip-hop culture in Guatemala continues to be a
phenomenon relatively outside of
the market, is that although it is no longer marginal, it
continues to be rebellious.
It was in 2006, at the First “Styles Universe” Hip-Hop Festival,
that these scattered groups

16. begin to find spaces to express and organize themselves. The
event takes place every
year to gather young people invested in hip-hop culture in
Central America. There are
also activities held each year that are part of already popular
cultural productions such as
8
freestyle battles called “Raptores”, regional and world
breakdance battles, graffiti
samples, rap music parties, etc. These events concentrate,
especially in the Historic
Center, on hip-hop culture. Nevertheless, in the case of local
culture, for example
settlements and popular neighborhoods in marginalized urban
areas, there is more and
more community organization around hip-hop. In the local
neighborhoods, not only is it
practiced, but different elements are also taught and transmitted
as part of a program.
In addition, there are young people now committed to
community organization based on
critical perspectives shaped by the culture itself.
Finally, as I previously mentioned, it is extremely interesting to
see how young people
from indigenous cultures have appropriated hip-hop culture, re-
signifying hip-hop’s
cultural elements, adapting them and integrating elements of
their native culture into it.
This is not an “acculturation” as the guardians of tradition
might perceive it. The in-depth
study of this hybridization might even challenge the perspective

17. that hip-hop comes out
of urban youth identity.
2. Study of cultural productions
Hip-hop as culture use arts to create a multiplicity of meanings.
To study these cultural
productions or artistic manifestations is to enter the thoughts
and worldviews of young
people in hip-hop culture. Traditionally, hip-hop is manifested
in four elements:
• The MCs, masters of ceremony, known as rappers. They are
the ones who sing
through rhyme and transmit through their lyrics their
perspective about
themselves and how they see the world. In this element, it is
important to study
the contents of the lyrics as much as their lyrical and poetic
composition.
• Graffiti, a form of visual art typically practiced on city walls.
This may be done
illegally. This element has two fundamental components:
aesthetic creation and
the appropriation of public space as a space for expression.
• Break-dance, which consists in the rhythmic dance and
gymnastics of the rhythms
of rap. Once again, there are two elements to consider. One is
the dancers’
physical skill, and the other how these young people organize in
collectives for
training and competition. It is this element of hip-hop which
has summoned the
largest amount of youth in Guatemala City.

18. • The DJ, who creates and mixes the tracks rap is made from,
and to which people
break-dance. Although DJ’s are not a large group in number,
they are important
because around them groups are able to organize and compete
with another
groups. They are figures around which the most local senses of
belonging are
generated.
To study these elements, you need multiple semiotic tools:
musical studies, literary
studies, choreography, analysis of use of public space, etc.
Also these are very specific
studies, from more of a micro-perspective, they help to
understand hip-hop culture
in all its complexity and totality. Finally, it is all these
elements that give hip-hop a
9
coherence, making it a culture instead of merely being isolated
artistic practices. It is
also the group praxis from all these elements that gives a
character of movements
with organizational and reproductive capacity.
Throughout this essay we have delimited, perhaps quite
generally, the scope of hip-cop culture
to the marginalized urban areas in the city and the impoverished
social classes who have to exist
within them. Within this culture, there are also differences,
maybe minimal, but significant

19. nonetheless. To practice each one of these elements implies
both the availability of leisure time
and some economic resources. That is why DJs exist in smaller
numbers, since it is necessary to
have turntables and a considerable amount of music that must be
constantly updated. DJs are
often found more in middle class sectors. In contrast, the group
of young people who practice
break-dance is growing more and more. This is because few
economic resources are needed to
practice it, since the instrument is one’s own body, although it
still requires discipline and daily
practice. In the case of graffiti, in addition to the need of
economic means to purchase spray
cans or special markers, certain personal characteristics are
required to assume the risks of
breaking the law and taking over public spaces without
permission. To be an MC, although
economic resources might be dispensed with, a comprehensive
management of written and
spoken language is required, as well as improvisation skills and
the ability to synchronize music
and the rhythm of poetry (what they call the flow). What we
want to reflect on this is that hip-
hop culture, like all cultures, is dynamic, and the individuals
who identify with it are diverse,
possessing different contexts and opportunities.
In conclusion
At the beginning of the essay we can find fragments from a song
by Bacteria Soundsystem, one
of the most representative groups of hip-hop culture in
Guatemala. I suggest you read it again,
because its responsive, poetic, and direct character brings us
much closer to the culture of hip-

20. hop than any intellectual effort to explain it.
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