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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Linguistics and Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/linged

Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities

Victor Corona a,∗ , Sophie Kelsall b,1
a
ICAR UMR 5191-École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 15 Parvis René Descartes, Bureau R-159, (33) 04.37.37.62.66.31, BP 7000, 69342 Lyon Cedex 07, France
b
St Marylebone School, Marylebone High Street, London W1U 5BA, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper investigates the sociolinguistic and semiotic aspects that make up Latino style in Barcelona.
Received 27 January 2016 It draws on interviews, songs, video clips, and observations collected ethnographically, from February
Received in revised form 22 June 2016 to May 2015, with young people from Latin America who produce rap in Barcelona. It examines the
Accepted 23 June 2016
role of the dynamics of diaspora, hip-hop discourse, and the experience of schooling in the construction
Available online xxx
of Latino identity in Barcelona. It finds hybridity in identification and language practices, as well as a
disconnection with schooling, which echoes the findings of prior research carried out with Latino youth
Keywords:
in Barcelona. This paper contributes to the conceptualisation of authenticity in hip-hop in relation to
Latino rap
Diaspora
migratory experience, speech styles, and locality in Barcelona.
Ethnography © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Linguistic varieties
Style

I like to go to places and get to know the rap from that place
because that is the music that lots of people regardless of lan-
guage, religion, skin colour, language or whatever identified
with under the same flag, that was that music you know? and I
realised when I went to Paris seventy per cent of people didn’t
understand shit about what I was talking about but they were
there and they were standing and saying “I don’t understand but
I’m not leaving”, which is the same as what we used to do when
rap started and it was in English and we didn’t understand shit
and you went and said “fuck I feel it” and my mum would say to
me “but do you understand what he says?” I don’t understand
mum but I love this shit. . . this is rap. . .
Rxnde Akozta, Barcelona, February 2015
research (see following section). In this article, selected data from
Corona’s first study are juxtaposed to the songs produced by the
rappers in the more recent fieldwork. It seeks to answer the fol-
lowing questions: (a) how discourses produced by participants in
the first study are echoed in the rap produced in Barcelona and (b)
what the sociolinguistic and semiotic aspects that make up Latino
style in Barcelona are. The article starts with an introduction on
what it means to be Latino in the Barcelona context and on the rel-
evance of the concept of diaspora. It follows with a presentation
of the methodology, the participants, the corpus, and the analysis
carried out to answer these two research questions.
2. Latino in Barcelona

1. Introduction In late 2005 Corona began his ethnographic PhD research in a

From February to May 2015, Corona, one of the co-authors, car-
ried out research with 4 young people from Latin America who
produce hip-hop in Barcelona, and this is the main data presented
in this article. In total 6 interviews, two video performances, and
17 video clips were collected and organised into a database. These
accounts and lyrics echoed some of the interviews Corona had
previously done with young people telling him about their migra-
tory trajectories and their experiences in Barcelona, during his PhD
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 0783403536.
E-mail address: victor.corona@ens-lyon.fr (V. Corona).
1
Tel.: +44 7833466914.
neighbourhood situated in the outskirts of Barcelona, an area that
was home to a significant number of immigrants from Latin Amer-
ica (Corona, 2006). The murder of a Latin American boy in 2004
and other incidents of violence involving young people began to
raise certain social alarms, which led government agencies such as
the Barcelona City Council to create programs targeted at helping
young Latin Americans.
Frequently, immigration was viewed as a problem for the
ongoing ‘normalisation’ of Catalan, a minority language that is
the language of instruction of schooling in Catalonia (Unamuno,
Tuson, & Corona, 2008). Latin American immigrants appeared in
these discussions as the most ‘problematic’ collective because they
spoke Spanish, so their presence would potentially increase the
use of the Spanish language in classrooms, thereby undermining

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
0898-5898/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
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normalisation efforts. It was common as well to find newspaper
articles talking about Latin American students as school dropouts
very likely to form Latin gangs. Corona’s particular interest was not
centred on the then infamous gangs (e.g. Latin Kings, Ñetas, Trini-
tarios, Dominicans Don’t Play) popularised by mass media outlets,
but on their school trajectories and the role of the languages of the
school curriculum in the construction of that Latino identity. Such
an identity was very much defined by the media as a product of
the contact between young people from different Latin American
origins.
In the context of the young people studied and the school used
as fieldsite, ‘Latino’ referred to a specific style. The term ‘style’
is favoured here over ‘variety’ because, as Opsahl and Royneland
(this volume) argue, a sociolinguistic style includes a wider range
of semiotic symbols than a variety, which is restricted to linguis-
tic items alone. Style may be defined as a clustering of resources,
including linguistic resources, and an association of that cluster-
ing with social meaning and with an identifiable aspect of social
practice. Importantly whereas the study of varieties is basically
structuralist in its approach to variation, the study of styles sees
variation as a resource for self-positioning in social space, and is
more concentrated on how social meaning is created through lan-
guage (Opsahl and Royneland, this volume).
The Latino style was fundamentally related to an anti-school
attitude, which was asserted as fundamentally male and was built
on social dynamics of discrimination inside and outside the school.
Indeed in the Latino boys’ discourse, the organisation of the school,
as well as its disciplinary mechanisms, clearly emerged as central
elements of their feelings of marginalisation. Thus the existence of
a Latino or several Latino groups could be understood as reflect-
ing the need for these boys to create a space of protection within
school. Moreover, belonging to the group of Latinos offered them
some social success that the school, from an academic point of view,
denied them.
In Corona’s initial study, not all adolescents from Latin America
identified with this Latino style. For example, it was particu-
larly noteworthy that that Argentinean, Uruguayan, Chilean and
some Ecuadorian youths affiliated with the school and openly
distanced themselves from Latinos. ‘Latino’ had a negative con-
notation for the school so many young people of Latin American
origin tried to get away from it. Furthermore, some data showed
that a racial dimension was important in the construction, or in
the conception, of who was Latino and who was not: for exam-
ple, many Argentinean and Uruguayan boys stated that they were
not Latinos because they were whiter than their Latin American
peers. On the other hand, the Latino group believed that Latin
American people could not hide their origin, saying “todos
somos negritos, indios o morenitos” (“we are all black, Indian or
brown”).
A sense of commonality across countries of Latin America, not
only in racial, but also in cultural, linguistic and social terms, was
therefore central to these youths’ discourse. They emphasised that
“somos más o menos lo mismo” (“we are more or less the same”)
rather than paid attention to possible differences; thus they seemed
to prioritise being Latino over their possible national identities.
In short, ‘Latino’ emerged as an interethnic identity that brought
together adolescents of different backgrounds and appearances
and expressed their disaffiliation with the institution of school-
ing but at the same time, drew them further away from the local
students.
When Corona finished his PhD thesis in 2012 there were many
issues which he would have liked to study more carefully; one of
these was the role of hip-hop discourse input the construction of
Latino identity in Barcelona. For this reason, at the beginning of
2014, he began to get in touch with some rappers of Latin American
origin who were doing rap in Barcelona. He started to follow them
Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
on YouTube and then also on Facebook; by doing this fieldwork, he
found a large number of videos. In many different ways, and with
widely ranging professional aspirations, hundreds of young peo-
ple used their computers to turn their rooms into actual recording
studios and were producing music and videos on what Barcelona
rap means for them. Before turning to the methodology followed
and the data collected as part of this second stage of fieldwork, a
brief introduction to the Latin American diaspora in Barcelona is in
order.
3. The Latin American diaspora
Latin American migration to Spain went from being almost
inexistent in the early 1990s to being one of the most signifi-
cant incoming demographic movements at the beginning of the
year 2000. Statistics reflect these important changes in the coun-
try’s demographics, which affected above all the largest cities such
as Barcelona and Madrid. The economic growth of Spain, which
had recently become a member of the eurozone, coincided with
the recurrent economic crises of Latin America. Furthermore until
2001, people from countries such as Bolivia, Peru or the Domini-
can Republic did not need a visa to come to Europe as tourists,
which contributed to the number of Latin Americans migrating
to Spain. What the statistics do not usually reveal, although it is
possible to infer by looking carefully, are the stories behind the
data.
Latin American migration to Spain, especially Barcelona, was
essentially feminine (Pedone, 2006). The emerging Spanish mid-
dle class found itself increasingly in need of people to clean their
homes, look after their elderly relatives and work at the tables and
in the kitchens of restaurants. Thousands of women arrived from
Medellin, Bogota (Colombia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Santo Domingo
(Dominican Republic), Guayaquil, Quito (Ecuador), and Trujillo
(Peru). Afterwards, with the construction boom, men were also
needed to build residential complexes, many of which are now
empty as a result of the financial crisis facing Spain since 2008.
Often the men who came to Spain to work in the construction indus-
try were the husbands of the women who had come first. During his
ethnographic work on being Latino in Barcelona, Corona had heard
time and time again the story of children who saw their parents
leave home in Latin America and who were looked after by their
grandparents or uncles/aunts. They saw their parents once every
three or four years, but they received money each week. From a
distance, parents and children planned the time when they would
live together again, called “family reunification” by Spanish gov-
ernment agencies that regulate migration. In the majority of cases,
this family reunification took a long time, as it required one of the
parents to obtain legal residency in order to be able to request their
children join them in Spain. Thus, children who stopped seeing their
parents when they were eight years old, saw them again when they
were 13, 14 or 15.
This narrative seems distant, now that the financial crisis in
Spain has destroyed so many jobs that Latin Americans as well as
many Spaniards have started migrating again looking for ways to
sustain themselves or their families. The diasporic situations result-
ing from this recent migratory history have an impact, not only in
demographic, but also in social and linguistic terms: for instance
Márquez Reiter and Martín Rojo (2015) demonstrate how, as result
of those processes of mobility, individuals renegotiate their identi-
ties through linguistic practices in interaction with host societies.
The rap produced by young Latinos in Barcelona can be seen as
one of such linguistic practices, in which participants display var-
ious linguistic as well as visual (through video clips) resources to
express their way of understanding the various meanings of the
Latin American diaspora in Barcelona.
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4. Methodology
4.1. Data collection
As mentioned in Section 1, the methodology for this more recent
study involves the use of the Internet as well as a more tradi-
tional ethnographic type of work. After finishing his thesis in 2012,
Corona kept in touch with the participants from his first study.
Some of the data from the conversations he maintained with them
after the thesis have been published elsewhere (Corona, 2016).
One of the themes explored in these conversations was music, as
they discussed the local and international rappers they listened to.
Meanwhile Corona watched and listened to their music on YouTube
and Facebook until he started to contact them to request inter-
views; these were completely open-ended, videoed and then partly
transcribed using Transana software. Some of the participants with
whom Corona developed more affinity invited him to rap concerts,
which he attended. The recordings of two of these concerts have
not yet been added to the corpus, although the fieldnotes taken
throughout have been. The data on which the analyses presented in
this article are based are: interviews, songs and video clips of young
people of Latin American origin who produces rap in Barcelona. In
the following section, the rappers who are the protagonists of this
study are introduced.
4.2. The main participants
4.2.1. First study
The participants from the first study included in this article are:
Alex, Raúl, Roberto, Ignacio, Oscar and Lucia. Raul, Roberto and
Ignacio are boys from Guayaquil, Ecuador, while Alex is from Tru-
jillo, Peru, and Roberto from Santa Cruz, Bolivia; Corona met all of
them while doing fieldwork at school. Lucia is a girl from Guayaquil
who had dropped out of school by the time Corona undertook his
research.
4.2.2. Second study
All the following information was obtained from the rappers’
music rather than from interviews. Listening to their music and
watching their videos is a way of accessing their trajectories, which
without doubt have forced them to reconfigure their identities and
roles as social actors. Their music and their view on life are the
result of encounters experienced during migration, which have
made them position themselves as mobile citizens. Despite being
diverse, the themes in their songs touch upon important aspects
for sociolinguistic and education studies. It is not a coincidence that
from their lyrics emerge stories of dropping out of school, racial dis-
crimination, and the role that linguistic varieties can play in these
social processes.
4.2.3. Achinado Elemental
Originally from Guayaquil, in Ecuador, Achinado Elemental
arrived in Barcelona in 2002 at the age of 16, having completed
secondary schooling in Ecuador. Compulsory education in Spain
also ends at the age of 16 so he began high school in Barcelona,
but soon gave up studying. He started to produce rap with friends,
improvising in parks and informal gatherings. Although not a music
professional, he has produced various videos. He normally works
as a kitchen assistant in restaurants, but does not have a stable job.
The interview with Achinado took place in a bar. An example of his
work may be found at the following YouTube link: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=O4b0z3iy7nI.
4.2.4. Darip Caicedo
Originally from Pereira, in Colombia, Darip has been living in
Barcelona since 2000. He has completed his baccalaureate and he
Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
3
intends to study image and sound at a professional level. However,
at the time that this article was written, he was working at a grocer’s
in order to help his family. He considers himself to be an “under-
ground” rapper and the themes in his songs revolve around the
street, immigration and also on rap as a genre. Of late he has also
been attracted to more commercial rhythms as it is a way of earn-
ing more money. When Corona went to interview Darip Caicedo, he
was in the studio recording an instrumental piece so Darip invited
Corona to interview him at his home the following day. An example
of his work may be found at the following YouTube link: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG1MnSusa0M.
4.2.5. Pielroja
Originally from Bogota, Pielroja has been living in Barcelona
since 2004. One of the most important underground rappers in
Barcelona, he works in a shop selling cured ham at the market of
the Boquería. He did not complete compulsory education either
and describes his student phase as one of his worst experiences
upon arriving from Colombia. In the interview conducted for this
research he regrets not having been able to continue studying
mostly because of the repercussions he has had to experience,
especially in terms of work. Nevertheless his efforts and perse-
verance in music have made him more and more well-known in
the world of hip-hop in Barcelona. In November 2015 he took
part in the important Latin American festival, Hip-hop in the Park,
organised by the council of Bogota in Colombia. The interview with
Pielroja took place at his home. An example of his work may be
found at the following YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Bi55zp0yE1c.
4.2.6. Rxnde Akozta
Originally from Cuba, Rxnde went on to live in Finland and
Venezuela, before settling in the town of Hospitalet, which borders
with the city of Barcelona, in 2007. He is one of the most influential
rappers in Latin America and a cult artist in the underground world.
Rxnde is now 32 years old and, in his own words, has been surviv-
ing making music since he was 19. He first migrated to Finland
where he worked as a dishwasher while he learnt Finnish, before
getting a job in a mobile phone factory. From Finland he went on to
Venezuela, where he came into contact with very influential artists
in the underground rap scene, such as Canserbero. Latin Ameri-
can migration to Spain brought Rxnde’s music to Europe so he was
invited to give some concerts on the continent. During one of those
trips, Rxnde decided to stay in Barcelona and continue his musical
career there. The interview with Rxnde took place in a squat. An
example of his work may be found at the following YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1xETlI6xFg.
5. Analysis
5.1. What Latino rap from Barcelona is like
In the ensuing sections of the article, an analysis of the data
being focused on in this study of Latino rap in Barcelona will be pre-
sented. Before that, however, it is important to discuss briefly what
Latino rap is like more generally. Latino rappers produce differ-
ent genres of hip-hop, both commercial and underground. This clip
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYu5r4IF53w) reflects many
elements found when Corona started his PhD research about what
it means to be Latino in the youth context in Barcelona in 2005. In
this short extract from the Puerto Rican rapper Don Omar (who is
not a participant in this research but whose work is intertextually
relevant to the data that will be presented in this section), some
examples of the symbolic unity of Latino can be seen: from differ-
ent Catholic symbols to figures like Che Guevara, Pancho Villa and
the repression by Latin American dictatorships (see Figs. 1 and 2).
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Fig. 1. Don Omar, pilgrimage.
Fig. 2. Don Omar, boxers.
Don Omar is one of the most important exponents of Latino rap
globally, above all of reggaeton, and his songs are clearly aimed at
a global audience, especially Latin American immigrants and dias-
poric youth. Reggaeton is a genre of urban music directly linked to
hip-hop and rap, but it also draws on Caribbean rhythms such as
bomba, plena, salsa, Latin pop and bachata. The specific rhythm that
characterises reggaeton is referred to as Dem Bow. Originating in
Panama in the seventies, reggaeton was Reggae music but sung in
Spanish and mixed with rapping in Spanish. Reggaeton developed
and modernized in Puerto Rico in the nineties and received its cur-
rent name. This kind of music has become a global phenomenon,
and nowadays has a world market which surpasses the geographi-
cal boundaries of Latin America. Furthermore, this success seems to
go beyond Spanish-speaking communities: the hits of singers like
Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Tego Calderón, PitBull, Wisinand Yan-
del are played in nightclubs around the world (Rivera, Marshall, &
Pacini, 2009).
At this point it is important to talk about certain aspects of the
Latino rap in Barcelona. What makes the Latino rap in Barcelona dif-
ferent from that of Madrid, for example? Rap is a genre inherently
rooted in the streets and in the immediate context of its perform-
ers. Its origin may be situated, in the New York of the 1970s, but it
takes form in each and every context it appears in. By following the
rap of Barcelona, one can take a tour of the neighbourhoods where
young people socialise and see the way they live. Thus the Barcelona
neighbourhoods of Carmel, Ciutat Vella, El Xino, El Raval, El Paral·lel,
Canyelles and the neighbouring town of Hospitalet de Llobregat
take centre stage in the songs. In this regard, the audiovisual infor-
mation that can be obtained from the video clips is extremely
important. The rappers show the streets they walk through, the
parks and bars where they congregate, the walls they paint on or
the ramps where they skate or breakdance. These local references
coexist with constant indexical references, such as clothing as well
as expressions such as “yoyo” and “in the house”, reminding us that
this rap, despite being from Barcelona, remains connected to the
rap in the rest of the world; indeed Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook
(2009) observes that hip-hop connects young people globally.
Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
Another important element is linguistic. The lyrics not only
reveal the name of streets in Barcelona and the surrounding area,
but they also reveal a type of Spanish which is a blend of differ-
ent varieties from Latin America. While this type of Spanish cannot
be linked to a specific location, it can be identified with a place
of linguistic socialisation: the streets of Barcelona. The Barcelona
Latino rappers display a linguistic repertoire incorporating words
and expressions in Catalan, such as: home (man), dona (woman),
t’estimo (I love you), xibeca (a brand of beer), quedius (what are you
saying), plegar (quit), feina (work), etc. Furthermore they make spe-
cific claims emphasising that their way of speaking and their accent
are not the same of as those of the Spaniards, and that therein, to a
large extent, lies their idiosyncrasy.
5.2. The themes in Latino rap
Although there exists a wide range of themes in the rap
produced by the rappers of Latin American origin who are the pro-
tagonists of this research, this analysis will now focus especially
on songs which refer to social processes related to diaspora, such
as redefining identity, discrimination, the process of dropping out
of school and linguistic varieties (Auzanneau, 2001; Auzanneau &
Juillard, 2012).
5.2.1. Language varieties and the Conquest of America
As has been mentioned already, in Catalonia, the language of
instruction of education is Catalan, but in urban contexts Span-
ish is the main language of socialisation (Nussbaum & Cots, 2011).
For new students, such as the Latin Americans who took part in
Corona’s first study, not learning Catalan could lead to problems
and affect their ability to follow classes normally. However, in the
interviews and discussion groups organised during the study, the
students themselves pointed out that in some cases the problem
was Spanish (Corona, 2016). Clearly Spanish and its different vari-
eties played an important role in the linguistic socialisation of these
young people.
Despite them being native speakers of Spanish, the school
institution questioned the legitimacy of the varieties they spoke,
ranking them as “less correct” than the Peninsular variety. This sit-
uation led many Latin American students to emphasise what they
constructed as the Latino characteristics of their speech, rather than
adopt the variety promoted by the school. Latino characteristics are
part of the seseante variety, where the sound “c” or “z” are always
pronounced as “s”, the sound “s” is aspired at the end of a sylla-
ble or word, and the sound “l” is replaced with “r”. The technical
way of this phenomenon is called lateralization. Another feature
is the seseante features are not shared by all varieties spoken in
Latin America, but in the data collected for Corona’s PhD study, it
was observed that, in practice, young Latinos used them regard-
less of “whose” variety it was. This is reminiscent of the situation
in the UK where the development of a single Creole language as
the vehicle for new cultural forms has developed among young
people of distinct Caribbean origins, against a backdrop of “pan-
Caribbeanisation” of cultures and of devaluation of creole by school
(Sebba & Tate, 2002).
The emergence of this stylisation could be seen in conversations
and interviews in which participants expressed their identifica-
tion with being Latino or described, for example, their conflict with
school or with the host society. Whereas the lexis used was very
much of a Spanish Peninsular variety, which did not differ greatly
from the one used by their peers in Barcelona, it was the musicality
of their accent and their way of speaking that stood out. Clearly, the
emergence of this form of speech can be seen as a natural conse-
quence of the linguistic socialisation of these young people (Corona,
Nussbaum, & Unamuno, 2012).
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At school, not only were linguistic varieties of Latin American
Spanish viewed negatively, but also Latin American students were
categorised as not being high attainers academically. They were not
considered by the school to be proficient in Catalan nor in the pres-
tigious variety of Spanish. During this first study it became clear
that these dynamics of differentiation clearly were not conducive
to recently-arrived students feeling part of the host community,
although they did promote the image of Latino as a collective. In
interviews participants asserted that they shared a common his-
tory not only an immigration trajectory but also a Latin American
history, and specifically the conquest of America by the Spanish,
which represented their discourses of opposition to Spain. The
theme of the conquest of America was a constant to exemplify cer-
tain dynamics of discrimination in school or in the neighbourhood.
One of these was undoubtedly the hierarchy of varieties of Spanish.
Participants argued that the Spanish varieties judged as less correct
originated in the former colonies. Thus the history of the Americas
and the migratory stories of these young people are intertwined to
create a discourse of what it means to be Latino confronted with
various elements of what it means to be Spanish, which, paradox-
ically in some cases, as in Extract 1, could actually refer to what it
means to be Catalan.
In sum the Latino speech style of these young people, where
form and content cannot be separated, feeds on all of this social
context. In other words, it is no coincidence that young Latinos
appropriate characteristics of Caribbean varieties of Spanish – vari-
eties usually most devalued by institutions – in order to confront
these relations of inequality (Block & Corona, 2016; Cutler, 1999).
Interview Extract 1 (corpus study 1)
551. VCR por qué no quieres a los españoles/|
552. ALX: eh/|
553. VCR por qué los odias/|
554. ALX: porque vinieron allá a jodernos nomás\| nomás para
jodernos\|hace mucho tiempo Colón-| dicen que es
español o algo así\|| Colón\|
555. IGN Colon sí\|
556. OSC: un culón de mierda|(risas)
557. ALX: vino-| se supone que fue a conquistar América\| pero
fue con toda con toda su peña ahí\ con sus barcos con
sus armas a joder a América
Latina\| a robarnos nuestra plata y toda esa huevada\|
Participants: Alex, Raúl, Roberto, Ignacio, Oscar, Víctor
(English translation)
551. VCR: why don’t you like the Spaniards?|
552. ALX: eh/|
553. VCR: why do you hate them?|
554. ALX: because they only came to screw us\| just to screw us\| a
long time ago Columbus-| they say that he is Spanish or
something like that\|| Colombus|
555. IGN: Columbus yes\|
556. CSOs: a shitty asshole| (laughs)
557. ALX: came-| it is supposed he went to conquer America\| but
he went with all with all their group there\ with their
ships\ with their guns to screw Latin America\| to steal
our silver and all that crap\|
Alex, a Peruvian boy, uses the history of America as a symbolic
element that reproduces the dynamics of inequality within the
school. In Latin America this subject is especially important in the
school curriculum because it is used as a resource for the construc-
tion of a national identity. The fact that this subject is not taught
in the same way in Spain sparks debates among the Latino groups
about the trustworthiness of different existing versions of history.
Nevertheless, it is important to highlight here how Alex uses this
topic as a symbolic resource to create a common voice for Latinos
in Barcelona, within a game of comparing the stories of discrim-
ination at school with a more global history of colonial relations
between America and Europe (Block & Corona, 2014).
It remains surprising that these students, categorised by school
as not very academic, would call upon contents from the history
Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
5
curriculum to transpose the dynamics of the past on the present.
Beyond this, they formulate important questions about how certain
contents should be taught in classrooms where there is diversity.
How should the history of the conquest of America be taught in a
class where there are students of Spanish, Catalan and Latin Ameri-
can origin? How can one ask about issues, which are always present
in Catalonia, about the construction of the State and about indepen-
dence?
Most importantly to the analysis of the data collected concern-
ing the five rappers who are the protagonists of this study, this
colonial discourse can also be found in the rap produced by Latino
artists in Barcelona. For instance Achinado Elemental has collab-
orated with another rapper of Ecuadorian origin, Big Torres, to
produce song in which they address the colonisation of America
and the role that it plays in their migratory trajectories and their
redefinition as Latinos in Barcelona.
Song Extract 1 (corpus study 2)
colonización europea en continente americano
exportación de esclavos
imperio español en territorio ecuatoriano
revolución liberal grito de independencia
de la corona española
amaneció independiente
un nueve de octubre de 1820
populosa Santiago de Guayaquil
...
no te equivoques no escribo autógrafos porque dibujo en el papel viví
dos párrafos de este cholo mestizo
nieto de ancestros blancos indios chinos egipcios griegos negros hijo de
culturas y culturas de habla hispánica
nacido y criado en la perla del Pacífico de Sudamérica
primogénito de migrantes ecuatorianos madre graduada en química padre
físico matemático
crecido en España Cataluña Hospi de Llobregat
Esplugues Cornellà Barna multicultural
Forever de ella. Achinado Elemental and Big Torres. Ecuador-Barcelona,
2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXnkgAp7MiY
(English translation)
European colonisation of the Americas
export of slaves
Spanish empire in Ecuadorian territory
liberal revolution cry of independence
from the Spanish crown
woke up as independent
one October 9th in 1820
populous Santiago de Guayaquil
...
make no mistake I do not write autographs because I draw on paper I lived
two paragraphs of this mixed-race cholo
grandson of white Indian Chinese Egyptian Greek black ancestors son of
cultures and Spanish-speaking cultures
born and raised in the pearl of the South American Pacific
firstson of Ecuadorian migrants mother graduated in chemistry father
mathematical physicist
grown up in Spain Catalonia Hospi de Llobregat
Espluges Cornellà Barna multicultural
This song is divided into two parts. In the first one Achinado
Elemental briefly summarises clichés about the conquest of Amer-
ica, such as the trafficking of slaves, Christianisation and the fight
for independence. In the second part, Big Torres picks up this dis-
course again to talk about his identity as a person of Ecuadorian
origin but with an identity rooted in Barcelona. The analysis of
these lyrics, and in general of all the rap songs analysed in this
corpus, cannot be isolated from the videos accompanying them.
The videos show movements from one place to another, flags of
Ecuador and Guayaquil appear, as well as of those of Catalonia and
of the Barcelona Football Club. Right at the end of the song, there is
a vindication of ethnic heterogeneity, be it Ecuadorian or Spanish
(see Figs. 3 and 4). The idea of purity is abandoned: an Ecuadorian
is presented as the product of this history of conquest, in which the
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Fig. 3. Achinado flags.
Fig. 4. Achinado Estelada.
Chinese, Egyptian or Greek diasporas also played an important part.
The song “Forever de ella” is a vindication of this diaspora not only
as a phenomenon of the present but also as a permanent factor in
the history of humanity. The Spaniards went to America centuries
ago but the Americans have now gone to Spain. Although this song
seems to refer specifically to Ecuador, Achinado Elemental and Big
Torres claim their rap as Latino rap from Barcelona. It is true that
they refer to local Guayaquil issues but in the context of differenti-
ating themselves from “what is Spanish”, being Ecuadorian is part
of being Latino. In an extract of the song he says: “Catholic through
Christianisation by Dominican Franciscans in the colonisation in
which they repressed the natives for their identity they gave them
sin shame blame for their sexual nature although for me this is
Fig. 5. Abyala Figure Manifesto.
Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
the living past the present without taboos frontiers flags call me
pagan.”
Towards the end of the video appears a mention to “Abya Yala
Crew”, a global hip-hop collective, which brings together different
artists and activists, such as Achinado Elemental and Big Torres,
who predominantly live in European cities such as Milan, Paris,
Zurich, and Berlin, and for whom their Latino identity is the basis
of their unity (https://www.facebook.com/AbyaYalaCrew/). In fact,
Abya Yala is a way of renaming the American continent, whose
name they reject as imperialist (see Fig. 5):
Abya Yala Website
Abya Yala means “venerable land” in the language of the Kuna
people, who live on the coast of Panama and part of Colombia.
This term refers to the continent known as America.
This expression has been reclaimed in the last few decades by
intellectuals and social movements, especially those of indige-
nous origin, as a new way of calling Latin America, a name which
is doubly colonial.
What could be the link between Latino speech and hip-hop dis-
course? The rhythm of the songs fuses traditional sounds from the
Caribbean with the flow of synthesizers. The main exponents of
Latino hip-hop, including reggaeton, focus on the Latin American
diaspora and racial discrimination. These singers express them-
selves with the varieties of Spanish that the school regards as
“invalid” or “incorrect.” All these elements seem to work perfectly
for young people who identify as Latino and find more than just
a channel of expression in reggaeton. As shown in other stud-
ies (Alim, 2004; Androutsopoulos & Scholz, 2002; Sarkar & Winer,
2006), hip-hop is a way of life for these Latinos, a way of behaving.
Videos and songs provide these young people with the informa-
tion needed to construct the discourse of being Latino in Barcelona.
During the second stage of the research conducted, it became
apparent that this kind of perception of Latino in Barcelona was
very close to hip-hop discourse. The way the Latinos dress, speak
and behave is closely related to all the symbols promoted by the
genre. Obviously it is not possible to relate rap with discourses of
resistance all the time, but originally, this music emerged from very
marginalised contexts (Krims, 2000; Rose, 1994). In the examples
just shown, it is possible to observe how these discourses of his-
torical discrimination find their channel of expression in the rap
discourse (Mitchell, 2000).
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Through this genre, the construction of Latinos as a group
allows people from different countries, such as Ecuador, Bolivia
and Peru, to move away from representations of underdevelop-
ment and poverty. This does not mean that the countries of origins
are forgotten; rather they are connected with successful identi-
ties, both locally and globally. Locally, because it gives them a
group identity which, despite wider social stigma, is attractive
and valued among young people. Globally because Latino and
rap connect these young people from Barcelona to the transna-
tional phenomenon of hip-hop. As Pennycook has stated, hip-hop
is characterised as “a culture without a nation”, and is currently
a movement with potential significance as a vehicle for different
types of youth protest (Pennycook, 2007). Hip-hop functions as a
space that allows certain types of people to identify with a local
context, with different languages, accents and fashion trends, and
to be, at the same time, connected to a globalised world.
5.2.2. The mother as symbol
Another of the themes encountered in the discourse of young
Latinos was the figure of the mother as the reason for their migra-
tory diaspora. The vast majority of them had been separated from
their mothers and had been reunited years later. Coming to live
in Barcelona was an emotional shock which impacted them in
many ways, notably while discovering the difficult working condi-
tions which their parents had had to experience. While they were
with their grandmothers, they received the money sent to them
and could buy things which other children, whose parents had not
emigrated, probably could not afford. In some cases they went to
private schools. Upon arriving here they realised that this rela-
tive comfort was the result of a great effort, in which processes
of stigmatisation and social inequality were factors. The figure of
the mother is very important in Latin America and it emerged as
such in the discourses of the young people from the first study.
What follows is an extract from an interview with Lucía, a girl of
Ecuadorian origin interviewed in 2005.
Interview Extract 2 (corpus study 1)
81. VCR: cómo fue cómo fue que tu familia emigró para acá/|
82. LCA: mi madre hace muchos años ya\| cuando yo tenía dos años\|
ella se fue a Chile y de Chile se vino para acá\| y mi madre tiene
siete años viviendo para acá\| entonces ella claro nos quiso
traer\| y nos trajo cuando ella tenía cuatro o cinco años aquí\|
83. VCR: aja
84. LCA: de allí nos trajo para acá
85. VCR: y tú\| hacía cuántos años que no la veías\| cuando llegaste para
acá/| cuánto tiempo hacía que no la veías/|
86. LCA: yo la he visto|\ a ver-| (2) antes de que viniera para aca la había
visto-| uno:os\| cuat-cinco años más atrás\|(1) cuando tení:ía
diez años creo\| por eso hoy no me recuerdo mucho|(2)XXXX a
ver-| yo con mi madre no es que me lleve también
perfectamente bien\| porque a mi como los que me criaron
fueron mis abuelos\| porque mi madre mi mami se fue cuando
tenía yo dos años\| y ella ha ido yendo poco a poco\| ella de
que ha ido a Ecuador ha ido a Ecuador\|vale/| ha ido algunas
veces muchas veces ha ido alla\|pero claro\| a veces ha ido un
mes\| semanas\| o sea-| no es como para decir no se ha
quedado un año para vivir conmigo para yo saber algo por lo
menos de ella\| no sé nada de ella\|(1) no no no es que no la
conozco a mi madre\| no la conozco\| a la que sí conozco bien
y a los que considero a mi padres son a mis abuelos\| porque
ellos fueron los que me criaron\|(1) mi madre también me ha
contado que cuando ella recién llegó también tuvo que fregar
pisos\| en casa de españoles\| pero en casa de españoles\|
mientras los españoles no terminaban-| XXXX osea sus jefes\|
no terminaban de comer ella no podía comer\| (1) no podía
comer porque decían que (F) las chachas las chachas\| comían
después de que los jefes\| (1) entonces a mi mamá me decía
también a mi que:e-| que ella vino aquí:í y:y la humillaron
bastante\| pero ahora ya no||(@) me dice ahora yo humillo a los
españoles como necesitan de mi\|
Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
7
87. VCR: en qué trabaja tu madre ahora/|
88. LCA: mi madre ahora trabaja en un supermercado pero en ese
tiempo trabajaba limpiando casas\|
Participants: Lucía, Víctor
(English translation)
81. VCR: how was it how was it that your family immigrated here/|
82. LCA: my mother many years ago already\| when I was two years old\|
she went to Chile and from Chile she came here\| and my mother
has been living over here for seven years\| so of course she wanted
to bring us here \| and she brought us when she had been living
here for four or five years\|
83. VCR: aha
84. LCA: from there she brought us here
85. VCR: and you\| how many years had it been since you’d seen her\|
when you arrived here/| how long had it been since you’d seen
her/|
86. LCA: I saw her|\ let’s see-| (2) before I came over here I had seen
her-|so:ome\| four five years before\| (1) when I wa:as ten years
old I think\| that’s why now I don’t remember much| (2) XXXX
let’s see-| with my mother it’s also that I don’t get on perfectly
well\| because for me as the ones who brought me up were my
grandparents\| because my mother my mum left when I was
two\| and she has been going bit by bit\|she from when she has
gone to Ecuador has gone to Ecuador\| ok/| she’s gone some times
many times she’s gone there\| but of course\| sometimes she’s
gone for a month\| weeks\| so-| that’s not to say she’s has not
stayed for a year to live with me for me at least to know something
about her\| I don’t know anything about her\| (1) no no no it’s
that I don’t know my mother\| I don’t know her\| the one I do
know and the ones I consider my parents are my grandparents\|
because they were the ones who brought me up\|(1) my mother
also told me that when she had just arrived also she had to scrub
floors\| in a Spanish house\|but in a Spanish house\| until the
Spanish had finished-|XXXX so like her bosses\|until they finished
eating she couldn’t eat\| (1)she couldn’t eat because they said that
(F) the maids the maids\|ate after their bosses\| (1)so my mum
also said to metha:at-|that she came he:erea:and-|they
humiliated her quite a lot\|but not any more|| (@) she tells me
now I humiliate the Spanish since they need me\|
87. VCR: what does your mum do now/|
88. LCA: my mum now works in a supermarket but at that time she used to
clean houses as a job\|
Without a doubt, Lucía’s story is also the story of many of those
Latin American young people who came to Europe in the great wave
of migration. Lucía describes a meeting with an unknown mother,
from whom she had been separated as a child, and a later separa-
tion from her grandparents, whom she considered her real parents
by then. Nevertheless, it is possible to see how this girl relieves
her mother of responsibility by revealing the suffering that she had
to go experience “in the Spanish house.” In other words, in this
story, she is not the only victim. Her mother, like many Latin Amer-
ican mothers, worked cleaning houses and, according to Lucía, was
humiliated by the Spaniards.
In the ethnography carried out for Corona’s PhD, one of the few
moments in which the Latino youngsters could be sorry about their
poor behaviour within school was when they were thinking about
their mothers. They felt guilty about not meeting the expectations
or matching the efforts of their mothers.
This is why it was not surprising to find matters related to moth-
ers so present while listening to the Latino rap of Barcelona. This
is exemplified in the following short extract of a song that Darip
Caicedo showed Corona on the day of our interview. While talking
about his life in Barcelona, he decided to show Corona a video clip
in which he sings to his mother.
Extract Song 2 (corpus study 2)
esta canción es para la persona más importante en mi vida
para mi mama que yo la quiero mucho y dice
hoy le quiero dar las gracias por todos sus esfuerzos
porque no es suficiente sólo con decir te quiero
gracias por su sacrificio por tener tanta paciencia
hoy gracias le da su hijo por cuidarlo con frecuencia
me porto mal pero es que actúo sin consciencia
mamá te pido perdón por los dolores de cabeza
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gracias a su iniciativa no falta un plato en la mesa

gracias a que nos motiva hoy la family progresa
es amable admirable y a la vez la mejor madre
buena gente y muy fuerte con un corazón gigante
mis respetos por sacar seis hijos adelante
es activa y luchadora hay miles de adjetivos positivos
que definen su persona
imagínate si es fuerte y a la vez trabajadora
que ella sola emigró de Colombia a Barcelona
con fuerza y valentía trabajando cada día
ella consiguió un hogar y reagrupar a la familia
para mi es una alegría por eso en esta vida
a quien yo más admiro es a la madre mía
se merece el universo se merece hasta la luna
sé que madre sólo hay una pero como ella ninguna ninguna

Tu hijo te admira, Darip Caicedo, Barcelona 2011 https://www.youtube.

Fig. 6. Darip writing.
com/watch?v=t007bGy29o8 (from minute 2.45)

(English translation)
this song is for the most important person in my life
for my mum who I love very much and it says
today I want to thank her for all her efforts
because it is not enough just to say I love you
thank her for her sacrifice for being so patient
today your son is thanking you for often looking after him
I misbehave but it’s just that I act without thinking
mum I’m sorry for the headaches
thanks to her initiative there’s enough to eat for everyone
thanks to her motivating us now the family is making progress
she is kind admirable and at the same time the best mother
a good person and very strong with a huge heart
my respect for providing for six children
she is active and a fighter there are thousands of positive adjectives
that define her
imagine how strong and hardworking she is
she emigrated on her own from Colombia to Barcelona
with strength and courage working every day
she managed to get a house and to reunite the family
for me it is a source of joy that’s why in this life
the one I admire the most is my mother
she deserves the universe she deserves even the moon
I know there is only one mother but none none like her
There is an intertextual connection between Lucía’s account and
Darip’s rap. Both tell us about the importance of the mother as the
starting point of the diaspora, but to a certain extent also about
how this situation of separation–reunification forced them to rede-
fine themselves as people in Barcelona. In Lucía’s discourse one
can detect a certain sense of revenge against “the Spanish”, who
used to humiliate her mother while the words of Darip reveal only
gratitude and admiration. The dialogue between these two types of
discourses makes it possible to understand to what extent the rap of
Barcelona is directed to a public sharing common life experiences.
Rap emerges once more as the channel to explain these situations
of inequality which are, in the end, what makes it sound “real.” It
is topics such as these which make it possible to speak of a Latino
rap that is a product of the immigrant diaspora. Its target audience
consists of thousands of young people who lived the same experi-
ence, and who, beyond sharing a specific nationality of origin, have
situations and statuses in common. This is why it is not surpris-
ing either that collaborations between rappers from the north or
the south of Africa can be found in the productions of Latino rap
of Barcelona. Their audience is most certainly local, however there
is an implicit awareness that these situations of inequality extend
throughout the world. In this aspect what is important is the role
played by media such as YouTube, which enable these young rap-
pers to reach surprising places with their music. What stands out
in the video of Darip Caicedo is the importance that he gives to the
writing process (see Figs. 6 and 7). In the interview, he commented
that thanks to rap he had discovered a hitherto unknown pleasure
in reading and writing. The power of rap in the school environ-
ment and in literacy practices is without doubt an interesting topic
to study, which is indeed addressed in articles in this issue (Garrido
and Moore; Morgade et al.; Opsahl and Royneland).
Fig. 7. Darip lyrics.
5.2.3. Dropping out of school
Finally, a facet of migratory experience that emerged as particu-
larly relevant for both the rappers and the young people in the first
study was failing at or dropping out of school. Indeed some of the
rappers and the vast majority of participants in the first study did
not succeed in completing compulsory education although, with
time, some of them were able to put their studies back on track by
entering vocational training programmes. The high dropout rate
among students of Latin American origin has been demonstrated
statistically; consequently their presence in post-compulsory edu-
cation is very low (Serra & Palaudàrias, 2010).
There are multiple reasons for this high dropout rate. Specifi-
cally in Catalonia it has been pointed out, above all by the media,
that one of the reasons for this problem is the fact that public
education is in Catalan. However in other regions of Spain where
teaching is done in Spanish, the results are no better (Martín Rojo,
2010). Many of the young people in the first study were not able
to adapt to a new way of life and of socialising, be it within or
outside of school. They had difficulties finding their place in insti-
tutions which a priori categorised them as inadequate and where
society in general judged them because of their physical appear-
ance (Flores & Rosa, 2015). In their personal accounts, what always
emerged was the image of a recently-arrived child, motivated to
learn, to surpass herself, to continue being or to become a good
student.
However, at a given point in their lives, there was a change in
attitude. This was visible, not only in their accounts, but also in
the three years of participant-observation undertaken by Corona
at a secondary school. Latino boys, and a minority of girls, adopted
an anti-school attitude which distanced them from their studies
but which brought them closer to very active social media. They
got together, they said, to defend themselves against racist attacks.
But according to what Corona was able to observe in the field,
they shared conditions of marginalisation and, as a result, common

Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
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situations and tastes. This issue came up in the more recent inter-
view carried out with Pielroja, the Colombian rapper presented
earlier on.
Interview Extract 3 (corpus study 2)
VCR. te afectó en la escuela eso/
PLR. sí me afectó vamos si me afectó\| dejé de ir mucho a la escuela\| no iba
a la escuela me mantenía fumando bebiendo por allí\| por el barrio
donde yo mantenía el barrio chino \| también son las compañías con
las que te juntas y ya te digo de repente fue que llegaron las pandillas
\| y esto entonces ya los latinos todos iban de malos algo que no me
gustó mucho fue que:e que por ejemplo todos los colombianos
hablaban mal hablaba:n que hubo gonorrea entonces qué piroba y
todos los ecuatorianos hablaban ecuatoriano pero mal también disque
ay no sé qué vacila y todo mundo quería hablar como de la calle calle\|
pero ahora que yo estuve en Colombia\| no todo el mundo habla así no Fig. 8. Pielroja streets.
todo el mundo habla uy que hubo gonorrea no se qué

Participants: Pielroja, Víctor
(English translation)
VCR. did this affect you in school/
PLR. yes it affected me definitely it affected me\| I stopped going to school a
lot\| I didn’t go to school I spent my time smoking drinking around there\|
around the neighborhood where I spent my time El Xino neighbourhood\|
it’s also the company you keep and as I said suddenly the gangs arrived\|
and this by then all the Latinos were acting as thugs something that I did
not like much was tha:at that for example all the Colombians spoke badly
they said whassup motherfucker so what bitch and all the Ecuadorians
spoke Ecuadorian Spanish but badly also it looks as if I dunno a shag and
everyone wanted to talk like street street\| but now that I have been in
Colombia\| not everybody speaks like this not everybody talks like hey
whassup motherfucker whatever
Pielroja exemplifies the process that he was explaining before.
This kind of transformation from ‘normal student’ to Latino stu-
dent had to go through dropping out of or losing interest in school.
Friendships with other Latino youngsters and the important pres-
ence of Latino gangs also played a key role in this dropping out
process. What is especially compelling in this extract is the con-
nection that Pielroja makes between this process and the adoption
of a specific linguistic stylisation, which is characterised by features
of Caribbean Spanish, such as the substitution of the sound “r” for
the sound “l”, a seseante variety (see previously) and a very large
variety of words known as “lower class” from different countries of
Latin America. This Latino attitude appears to be mediated by the
appropriation of a way of speaking which he identifies as “street
street.” It is this specific speech form which has been referred to as
Latino style (Corona et al., 2012), which is also directly connected
to hip-hop discourse, as well as with the negative categorisation of
these linguistic varieties by the school institution. The extract from
this next song by Pielroja clarifies this further.
Extract Song 3 (corpus study 2)
cruzar el continente pa encontrarme con mi madre
empezar de cero sin conocer a nadie
problemas en la clase por mi acento por mi carne
esperar a que acabe esta angustia incontrolable
que suene la campana corriendo para ir a pelearme
y aunque tuviera miedo nunca quise ser cobarde
la vida se hace dura cuando está ausente tu padre
tener que echar palante sin que nadie te eche un cable
ya con los dieciséis yo dejé el instituto
dedicándome al chanchullo y a pequeños hurtos
con una idea clara ganas de comerme al mundo
Mi niñez. Pielroja. Colombia-Barcelona. 2015. https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=JLP7vVeQbjw
having to go forward without anyone lending you a hand
then aged sixteen I left school
dedicating myself to scamming and small robberies
with a clear idea wanting to conquer the world
My childhood. Pielroja. Colombia-Barcelona, 2015
This song summarises the accounts analysed in the previous
extracts. In it appear the figure of the mother, family reunifica-
tion, meeting the host society and the conflicts at school because
of questions of ethnicity. Despite there being an official discourse
according to which linguistic diversity in schools is seen as posi-
tive, the discourse of these young Latinos reveals that the majority
of teachers believe that the varieties of Latin American Spanish are
less correct that the ones spoken in Spain. Indeed, this is congruent
with the observations made by Corona during his years of fieldwork
in schools for his PhD. This echoes wider research outlining the
delegitimisation and decreased exchange value of Latin American
Spanish in Spain (see Márquez Reiter & Martín Rojo, 2015).
In this song, called ‘My childhood’, Pielroja goes over how all
these events led him to see rap as a way of denouncing, as well
as expressing his own identity. As for the other participants in this
study, rap becomes not only a way of expressing themselves cultur-
ally, but also a way of life. This song by Pielroja is a true reflection
of how diaspora is a key factor in the way they define themselves
as people. Although rap can be used as a pedagogical tool within
the classroom, school tends to look down on this genre, by linking
it to its more commercial and negative side (see however Morgade
et al. in this issue).
The rap of Pielroja exemplifies perfectly the Latino rap described
here: while recognising that it belongs to the city, as well as the
linguistic and social context, of Barcelona, as we can hear in its
songs and see in its video clips (see Figs. 8 and 9), it claims the ethnic
specificity of being Latino. This specificity is not only linguistic but
also relates to social issues such as job insecurity, discrimination or
police brutality. In the end this is perhaps what is really important
for these young people, and what makes their music local and global
at the same time. Their rap relates to the rap being made in many

(English translation)

cross the continent to meet up with my mother

start from zero without knowing anyone
problems in class because of my accent because of my flesh
waiting for this uncontrollable anxiety to end
for the bell to ring running to go and fight
and even though I was afraid I never wanted to be a coward
life becomes hard when your father is absent Fig. 9. Pielroja ramblas of Barcelona.

Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
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parts of the world and, to return to the words of Rxnde Akozta in the
epigraph of this paper, it is a discourse that goes beyond languages
and that connects, through the flow of music, the realities of people
who see themselves as different, to a certain extent, but who are
essentially equal in the social role they occupy.
6. Conclusion
Like many other songs in the Latino rap from Barcelona, this final
song by Pielroja song talks about anxiety, pain and the challenge
posed by leaving one’s country of origin to meet with one’s par-
ents again. It also talks about discrimination, social inequality and
important historical questions such as the colonisation of America,
a theme that also comes up in Achinado Elemental’s and Big Torres’
rap. These topics are far from banal and could definitely be treated
seriously at school. But the importance of Latino rap produced in
Barcelona does not only lie in the issues it deals with; rather it is a
fair reflection of the sociolinguistic movements of young people in
the diaspora. The musicality of their accent and their lyrics evoke
different countries of Latin America, as well as the Spanish spoken
in Barcelona, as it includes a great number of words and expressions
in Catalan.
By establishing strong connections between the discourses of
young Latinos (from an earlier study) and the more recent spoken
and visual accounts of Latino rappers, this study has outlined what
‘Latino’ means in sociolinguistic and semiotic terms in the con-
text of Barcelona. It has shown hybrid identities as well as hybrid
linguistic practices were created as the result of the tensions of
diaspora. Moreover it has contributed to the conceptualisation of
authenticity in hip-hop in important ways in relation to migratory
experiences, speech styles, and locality in Barcelona. Indeed the
sense of locale, here Catalonia and its specific language ideological
characteristics, is fundamental to grasp the story of disconnec-
tion between hip-hop discourse and schooling among these youth.
Finally it has identified how certain discourses – colonialism, school
failure, and the mother symbol – are appropriated by the rappers
to construct this Latino style.
For rappers, Latino or not, hip-hop constitutes a community in
itself that goes far beyond geographic, linguistic, or ethnic borders
(Alim, 2009; Pennycook, 2003). Indeed, one becomes aware of this
heterogeneity by attending rap concerts. In one of the interviews,
RxndeAkozta explained that, thanks to current media accessible to
almost everyone, underground rap is connected. Latino rap, pro-
duced in America or Europe, constitutes a special voice and finds
a global audience. As this article’s epigraph notes, the rap made in
Spanish is starting to have an important influence in areas where
Spanish is not the majority language. As a test, one only needs to
follow rappers such as Rxnde Akozta, Canserbero, Lil Supa, Jonas
Sanche, Portavoz, Intifada, 79, Negro HP, Nedman Guerrero, Rapper
School, Hermanos de Causa, Naranjuano, Nasty Killa, Gegga, among
many others, on YouTube, to realise that Latino rap is present
across the world. We believe that in sociolinguistics getting closer
to these discursive manifestations is another way of understanding
the social dynamics in which language plays a central role. How-
ever, in this context of globalisation and diaspora, it is important
to integrate to our analysis the role that visual and linguistic ele-
ments play in connecting people through discourses like rap and
hip-hop where the audiovisual elements brought by the Internet
are as important as the linguistic resources, although there remains
much fascinating terrain to explore.
Acknowledgement
Victor Corona is grateful to the ASLAN project (ANR-10-LABX-
0081) of Université de Lyon, for its financial support for his ongoing
Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005
research within the programme “Investissements d’Avenir” (ANR-
11-IDEX-0007). The ASLAN project is funded by the French
government, via the National Research Agency (ANR).
Appendix A.
A.1. Transcription conventions
1. Speaker: ABC:
2. Intonation:
a. Falling: \
b. Rising:/
3. Pauses: |
4. Overlapping: [text]
5. Latching: =
7. Lengthening of a sound: te:xt
10. Incomprehensible fragment: xxxx
11. Dubious transcription: (text?)
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Please cite this article in press as: Corona, V., & Kelsall, S. Latino rap in Barcelona: Diaspora, languages and identities. Linguistics and
Education (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.06.005