The Ch'ixi Blackness of Nacion Rap's Aymara Hip-Hop

This essay examines the music of Nacion Rap, Aymara rappers of El Alto, Bolivia, as an expression of what Aymara sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui terms a ch'ixi cultural form, one that juxtaposes seeming opposites into a changed third. I look to earlier moments of Aymara and Quechua cultural production, specifically colonial New World Baroque art, to consider Aymara hip hop as another instance of ch'ixi cosmopolitanism. In examining the lyrical, musical, and visual elements of Nacion Rap's performance, I argue that their music intervenes in local ideologies of race and Indigeneity. By reformulating what is understood as Aymara, by situating the Aymara language as poetically equivalent to the colonial lingua franca of Spanish, English, and French, and by wearing Aymara clothing and hairstyles in the performance of an urban musical genre with proximity to Blackness, these artists challenge dominant racial logics of their society.