Browse Items (42 total)

Translated as "The Right to Live in Peace", this song was originally written as a tribute to Ho Chi Minh and talked about the destruction brought forth by the Vietnam War. It wasn't uncommon for the genre's artists to talk about injustice outside of…

Forced disappearances were a key tactic of various dictatorships of the Americas. The song follows the story of a man and woman, ordinary people who have disappeared, and the fight their family engages in to try and locate them. The final stanza…

The song describes the assassination of a popular village priest and altar boy, indirectly referencing the assassination of Bishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, major figurehead of Liberation Theology. Romero's preaching of liberation theology sought to…

This song could be used to introduce students to the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, the removal of a socialist president, Salvador Allende, and the installment of a U.S. backed military junta government led by General Augusto Pinochet. The name of the…

“Strange Fruit” describes the picturesque agricultural landscape of the South and contrasts this beauty and bounty with the horrific violence - lynchings in particular - that occurred in that setting.

Officially written by a Northerner, this song was rewritten by Southerners and Northerners to support varied agendas. “Dixie” is symbolic of the Lost Cause of the Old South and Southern resistance to the Civil Rights Movement.

This song describes the Dominican Republic’s social, political and economic situation. It can be used to discuss issues of social justice, poverty, social class and racial disparities, political corruption and foreign influence.

This song may be used to introduce students to the image of the soldadera and Adelita during the Mexican Revolution.

This song may be used to introduce students to an eloquent historic-cultural argument criticizing anti-immigrant sentiments in the United States.

This song may be used in conjunction with the eponymous poem by Nicolás Guillén to show the ways that indigenous people and people of African descent became visible in "high" cultural representations throughout Latin America.