Bocafloja, or Aldo Villegas, is a hip-hop pioneer based in New York City with Mexican roots whose body of work embodies themes of Critical Race Theory, the Global South, Coloniality, and the African Diaspora in Latin America. His mediums of creation include music, filmmaking, literature, and photography. He was born on July 12, 1978, in Mexico City, Mexico. His Mexican background and experience in the Bronx have provided him with the perspective to educate audiences on Mexican Hip-Hop in the United States and amplify the voices that were silenced through its emergence. He has shared his views through lectures at universities across the country and has been a frequent attendee of the Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival having attended it eight times.
Bocafloja attended the festival in 2006, 2007, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2021, and most recently in 2022. During his appearances at the festival, he has shared his music, films, and overall wisdom with an international audience of hip-hop enthusiasts. At the festival, he screened his films Nana Dijo; Irresolute Radiography of Black Consciousness (2016), and Bravado Magenta (2019). Nana Dijo; Irresolute Radiography of Black Consciousness tells the story of race politics regarding Blackness in the context of Latin America. Bravado Magenta is about connecting the stories of racialized masculinities through a multilayered analysis of coloniality and was screened at the 2021 Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival. He conducted a Q&A following the screening where he addressed how his style of hip-hop is founded on critical analysis and using language as a tool to convey hip-hop as a diasporic experience. Reflecting on his experience as an attendee, Bocafloja shares how the festival serves as a creative epicenter and decentralizes the idea of the United States as the center of hip-hop culture, and fosters the discussion of understanding hip-hop as a larger experience. These themes are fundamental to the overall mission and purpose of the Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival.
Bocafloja founded the Quilomboarte Collective, which is a production platform that recognizes the Quilombos, which were communities established by black slaves, indigenous peoples, and others who rejected colonialism’s domination and preferred to live as free people in communal form. Their purpose is to amplify the voices of artists from the Global South and stand in solidarity from an anti-colonialist perspective and provide them with a platform to further create and develop their art. In an interview with OkayAfrica, Boca shared “I am of African and indigenous descent born in Mexico, so colonialism and body politics is something I’ve dealt with personally”. His personal connection and passion for combating these issues are what make his narrative compelling to audiences. Every aspect of his work is carefully composed to reflect his four elements of hip-hop: “decolonize, self-manage, transgress, emancipate” and communicates it in both English and Spanish, colonizer languages that Boca uses to exemplify the structures that make communicating in them inevitable. Specifically, demonstrated in his music video, “Distopia” ft. Immasoul, released in 2016, a bilingual track that incorporates rap, graffiti, and cinematography to share the feeling of being a “second-class citizen” in a country that prides itself on freedom and justice for all.
“I am of African and indigenous descent born in Mexico, so colonialism and body politics is something I’ve dealt with personally”
– Bocafloja during an interview with OkayAfrica
Bocafloja emphasizes peace, love, and unity in hip-hop by highlighting the social and political movements rooted in the genre by combating ideas of coloniality and anti-Blackness that exists in Latin America and permeates into the Latine music industry. Bocafloja’s body of work encourages audiences to explore their own identities and become antagonists against the systems that hinder the expression of oneself and others.
“Decolonize, Self-Manage, Transgress, Emancipate”
– Bocafloja, his four key elements of hip-hop