The music video for “This is not America”, new single by Puerto Rican rapper Residente, hit more than 15.1 million views on YouTube this month and spurred a series of debates as people, particularly from Latin America, began to capture the different visual references of their shared stories.

In collaboration with the French-Afro Cuban duo Ibeyi, Residente seeks to burst that bubble with a mix of thought-provoking lyrics and historical references, arguing that the American continent is rooted in a long history of colonialism and slavery, systems that have contributed to the erasure of the continent's Black and Indigenous heritage, according to NBC News.

The rapper stated that “while such systems are considered a thing of the past by many, the United States has exploited both in recent decades through its interventions across Latin America, a practice that has helped the nation co-opt the term ‘America’ as its own”.

But even more impactful than the song's lyrics is the related music video.

“The clip is followed by a dramatization of the gunshots that reverberated through the U.S. Capitol in 1954 when Lolita Lebrón led three other Puerto Rican nationalists on an attack on the House of Representatives to demand the independence of Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States”, according to NBC News.

Images of Zapatista women serve as a reminder of when the Mexican government ordered a crackdown on the predominantly Indigenous community in the 1990s out of fear that insurgency across these groups could threaten the ratification of NAFTA, a trade agreement between Mexico, Canada, and the United States.

“The music video also includes a recreation of the killing of Víctor Jara, a Chilean activist folk singer who was killed under the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who led the 1973 military coup that overthrew leftist President Salvador Allende”.

According to NBC, Residente seeks to show in his music video how big corporations are also a manifestation of U.S. imperialism across Latin America, “with images of indigenous children standing on piles of what appear to be Coke and Amazon boxes, as well as McDonald's Happy Meals and Starbucks coffee cups”.

“The video also questions the impact of U.S. immigration policies across Latin American countries by showing gang members as religious and as victims of the longstanding Central American refugee crisis. It also refers to family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border as well as amputated and mutilated migrants seemingly injured by ‘La Bestia’ a freight train often used to travel from southern Mexico to the U.S. border”, according to publication.

There are other historical moments of Latin American countries portrayed by the artists in the video that seek to demonstrate situations that began with the interventions of the United States throughout America.

“In just a few seconds, Residente traces a colonialism timeline across the American continents by placing images of pre-Columbian monuments among first-world skylines and an Indigenous version of the Statue of Liberty paired with lyrics reminding audiences that ‘the Mayans invented the calendar they use’, notes NBC.

Residente said he also has other upcoming projects based on the main message of his latest single, that is, “giving back the name America to the continent”.

“It’s an educational thing. People that I admire, they call the U.S. America. It’s not the name of a country, it’s the name of a continent”.