"Without a Face" is a song by American

rap metal Rap metal is a fusion genre that combines hip hop music, hip hop with heavy metal music, heavy metal. It usually consists of heavy metal guitar riffs, funk metal elements, Rapping, rapped vocals and sometimes turntablism, turntables. History O ...

band

Rage Against the Machine Rage Against the Machine (often abbreviated as RATM or shortened to Rage) was an American Rock music, rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1991. It consisted of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim ...

from their second studio album ''

Evil Empire An evil empire is a speculative fiction trope in which a major antagonist of the story is a technologically advanced nation, typically ruled by an evil emperor or empress, that aims to control the world or conquer some specific group. They are ...

'' (1996).

Background

"Without a Face" discusses the hardships faced by Mexican immigrants when moving to the United States, and how the U.S. government was building a wall at the border between itself and

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

to stop the immigrants coming in. The title references the fact that many Mexican immigrants in the U.S. go unnoticed: they don't have signs on their backs, identification or rights, and are treated as one mass of nameless people. As such, they can be thought of as "without a face". The chorus (''Walk unseen past the graves and the gates / Born without a face / One motive, no hope, uh / Born without a face'') refers to the Zapatista people of

Chiapas Chiapas, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas, is one of the states that make up the Political divisions of Mexico, 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises Municipalities of Chiapas, 124 municipalities and its capital and large ...

, who were unrepresented and ignored by the

Institutional Revolutionary Party The Institutional Revolutionary Party (, , PRI) is a List of political parties in Mexico, political party in Mexico that was founded in 1929 as the National Revolutionary Party (, PNR), then as the Party of the Mexican Revolution (, PRM) and fin ...

(PRI) controlled Mexican government, but also broadly to other peoples hurt by the

North American Free Trade Agreement The North American Free Trade Agreement (, TLCAN; , ALÉNA), referred to colloquially in the Anglosphere as NAFTA, ( ) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The ...

(NAFTA).

References

{{Rage Against the Machine Rage Against the Machine songs Songs written by Zack de la Rocha 1996 songs