‘Si quiere,’ mi Machete te muerde’: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of “This is not America” by Residente

The social problems of Latin America have been extensively examined in diverse fields and music has become a significant way to inform and interpret these social problems. Residente, a Puerto Rican singer, presents his song “This is Not America” that demonstrates a valuable interpretation of the issues that impact Latin American and its people through the song lyrics and music video. Thus, this paper analyzes the discursive and visual features of the music video for the single ‘This is Not America’ and reports on how Residente interprets the political and social problems in Latin America. Multimodal critical discourse analysis has been implemented for the exploration of the music video and lyrics alike.