Ecuadorian director promoting documentary about late rapper to find closure

For Ecuadorian film director Andres Ramirez, the release of his documentary “Ukamau y Ke!” in Bolivia is a way to help him find closure and move on from the death of his beloved friend, Bolivian rapper Abraham Bojorquez, considered to be one of the pioneers of hip-hop in the Aymara language and praised as a benchmark in the genre in Latin America.

“After seven years, I feel it’s like closure, it’s the end of a period of mourning,” Ramirez said in an interview with EFE.

The Aymara rapper died in 2009 at the age of 27 but Ramirez was unable to attend his funeral, so he decided to make this documentary as a means of mourning and saying farewell.

The documentary shows the filmmaker’s journey from Quito to La Paz to portray the life and struggles and struggles of Bojorquez, better known as Ukamau y Ke (“That’s how it is, and what!” in Aymara).

The documentary also presents images and performances of the Bolivian rapper, so that people can get to know the life of the musician “in his own voice,” said the director.

In Ramirez’s opinion, his late friend’s life is important for Latin America because of his level of social commitment, which is reflected in his music, and with the dissemination of the film the director hopes other young people can come to know about the rapper’s life, his struggles and also the circumstances in which he died.

“People look at Abraham as a young man who committed himself to the people, who gave his life to music, to the Andean identity and to the continent’s social struggle,” said the Ecuadorian director.

Ramirez highlighted Bojorquez’s commitment to his Aymara identity, his struggle against capitalism with his music and the victims of the so-called “Guerra del Gas,” a 2003 social revolt in Bolivia in which more than 60 people died during the mandate of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (2002-2003).

So far, the film has been screened in Ecuador, the US, Greece, France, the United Kingdom and Mexico, as well as in Bolivia.