mon laferte, SEIS, and chile's new constitution
a love letter
I first discovered Mon Laferte when I cut my own bangs and a friend told me that I looked like her. It’s a compliment, she assured me. I laughed; made sure to memorize the name. That night, at the kitchen table in my first real apartment, I listened to her newest single, Algo Es Mejor.
The cover art for the song is a photograph of Mon, who gazes out the window of an antique baby blue car, lips just barely parted, elbow resting on the sill, sleek black bangs framing her face. She’s wearing a periwinkle that blends in with the color of the 1965 Plymouth Valiant, and they begin to merge too, so that the car holds her serenity and she carries the confidence of its timelessness. More than anything, she looks at peace.
In an interview with GQ Latinoamérica, Mon said that the melody for the song came to her as she was driving through Malibu with the windows down, wind blowing, listening to Fleetwood Mac. Me sentía muy bien, she said. Me sentía muy feliz, muy relajada, muy buena onda. She wanted to convey that calmness with a track that, unlike her others, wasn’t too vocally demanding. She wanted to be casi susurrando—como me sentía, she said.
When I heard it for the first time, though, I was going through a breakup. I was looking for more of an Algo Es Peor, for something I could scream-sing, or cry to. I remember thinking it was pretty. But I didn’t listen to another of her songs for months.
The second time I discovered Mon, I was at a friend’s party. It was December, and we wore our nice clothes under winter jackets that we hung up by the door. I brought Guaraná, sold to me at a discount by the 102-year-old Portuguese man who ran a small grocery store in the neighborhood, and my friend Abby brought gin. The table was so full of food—empanadas, quesadillas, fruit, flan, chips, salsa—that we had to eat to make more room. We exchanged Secret Santa gifts. And as all good parties do, around midnight, the gathering devolved into karaoke. Val, the friend who had told me I looked like Mon, sang first.
I was sitting on the bed, but I wish I had crouched to find the best angle and pulled out my phone to record, because I remember only what I felt and a humid navy blue haze. The more descriptive words fail me, I think, because I was so absolutely entranced by Val’s voice, by the lyrics, by the melody, by how it felt like I had heard this song before, like I had written it. I didn’t know the words, so I couldn’t have sung along, but it feels like I did, like I was part of the moment more than an observer of it.
That night, we also sang Selena, Don’t Stop Believin’, Julieta Venegas’ Limón y Sal, which I hadn’t heard in years, and (obviously) All I Want for Christmas is You. Afterwards, I remember walking home two blocks, sleeping in my makeup, waking up without a hangover, looking at pictures from the night before and feeling disappointed, wishing I looked prettier.
It wasn’t until over two weeks after that, when I was on a road trip with my parents in a car somewhere between Pittsburgh and St. Louis, that I listened to Tú Falta de Querer. And then listened to it again. And again. And again until I had memorized not just the name Mon Laferte but also all the words to describe my heartbreak. I remember wanting to scream out the window: Aún te amo, y creo que hasta más que ayer! Yo fui tu amiga y fui tu compañera! Veeeeeeeen, y cuéntame la verdad! Ten piedad, y dime por qué! ¿Cómo fue que me dejaste de amar? Yo aún podía soportar tu tanta falta de querer!!!! If you haven’t heard it, I suggest you pause your reading and go do so. It is absolutely the best break up song of all time.
“I found your karaoke song,” I texted Val. “Your version is better tho.” She answered a few hours later. “That song is actually heaven. And that’s the singer I said you remind me of when I first met you!!!” Definitely a compliment.
I listened to Mi Buen Amor, Amárrame, Amor Completo, Pá Donde Se Fue, Algo Es Mejor (again), and her newest album, 1940 Carmen (on which the best songs, in my opinion, are Zombie and Placer Hollywood). I texted the music festival booking board I was on at the time that we should bid her, recommending that “everyone pls listen to Mon Laferte over break.” Two days later, somewhere between St. Louis and Amarillo, Texas, I sent myself a text that began: “idea: a collection of essays about music” and listed my inspirations, including, of course, something about “mon laferte.”
I recognize that this is a long introduction, but anything I write about Mon is defined by the relationships that introduced me to her. Part of why I feel so drawn to her music is the fact that it reminds me of all these moments of friendship, of belonging, and of love. Clarice Lispector, one of the most famous Brazilian authors of all time, once wrote that she was proud to belong to Brazilian literature. I am happy just “to participate,” she wrote. I, too, am happy just to participate in the discussion of music, and I take quite a bit of comfort in the notion that I may belong to an idea. That I may belong to Brazilian music but not to Brazil, to Latin American music but not Latin America, that I may belong to what I love or what loves me.
If I one day have the opportunity to interview Mon (as Val messaged me the other day, “never say never”), the first thing I would ask her is to what places, people, and ideas she belongs.
Mon Laferte was born Norma Monserrat Bustamante Laferte in Viña del Mar, Chile, in 1983. Which means Mon Laferte was born Norma Monserrat Bustamante Laferte in a country where memory of dictatorship hangs over everything like an atmospheric shroud, blocking the sun, tainting the rainwater, and seeding the soil, so that shrouds start fruiting on family trees. In 1983.
Yo nací durante la dictadura, crecí en la dictadura y viví el paso a la democracia, en un país con muchas desigualdades, Laferte said in 2019. Es impensable que 30 años después de llegada la democracia, esto siga.
‘Esto’—violence, human rights abuses, inequality, authoritarian governance, the consequences of capitalism—defined news coverage of Chile between October 2019 and March 2020. What began as a student-led protest against an increase in public transportation costs became a widespread manifestation against the right-wing president, Sebastián Piñera, an outdated constitution written under Pinochet, neoliberalism, and social inequality. On October 25, over 1.2 million people protested in Santiago, in what has since been called ‘the biggest march of Chile.’ But in a violent retaliation characteristic of nominally democratic right-wing states, police terrorized protesters. By the end of the year, at least 29 people were killed, 2,500 were injured, and 2,840 arrested. It remains unreported how many people were tortured or assaulted by police.
In November, on the red carpet of the Latin Grammys where she would win Best Alternative Music Album, Laferte exposed her chest in protest against this police violence. The black ink on her skin read: EN CHILE, TORTURAN, VIOLAN, Y MATAN. Around her neck, she wore a green bandana, the symbol of the abortion rights movement in Argentina. She crossed the lapels of her suit neatly above her belly button, stood for nearly a minute staring solemnly ahead, and then turned to continue down the carpet. The next day, Chile’s Congress agreed to a national referendum on the Constitution.
Almost another year after that, in October 2020, the referendum vote finally happened, with 78 percent voting in favor of rewriting the document. 79 percent voted for it to be written by elected citizens in place of established ‘career’ politicians. And the resulting redrafted constitution, made public in early July, is groundbreaking in how it approaches rights—to work, health, housing, and more. The “visionary document [would] set a new standard for democratic renewal in the 21st century,” David Adler wrote for the Guardian. If passed, it would be the first constitution to codify the right to abortion and respond to the climate crisis.
On September 4th, Chileans will vote on whether to ratify it.
Something I appreciate about Mon is that despite her bold acts of protest, she doesn’t claim to be an activist. (Typically, it’s the other way around). If I’m an activist, I’m the worst one, she told Paper Magazine. Because activists dedicate their lives right? All the time. And I’m here doing other things—but I have concerns. In a different interview, she said: Yo lo único que sé hacer es cantar.
But singing, too, is protest. SEIS, released in April 2021, features two songs addressed to a governmental “tú.” On the first, La Democracia, Laferte sings, ironically:
Tú no tienes la culpa de que la plata a nadie le alcanza/ Tú no tienes la culpa de la violencia y de la matanza… The chorus repeats: Que alguien me explique lo que pasó (por la democracia, la democracia)/ Me confundi o alguien me mintió (la democracia, la democracia) Pa’ dónde fue? Quien se la robó? (la democracia, la democracia).
In English: It’s not your fault that money doesn’t reach anyone/Violence and killings are not your fault…Can someone explain to me what happened (to democracy, democracy)/ Was I confused or did someone lie to me (democracy, democracy) Where did it go? Who stole it? (democracy, democracy).
Knowing the context of her November protest, it’s easy to read this critique as one of her homeland, Chile, but the song extends to any state that denies its role in human rights abuses and simultaneously assures of and applauds its democracy. In this way, it’s easy to read it as a song about Mexico, too, where Mon moved in 2007 and has lived ever since.
After the first chorus, she sings, Tú no tienes la culpa de que persigan a los migrantes/ Tú no tienes la culpa de la masacre a los estudiantes, nods to the Mexican government’s violence against Central American immigrants and the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in 2014. In the latter case, because evidence was tampered with and people were tortured and forced to make confessions that corroborated the government’s narrative, nearly eight years later families are still seeking the truth.
Yo soy mexicana y soy chilena, soy las dos, Mon said in 2021. Uno es de donde quiere ser, de donde vive y donde está su corazón. Y mi corazón está para allá y para acá.
That she sings about Mexico the way she sings about Chile, though, is the proof of this statement. She talks about both with a particular sense of responsibility that comes from a deep love and sense of hope. We typically metaphorize land and place as ‘mother,’ but Mon talks about Chile and Mexico the way people talk about something they’re creating. In remembering, documenting, honoring, living, she is creating, too.
Last January, at the same ever-sticky kitchen table where I first listened to Mon, I arranged mismatched bowls and plates with refried beans, onions, lime, tortillas, and southwest-seasoned chicken I had made for dinner with Val and our friend Ana. We spoke about art and dance forms as protest, recalled the chant y la culpa no era mia ni dónde estaba ni que yo vestía!, and thought about living as women, how important it was that we had each other. My laptop was open on the table, and Ana pulled up a song she wanted to choreograph to.
It was Mon Laferte and Vivir Quintana's Canción Sin Miedo, a protest song against femicide. Nós queremos vivas, a chorus of women sang, and we inhaled the familiar pain in their voices, inviting it to rest at the bottom of our full stomachs. Si tocan a una, respondemos todas.