Immortal Technique – Open Your Eyes lyrics

[Repeated in background]
(Open your eyes before you die)

We're here because of you
We're here because you were there
We've arrived from every corner of the planet to this nation
To seek the fulfillment of a promise of America
We were promised a better life in our home countries,
where we were told that privatizing water and electricity will make things run more efficiently
Instead the quality remained almost the same
and the price was increased until it became an unaffordable luxury

Some corporations are more efficient than government,
but their motivation is not the health or the well being of the people,
it's only about profit, everything else, their image,
their human resources, their public relations,
only exist to protect the reality behind it
Once upon a time, we were told that nationalization would prevent growth
by limiting competition,
that our countries were nothing without the companies
that invested in us and so they privatized everything,
everything in our country was owned by people
that had no connection to our culture,
by those who never had our interests at heart,
they didn't care about our survival or well being,
they just wanted to turn a profit by raping our land,
by exploiting our people, our industry and our resources
They took everything we built and made it theirs,
first by creating racism to justify slavery,
building the capital for capitalism
and then when they gave us what they call liberty,
everything we had was still owned by them,
our governments told us that socialism was the real enemy
and that we would have freedom,
but the foreign powers and corporations were the ones with real freedom
The freedom to take all the wealth generated
by our work and our land
and give us only a small percentage of the scraps from the table
Their lust for power and their greed drove them to betray not only us but themselves and the word of their own God

(Open your eyes before you die)
And while some used missionaries and donations to off set this abuse,
other countries and companies were blatent with their crimes,
using war, disease and sanctions that killed millions,
they supported corrupt governments
that were almost like the old slave masters in their oppression of the people,
because their loyalty was to those who enable them,
enstored them and kept them in power,
they became the bastard children of American industry,
kleptocracy, government's of thievery,
they protected the corporations
and went to war against their own people to preserve those profits
The puppet rulers were given billions of US tax dollars
to fund civil wars, right wing death squads,
execute political dissidents, sympathetic clergy
and even overthrow democratically elected governments
and so the age of revolution began again,
they painted it as godless terrorist versus the free world and the market
But the free market has never been free,
because the market does not regulate itself,
it is manipulated like a puppet and it survives because of its image,
destroy the image and the enemy will die
Such is the same in the rap industry,
but the major label super powers treat the underground like the 3rd world,
when they need new assets,
new honest to prostitute a side and put on a shelf to use their songs
When they needed new concepts, music and publishing to steal from the producers,
they came to the underground, to the 3rd world, they took our culture,
our property and our industry and our resources,
even using our own people to help them exploit us
But behind the mask of efficiency,
they claimed that we need to succeed,
they're no better than us, they're economic advertising was always a lie,
a few got rich but most were given an illusion of wealth,
almost as if it was designed for failure
Opportunity comes at the price of soul and the music,
so remember what they are underneath the fancy architecture,
glittering rented jewelery, the cars, the IMF loans,
the seeds with suicide genes, 20 year contracts and oil bloody money
Build your defenses my independent brothers and sisters,
they'll stop at nothing to get what they want,
they paint the 3rd world, underground, as savage and backward,
but the super powers are no less corrupt,
they've just learned to disguise it better,
cause they fix elections too, they embessle tax money,
they go to war for resources, they fund terrorism for their own benefit,
and when there's enough at stake,
history's taught us that they'll even assassinate their own president.

[Repeat: x5]
(Open your eyes before you die)