Michael Jackson Brought Afrodescendants Across the Americas Together in 'They Don't Care About Us.' Now His Latino Nephew Picks Up the Torch in MICHAEL

Thirty years ago, Michael Jackson and Spike Lee made one of the riskiest and most unforgettable videos of the 1990s. They took They Don't Care About Us, one of Jackson's angriest, most confrontational songs, and filmed it in Brazil amid official outrage, legal battles, and long-running reports that the crew had to negotiate access to a Rio favela controlled by traffickers. What came out of that gamble was way more than a hit short film.

It was one of Jackson's forays into Latin America and an adventure that comes full circle with the movie MICHAEL, with one of his Latino nephews, Jaafar Jackson, as the King of Pop.

They Don't Care About Us came from Jackson's 1995 album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. It was released as a single in 1996 and quickly became one of the most controversial records of his adult career. Explaining why he chose Lee to direct the video, Michael Jackson said, "'They Don't Care About Us' has an edge, and Spike Lee had approached me." It's a public awareness song and that's what he is all about. It's a protest kind of song... and I think he was perfect for it."

Lee has said the collaboration almost went in another direction. Recalling the story years later, he said Jackson told him, "My new album's coming out, pick a song." Lee picked Stranger in Moscow, but Jackson pushed back. In Lee's retelling, Jackson told him, "Nah, you don't want 'Stranger In Moscow.' You want 'They Don't Care About Us.'" Jackson knew what he was doing. He wanted Lee's eye, and he wanted this song treated like an argument, not a product. Together they chose Brazil, specifically one of Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shanty towns,) and the city of Salvador, in the northeast.

Brazilian officials were horrified. Rio was trying to polish its global image while pursuing the 2004 Olympics, and the idea of Michael Jackson filming in one of the city's poorest communities hit nerves immediately. A judge briefly blocked the production before a higher court cleared the way. The concerns were not just about security. They were also about optics. Officials feared the video would show the world a Brazil of poverty, race, neglect, and exclusion instead of beaches and a skyline.

Then came the detail that still makes the story sound like a thriller. The production history around the video has long included reports that Jackson's team negotiated with traffickers in order to gain permission to film in Santa Marta, the Rio favela where part of the video was shot. Some residents and officials found that offensive, according to summaries of the shoot, but the production moved forward anyway. Even stripped of legend, the basic fact remains astonishing: one of the biggest stars on Earth went into an area that officials considered dangerous, and he did it in order to film a protest song in the middle of real life.

If Rio gave the video its danger, Salvador gave it its depth.

That is the part that makes the short film more than celebrity folklore. UNESCO describes Salvador de Bahia as, from 1558, "the first slave market in the New World," a city where enslaved Africans arrived to work on the sugar plantations. The video was filmed in Pelourinho, a historic neighborhood that was the city's center during the Portuguese colonial period and was named for the whipping post in its central plaza where enslaved people from Africa were publicly beaten as punishment for alleged infractions. By placing They Don't Care About Us in Salvador, Jackson rooted a song about abandonment, violence, and inequality in one of the most symbolically charged sites of the African diaspora in the Americas.

That is also why Olodum, the percussion band that plays with Jackson in the video, was so important.

Olodum is an Afro-Brazilian cultural group from Salvador, founded in 1979, deeply associated with Carnival, Black pride, activism, and the musical style known as samba-reggae. Olodum has worked to combat racism, build self-esteem, and defend the civil and human rights of marginalized Afro-Brazilians. Together with Michael Jackson, they represented unity across the Afro-descendant community of the Americas.

The scale of that collaboration was enormous. Production histories of the video say Jackson worked with 200 members of Olodum, whose drums shape the Salvador footage and give the clip its pulse. The same accounts say the media attention surrounding the video exposed Olodum to 140 countries, dramatically increasing its international profile. The cameras following Michael Jackson were also acting as global transmission system for Afro-Brazilian sound.

The video endures. They Don't Care About Us peaked at No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100, and traveled far beyond the U.S. market, and the official video passed one billion views on YouTube in 2023, according to Billboard. The clip's scale was obvious from the start. Contemporary accounts cited in production histories said the premiere was expected to reach more than 200 million viewers worldwide, showing the impact of a protest video built for mass culture, with the biggest star in the world at that time at its center.

And yet what keeps the film alive is not the chart position. It is the feeling inside the frame. Jackson is not presented as distant or untouchable, as he is in the middle of people. Women break through crowds to hug him. Children run beside him. The drums become the song. In Salvador and Santa Marta, the residents become part of the whole thing.

That afterlife is visible in Brazil's own memory of the shoot.

In 2009, Reuters quoted a tourism official in Dona Marta saying, "This process to make Dona Marta better started with Michael Jackson," before adding, "But all the attention started with Michael Jackson." That may overstate one music video's power, but it captures the emotional truth of the event. Jackson's visit changed how many outsiders looked at that place.

There were other Latino connections in Jackson's career, and they are worth remembering. He recorded Todo Mi Amor Eres Tú, the Spanish-language version of I Just Can't Stop Loving You, with lyrics translated by Rubén Blades. That was not a footnote. It showed that Jackson was willing, at times, to speak directly to Spanish-language audiences rather than simply rely on crossover. But Brazil was different. Brazil was not a translation. It was an immersion.

This weekend, Jaafar Jackson, the son of Jermaine Jackson and Colombian born Alejandra Jackson, brings back to life the spirit of Michael Jackson, and the spirit of that unity of the black people of the Americas that the King of Pop showed in the video of They Don't Care About Us.

Originally published on Latin Times