Zacarías Manuel de la Rocha (born January 12, 1970 in Long Beach, California) is a rapper, musician, poet, and activist best known as the vocalist and lyricist of Rage Against the Machine. Early life In 1983, de la Rocha's father Roberto (known as Beto)—a member of Los Four, the first Chicano art collective to be exhibited at a major museum (LACMA, 1974)—suffered a nervous breakdown and took his religious ideals to extremes. He destroyed his art, and, when Zack visited him on the weekends, he was forced to fast, sit in a room with the curtains closed and the door locked, and help destroy his father's paintings. After a while, he was unable to cope with this lifestyle and stayed with his mother in Irvine. For elementary school, he attended the UC Irvine Farm School, a laboratory school housed in ranch hands' bungalows associated with a slaughterhouse operation that was formerly on the site - houses that are among the very fe