Songfacts®:

• This song seems to be about children born into very poor families in Mexico where they have no advantages and feel their lives don't matter. The part about Gates, Guns, and Alarms shaping the calm of the dawn is in reference to the US/Mexico Border and the border guards blocking the children's entrance to the US. The line about "One book and forty ghosts locked in a room" is in reference to the poor school system which children born into poverty must deal with.
• "Born As Ghosts" is part of the third Rage Against The Machine album, The Battle Of Los Angeles. Lead singer Zack de la Rocha explained the album title: "Los Angeles is famous for Hollywood and for its culture of entertainment, but the reality is that it's a city that's in permanent conflict between those who have and those who do not, between those who were born privileged and those who have been abandoned by the Government system."
  
  Rage's music has always tried to reflect and to raise those voices of the vulnerable, and the album's title has to do with that. Guitarist Tom Morello has said that a band like Rage Against the Machine could have only occurred in Los Angeles - the sound, the ethnic makeup of the band, the intensity of the live shows - it's entirely LA. The struggles that the band went through in order to make it all work was a battle in its own. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Tim - Pittsburgh, PA, for above 2