This line and the previous line are also a hard reference to a Roman Senator named Cato the Younger.

The “Roman senator inner reveals Maccabees” refers to the suicide of Cato the Younger who famously sliced his torso with a knife and ripped out his own intestines or “innards (inners).”

His innards reveal Maccabees (a group of rebels in the Kingdom of Judea) because Cato’s suicide was a protest to the legitimacy of Julius Caesar’s newfound control of Rome. His suicide inspired rebels (Maccabees) like Marcus Brutus, one of the famous assassins who killed Caesar. Marcus Brutus was the nephew of Cato, and Cato brought him up and taught him stoic philosophy. So Cato’s innards inspired/revealed Maccabees (rebels) like Marcus Brutus.

The next line says “Never trust off guts, unless it’s Cato’s” referring to the trust many Romans had in the spirit of Cato which was crystalized by his suicide (his guts). The spirit of Cato was essentially the spirit of Roman tradition and the Republic juxtaposed to Caesar’s disregard for tradition and his position as absolute ruler.

I also feel that here Lupe is saying to trust your experience over your intuition or gut feeling.

As for the line above, it’s in reference to the Roman control over the land of Palestine/Israel, most likely in the time of Pompeii a Roman Senator. Although it was regarded under his control it was under the true control of the Maccabees, a Jewish population known to rebel. This biblical reference is likely tied to the “pillars of salt” mentioned later since that was the biblical punishment for the people of Sodom and Gomorra.

There’s more subtlety in this line than what’s stated above.

Kuato is merely the (bizarre) exception that confirms the (strict) rule that you should “never just trust off guts but what’s actually"—that is, what’s sensible (or practical or realistic), which is a combination of instinct + reason.

Kuato isn’t “smart,” he’s wise. However, he is still a mutant parasite attached to another man, which makes his wise words all the more important to the hero of the film, Quaid:

You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.

Kuato then reveals the critical memory inside Quaid’s mind, so he can act accordingly (much like the Oracle does for Neo in The Matrix). Both need each other to further the cause.

Which is why Lupe subtly blends their names together, specifically through the vowels: Kuato + Quaid = Quaito (or Kuaito or…).
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In the movie, Kuato is pronounced
kwä*-dō

Could be a reference to Failure

Everyone is more or less right.

The image proves how compressed his “gallery of galleries” really is by being itself another exhibit within it…rather metapoetically…like another super lyrical painting upon the walls of some grand, evershrinking museum in Lupe Land…or like one of many mini-murals within the mural of this song and that within the mural of Lu’s career, perhaps.

He says a lot with little. A few words paint a serious political picture of a “land” which from afar could nearly be any “ghetto” anywhere but one more like a blend of Warsaw, Poland + Chicago, Illinois. Their respective histories color and darken the simple landscape.

Chicago’s a pretty Polish place.

The land of the po’ is both a reference to the ghetto and the nation of Poland. Poland’s capital is Warsaw, which was home to the largest Jewish ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe. Further, Lupe is drawing a comparison between the plight of the Jew in Nazi Germany and that of the African American in the US.

The way Lupe says po' sounds like Pole, which ties into the wordplay of Poland and Warsaw