Anti-Emo Riots Break Out Across Mexico
By Alexis Madrigal

March 27, 2008 | 5:42:52 PMCategories:
Current Affairs,
Music
Riot police have taken to the streets of several cities in Mexico to ... defend emo kids?
A series of attacks on dyed-hair, eye-makeup-wearing emo kids began
in early March when several hundred people went on an emo-beating
rampage in Querétaro, a town of 1.5 million about 160 miles north of
Mexico City.
The next week, shaggy-haired emo teenagers were harassed again by
punks and rockabillys in the capital, prompting police protection and a
segment on the
TV news.
Most recently, a Mexican newspaper reported that metal heads and
gangsters have warned Tijuana's emo kids to stay away from the town's
fair next month.
But the so-called emos are organizing, too. Last week, they
demonstrated against the violence, pictured above, and Wednesday some
met with police in Mexico City.
"They're organizing to defend their right to be emo,"
wrote Daniel Hernandez of
LA Weekly on his
personal blog, which has provided stellar coverage of the whole affair.
Music-based subcultures have permeated Mexico's major cities for
decades, fueled by constant migration from rural cities. But only in
the past year have emos begun to make their presence felt in the
streets. In response, many of the established so-called
tribus urbanas
like punks and metalheads are responding with violence. The emo-punk
battles are reminiscent of earlier subculture fights among various
factions, like the Hell's Angels fighting hippies at the
Altamont Music Festival or the
Mods taking on the Rockers.
But while videos of Mexican teenagers with pompadours advancing on
equally baby-faced emo rockers seem like scenes from a
south-of-the-border version of John Waters'
Crybaby, there are ugly undercurrents to the story.
First, by
some accounts, the emo subculture is identified with homosexuality in Mexico. As Mexico City youth worker Victor Mendoza
told Time.com: "At the core of this is the homophobic issue. The other arguments are just window dressing for that."
Gustavo Arellano, the author of
Ask a Mexican
and an editor at OC Weekly, said that the sexual ambiguities cultivated
by emo fashion helped set the group up for targeting by more macho
groups.
"What do you do when you are confronted with a question mark about sexuality in Mexico?" Arellano said. "You beat it up."
Forum posts show similar sentiments. One person wrote on a
government youth-website forum, "detesto a los emosexuales," which translates as "I hate emosexuals."
Emosexual is an obvious play on
homosexual, especially in Spanish, where the H is silent.
Many of the attacks have been planned, or at least fomented, on violently anti-emo websites like
Movimiento Anti Emosexual,
which features videos of physical violence sprinkled liberally with
anti-gay sentiment. Last.fm's Anti Emo Death Squad group has almost
4,000 members.
But Arellano said he thought the riots could have a positive impact here in the US.
"It's a great clusterfuck for the American mind's idea of Mexico,"
Arellano said. "This teaches the rest of the world that Mexico is not
just a bunch of cactuses and sombreros."
Photo: Mexican emo kids gather in response to anti-emo violence by metalheads and punk rockers.
Credit: promrguez
[Via
Daily Swarm]