Intersections

UNAM expert: Emos do not constitute an 'urban tribe'

* Darker than emo: A fan of Christian Death.

There was awful, sauna-style heat at the venue in Roma where L.A.-based Christian Death showed up to play on Saturday night, but that didn't stop some people from donning some impressive, full-scale goth/punk looks, like the guy above. * Read more on the show and other stuff at my new post at LA Daily.

Now, let's consider an article that I came across while looking through the anti-emo blog Movimiento Anti-Emosexual Inc., which previously disavowed responsibility for any instances of anti-emo violence. The blog links to an article in La Jornada that cites researchers who argue the emos of Mexico are not a bonafide 'tribu urbana' because they don't have a political ideology. My translation:

The specialist in urban groups Héctor Castillo Berthier indicated that to consider the emos an urban tribe is incorrect, as they do not adhere to the characteristics necessary to be one, and they only represent a fad.

[...]

The phenomenon, he said, simply obeys market interests and does not have any social sense, let alone a political one, for which it only represents a trend that [emos] will leave behind once they work or change their interests. "These showy adolescents will simply stop being emos," he said.

The article -- still maintaining a straight face -- also quotes someone who says 40 percent of emos are suicidal. I'm open to discussion on my translation, so here's the English Google version.

* MORE: Kristoff in translation.

Now some punks have something to be punk about

* Above: Anti-emo kids tear apart a welcoming banner for the emos at El Chopo.

It was supposed to have been a multi-tribe peaceful march for tolerance for the emos, from the Glorieta de Insurgentes to the one-and-only El Chopo street market, where for 25 years nearly every branch of alternative youth culture in Mexico City has gathered on Saturdays. Nevermind. It failed.

On a hot and rainy day here, emos arrived to El Chopo and were received with nasty resistance from some punks, skinheads, and darketos. It should have been expected. At the start of the march, I barely saw a single sympathetic member of any another tribu urbana. Plus, the emos arrived under heavy protection by riot police -- not a heartwarming sight for any self-respecting punk. (Some punks in fact said it was the presence of the poli that set them off.) "Fucking emo pigs!" they chanted ferociously. Defeated, the emos retreated behind police lines and left, further revving up the Chopo regulars -- who then decided to start moshing.

Meanwhile, in Tijuana, emos marched and faced their adversaries today and on Friday night. Norma Hernandez (yeah, my mom) put herself on "special assignment" for Intersections and provided images, seen below. She reports that emos are regularly discriminated against by the merchants at Plaza Rio Tijuana (a rare bit of public space for the border city). Mom writes: "Bueno yo iba a ir a pelearme con los mendigos comerciantes y tratar de defender su derecho de estar ahi y de ir al cine si les da su regalada gana..les mandan policias armados [...] Apoyo a los Emos!!"

BeamTV in Tijuana has more coverage.

* Punk girls in TJ.

* In Tijuana, demonstrating for tolerance.

THE WEEK IN REVIEW: "Violence against emos sweeps across Mexico," "More on the emo attacks in Mexico," "The emos of Mexico are fighting back," "Emos prepare to rumble in Tijuana, march for peace in Mexico City," "Could the anti-emo movement be good for emos?"

NOTE: Updates with more links are coming later.

Could the anti-emo movement be good for emos?

This is Adrian and Pablo, teen guys hanging out on Thursday at the now-infamous Glorieta de Insurgentes in Mexico City. It was calm today and, as expected, swarming with journalists gingerly making their way around the emo kids. "We've been hanging out here and no one's cared," Adrian said. "Now, there are cameras everywhere ..." -- just as another guy approached from a magazine, with a camera, asking to take a picture.

The much-maligned emos of Mexico are now enjoying the world's attention and an outpouring of pity and good vibes from the local government, local rights groups, and the global media. And even D.F.'s well-organized punk movement? Possibly. One rumor I heard today said that on Saturday pro-peace and tolerance punks will rumble with anti-emo punks, once and for all. Could there be a backlash to the backlash?

As for the kids whose iPods are packed with tracks by Alesana and My Chemical Romance, they profess they don't want to be bothered and don't want pleito with anyone. In fact, they have their own divisions. Many snicker at "posers" who've only recently begun wearing the emo style. Updates, as always, later.

* More links and updates on the buzz in Tijuana over at LA Daily: "Emos prepare to rumble in Tijuana, march for peace in Mexico City."

The emos of Mexico are fighting back *

Well, in a manner of speaking. The most active and committed of Mexicans emos are making their presence felt in defiance of a wave of violent attacks directed at them. They're organizing to defend their right to be emo.

In Queretaro on March 15, a week after the first anti-emo incident nationally, emos and others staged a silent march for peace and tolerance through Queretaro's centro. A week ago on Wednesday, emos and their supporters in Mexico City demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the municipal justice department. The action was organized by a Mexico City gay-rights organization, highlighting the contention of some that the anti-emo movement is homophobic, among other undercurrents. (Here's coverage from the gay angle at Sergay.com, in Spanish.) After the rally the emos marched to the metro under police protection and returned to their unofficial base, the Glorieta de Insurgentes, chanting "Emos! Emos! Emos!" On Tuesday, last night, emos here met with representatives of the D.F. municipal government. The meeting was closed to the press. Mexican media has also reported on pro-emo demonstrations in Puebla. As always, updates later.

* Previously, "Violence against emos sweeps across Mexico" and "More on the emo attacks in Mexico."

Skullphone (did not) hack digital billboards in L.A. ***

*** Thursday update No. 3: Nevermind.

The enigmatic Skulllphone took street art vandalism to a new level of sophistication last week, apparently hacking into 10 Clear Channel digital billboards across metropolitan Los Angeles and covering the advertisements with his signature image, the dead cellular user. Supertouch has pictures. Brazen, illegal, and, if true, impressive. But some commenters at LA TACO are arguing the "operation" was just regular old bought propoganda.

* Thursday update No. 1: I sent a press inquiry to the people at Clear Channel asking for verification of the hacking and any sort of comment. Updates as warranted.

** Thursday update No. 2: Commenter Diego alerts me that CurbedLA is citing a source and calling Skullphone a sell-out. Still no response from Clear Channel.

Violence against emos sweeps across Mexico **

* Note: This post has been updated. See below.

A bizarre wave of mob emo-bashings is sweeping across Mexico. The movement is being generated on message boards and social networking sites by non-emo youth who highly dislike like the emo look and attitude.

The spark came first in Queretaro on March 7. An estimated 800 young people poured into the city's Centro Historico hunting for emos to beat the crap out of. They found some. The next weekend it spread to Mexico City, where emos faced off against punks and rockabillies at the Glorieta de Insurgents, the epicenter of emo social space in the capital. There's also been reports of anti-emo violence in Durango, Colima, and elsewhere.

The question on everyone's lips right now seems to be, "What the hell is going on?" Been reporting this story since it broke, and we're looking further into it. Updates in the near future.

* New material: Added source links at "More on the emo attacks in Mexico."

** THURSDAY UPDATE: Fresh post above, "The emos of Mexico are fighting back."

Happy face in San Miguel Chapultepec ...

... On a narrow street behind a church dedicated to the archangel Michael.

Meditation on a manhole cover

From a short piece I have in the current edition of Tu Ciudad magazine:

It's not often you get a cultural lesson from a piece of municipal property, but this actual manhole cover plainly conveys the essence of Los Angeles, day after day, politics and media games aside. The message, etched in steel, is not a call by Chicano nationalists for a reconquest of the American Southwest. It is simply a statement of fact.

How? History tells us that L.A.’s roots and soul were indeed made in Mexico, but so does the present. We're reminded in the way the city is laid out, along the former boundaries of old Californio ranchos. We're reminded in the flavors and sounds of the cultural landscape -- la comida, la vibra. In the faces of the people, who come in every shade of brown mismatched with black and white and yellow and red and everything in between.

Today, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Jim Gilchrist, and hordes of faceless lieutenants in the relentless hate-talk war against "illegals" too often cloud our historical perspective. In Los Angeles -- the undisputed capital of modern-day Alta California -- even our manhole covers are smarter than that.

This one has Homeland L.A. written all over it, and if you look back in those archives, for me it's all about the layering of L.A.'s mixed-race Mexican heritage with everything that's come before and after. It's what makes it so rich and unlike any other city in the world.

* Better late than never: I want to thank Oscar Garza, Dennis Romero, and the team at Tu Ciudad for including me in their 2007 "Hip Hot Now" issue. It was a really cool feature and photo session at the lake. And regarding that issue release event at Union Station: the magazine sure knows how to throw a party.

Young lovers in San Salvador Atenco

These kids were in blissful embrace during a reggae and ska festival in San Salvador Atenco on Friday. Read my post about it at LA Daily. The festival was held in a dirt soccer field surrounded by rusty metal barricades. They sold caguamas for $25 pesos. Besides open P.D.A. I also saw some dads and moms ska-jamming with their toddlers and tweens. Later that night I carried my last caguama on a standing-room-only bus back to the city, to the transit hub at San Lazaro, elated with everything. * More here.

A marketwatch: Cory Kennedy in Mexico City

Another jam-packed Saturday night in the big D.F. Party at Malva with Domestic Fine Arts, which I missed. And Steve Aoki, Mark "The Cobra Snake" Hunter and Cory Kennedy were in town to host a party at Pasagüero. Here are Mark's shots documenting it all. At Salon Caribe in San Cosme on the same night, I watched Berlin-based Stereo Total destroy the house with that irresistable electro-pop. (Once again, the Mexico City audience was hyped and committed!) On Sunday Mark and Steve took off early, and Cory and I went with the guys of Te Amo and Denise Marchebout to Lagunilla, the antiques market north of the Centro. Looked at things but mostly we ate from the sidewalk vendors: fresh-squeezed orange juice, pico de gallo, and a big caguama beer in a Styrofoam cup.

The words "Cory Kennedy" are by far the most Googled way people find this site. Literally, daily, dozens of strangers stumble upon Intersections in their insatiable search for images or chatter about the now-18-year-old L.A. "Internet It Girl," all coming to a regular old People & Ideas post (which she told me she had never seen) that I did more than a year ago. The sustained buzz over everything Cory wears and does is so maddening to some people that they feel compelled to spend a significant amount of energy debating her significance on her Uber blog. Lately, she says, she stays home a lot.

L.A. Times publishes Metro piece in Spanish

It seems to have passed under the radar, but it's worth noting that the primary news source for Southern California published last week a Column One by Metro reporter Anna Gorman simultaneously in English and Spanish. The story, "Criando una familia con la basura de Pasadena," is about an undocumented Mexican woman named Juana Rivas who makes her living scavenging for recyclables. (Here's an audio Flash feature.) I don't know how it was presented in print but online the Spanish version of the story goes under the header "Columna Uno" and Gorman is cited, deliciously, as a "Redactora del Times."

The translation is lucid and smart, but a translator is not given credit. Yet this is fairly remarkable step taken for a newspaper that serves a global metropolis that is home to the second largest concentration of Mexicans in the world after Mexico City and operates essentially as a bilingual town. The question is, did Spanish-dominant Angelenos actually find the piece, and will they and the Times benefit from the effort?

* L.A. Times photo above by Anne Cusack.

'Bad Kid': Twelve-year-old thief makes the news

* Above: Youth slam-dancing in the dust at a reggae ska festival on Friday.

"Niño Malo," hollers the Saturday front-page of El Centro, a Mexico City tabloid. "He's 12 years old and robs, robs, robs." The story inside says the kid, identified as Jorge, was finally caught by police after holding up a microbus at knifepoint on Friday and making off with three handbags, three cell phones, and a bag full of clothing, with the help of an accomplice. Bold little thug, 'int he?

The paper says Jorge's base of operation was in the colonias of Santa Anita, Asturias and Viaducto Piedad, on the border of the boroughs of Cuauhtemoc and Venustiano Carranza. "Since October or November, the chavito started hanging out with a crew that, some say, are thieves," a neighbor said. "Sometimes the kid just disappears. He says he doesn't even care about his aunt," with whom Jorge lives. Or, lived, now that he's in juvi.

* The image above is an unrelated preview, for a future post. 

Bust of Che Guevara before sleepy plaza

"¡Hasta la victoria siempre!" reads the inscription below this bust of Che Guevara. "30 aniversario de la caida del Che en Bolivia. 1967-1997. Mexico." Stumbled upon it near the main entrance to the gorgeous Academia de San Carlos. In the plaza there, homeless men slept on the benches in hot midday sun.

Braving the chill: Report from MX Beat 2008

Here's my take, "Bodies Moving at MX Beat." It comes with some news: I've signed on with LAWeekly.com to write a series of posts at the blog LA Daily from my base here in Mexico City. I've added a link to the menu bar at your right titled "Dispatch D.F." that will take you directly to my posts at LA Weekly, filed under the category "Letter from Mexico City." Posts will go up once or twice a week, so keep checking back. The second installment is my report from MX Beat.

More, Milenio reports that 7,000 people attended. * Image above, yours truly, somewhere else, some other night.

Santogold: 'I am an introvert and excavator' *

Right now the scenesters of Mexico City are abuzz over the arrival of London MC Maya Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., who is in town for Saturday's MX BEAT festival (along with the Beastie Boys!). But by the looks of recent blog activity in the States, could it be that fellow Brooklyn homegirl and former punk singer Santogold is poised to cut into M.I.A.'s current hold over the urban-glam electro-grime female (etc.) performer market? The cause is the release of a new video for the spacey single "L.E.S Artistes," an assault on the "force fakers" of New York's Lower East Side and presumably anywhere else the breed gathers. It is indeed a convincing track, foreboding a bit, but with a hint of cheer and expectation.

Santogold is linked, whether in the studio or on stage, with the likes of Spank Rock, Diplo, Switch, and of course, M.I.A., whose singular sound is echoed a bit on the Santogold track "The Creator." Read more at BBC's Collective and at Rolling Stone, which has a good video of Santogold introducing herself.

* Previously on Intersections, "Grime-glam goddess M.I.A. unleashed on L.A." and "On hip-hop handwringing, international spotrockers unite!" * And, more later on MX BEAT and M.I.A.'s visit to the big D.F.! (This post has been updated.)

View inside the Casino Metropolitano

This is a shot of these interesting light boxes hanging on the second-level of the exhibition space at the old Casino Metropolitano, a gallery in the Centro Historico of Mexico City. One of the walls in the space has a really nice mural honoring Roma laundry soap. Specific information about the works was not available, but the show is titled "Los Compadres Outsiders," according to the flier.

The drumbeats of war rise in the Andes **

Authorities have confirmed that a 21-year-old Mexican woman named Lucía Morett Alvarez was injured in the attack against a FARC camp in Ecuador that killed one of the Colombian rebel movement's high-ranking leaders. The incident is threatening to bring war to the Andean region between Colombia and allies Ecuador and Venezuela. This is the New York Times breakdown of the situation as of Tuesday. The L.A. Times explains the Colombians' incursion into Ecuador in its chase for FARC No. 2 Raul Reyes.

El Universal identified Morett Alvarez as a native of Mexico City and a graduate of the UNAM in the faculty of philosophy and letters. What was she doing in the highlands of Ecuador? Had she been on some sort of humanitarian mission? Was she a FARC insurgent in training? It's not yet clear. Ecuadorian military officials told the papers Morett Alvarez had suffered wounds to her legs and upper body, and was in "military custody."

Borders are closing, ambassadors are being recalled, diplomatic ties have been frozen, and the war of words is well underway. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has called Colombian president Alvaro Uribe "Dracula" and his country "the Israel of South America." Uribe's government has produced documents it says prove Chavez is a financial supporter of the FARC. Meanwhile, the Colombian rebels annouced on Tuesday a replacement for Raul Reyes, a man they're calling "Joaquín Gómez." * This post may be updated.

** Wednesday update: It appears the major tensions have thawed a bit, but Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa said today that if Ecuadorians had been among those killed by Colombia over the weekend, there would have been war by now.

* AP photo by Dolores Ochoa: Ecuadorian soldiers arrive on the border with Colombia.

Plants and robots: A contemporary art recorrido

Mexico City artist Jeronimo Hagerman, who is fond of plants, has an interesting installation at the Casa Vecina cultural space in the Centro Historico. "Malas Madres," 2007, consists of 35 houseplants hanging from rope in an atrium in a neat grid. The ropes are pulled tight and the plants hang at different angles and heights. On the roof of Casa Vecina an artists collective installed a wooden ramp that rakes probably about 20 ft. into the sky to a platform. Viewers at the opening were instructed to climb it one at a time in order to participate.

Also, the other night, Garash gallery in Col. Roma opened a show by Gilberto Esparza. The exhibit is built around a bunch of barebones mechanical toys modified with wire antlers that function to fruitlessly push around trash on the floor. Esparza also has a piece at the Casa Vecina show. It is a robot operated by cell phone (which viewers must call to activate) that moves on small wheels and sprays dull industrial paint over government documents taped to a wall.