Guernica punk rock.
by Guilli Damage / Rene Zemog

What is this?

The word “punk” culturally speaking, brings to mind the image of a person with colorful Mohawk hairdo, studs, painted and ragged pants, cheap sneaker shoes, dirty and a permanent violent gesture in the face.

That stereotype was born in the late 70’s in first world countries thanks to the media bomb that represented itself, a social reaction to the world that was designed to provide opportunities to everyone but at the same time wasn’t working anymore, which became a social revolution that made everyone rethink about the social-cultural matters.

Thru the years, every punk had their chances in that “first world” full with opportunities. The kids that witnessed the suicidal speech of anti-heroes such as Sex Pistols, were designing computers, leading syndicates, running businesses or proposing real solutions to real problems around them 10 years later.

3rd world countries (or countries in way to development) had different realities. The dictatorships established decades before where not being well received by the global public opinion, so they took their own repression methods to a higher level of brutality, faking wellfare, peace and cooperation in the new world order of progress.

Introducing the Mexican scenario.

In the 40’s decade, the Spanish civil war deported thousands of General Franco’s ultra conservative system opponents, which consisted mainly of workers and farmers identified with the socialist and anarchist movement. Most of them were told to leave the country within hours, taking along only what they were wearing.

Mexico opened its doors to the refugees, welcoming and helping them to merge right away to Mexican society, marrying Mexicans and forming families that bred a new “post revolutionary” generation in a blooming country. They educated their sons and daughters with multicultural values of gratitude to a country that, in exchange, brought a peaceful environment who seemed like a promise land to everyone. This social environment surrounding the land seemed to be an ideological utopia to any creed and ideology (Simon Radowitzky, Leon Trotsky, Fidel Castro, Ernesto Guevara among many others who lived and died in Mexico those days), mostly because the country was looking for a social improvement through a culture of hard work.

As in the rest of the globe, in the late 50’s this naïve bubble broke, the sons of this first refugees started to look for their own identities, giving up the grateful and well-behaved attitude taught by their parents to start questioning the real motives of their own environment, getting their own points of view and a new urge to leave home. Those times weren’t about being unified by a flag or a country; it was about a whole generation that suffered the same kind of issues. In Mexico, it didn’t mattered where you were born or which color you was. It all had to do with the people.

Those who made a path to the power spots felt a menace in these kids, because those kids who where supposed to keep and protect the heritage of the nation had different plans.

It took almost 10 years for this new revolution to settle it’s terms. The soon-to-be heirs decided to play their social roles standing up against the conservative ways they lived day by day. Demonstrations took place everywhere, kids where looking for answers and change in France, Czech Republic, Cuba, Argentina, US, Chile, China, and of course Mexico.

Each nation confronted the situation in it’s own way. Some gave up a little, others confirmed their own decadent positions. In the case of Mexico, the international public eye was fixed all over the place because it was the hosting country for the Olympic games that where just about to begin. This situation urged the Mexican authorities to take action in the most cruel, brutal and stunning ways, such as the students massacre of the 2nd of October of 1968.

Mexico gets it’s very own dictatorship.

The education exchange and cultural expression means with other countries got filtered to reach the point of a social psychosis afraid of the “communist danger”, heavily influenced by the North-American ultra right way of thinking, but kept their open door policies to refugees of the world even if they had really left ideologies (such as Argentineans and Chileans). This set up a fragile melting pot environment with a government that ran the country with a more centralist thinking and self indulgent actions, where people with enough economical means had an opinion and a future in the system while the poor where silenced and forgotten.
Those days, being young came to be a crime. Thinking different was illegal enough to be put in jail and depending the social position or the mood of the authorities, even become a “desaparecido” (disappeared).

Coming off-age quickly translated into forming a family the very first chance they had and this generation’s kids grew eye-folded. Well taught into individualism, selfishness and frivolity.

The Mexican society focused in forgetting all about their immediate past and became fearful of questioning or taking action. This dullness ruled easily for years, allowing the foundations of counter-culture to be solidly set.

Logically, this whole somber landscape was happening, more or less, simultaneously in the whole lower American continent, as almost every country in Latin America had it’s own dictatorships and revolutions in process, and their own communications monopolies concealing anything not mainstream or thoughtful.