It’s not every day that Queretaro makes the front page of Time.com in English. A couple of weeks ago there was a fight in the centre, where a couple hundred preppy kids organised online to attack what turned out to be about 30 alternative kids. The article says “emo”, but I would have called them goth or just alternative. A few days later, there was (supposed to be; not sure if it actually happened) a parade in the centre, organised by the emos, in solidarity against the attack.
This article makes it seem like some kind of fight over music, perhaps a part of an eternal aesthetic conflict. To me, it just seems like a bunch of bored kids with nothing better to do. One guy from the DF is quoted in the article as saying, “This is not a battle between music styles at all. It is the conservative side of Mexican society fighting against something different,” saying it is more a battle against effeminate styles and homosexuality. If there’s any greater meaning in this, I think this guy is the closest to getting it.
Kids here, just like in the states, get bored and pick fights with what’s different. And, just like high school conflicts in the states, this hasn’t boiled over into wider society much at all. None of the adults here are involved at all. They don’t even know what an “emo” is. They’re only getting involved now because there was a big scary expose about it on the nightly news (sound familiar?). I don’t see it as indicative of a large problem spreading across Mexico among all classes or ages. It’s mostly a middle class high school thing. There is a large problem regarding homophobia and machismo. This is without a doubt. But I don’t think this is the biggest and definitely not the most important demonstration of that problem.
