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.
Is just a bunch of (stupid) teenagers agaisnt another teenagers, when a teenager everybody wants to be part of something, to be rebel in hi/her own way, I remember that, that is why at that age you decide what to be:
- Sport kind
- Rocker
- Super trendy (fashionista)
- punk
- Goth
- etc.
And there is always fights or issues between this groups, that is what happened. It was an awfull thing, but I also thing is a bunch of “nothing better to do” kids meeting to “party!” of the hundreds in the meeting only 5 where attacking a kid, the others just stay there, why, they really didn’t want to do anything, but where afraid of stop it, because then, they will be with the emo and against the “rebelion” so they will be loosers.
This happened a lot in Mexico before, with hippies, rockers, punks… each on a different decade (60’s, 70’s, 80’s)
But grew due to the media, needy for money, which is bad and good, bad because there is a lot of lies in the reports, and good because the goverment is forced to act and prevent this things to happened again.
By the way the march for respect did happened.