Countercultural Stirrings

Closing the cafés was a stopgap measure at best, though it did have the immediate effect of limiting live rock to the elite nightclubs. Still, the real

challenge to authority was already fermenting in the home. This challenge was incipient and still principally stylistic, though a few years later, when the right political conditions were met, it would have more profound implications. In short, fashion was becoming politicized, and rock music, in particular, was again becoming a wedge against traditional social values and a vehicle for free expression. While foreign rock provided the crucial reference points for this rebellion, local rockers successfully transcribed this music for a native audience, in turn grafting a hybrid sound and image that directly served the needs of the middle classes. "Rock," explains Manuel Ruiz, "was a tool." And Mexican rock was a handmade instrument: "It wasn't just some copy, but I'm telling you it sensitized us. All of that [foreign influence] was transferred to your national reality, and it made you rebel against whatever got to you. Like it got to you that you couldn't dress as you wanted, and you felt better because that's how you saw other people looking, like in the photographs of your idols."^[29] In fact, the changing image of rock—the shaggy hair, psychedelia, and irreverent and aggressive posture of many of the new bands—had already become a rising concern for parents who feared the influence of foreign mass culture on their children. In an editorial entitled "Rights of Adolescence" parents were warned about the "idols of the 'New Wave,' " epitomized by the Beatles (appearing in an accompanying photograph with their patented weird expressions). "Your children will venerate these new groups, for which we cannot find the appropriate adjective," the editorial stated. Though the writer did add that "not everything about them must be censured and, when you do it, be constructive."^[30] Shortly thereafter the cover of Jueves de Excélsior featured a caricature of a Mexican rock group, varying in skin tone from dark to light. Unstyled, matted hair, faces and bodies grossly twisted, the appearance of one even suggested that of a transvestite. The text succinctly explained: "The 'Mexican Beatles.'"^[31] Once again, the emasculization of rock performers became a response to the threat of cultural subversion. "We live in an age of clay gods, of false values that arise from styles and whims," expressed another writer. "It is necessary to educate [youth] in spiritual, moral, and intellectual matters before it is too late."^[32]

This new round of criticism underscored the difficulties that the cultural industries would have in promoting the new rock sound. On one hand, there was a need to accommodate the rapidly changing styles of youth. The market was changing, and so too must the companies in order to keep pace. On the other hand, however, encouraging bands to pursue an image of anguished rebellion was an invitation for censorship from parents' associa-

tions and perhaps even the government. By late 1965 various television programs—including Hulaballoo [sic ], Yeah yeah , and Discoteque a gogo —were geared to lip-synched rock performance (some were even reportedly using English-language lyrics) that "rous[ed] the live studio audiences to a screaming, jerking fury."^[33] To be safe, however, record producers insisted on continued control over record content, despite the activities of bands in live performance. With Los Yaki, for example, whose lead singer raved and swaggered on stage like Mick Jagger, Mexican bands were able to project a more aggressive posture in accordance with the changing times. As the liner notes from one of the group's albums read, "As soon as 'Los Yaki' enter the recording studio the atmosphere is transformed; Benny [the lead singer] begins the disorder, followed by [the rest of the band]. A drum-beat mixed with a joke [from the band] and a few guitar chords are sufficient to electrify the atmosphere, contaminating producers and recording technicians present in the studios. This same phenomenon is found everywhere they play, which is exactly the reason why 'the aggressive sound of Los Yaki' is so popular."^[34] Others, however, kept to a clean-cut image to avoid police harassment and safeguard their careers. "Wherever we found ourselves," a member of the Los Desenfrenados (The Wanton Ones) said, "the authorities intervened and, on various occasions, even wanted to book us, thinking that we were 'rebels without a cause' and not artists."^[35] While rebellion sold records, the mass media nevertheless sought to promote an image of rock as anything but disreputable.

Once more, a discourse of contained rebellion that stressed the diversión sana of rock returned. For example, in an article on the band, Los Sparks, they were quoted as saying: "We are not REBELS , but just want to enjoy ourselves without harming anyone." Referring to the group as one whose music was "distinctive, aggressive, and with great impact," the article also noted it was the first rock band to play at the Veranda Bar in the "elegant Hotel María Isabel," in the capital district.^[36] In a review of another band, Los Apson, a writer called the group "five kids full of enthusiasm, anxious for glory, and already with a hefty bank account that allows for the meeting of certain whims, though always for the benefit of the group."^[37] More-over, in an effort to contain any doubt that Los Apson were malinchistas (cultural traitors), the writer added, "The culture of the North seeps from their pores, and although they're a little bit influenced by North American customs, they are more Mexican than pulque."^[38] Finally, looking to counter an image of rock as increasingly disorderly and irreverent, an article on the famed Los Locos del Ritmo emphasized that "they are not crazy [but] just

five dynamic, happy, and enthusiastic students in a dignified, clean, and honest career." Asked what his greatest ambition in life was, the lead performer, Rafael Acosta, replied: "To become a man in every respect."^[39]

All the same, the politics of hair and the subversive influence of an emergent hippie movement abroad was becoming a central issue in Mexican society. At first the Mexican press treated the hippies as a strange yet fathomable "problem" facing industrialized nations alone. A June 1965 cover drawing for the magazine Jueves de Excélsior , for example, showed a longhaired couple walking a sheepdog; wearing sandals and smoking a pipe, the man has an expression of starry-eyed thoughtfulness, while the woman looks dazed, perhaps drugged. The context of the scene is identified by the text: "New York 1965." In a subtle play of language, however, the text continues: " 'Existentialism' is no joke" (El 'existencialismo' no es una tomadura de pelo).^[40] Using the equivalent expression for "pulling one's leg"—"tomando el pelo"—the text suggests that the fad of existentialism had traveled beyond the philosophers, instilling in youth their critical ideas of identity and existence. Indeed, the influence of such philosophers and novelists was apparent among a growing sector of university youth. As José Agustín writes, "In reality these youth were a hybrid of existentialists and beatniks, but in Mexico they became known as 'existentialists! I imagine that's why they called the cafés by the same name, as well as any 'strange-looking' young person."^[41]

While the setting was New York City and not Mexico City, already there were small groups of youth, mostly politically conscious students from the middle classes, who had openly begun to defy societal norms of fashion as a vehicle for self-expression and criticism. As Eréndira Rincón recalls about this period:

I began to dress as I wanted to. For example, we used to go to school in huaraches, which was considered extraordinary.... On the buses people looked at you strangely, and they'd say things to you, aggressive things under their breath. But that only made you feel like you had an identity.... It allowed you to identify yourself with a culture that you considered more authentic, not a copy of something else ... Because people in the countryside still use huaraches. So it was like wearing your credo and going against the majority of people in the city, who were imitating the gringos.^[42]

But imitating the gringos was itself becoming an issue of concern for adults, as the proliferation of commodities and images from the counterculture abroad steadily redefined the reference points for being "cool" versus "square" in youth's search for new identities and self-expression.

For boys, being cool meant breaking free of the mold of the societal father, whose values were inscribed not only in his manicured appearance but also in his proper language and the music he listened to: "You had to dress 'like this' and have your hair 'like this' because if not, you were going to look like a bureaucrat, a manager, anything but a young person. You would look like a señor. In fact, it was pretty common back then if you saw someone who wore short hair, conventional clothing, and listened to baladas románticas to say, 'Oh man, that guy looks like a señor.'"^[43] The disheveled look of the new rock bands introduced a fashion rage for long hair on boys that, despite its relative tameness in 1965–1966, rapidly became a litmus test for familial confrontations. As Manuel Ruiz continues:

When I was twelve or thirteen years old, every week my father went to the barber, and so every week he took me along with him for a haircut too. But I started to rebel. Around 1965 I saw photos of the Rolling Stones, and I looked in the mirror and said, "No way." The hair on the Stones at that time wasn't even that long, really, but compared with mine it was like I had a crewcut.... So I said to my dad, "Dad, I don't want to get my hair cut like that," and my dad said, "It doesn't matter if you like it or not, because you're going to get it cut." And that happened in most middle- and lower middle-class homes.

For many middle-class girls, the need to be free by defying traditional stereotypes of what it meant to be a lady were equally pressing: "You would feel really down if, for example, someone compared you with 'your cousin Lupita,' like by saying, 'Wow, you and your cousin Lupita are so alike.' That was horrible, because you had to be you, and nobody else.... That was the idea of individualism: being original, rejecting what was expected."^[44] When another article on the transformation of the posadas appeared in late 1966, the issue had gone beyond mere irreverence for tradition, as suggested by the headline "Posadas a go go."^[45] Now the line that had formally divided the sexes was itself dissolving. At the root of this threatening transformation was rock music: "Boys and girls are barely distinguished by their dress, since both wear pants and long hair, amusing themselves by making grotesque contortions to a background 'noise' of drums, electric guitars and bass, which they call music." In an interesting detail, the author noted that couples did not follow one another's steps or a male lead, as in the past. Rather, "[e]ach one jumps and moves in his own way until exhausted."^[46] Thus even the fundamental structure of dance was disappearing, in which girls no longer had to wait for a boy's invitation and individualism prevailed over partnership.

Figure 6.
"Which One Is the Woman? Which One Is the Man?"
Source: Jueves de Excélsior , 22 September 1966. Used
by permission.