4
La Onda in the Wake of Tlatelolco

After the massacre there was, in a fundamental sense, nowhere for youth to turn to but La Onda. As the student movement had been creatively informed by the changing sensibilities of youth, in turn La Onda was itself transformed from a fashion statement and middle-class struggle within the home into a more broadly based expression of protest unavoidably grounded in the political events of that summer and fall. Despite the increasingly commercialized aspects of the counterculture (marketing a countercultural aesthetic was still profitable), for many La Onda was given new meaning after 1968. In the aftermath of Tlatelolco, the counterculture became an important vehicle for channeling the rage and cynicism felt toward a political system that denied democratic expression and toward a family structure that seemed to emulate it. "You see now why I'm a hippie," commented one youth after the massacre.^[1] La Onda became a pretext for desmadre, for openly defying the buenas costumbres of family and society through drug consumption, liberated sexual relations, and in general replacing familial dependency with independent living. Where the student movement had politically empowered broad sectors of youth—and influenced by example others who stayed away—La Onda offered the possibility for continued protest, only now by repudiating rather than engaging society as a strategy for change. In the words of the noted Mexican critic Gastón García Cantú, a "hippismo of the left" characterized many of those who had once been a part of a now-disintegrated movement.^[2]

Jipis , Xipitecas , and Jipismo

The massacre succeeded in dismembering a political and social movement at its moment of greatest strength. In the aftermath one element of the stu-

dent population became further radicalized, while the majority was consumed with a sense of impotence and failure.^[3] To be sure, ongoing contact between friends, family members, and others with those imprisoned kept alive a spirit of political activism, often at great personal risk. Within the prison itself a culture of resistance and of solidarity prevailed, despite often tremendous hardships.^[4] Those who could fled abroad to avoid persecution for their involvement. A minority took to organizing armed revolutionary struggle. But for the majority, the massacre produced feelings of "a terrible sense of frustrated impotence," in the words of one participant. "After the massacre, each person was left to confront their own individual demons, because each had lived it in their own particular way."^[5] As Carlos Monsiváis would write several years later, "there [was] no Vietnam war" for Mexican youth to confront; instead there were "the institutions of the Mexican Revolution and [the ideology of] National Unity."^[6] As a twenty-five-year-old reader of the magazine POP wrote in the spring of 1969, "We want to do what our souls tell us, given that we don't want to be a copy [of foreigners] and we don't want another revolution where a million Mexicans are slaughtered; we want peace and understanding. Our position is not meant to bother anyone, because we already know that incomprehension brings on the granaderos, as well as many more sad nights [like Tlatelolco]."^[7] With the massacre the PRI had revealed its commitment to one-party rule, but many adults had concurred with the view that youth had lost respect for authority, beginning in the family and extending to the presidency. "We didn't have to fight [against] a war," one woman explained. "We fought against a corrupt society, [one] that was suffocating us, that was deceiving us." She continued, "That was our war, and rock [music] helped us to scream; rock for me is about that scream, a universal scream."^[8]

In the days and months following the massacre, renewed reports of the emergence of a Mexican hippie movement filled the pages of the press, and editorialists from the right and left found equal cause to criticize them. Alternately referred to as "hippies" (in quotation marks), jipis , and later jipitecas (or xipitecas ), the appearance of these youth in larger numbers reflected the continuation of a trend that predated the 1968 movement but that had been given new impetus by the repression. Mexican jipismo was overwhelmingly a middle-class movement, for it was among the middle classes that the values of patriarchy and religion were most strongly reflected. The more pressing questions of everyday survival influenced the actions of the lower classes, and the elite flaunted rebellion as a sign of their privileged access to fashions and trends abroad, but the middle classes used jipismo to escape familial and societal pressures. For some on the left, the

spread of jipismo took on proportions of a government conspiracy. (One author has even suggested that the government distributed drugs among the students to encourage this apolitical alternative.)^[9] "Dropping out," however, involved a complex process of simultaneously emulating the modernizing aspects of foreign hippies—whose psychedelia, music, and attitudes toward authority revealed their "advanced" thinking—and reappropriating as their own the hippies' turn to indigenous spiritual and cultural traditions.

Once more the confusion of gender roles, satirized by numerous cover drawings for the conservative weekly Jueves de Excélsior , evoked a common fear among conservatives that the bedrock values which had kept men masculine and women feminine were at risk. As one author described the situation, "The men do everything possible to look like women: their long hair, their tight pants, and even their way of walking. The women, in contrast, cut their hair short, wear trousers, use sweaters, and really, really do look like men."^[10] The implications of such brazen cross-dressing seemed perfectly clear: The jipis were a direct threat to a hegemonic value system grounded in patriarchy and heroic nationalism. Mexican youth, ran a familiar refrain among conservatives, had "lost its vision of true heroism" by succumbing to the "false heroes" brought in largely on the wings of transnational capital.^[11] So threatening was the prospect of a man looking like a woman that when forced to choose between the "manly" acts of student protest—uniformly denounced by the conservative press—and the "feminine" approach of passivism, one author concluded: "It's preferable to see youth discontent in an open and virile manifestation, in a vigorous, bold protest, [which is] much more [Mexican], much more comprehensible than the absurd attitude of 'passivism,' which is only a pretext for vagrancy and corruption.... Mexico needs men, not hippies."^[12] "Dropping out" of society was thus as threatening a posture of defiance as was openly confronting the government by marching in the streets. Indeed, in that the former implied a restructuring of everyday values one could argue that its significance as a counterhegemonic force was even greater in the long run than was confronting the government on strictly political terms, terms that later proved readily cooptable.

But for many on the left, the jipi movement was too overtly depoliticized and, at any rate, still a second-hand copy of the "authentic" revolt against technocratic life that was embodied in the hippie movement abroad. When Carlos Monsiváis asked, "Against which high technology do [the jipis] protest in the name of love?"^[13] he articulated the left's paradoxical sense of bitterness toward Mexico's jipi movement and simultaneous admiration for

hippie culture elsewhere. This basic argument would be echoed many times over in later years. For much of the "new" Mexican left—supportive of the student movement, critical of authoritarian culture (including the Communist Party) and patriarchal value systems—the nation's problems were not linked to abundance but to poverty; not to overdevelopment, but to underdevelopment. Mexican jipis, no matter how hard they "tried to be like real hippies," in the end amounted to nothing more than a cheap imitation of a Western countercultural ideal that, ironically, most intellectuals respected.

The Zona Rosa

For those living in the capital, the Zona Rosa offered a learning environment and mirror for the inchoate jipi movement. Yet if the Zona Rosa offered a countercultural free zone for disillusioned middle-class youth, it was first and foremost an upper-class shopping district where the elite junior set came to display their cars and "in" fashions, while tourists—including visiting hippies from abroad—marveled at Mexico's cosmopolitan achievements. Epitomizing this appeal to cosmpolitanism was the brief publication of the self-promotional magazine, Zona Rosa . Filled on one hand with cultural criticism by writers and artists such as Carlos Monsiváis, Alejandro Jodorowsky, José Luis Cuevas, and others, on the other hand the magazine's editorial position revealed the self-conscious need to project an image of the Zona Rosa as a controlled countercultural environment, where the intermixing of foreign and local jipis created an ideal touristic space. The fact that the district was designed precisely to promote an avant-garde aesthetic, but one closely regimented by the confines of commerce, drew the support of many conservative writers and investors. Thus, the Zona Rosa's Business Council worked closely with city administrators and the Department of Tourism to provide a clean, attractive, and, above all, impressionable image of Mexico for foreign visitors. Promotional plans included the creation of a "Zona Rosa Passport" filled with store coupons for visitors, along with organized folkloric presentations, beauty contests, art competitions, and even the creation of an FM radio station.^[14] As one writer noted, "The 'Zona Rosa' has constituted itself as an outstanding tourist center in Mexico." The fact that here "one runs into strange types, some shaggy-haired, others meditative, bearded or wildly dressed" is precisely what gave the Zona Rosa its "exotic character ... [its] cosmopolitan touch." "Its fame," the writer proudly concluded, "has moved beyond the country's borders."^[15]

This debate over cosmopolitanism was at the heart of discussion con-

cerning the Zona Rosa. Some saw in the fact that the district was capable of bringing together so many different types of personalities—from street vendors to noted intellectuals to hippies—a testimony to its progressivism; among its cafés and restaurants, its boutiques and art galleries reigned "the style of the avant-garde [and] the liberation of prejudices,"^[16] exclaimed one writer. The Zona Rosa, wrote another, is "one of the most accomplished [social] environments in the country ... a cosmopolitan point" of reference that must be defended at all costs: "[It is] an innate living together among people, emotional freedom, open comprehension, a pleasing appreciation that renews our senses; the lights, the sounds, their images, everything goes in the magnificent Pink collage that emits freshness and freedom."^[17] Others were less enthusiastic and understood the Zona Rosa not as a liberated zone but as a contrived oasis. As one writer noted, while the Zona Rosa provided "the possibility of living for a few moments with symbols of freedom or protest," it did so within the confines of "several square blocks of privilege that allow us to deny the realities of our city." In the end, he concluded, the counterculture reflected in the Zona Rosa amounted to a trivialized, superficial version of "evolutionary social movements" with validity elsewhere but "out of context" in Mexico, where the styles and rhythm of the counterculture "are used like a great carnivalesque game of negation."^[18] Carlos Monsiváis viewed the Zona Rosa as symbolizing the urge to belong to a "sphere of Mexico where underdevelopment does not reign, to belong to the non-Mexico ... to exterminate all difference between Fifth Avenue [in New York City] and Génova and Hamburgo [the principal streets of the Zona Rosa]."^[19]

For those living in Mexico City, however, the Zona Rosa still served as a locus of a countercultural rebellion. "That is where I came to know about rock, where I really came to know about what they were calling the jipi movement," explained one female informant. Recalling her first encounter with drugs, rock music, and the contradictory feelings they brought with respect to her strict Catholic upbringing, she described a party near the Zona Rosa: "[They brought me] to a house that was practically abandoned, where they were playing rock music: it was Janis Joplin, and it was the first time I had ever heard her. And it seemed so strange! Lots of shouting and noise, and I didn't understand anything! ... And these weirdos were taking out cigarettes and everyone was smoking them backwards.... It was the first time I tried marijuana.... I left thoroughly terrorized and I went home and then to church. I had to confess."^[20] It was also in the Zona Rosa that the avant-garde styles of foreign hippies—especially their fusion of pop culture with indigenous clothing and jewelry—would be (re)appropri-

ated by aspiring Mexican jipitecas. An important example of this process of reappropriation was the use of huaraches. For foreign hippies, wearing huaraches was symbolic of a Third World rite of passage. The counter-cultural travel book, The People's Guide to Mexico , for example, devoted two pages to shopping for sandals and Indian clothing in its section on what to buy. "Almost every tourist will purchase at least one pair of huaraches (sandals)," the guidebook instructs.^[21] The cynical comment by a Mexican rock musician two years later on the adoption of this "indigenous style" by Mexican youth is therefore particularly revealing:

Look, what I view as false about Mexicans is that they're all stupid.... Before, no one used guaraches , and if someone put them on people would say: "Oh no, you look like an Indian!" Now, everyone uses them because someone who isn't even of our race, some gringo , started to walk with them in the Zona Rosa. The same thing happened with shirts from Oaxaca: before no one went near them; now they're everywhere. It's one thing to copy the gringos , but another to copy what's already ours!^[22]

The comment was relevant not only to sandals and dress but also to a whole style of indigenous revival pursued by the hippies and in turn influential in Mexico's own jipi movement. It was widely rumored, for instance, that famous rock stars such as John Lennon and Jim Morrison had traveled to Huautla in search of María Sabina and the acclaimed mushrooms. One informant emphasized the influence such ideas had on local style:

There was even a photo of Jim Morrison wearing a necklace called the yaxhqui , which is made up of tiny stones typical of Huautla. A lot of [Mexican] kids who went to Huautla wore the same necklace, and those of us who didn't go to Huautla but went somewhere else in Oaxaca to try mushrooms, well we wore that necklace at one time too. In fact, if you knew someone going to Huautla you'd ask them to pick one up for you. But all of that came about because we saw Jim Morrison or Brian Jones [wearing one].... I mean, here [the necklaces] are from our own country, and we didn't even have one!^[23]

According to Alvaro Estrada, the yaxhqui was actually a string of light, wooden beads held together by a piece of red cord and used by the Mazatec as rosary beads in the church. As early as the mid-1960s hippies from the United States reportedly purchased these beads "by the fistful and combined them with the brightly colored string bracelets that were used as a headband, Apache style."^[24] Thus while this rediscovery of Mexico's indigenous present was central to the ideology of jipismo, it ironically exposed the jipis to accusations of reflective imitation.

Reencountering the Countryside

The same modern impulse that led North American youth to seek the "primitive" in Mexico, and through such encounters to reconstruct their own postmodern identities, deeply affected Mexican youth in the wake of Tlatelolco. In rejecting their own middle-class lifestyles, Mexican youth were simultaneously embracing its transnational manifestation, literally embodied in the countercultural practices of foreign hippies. This embracement, in turn, stimulated a nationalist gesture reflected in a return to the land and the revalorization of indigenous cultures.^[25] It was in this way that Mexican youth adopted the gestures of a postmodern cultural politics guided toward a counterhegemonic strategy of popular (versus "official") nationalism. While foreign hippies certainly did not cause this jipismo movement, they were guilty—as elements of the press claimed in a distorted way—of directly influencing the direction the movement took. Thus at the heart of this "Mexicanization of the hippies"^[26] was the ironic double-mirror effect I have already noted: the reabsorption of styles that youth from abroad had already appropriated in their mutual yet quite distinct flights from and expressions of modernity.

Numerous Mexican jipis during this period followed the example set by foreigners and set off to discover the Mexican countryside. During the late 1960s, scores of youth from Mexico's middle classes, many from the provinces and in large majority men, left their homes to crisscross the country. Hitchhiking—pedir aventón or pedir un ride—was popularized throughout the country, also suggesting the direct influence of the hippies. For most who did so, this meant voluntarily leaving one's home and being on one's own for the first time. It became known as andar en el rol and meant, in the words of one male informant, "traveling, getting to know Mexico."^[27] For Joaquín López, his travels around the country "hitchhiking with my guitar" brought him the invaluable experience of an "Other" Mexico, an indigenous Mexico he had known about largely through the static discourse of an official nationalism. Traveling was about "discovering music, people [and] other distinctive worlds."^[28] The experience of andar en el rol meant the possibility of reclaiming national territory and an official ideology of indigenismo through personal transformation. At the same time, it rebuked a myth of national harmony, in which the contradictions of ethnic, class, and cultural differences were ceremoniously masked by an official discourse that sought to define one's "place" in the progress of the nation. "There was a certain valorization," he recalled in describing his experience. "Maybe it

was your first cup of coffee made by an Indian. I was a middle-class kid, and that was cool. It made you reflect on class and other relationships.... It was something very special that happened to our generation."^[29]

At the same time, leaving home also represented an act of defiance against rigid familial and institutional structures. For Jasmín Solís Gómez, who disobeyed her family's wishes and ran away to Huautla, where she stayed for several weeks, the trip was "the first time that I could feel [free]." Indeed, she had made the trip not consciously seeking out an indigenous experience but rather to feel accepted by a group of several "liberated [high school] friends" with whom she had spent time in the Zona Rosa. En route to the sierra of Oaxaca, she recalled finding herself on a bus with Canadians and about thirty people from the UNAM, all "pure jipis" and all men; her "liberated friends" had chickened out. In Huautla she was introduced to mushrooms by a few of the Canadians: "Someone had a radio. I was listening to Janis Joplin, and the musical notes began to dance in front of my eyes.... The forest was full of colors and everything filled with music." The naturalness of listening to rock music while in the Mazatec Sierra tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms reflected the fusion of modern and indigenous cultural experiences that informed the hippie and jipiteca movements. It was discovering the possibilities of such fusion that opened up new spaces of meaning for a generation of Mexicans raised on a modernizing ideology that separated the "folkloric" from the "cosmopolitan" spheres of everyday life. Choosing to explore this fusion implied making difficult choices about one's identity and outlook on life, choices that in turn directly affected the cultural terrain of hegemony. "The jipi and feminist liberation movements gave me a different possibility for growth," she told me.^[30]

Processes of transculturation occurring in what Mary Louise Pratt has described as the "contact zone"^[31] incited what I term a nationalist gesture in Mexican youth. This gesture involved the reparticularization of self- and national identity on terms that sought to sever the link between personal identity and the hegemonic project of nationalism inculcated by the political regime.^[32] Through the influence of transnational images, music, and actors Mexican youth came to challenge a totalizing discourse of national identity, one that stressed the stasis of an indigenous present and the "correctness" of patriarchally defined hierarchies. Transnationalism introduced the possibility of selecting among multiple reference points in the reconstruction of one's national as well as individual identity. In this way, transnationalism becomes intimately linked with postmodern identity-formation strategies and the forging of a popular nationalism from below.

I use the term postmodern here in the sense of repudiating the ideological constraints imposed by an Enlightenment-based concept of the nation, which assumes fixed and bounded signs of a collective national identity. As Néstor García Canclini writes, "In several cases, cultural modernism, instead of being denationalizing, has given impulse to, and the repertory of symbols for, the construction of national identity."^[33]

By pursuing a postmodernist impulse that critiqued modern society, Mexican youth acted out gestures of national and self-reimaginings. Such gestures inevitably involved the casting aside of fixed stereotypes of national identity and conforming to buenas costumbres in the search for new personal freedoms and new collective identities. Enrique Marroquín would later coin the Náhuatl-inspired term xipiteca (also written jipiteca ) as a means of describing this phenomenon of cultural reappropriation and fusion. In his book La contracultura como protesta , perhaps the only serious attempt at the time to explicate the Mexican counterculture on its own terms, Marroquín uses the term xipiteca to denote the "creation of a genuine [Mexican hippie] subculture with original nuances."^[34] I would argue that this subculture was in fact part of a broader countercultural movement (La Onda) with widespread impact. Jipismo involved a reimagining of national community that was reflected in the search for what Marroquín called "a lost Mexico."^[35] Ironically, this search for indigenous cultural heritage was directly related to the experience of modernity. As one participant describes what took place: "it was a very strange combination [incorporating] selected elements from rock [music culture], but worked on, harvested in a very different context."^[36]

Though much of the press and writers on the left and right alike sought to portray the jipi movement as a farcical imitation of the hippies or, worse yet, the direct result of imperialism, Mexican jipismo rapidly evolved into a countercultural force of its own. This possibility, as I have argued, was in large part due to the direct presence of foreign hippies, who served as avantgarde role models for the revalorization of ethnic difference and a recuperation of national histor(ies). Travels by countercultural agents from the metropolis and the imagery associated with the counterculture abroad offered a direct and tangible example of how to rebel: most dramatically, perhaps, by leaving one's home to travel the Mexican countryside. In turn, Mexicans reinscribed national territory with individualized and newly collective histories. By reinventing themselves as xipitecas, Mexican youth thus discovered new ways of being Mexican, ways that ran counter to the dominant ideology of state-sponsored nationalism.

Figure 7.
Military authorities search a guitar case
for hallucinogenic mushrooms and other possible
drugs during a bust in Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca,
in July 1969. Source: "Concentrados: sobre 1303,
'Hippies [mugrosos gringos de la época],' July 1969,"
Hermanos Mayo Photo Archive, Archivo General de
la Nación. Used by permission.

The Regime Cracks Down

In July 1969 judiciales, combined with agents from the Department of Interior Affairs, the Defense Department, and local officials, launched the "first combined hunt" for what El Universal headlined as "Vicious 'Hippies.'" Sixty-four Mexicans belonging to the Tribe of Christ commune, along with twenty-two foreigners caught in the raid, were arrested; all were officially charged with trafficking drugs. The foreigners—seventeen from the United States, four from Canada, and one from England—were promptly deported (see Figures 7 and 8).^[37] Two days later El Universal

Figure 8.
Foreign hippies (probably from the United States) face the prospect of ar-
rest and deportation following a raid on Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, in July 1969.
Source: "Concentrados: sobre 1303, 'Hippies [mugrosos gringos de la época],'
July 1969," Hermanos Mayo Photo Archive, Archivo General de la Nación. Used
by permission.

warned of the "grave dangers" facing Mexico because of the "contamination of our youth" by North American hippies.^[38] The arrests were just one aspect of a wider crackdown. Jasmín Solís Gómez, the informant cited above, was in Huautla when she too was caught up in a raid: I heard shots, shouts, and beatings and didn't know what to do.... They marched [the three Canadians and me] back to Huautla."^[39] While police actions against foreign and Mexican hippies were well known prior to this, the federal orchestration of the arrests suggested the utility of highlighting the jipismo "threat" in the wake of Tlatelolco (see Figure 9).

Focusing government attention on the rise of jipismo not only distracted from the larger issues of reform and repression but, moreover, facilitated a strategy of conflating antigovernment protest with jipi radicalism.^[40] By implementing a repressive policy against native and foreign hippies, the government sought to bolster support among conservative social groups such as small shop owners, middle-class parents, and, especially, rural and

Figure 9.
Caught with hallucinogenic mushrooms, a Mexican jipi faces the pros-
pect of arrest during a bust in Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, in July 1969. Source:
"Concentrados: sobre 1303, 'Hippies [mugrosos gringos de la época],' July 1969,"
Hermanos Mayo Photo Archive, Archivo General de la Nación. Used by permission.

provincial populations who felt threatened by the challenge to traditional family values—work discipline, respect for authority, gender distinction—embodied in jipismo. A central feature of the government's strategy was thus to rally sentiments of xenophobia and nationalist pride, a tactic which also overlapped with the official position that the student protesters were backed by "foreign agitators." Capturing this sentiment of support for the federal offensive against the "contamination" of Mexico by North American hippies is the August 1969 cover drawing for Jueves de Excélsior: a man with his shirtsleeves rolled up, broom in hand, sweeping a contingent of (male) hippies back across the border (see Figure 10).^[41]

Mexico was not alone in its struggle to combat its "hippie problem." Many governments were forced to confront the influence of a U.S.-led counterculture on a generation of young people who refused to conform to their nation's ideological project of development, whether oriented toward capitalism or socialism. In Singapore, for example, entry was prohibited to tourists who wore "ornaments and clothes which leave one with the unmistakable impression that this is part of the contemporary aberrations found in the highly developed and affluent societies and imitated by not so

Figure 10.
"Cleanup of 'Hippies' and Drug Addicts." Source:
Jueves de Excélsior, 21 August 1969. Used by permission.

highly developed and affluent societies."^[42] In the Soviet Union, the state was obliged to declare the "legality" of long hair, a tacit recognition of its inability to pursue a totalizing socialist project.^[43] For governments the world over, the "hippie problem" suggested a fundamental crisis of representation: "dropping out" of society, reflected through one's dress, language, and attitude openly challenged the ideological premise of the heroic nationalism that characterized most post-World War II states. While in reality the hippie presence in most countries was never more than a minority, for an entire generation of modern, urban-raised youth throughout many parts of the world the power of the hippies' appeal—to "do one's own

thing"—presented an unforeseen and complex new threat to national-developmentalist projects.

Despite drastic efforts by the Mexican regime, however, the flow of foreign hippie travelers into the country seemed unabated. An editorial that appeared one year after the Huautla raid cited the "need for a new, even more energetic intervention by the army and federal police" to stop the continued influx of hippies: "If the Secretary of Interior Affairs doesn't put a stop to the immigration of undesirables, soon we will have to support spectacles of homosexuality, massive drug addiction, and street violence, similar to what citizens of San Francisco, New York, London, and other large urban centers face."^[44] These fears directly contributed to a public backlash against jipismo and led to heightened efforts by border guards to keep foreign hippies out. Judging from a report in Rolling Stone magazine, the problems facing hippies traveling to Mexico were taking their toll. "They don't like longhairs in Mexico," the travelogue opens. "If you are a man and your hair falls below your collar, expect to be—at least—stared at as if you were a civil rights worker in Mississippi, and—at worst—robbed or beaten by policía as well as bandidos."^[45] Indeed, The People's Guide contained a special section dedicated to "Border Hassles," which stated in part: "If you do not look like the average tourist (and you longhaired, bearded, beaded and braless people have already guessed that there was a catch somewhere), you may not get average treatment when entering Mexico.... Mexican border officials have a straightforward attitude: people without money are hippies and therefore less desirable as tourists.... People with money are not hippies, even though they may affect hippie styles."^[46] To beat the system, Carl Franz, the book's author, suggested a temporary fix of dress and presentation: "We look like small town teachers or college students from the early Sixties [when we cross]." He added, "The border officials love it."^[47]

Though official sources that treat this theme are difficult to come by, one record found in the archive of the Department of Foreign Relations reveals the extent to which antihippie policy had reached the highest levels of power. The Mexican consul in San Diego came across an article in a local newspaper that described the difficulties facing U.S. hippies in Mexico. He forwarded a copy of the article to Mexico's secretary of foreign relations, who, in turn, forwarded the report to the appropriate authorities at the Department of Interior Affairs, with the accompanying message: "For whatever importance it might mean for this Dependency of the Executive [that is, Interior Affairs], with the present note is remitted a newspaper clipping from the 'San Diego Union,' which was sent to us by our Consul in San

Diego, California [regarding] the publishing of an extensive article warning North American drug-addicted youth about the obstacles they will come across [when] penetrating our country to dedicate themselves to their cravings."^[48] Whether or not this message went into a larger file at the department is uncertain, though probable; access to its archives is still restricted. At any rate, Mexican officials were by no means alone in their fight against foreign hippie influence. When later "banned" from Lamu Island, Kenya, for disrupting village life, for example, Jerry Hopkins, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, blithely concluded: "The search for paradise continues."^[49]

Some U.S. citizens even expressed their support for the stepped-up repression against hippie youth by the Mexican government. In a letter to President Díaz Ordaz, one writer stated: "May I offer my sincere congratulations on the stand you have takened [sic ] regarding the long haired, hippie type, individual or so called? [sic ] citizen, of our side of the border. Speaking for myself I am ashamed of their appearance."^[50] Another person wrote, "I wish our government had the backbone to take a stand against such un-Godly, trashy mess as you have."^[51] These letters suggest a projection of frustrations with the "hippie problem" in the United States onto the more "efficient" regime in Mexico. Moreover, they follow a pattern of support for Mexico's policy of repression against dissidents in general. Thus the author of the last letter concurred with the harsh approach to protesters, saying in conclusion: "I believe we could put a stop to riots here, as you did when they tried to prevent the Olympics from being held in Mexico. I have never [heard] of any more riots in Mexico."^[52]

North America's Nepal

By the late 1960s, travel by North American and West European youth to the Third World had become a rite of passage for the countercultural generation. Embracing the "underdeveloped world" became not only a sign of one's repudiation of materialist values but proof of one's humanism as well. And for U.S. and Canadian hippies Mexico, it might be said, became the poor person's Nepal. As Carl Franz remembers, "It was the closest warm, exotic place that you could go to—and the cheapest."^[53] Or, as another former traveler from the United States succinctly put it, there was "more fantasy per dollar."^[54] These comments match an analysis made by Marroquín in La contracultura como protesta: "There was an urge to travel, like the beatniks. But now, the goal is further away: India is paradise. Hippie communities are formed in the Orient. But it is difficult to go all the way over

there. Mexico turns out to be tempting: close, cheap, exotic, savage, and legendarily hallucinogenic."^[55] By 1969, "after the Summer of Love turned sour," Carl Franz recalls "a big migration South."^[56] Or, as another writer summed it up: "political dissents or draft dodgers, potheads or college flunkouts, born again hippies or red light runners, rebel artists or just curious wanderers—anyone or everyone on the run [headed] for Mexico at some time or other at the turn of a turbulent decade."^[57]

What is important for us to understand, however, is that the promotion by the Mexican state of native "color"—the living presence of indigenous cultures, the exotic adventure offered by visits to pre-Columbian ruins, the appeal of semideveloped tropical beaches—all directly contributed to the perception that premodern society was alive and well just south of the border. This folkloric representation of Mexico—an integral flip side of a cosmopolitan discourse linked to the promotion of the Olympics—was directly taken up by the hippies in their pursuit of native cultures, not to mention the quest for hallucinogenic mushrooms and the promise of cheap marijuana. Such a quest took them not to the Ballet Folklórico but directly in search of "the real thing": The reality of Mexico's largely indigenous countryside and the experience of direct contact with native cultures—about which, ironically, most urbanized Mexicans knew little. Carl Franz was particularly revealing about this relationship. "One of the reasons we used to go to the Museum [of Anthropology]," he told me, "was to get clues about the areas we wanted to visit." The Ballet Folklórico was skipped altogether: I thought it was completely hokey."^[58]

The stream of countercultural travelers to Mexico increased in tangent with the steady rise of tourist travel generally throughout the 1960s.^[59] By the early 1970s, travel to Mexico had become an established tradition among the North American countercultural population. One important indication of this travel relationship was the tremendous popularity of The People's Guide , in the words of its author, "the first underground, counter-cultural travel guide to a foreign country" (see Figure 11).^[60] First published in 1972, by 1979 it was in its fourth edition and seventh printing. Throughout the 1970s it sold between 10,000 and 15,000 copies a year, peaking in the late 1970s with sales of more than 20,000 a year.^[61] Through The People's Guide and on their own, countercultural tourists developed a repertory of tourist sites to explore, places "off the beaten track," including favorite mountain villages and isolated beaches.

While many Mexican intellectuals regarded the jipis as a "cheap imitation" of the real thing, for at least some jipis it was the foreigners who fell short of the mark. Mexican youth immersed themselves in the reexperi-

Figure 11.
Cover of  The People's Guide to Mexico  (1972), a
guidebook for countercultural travelers. Used by permission.

ence of native culture and traditions. Foreign youth, on the other hand, seemed "to come more for the drugs and the sun," as Joaquín López put it; "They weren't really part of our 'rol.' " "Some," he added, "adapted ... and in that sense there was a valorization" of Mexican ways of life. But ultimately understanding Mexican culture was beyond the grasp or even the purpose of most hippies' travel experiences. For Mexicans, that experience was intrinsically different. "You went looking for the countryside," continued López, "and in looking for the country you meet up with campesinos, with Indians. And you're thinking about them, and they're seeing you with long hair. It was great."^[62]

Foreigners, on the other hand, mostly used Mexico as a backdrop for their transformative escapes from the metropolis. "The exciting thing for Americans," recalled Carl Franz, "was to go to some Indian village and pretend you were Carlos Castañeda."^[63] In fact, the level of actual contact between hippies and jipis often revolved around exchanges of money or food from the former for insider knowledge of local customs and drug connections from the latter. As Steve Rogers recalls, "I remember once thinking, 'oh god, here come those Mexican hippies,' and they'd come and hit you up for food and dope, and they never even had a nickel.... You'd be down camping on the beach, and some Mexican hippies would sometimes come over with a guitar. They were pretty adept at scoring pot, and since the Americans had the money but no connections, the Mexicans would usually find something."^[64] But it was the distinctive nature of their respective backgrounds that probably kept Mexican and foreign hippies away from one another. "I felt that usually Mexicans wanted to talk radical politics, whereas Americans were there just to have a good time," Rogers commented.^[65] Indeed, this disjuncture between their conflicting worldviews is neatly encapsulated in a comment made by a self-proclaimed "die-hard" U.S. hippie coming to Mexico for the first time: "I love this country," he said. "Everyone lives like hippies down here!"^[66] This romanticization of poverty could often reach extremes and, rather than bridge cultural differences, only served to underscore them. As the historian Catherine LeGrande recalls of her experiences as a student in Mexico, "I remember this one blond-haired gringa who went barefoot in Mexico City. Everywhere she went. I remember being angry. at her, not only because it was dangerous but because it was really embarrassing. Once, we went into a market and this vendor cries out, 'Oh look at the poor gringa, she doesn't even have shoes!' It was incredible ethnocentrism on her part."^[67] Thus for many foreign travelers, Mexico offered the fantasy of escape from the trappings of bourgeois life, an escape they could literally afford to make and that, by definition, was only transitory.

For U.S. hippies a degree of cynicism toward the Mexican jipiteca also played a role. Carl Franz, for example, remembers Mexican jipis as "a pale imitation of the real thing." He continued: "It's as though they never really got it. Most of them are from the upper class, as opposed to Americans who are from all over. They struck us as more like Weekend Hippies. And a lot of them did it to just to get next to American hippie girls.... You didn't have to scratch a Mexican hippie very deep to find a macho Mexican man [underneath]."^[68] For U.S. hippies the ideal was to avoid people, to "dig" the natural landscape, and, when it became unavoidable, to learn

to navigate one's way through local customs and idiosyncrasies. "Your arrival in a remote area will not go unnoticed," cautions The People's Guide: "People—curious, questioning, staring—are everywhere."^[69] To its credit, one of the central values of Franz's guidebook is that it strives for what Dean MacCannell refers to in The Tourist as a "utopia of difference": "the possibility of recognizing and attempting to enter into a dialogue, on an equal footing, with forms of intelligence absolutely different from my own."^[70] Thus Franz offers a way out of MacCannell's "prison house of signs"^[71] sug-gested in the uncomfortable scenario of curious, staring natives:

Once you've accepted the fact that there are going to be people around, you can take advantage of their curiosity to satisfy your own curiosity about them. I've found that there's no better way to get into an area than to select some likely looking person and suggest that I'd like to do something: go fishing, hunting, exploring, collect water or gather firewood. The response is almost automatically enthusiastic and quickly changes the relationship from frustrated curiosity about you to a desire to demonstrate something that they can do, whether it's climb a cocopalm or lead you to an interesting ruin.^[72]

This somewhat benign view of intercultural relations, however, is challenged by another reality of abuse and conflict. In an autobiographical short story, the writer Robert Richter captures the development of relationships between locals and foreigners at a seaside hippie haven in Baja California:

Friction in relations developed early and naturally with simple cultural differences and attitudes. The young gringos wanted the isolation and the privacy of their own newly created world. They wanted only to hide out from a far away war and hassles at home—on their own—catching waves, living high, mellow and easy.... So the natives were intrusive and nosey to the gringos. The gringos were rude and crazy to them. Gringos had time and leisure and luxury, and the villagers had poverty and jungle-scrounging labor in a deceptive paradise.^[73]

Richter's perception of inequality and unease beneath the allure of harmony is instructive. For even as they often abused and misunderstood their relationship with locals, U.S. hippies still viewed themselves as "the real thing," capable of full communion with Others as they navigated between modern and "pre-modern" worlds. Describing his experiences in Huautla, one hippie thus told a New York Times reporter, "There is a close bond of friendship and spirit of survival between the mushroom eaters and the local people."^[74]

Fresas , Nacos , and Onderos

If La Onda belonged first and foremost to the middle classes during the mid-1960s (with los juniors flaunting their "in" fashions), after the student movement the lower classes staked out a claim on the rock counterculture as well. Why and how this occurred is no doubt complex. In part it is explained by the fact that rock is a mass medium—disseminated by radio, television, and film—and thus increasingly accessible even to those who could not afford to purchase albums or fanzines directly. Since the late 1950s, there had always been an element of the lower classes that sought participation in the youth rock culture (recall the King Creole riot in 1959), and it seems reasonable to imagine that this element grew during the 1960s.

A second factor was the experience and imagery of youth solidarity conveyed by the student movement, which contributed in an immense way to the transcendence—if perhaps often transitory—of class prejudice. Many students from private universities joined with those studying at the UNAM, the Polytechnical Institute, and the myriad affiliated schools throughout the capital to create a shared bond of struggle, despite often glaring class differences. This bond no doubt found expression in the common language of rock and the universalizing lexicon of La Onda, which now drew heavily on terms before seen as vulgar and crude. English words and phrases also became an integral part of this Onda lexicon and thus arguably became dissassociated from elitist pretensions, as they were reworked by youth in a broadening class context. This reappropriation even led to the creation of new words and phrases transliterated from the English, such as, for example, the word simón —slang for right on —which one U.S. journalist writing at the time suggested was the likely result of combining sí (yes) with man .^[75] English had long been associated with upward mobility, though a parallel usage also existed. This was the value of English as a mechanism of burlarse , to mock the social habits—and the presumed "monopoly" of foreign cultural knowledge—of the upper classes, dating to the border pachuco slang popularized by the actor Germán ("Tin Tan") Valdés in 1950s Mexican cinema.^[76] This latter usage was now popularized by the rock revolution as youth from the middle and lower classes strove for an identity beyond the straits of a repressive nationalism. "Like the pochos ," writes García Saldaña, "Mexican youth were tired of speaking in Spanish. They found themselves pissed off at all of those words that signified a reality which existed thanks to the Mexican Revolution, which, of course, meant nothing to them."^[77]

Figure 12.
A roundup of Mexican jipis following a raid on a home in the wealthy
Mexico City neighborhood of Las Lomas in early 1971. Source: "Concentrados: 
sobre 1303, 'redada de "hipis" en una casa de las Lomas,' 12 February 1971," Her-
manos Mayo Photo Archive, Archivo General de la Nación. Used by permission.

Perhaps the most important factor underlying the incorporation of the lower classes into La Onda was that, as local rock bands proliferated, the limited venues for live performance clashed with increasing demand for them. This led to the formation of alternative performance outlets: on one hand, at schools and in the homes of the elite, and on the other, in improvised outdoor spaces toward the margins of the capital. Called tocadas from the verb tocar (to play an instrument), these concerts by local bands (singing in English) played an essential role not only in disseminating La Onda but in reinforcing its spirit of underground, semiclandestine culture as well. It was not surprising that the elite "junior set"—known colloquially as los fresas , which connoted either an acclamatory or derogatory label, depending on one's perspective—opened their homes to rock parties after 1968.^[78] With money and political protection, los juniors could quite literally afford to wear their hipness generally without fear of the police. Such immunity was not always guaranteed, however, as suggested by a police bust at a home in the exclusive Las Lomas neighborhood of Mexico City (see Figure 12).

Participating in La Onda was an obvious sign of the elite's social con-

nectedness with U.S. and European culture. "They belong ," Monsiváis wrote of los fresas; "they have friends, groups, situations predisposed in their favor."^[79] The present-day rock group, the TRI, then known as the Three Souls in My Mind, in fact began by playing at tocadas in the mansions of Las Lomas de Pedregal, another wealthy neighborhood in Mexico City.^[80] "It was a way of making money," described Manuel Ruiz, who went frequently to the tocadas. "You contracted some known band and sold rum and cokes.... But it was mellow. People were hired to keep an eye out for problems, but no one trashed the house, and everyone was happy. Besides, the organizer of the party made a nice bundle."^[81]

While the elite sponsored open house parties, in the barrios and middle-class housing complexes (such as Tlatelolco), weekend tocadas drew thousands of people. Later named hoyos fonquis (literally, funky holes) by the novelist and rock critic Parménides García Saldaña, they had a spontaneous, often transitory, urban character. Though several of these performance spaces acquired actual names (for example, Chicago, Revolución, and Mandril), mostly they were noted for their semiunderground, often tenuous existence. Organized locally, all-day concerts featured numerous bands, often contracted to play at several sites around the city on the same day. According to Joaquín López, roadie and later member of the band La Revolución de Emiliano Zapata, "The hoyos fonquis were huge spaces in the urban parts of the city, warehouses that held 20,000 people. A stage was put up at one end and another at the other end. Bands were hired to play for an hour, and so you'd come for one set and then head off to another hoyo fonqui.... In the same day, you'd play at five different hoyos fonquis."^[82] These spaces provided the key linkage between rock and urban lower-class youth after 1968.

While fresa denoted a person with wealth, naco (Monsiváis would later coin the term la naquiza ) was reserved for the lower classes. Today, naco has come to mean someone who literally "lacks culture" or "proper etiquette," and it was in this sense that the lower classes were looked down on by the rest of society. As Monsiváis wrote at the time, "Naco , within this discriminatory language so characteristic of Mexico, equals proletariat, lumpenproletariat, poor, sweaty, greasy ducktailed hair, the profile of a head at Palenque, outdated in fashion by six months, out of fashion, or simply wearing crosses around the neck."^[83] As rock music became directly integrated into barrio culture its containment as a sign of status in a modernizing society was irrevocably transformed. The lower classes increasingly claimed rock as their own, imposing their own voice on a medium which up to that point was still characterized by its privileged sense of access. Rock

events became a pretext for desmadre and reventón (slang for partying), terms that conveyed a sense of anarchic festivity where social hierarchies were overturned and "respect" was located in a transient, unstable logic.

La Onda was becoming a bridge between the classes, superficial, perhaps, but real nonetheless. While part of the genius of Mexican nationalism has been the dissemination of mass cultural reference points that are shared by different classes (this is especially true for film),^[84] in rock youth encountered an alternative set of references that identified them as a group in opposition to parents and society. While the upper and lower classes rarely interacted directly, youth from the middle classes took advantage of both social realms and might be called on to act as go-between for the elite, as Manuel Ruiz explains:

Those of us from the middle class were close enough to those from the upper class so that we could relate to them and, from time to time, invite them into our scene. But we were also so close to those from the lowest class, those who were right there with the drug trade, that it was easier for us to buy marijuana and all sorts of other drugs. So a lot of times los juniors came up to us to see if we'd sell or give away a joint, or maybe just a hit of something.^[85]

But if los juniors "belonged," as Monsiváis argues, their acceptance within La Onda was not guaranteed. Rather, their overstated efforts to belong often marked them as outsiders, impostors in a movement that prided itself on authenticity. Ruiz explained: "There were some funny moments, like los juniors who were so obviously juniors, so false. They'd come up to you and say [in English], 'Peace and love, brothers,' but in a tone so false and hollow that rather than [you] saying, 'Yeah, let's hang out,' instead they bummed you out. You felt like they were even making fun of you." Yet as this informant also pointed out, "rock at the end of the 1960s was [a] magic [that] ... allowed the different classes to interact." Speaking of his experiences at private parties in the wealthy suburbs, he recalled that "A lot of times you'd leave a party really late and the buses and everything had already stopped, and suddenly some junior in his car would come up and say, 'where you headed, maestros.' You identified each other by the long hair and whatnot. And so they'd give us a ride. You'd go with them and be really appreciative of it. Without a doubt rock united us [in that way]."^[86] Yet despite this mounting overlap between the middle and upper classes, there was an entrenched distrust by both the middle and upper classes of the nacos and of the element of total desmadre associated with the lower classes.

Rock for the Masses

The first real opportunity for the classes to come together around rock was a stadium concert that featured a joint performance by the Union Gap and the Byrds in March 1969. Held at the Olympic Stadium, on the grounds of the UNAM, it was the first truly interclass, massive rock event in Mexico. The permit, in fact, had been in doubt until the last moment. Organized by the Hermanos Castro, themselves an internationally recognized ballad combo who had appeared on ABC's Hollywood Palace (alongside Big Brother and the Holding Co.),^[87] profits were maximized by carving out differently priced sections from the enormous stadium. With the upper-tier priced at a mere 5 pesos (less than U.S. $0.50), the middle-tier priced at 10 pesos (around U.S. $0.75), and lawn chairs at 20 pesos (less than U.S. $2.00), the notion was to attract as broad an audience as possible. But not only was little effort made to maintain a separation between the differently ticketed sections, no one was assigned to police the floor of the stadium. "When the people saw that no one was watching over them, they pushed forward and invaded the lawn area without a second thought. In a few moments it was impossible even for the opening act, 'The Tijuana Five,' to arrive at the stage."^[88] As those in the back continued to press dangerously forward, the Castro Brothers pleaded with the crowd to "show your level of culture and ... degree of civilization so that we may confirm that the youth of Mexico are indeed ready for this type of event."^[89] Concerned for the safety of the group, the Union Gap backed out of the concert altogether, leaving a string of Mexican groups to kill time until the Byrds, delayed at the airport, belatedly arrived.

When the Byrds finally took the stage and the first chords of "Turn, Turn, Turn" drifted over the inadequate sound system, sheer mayhem erupted, as the pent-up energies of waiting provoked a mad rush forward, dissolving any pretext of which seat belonged to whom.^[90] In the impressionistic style that became his trademark, Carlos Monsiváis eloquently related afterward:

And the seats go flying and the people scatter and the masses are the same on all sides, and the pitched battle begins, the riot, the general breakdown, the end. Seen from the summit of the stadium, the spectacle is at once formidable and convulsive. Those of La Onda get fed up and flee, convinced that the scene smells ripe for the granaderos of Baskerville, whose presence is thought to be imminent. The fresas try to keep listening, apprehensively protecting their girlfriends and their siblings

and their diploma which is only a few years off.... And the nacos, they take it all in (the generalization is coarse, but not untrue), at once experiencing the total burden of that classist substantive grounded in an aesthetic labeling, which in an instant of physical "kidding around" becomes the Other of the bourgeoisie ... the thousand-headed monster of prerevolutionary mythology that threatened every proper Porfirian lady hidden in the basement of her hacienda.^[91]

The implications of such a total breakdown in control over social space were profound. For state authorities, the concert clearly pointed to the limitations of control over mass popular culture.^[92] Rock music had ceased to be the exclusive domain of the middle and upper classes. In the hands of the poor, it was even less containable. Yet for intellectuals and political activists who were still recovering from the blow to the student movement barely six months earlier, the prospect of mass rock concerts drew cynicism and despair. Monsiváis, for instance, later criticized those who attributed a political element to the riot (suggested by photos of youth waving a "V" sign, which was closely identified with the student movement), arguing that fans were only mimicking the performers without any clear sense of the symbol's meaning.^[93] At that moment, the desmadre of rock seemed to be the antithesis of all the students had struggled and died for, a vulgar mocking of their martyrdom. For commercial interests, however, the concert (despite its fiasco) revealed the depth of pent-up demand for foreign rock.

Three months later the Doors also came to Mexico City. From the perspective of the entertainment media, the group was a hot commodity with tremendous commercial possibilities. A popular radio station known for its English-language programming, Radio Exitos, reportedly prepared for the group's arrival by playing their hit song, "Light My Fire," fifty times a week. Suggestive of the Doors' popularity was the observation that a jukebox version of their hit "The End" was said to be "so worn the words were indiscernible."^[94] Telesistema, in fact, offered U.S. $20,000 in back-room negotiating for the right to a two-hour televised special on the band. The Doors, a Telesistema negotiator explained, represented "a life style that would be good for Mexico."^[95] At that point, the group's reputation as a raucous and provocative musical act was already widely established; only a short while earlier Jim Morrison had been arrested on charges of public indecency while performing in Miami. On the one hand, it would be appropriate to interpret the above comment as indicative of a push from within the television giant—most likely by a younger generation of producers—to shed the restrictive terms of an earlier containment in favor of the direct marketing of youth rebellion. This trend grew stronger over the next

couple of years (epitomized by the role of Luis de Llano Jr.). On the other hand, however, the proposed deal between the Doors and Telesistema never materialized, apparently canceled by the latter. The most plausible scenario is that Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, owner and director of Telesistema, vetoed the proposal. Despite Telesistema's early promotion of rocanrol, Azcárraga remained highly conservative in his values. This basic conservatism was revealed by the earlier cancellation of ¡ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 a Go-Go! (see chapter 3) and Azcárraga's single-handed decision to shelve Luis de Llano Jr.'s footage from the 1971 Avándaro rock festival (see chapter 6).^[96]

The Doors' initial intentions were to take Mexico by storm. They had agreed to perform at least three concerts, each targeted at a different audience (in itself, a novel concept for a rock band of their reputation): at the 48,000-seat Plaza de México bullring at popular prices; a benefit at the Camino Real Hotel for the Red Cross; and finally, at an exclusive Mexico City nightclub. "The idea being that in one visit the Doors could perform to all levels of Mexican society."^[97] While the idea of performing in a bullring, with its fixed-priced seating, would have resolved some of the logistical problems that contributed to the riot at the Union Gap / Byrds event, the image of 48,000 youth massed together (and under the leadership of a known rock provocateur) was beyond acceptance for the city government. Alfonso Corona del Rosal, the capital city's appointed mayor (1966–1970), essentially vetoed the performance by making himself absent from the capital when the necessary papers were to be signed. Without his signature there could be no concert. Mario Olmos, a thirty-one-year-old interior decorator who had brought the Doors to Mexico with assurances to the band of at least one mass concert, then bribed his way into the office of the president himself, "who reportedly gave his verbal okay," according to Jerry Hopkins, a rock journalist who was traveling with the band. If this is true, it may have suggested Díaz Ordaz's readiness to open the channels of rock as a means of siphoning off youth discontent; or perhaps it reflected the president's unawareness of what the Doors' act was all about. Maybe the president simply caved in to pressure from his rebellious son, Alfredo. At any rate, as Hopkins relates, the plan again fell through: "When the Regent [Corona del Rosal] returned, however, the president's verbal go-ahead disappeared in a swirl of polemic dust (and unanswered calls) and apparently the buck was passed back to the Regent, who just never got around to saying yes or no."^[98]

In the face of bureaucratic intransigence, the original notion of reaching the broadest segment of Mexican society was extremely scaled back: the canceled bullring concert and suggested alternative performances at the

National Auditorium (where local rock bands had performed in 1966 and where leftist Latin American folksingers would appear with the government's blessing several years later) or at the Alameda Park (an outdoor park near the Zócalo) were all sidelined by city officials. In the end, the Doors were relegated to three performances for an upper-class audience in an exclusive nightclub, the Forum, run by Javier Castro, coproducer of the illfated Union Gap / Byrds event.

Restricting the Doors' performances to the Forum, where an obligatory dinner further upped the ticket price, reflected the regime's indirect efforts—short of forcing the tour's cancellation—to contain this vanguard rhythm.^[99] At the Forum it would not be rock for the masses but rather rock, once again, for los juniors. Ironically, Jim Morrison's bearded face (and mounting potbelly) so utterly failed to fit the superstar's studly commodified image—reproduced in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot mural on an outside wall of the club—that his own fans initially did not recognize him; the first night, they reportedly elbowed him aside at the door in an effort to get a better look at the band.^[100] Whether he was self-consciously mocking his upper-class audience or simply making a half-gesture at communication, Morrison later introduced himself as "Fidel Castro."^[101] In a review of one night's performance, Raúl. Velasco, creator of the entertainment variety show "Siempre en Domingo" (later accused by the Guatemalan government of corrupting Guatemala's national values! ),^[102] derided Jim Morrison as a "red-bearded pirate crossed with Fidel Castro and the Hunchback of Notre Dame."^[103] Outside the club, thousands of chavos de onda (hipsters) stood in the rain, straining to hear the music of their heroes. Inside, young couples in tuxedos and evening dresses sat politely at their dinner tables. Raúl Velasco continued: "The golden youth of Mexico came out in full to render homage to the myth of the Doors.... And they demonstrated their capacity of judgment in not surrendering (there was applause but not, we make clear, surrender) to the nightmarish world of Mr. Morrison."^[104] Further emphasizing the "resistance of Mexican youth" to the disease of Morrison, a photograph of a woman drinking a soda carried the following caption: "A pretty young lady is surprised while drinking a Coca-Cola. Such was the wholesomeness of the atmosphere."^[105]

Keeping the Doors away from the masses—at least in concert—while reviewing their performance in terms that glorified the aesthetic good taste of Mexico's (upper-class) youth could not, however, halt the impact of rock music on the middle and lower classes. Instead, efforts to contain rock's performance simply reaffirmed the significance of this music for those who were shut out. "Who is the Doors music for?" asked Parménides García

Saldaña in a review of one of the performances. "Obviously, but very obviously, it is not for the golden youth who drank lemonades and Coca-Colas at the Doors 'show.' And still more obviously, the Doors' songs don't speak about nor are they directed toward that [category of] youth."^[106] Imported rock music could no longer be contained as a modernizing metaphor of a nuclear Revolutionary Family rejuvenated, as an earlier discourse of rocanrol had imparted. Rock music increasingly belonged to the masses, who in the particular context of U.S.—Mexican relations believed that it was indeed their music to experience and understand.

La Onda as Literature

By 1968, La Onda was experienced not only in rock music but through a new genre "of literature by youth and for youth"^[107] as well. This genre was baptized literatura de La Onda by the literary critic Margo Glantz, and the label has remained despite criticism from some of the very authors she deemed to categorize.^[108] Launched by the progressively independent publishing house, Joaquín Mortiz, the literature of La Onda offered youth, in the words of Elena Poniatowska, "for the first time a reading material that was very accessible and immediate [to their experiences], and as such [which] began to generate a new reading public."^[109] The writing style of these young, iconoclastic authors also widely influenced a whole generation of writers and journalists, much as Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe had established a style of "new journalism" in the United States. Though most of these writers identified at one level or another with the counterculture, José Agustín and Parménides García Saldaña were especially visible.

Agustín, whose novels La tumba (1964) and De perfil (1966) first heralded this new style of writing with its countercultural sensibility, later delved into the realm of television, theater, and film. An ardent fan of rock music, Agustín's book La nueva música clásica (1968) helped establish rock as an avant-garde art form beyond mere pop, arguing that by the late 1960s rock "offer[ed] a new aesthetic order that no other musical current or artistic discipline could deliver."^[110] Though critical of Mexican rock's lack of originality, Agustín nonetheless helped elevate the status of certain groups whose quality he respected (such as Los Dug Dugs), incorporating them into his film and television projects. His collaboration, for instance, on the screenplay of the cult film Cinco de chocolate y uno de fresa (1967) featured the Mexican pop singer Angélica María (with whom he was briefly romantically involved) in the role of a cloistered Catholic girl turned psychedelic ondera, as well as the music of Los Dug Dugs and Javier Batiz. Arrested at

the end of 1970 on trumped-up drug charges, Agustín spent seven months in Lecumberri prison. Though his autobiography, El rock de la cárcel (1986), provides numerous detailed excursions into his drug experiences, at the same time Agustín denies feeling "part of the psychedelic movement or [a] spokesperson for the chavos de la onda," ^[111] a role first attributed to him by the critic Margo Glantz. Indeed, his short stories and novels often approached La Onda from a distanced, at times cynical, perspective, even though he used the themes of youth culture and identity as building blocks for his work. Though not outspokenly political, Agustín belonged to the group called Artists and Intellectuals in Support of the Student Movement and attempted to introduce student politics into his creative projects. At least one of his writings, Abolición de la propiedad (1969), a short play framed by rock music, directly referenced the student movement.^[112] He would later comment that the written word became for Mexican youth their own contribution to the rock revolution.^[113]

If Agustín was wary of being pigeonholed as a spokesperson for La Onda, his cohort and close friend Parmeénides García Saldaña leapt at the opportunity. Though both Agustín and García Saldaña ridiculed the elitist pretensions of La Onda (in his short story "¿Cuál es La Onda?" Agustín perceptively mocks the moral hypocrisy of his upper-middle-class characters), García Saldaña was the one who recognized and identified with rock's growing proletarian edge. Having spent part of his youth taking classes in Louisiana, where he soaked up the rich blues heritage of contemporary rock, García Saldaña intuited the shifting location of rock away from the middle classes toward the barrios that had begun to occur in the late 1960s. In this, he was irredeemably negative toward native rock groups, which he considered—with the exception of the hard blues sound of Three Souls in My Mind—a second-rate imitation and alien to the needs of Mexicans. In a 1973 article, for example, he wrote that "the majority of [Mexican] bands ... turn me off." "I want it to be clear," he continued, "that I like the scene of Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, [and] Santana, so that my harsh and not optimistic opinion regarding Mexican rockers is somewhat understood."^[114] Yet more so than Agustín, García Saldaña identified with the element of desmadre that the lower classes introduced, and he carried this attitude over into his writing style. He was also famously irreverent of the intellectual, artistic, and political establishment, to the point of mocking noted intellectuals and refusing literary awards. Tragically, he died of a drug over in 1982.^[115]

As chaotically hip explorations of (mostly) middle-class youth identity,

the literature of La Onda captured the cultural attitudes and lifestyles of a segment of youth from this period, and especially the colloquial argot which separated the new generation from the old.^[116] Rock music culture and an irreverence for established norms defined the characters and contexts of many of these writings. As Octavio Paz noted at the time, "[L]iterature written by youth is beginning to be critical, and this is occurring at two levels: as social criticism and as verbal creation."^[117] Later, in describing his novel De perfil , Agustín wrote, "It's true, De perfil wasn't really literature, at least not as it was conceived of back then. Rather, it was a new proposition: as with rock, it sought to fuse high and popular culture, to legitimate artistically once and for all a colloquial language."^[118] These authors' often radical approach to literary structure explicitly challenged the established canon composed of such luminaries as Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, and others. This radicalism was embodied not only in their selection of subject matter but also in their flaunting the rules of proper grammar and punctuation. In particular, the writings of Agustín and García Saldaña are filled with the celebration of youth slang, the direct incorporation of rock lyrics, words, and phrases in English, and, most blasphemously, the introduction of linguistic inventions in Spanish. Commenting on his publisher's criticisms of La tumba , for instance, José Agustín writes, "It bothered [him] that I would come out with wordsmadeupofvariouswords, that I Put Capital Letters Where They Did Not Belong, that I didn't highlight phrases and words in other languages, and other such details. I asked him not to apply supposedly general principles [of writing] to a work which, for better or worse, established its own laws, its own wavelength."^[119] This contempt of established literary traditions mirrored the broader challenges to authority that were transpiring in society at large. At the same time, the liberal incorporation of excerpts from rock lyrics and expressions in English reflected a longed-for identification with the "universal" rock counterculture abroad.

Rock lyrics indicated a shared sense of hipness and offered a direct link to the avant-garde in other countries. For example, a passage from García Saldaña's Pasto verde (1968) epitomizes the inextricable location of foreign rock in his work (only the italicized parts indicate translation from the Spanish):

And I'm listening to Lady Jane by the Rolling Stones and in my calmness, I don't understand the lyrics but I begin to play around a little with the inspiration of the song ... Come on babe Come on come on COME ON ! Help! Let's spend the night together not fade away not fade

away babe I'm totally fucked-up .... Yeah babe too much monkey business around n' around i need your love tonight get off of my cloud lady jane just like a thumb tom blues queen jane approximately loveminus-zeronolimit everybody must get stoned! ^[120]

Rock-inspired language thus provided this literature with a sense of organized chaos. This manifests itself as a frenzied quest for meaning in García Saldaña's work, for example, or as the backdrop for youth exploration in an uncertain age in José Agustín's writings. "Since I was a kid," Agustín explains, "the United States has been very close to me. I enjoyed rock, good literature, and counterculture."^[121] Ironically, the prevalence of youth slang makes this literature largely inaccessible to anyone other than Mexican youth. At the same time, English-language slang—expressed, for example, in phrases such as "You know what I mean"—referenced the authors' cosmopolitanism, while also reflecting the mounting degree of English used in everyday expression. Sometimes a Spanish equivalent drawn from colloquial language was used, while at other times an English word was simply substituted for an idea or term not readily expressed in Spanish, such as "underground."

Such incorporation of English spoke to the dual process of an erosion of privileged cultural access by the elite and the simultaneous reappropriation of foreign youth culture by the middle and lower classes. This interpretation of the use of English directly challenges a basic assumption of an earlier literature on cultural imperialism: that the widespread use of English was "an indicator of class or at least a 'status symbol' for advanced sectors" that symbolized the "seal[ing] of an alliance between the local 'advanced' bourgeoisie and North American interests."^[122] While English did remain a symbol of status among the elite, by the late 1960s it could no longer be claimed as their private domain. As it spread to the masses, the rock counterculture broadly disseminated English as a vehicle for challenging the very triumphalism of the bourgeoisie. The lower classes, especially, may not have understood the precise meaning of rock lyrics and widely circulated phrases, but it was enough to have them in their own possession to challenge the presumed monopoly on "high" culture to which the elite had once been able to lay claim. This restructuring of the relationship between access to foreign culture and class was directly linked to the massification of foreign youth culture that mounted through the 1960s. The literature of La Onda reflected and contributed to this demystification of English as an elitist code. Thus if a dominant fact of this literary genre was the search for new truths—personal, social, cultural—the presence of English not only was an indicator of the problematic historical relationship between Mexico

and the United States but also served as an inextricable vehicle for unraveling the mystery of that relationship.

The Twilight of Díaz Ordaz

Under Díaz Ordaz La Onda prospered commercially, at the same time enduring a fierce repression. This contradiction had in essence always been apparent, but in the wake of Tlatelolco it became all the more blatant. By the late 1960s, La Onda clearly influenced the marketing spirit of the times (as the counterculture did for marketing in the United States), and a psychedelic tinge was incorporated into many aspects of sales aimed at youth. For example, even the conservative newspaper Excélsior carried an advertisement announcing the opening of a new boutique by the clothing-store chain, Palacio de Hierro: "Movement ... action ... youth ... a boutique without comparison where we have brought together the latest of IN fashions ... superwide pants made from the most outrageous cloth ... transparent blouses ... all of the most daring ... all of the most innovative you'll find at Paraphernalia, the hip boutique for hip people."^[123] In the music fanzines there was also an important shift in editorial direction, as younger writers were recruited and older editors were replaced. México Canta , for instance, went from being a narrowly based entertainment magazine to one increasingly attuned to the rhythms and needs of the counterculture.^[124]

Yet, at the same time, access to imported rock—the "real thing"—remained limited for most Mexicans. Youth who liked rock had access to the images, even to the lyrics (often translated) of the emergent rock stars via fanzines such as México Canta, Idolos del Rock, POP , and others. But literal access to the music on one hand—especially the "original" record album—and diffusion by radio stations of what was actually available, on the another, continued to restrict the full repertoire of foreign rock to those with purchasing power. This gap in terms of access to an original rock product was bridged by personal connections to people who traveled abroad and, more significantly, to individual capitalists who recognized the profundity of local demand. For example, in Mexico City several music stores specializing in imported rock soon opened. One, Discoteca Yoko, offered a stock of well-known foreign groups plus "shipment of orders to any part of the republic." In an advertisement, a voice bubble reads: "Wow! What cool records! And where can they be had?"^[125] Armando Blanco, founder of Hip-70 (which opened in 1969), later commented: "Those who were part of the underground scene, who didn't listen much to the radio, who didn't watch television, they were the ones buying records at Hip-70.... It was

a true treasury to have the great American [sic ] rock albums. They even smelled different."^[126] The record companies understood the demand for rock, but their marketing strategy still closely followed the trajectory of an earlier musical product. What they failed to grasp was the longing by fans for greater access and the need to "get closer" to the authentic rock commodity. It was not only the song that now mattered, but ultimately access to its authentic presentation as well. By the turn of the decade, however, the marketing approach taken by the transnationals shifted dramatically, as we will explore in the next chapter.

After Tlatelolco rock became an intrinsic part of a political, social, and cultural conquest by youth in an environment conditioned by the threat of repression. "Before an act of protest or of rebellion, both unequivocal signs, think about rock," wrote Carlos Monsiváis at the start of 1970; it is "an over-powering language, whose speech is an inescapable part of youth."^[127] Marching in the streets and making public demands had failed to budge the regime toward greater democratization. This provoked a greater radicalization by some students, on one hand, and a retreat from politics by the vast majority on the other. Seen from this perspective, the burgeoning of jipismo and the class expansion of La Onda is understood in direct relationship to youth's disillusionment and cynicism about the likelihood of political change. The channeling of this cynicism toward the rock counterculture is captured in a review of the group, Los Dug Dugs, from early 1969: "From the purist essence of rebeldismo, from the most obscure hippie roots, from the most profound corners of Underground Rock, have come the Los Dug Dugs ... a dirty and disheveled look on the face of youth, [with] insolent gestures that offend. Like all their generation, they protest against everything and everyone. They break contracts, they don't want to record albums in Spanish, they're defiant, unpunctual, and apathetic."^[128] Immersing oneself in La Onda meant the transformation of individual lifestyles—wearing long hair, taking drugs, demanding sexual and personal freedoms—which grated harshly against the predominantly conservative Mexican household. In the United States most youth had the option of attending college away from home, but in Mexico (unless one studied abroad) this was not the case. The economic and social ramifications of revolt, hence, were more severe, and many youth faced the prospect of either conforming to family standards or being ejected from their home. Such conflicts were exploited by the regime, which conveniently sought to conflate in the public mind-set the rebellion of students with a breakdown of patriarchal order more generally. Ongoing repression after 1968 thus became justified for

large sectors of the public, which also experienced the new insolence of youth directly.

In fact, the escapism of the jipi movement was no guarantee against police brutality, which targeted such youth with a vengeance. Stories of greñudos (longhairs) being harassed in the streets, denied service on public transportation and in restaurants, picked up by the police for no reason and then dumped off with a forced haircut, became legion. "We were the weirdos, los greñudos," recalls Ramón García, an informant from the lower classes. "They harassed us wherever we went.... Perhaps like what happened in other countries with racism, only here it was directed toward the roquero [ardent fan of rock, also written rockero ]. Like they wouldn't let you on the bus, ridiculous things like that. Wherever you went, there were the cops. The cops came after you, they beat you, they robbed you."^[129] The communicative spaces offered by rock, therefore, were an essential focal point for the expression of anger, fear, and distrust toward authority in general, at the same time revealing the organizing impact of rock itself. "Here in Mexico, there are a ton of things that as youth we have to fix," wrote Carlos Baca in his weekly column, "Rock Subterráneo," in the magazine México Canta . "And to do so we have to be united, because they're closing down all of the places where we hang out and well, whatever, we've got to find other places then." One public space recently affected by police repression was the Parque Hundido (Sunken Park), where "now every Saturday the place is full of paddy wagons and whatnot so that 'not a single greñudo' is allowed to congregate."^[130] One infamous occasion that highlighted the regime's obsession with youth protesters occurred toward the end of the Díaz Ordaz administration. A group of Mexican jipis bold enough to traverse the capital along a main thoroughfare handed out flowers and sang songs. Parading down La Reforma, they shortly arrived at the Monument to independence, where they were met by granaderos who "beat them up, all the while they were handing out flowers and saying 'Peace, brother.' "^[131]

In the twilight of Díaz Ordaz's rule his hand-picked successor, Luis Echeverría, sought a new political tone during his campaign for the presidency, one that would distance him from the very policies he helped implement during the previous administration. As secretary of interior affairs, Echeverría was widely held responsible for the orchestrated attacks on students and other protesters, culminating in the massacre at Tlatelolco. In choosing him as his successor, Díaz Ordaz most likely believed that the economic-development strategy of fiscal conservatism and political stability would be maintained. Such a strategy dated to the post-World War II

period and was marked by restrictive labor and political conditions, which were deemed necessary for the stability of the peso and the continued influx of foreign and native capital investment. Mexico's economic "miracle" had been based on this approach, which not only rendered impressive annual growth rates but was rewarded with the prize of Olympic recognition. It was not clear yet what Echeverría's plans might be, but following his official nomination by the PRI there were indications that in the wake of 1968 a new strategy was in the making. Already he had raised parallels with the 1930s populist presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, whom he emulated in his discourse and countryside campaigning. Echeverría recognized, above all, the need to reach out to youth, an approach that was reflected in his numerous visits to universities (but not the UNAM) around the country in the course of his presidential campaign. As one editorialist noted: "In his oratory remarks, some of which have been spontaneous and open, he has directed himself [to the students] and to youth in general, asking that their nonconformity be directed toward the common task of acting in the best interests of the country, above all breaking away from those elements that are conducive to the fragmentation of common interests and that deepen our divisions."^[132] But Echeverría's campaign faced an uphill battle against despair and disillusionment, not to mention the mark of culpability assigned by students for his presumed role in the massacre. He was often rebuffed, at times violently, from the schools he visited. Slogans such as "To Vote in 1970 Is to Forget 1968" underscored the open wounds that had been created by the massacre.^[133]