The Righteous and the Profane: Performing a Punk Solidarity in Mexico City by Kelley Tatro Department of Music Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Louise Meintjes, Supervisor ___________________________ Paul Berliner ___________________________ Philip Rupprecht ___________________________ Diane Nelson ___________________________ Pedro Lasch Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Music in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 i v ABSTRACT The Righteous and the Profane: Performing a Punk Solidarity In Mexico City by Kelley Tatro Department of Music Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Louise Meintjes, Supervisor ___________________________ Paul Berliner ___________________________ Philip Rupprecht ___________________________ Diane Nelson ___________________________ Pedro Lasch An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Chemistry in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 Copyright by Kelley Tatro 2013 Abstract Mexico City’s punk scene has a notorious reputation, based on the supposedly angry, rude, and destructive behavior of its integrants. Certainly, participants in the punk scene value intense affects, aesthetics, and interpersonal exchange, but see them as means to amplify their political consciousness, their attempts to create alternative social networks. In this dissertation thesis, based on an extended period of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City’s punk scene, I investigate the co-constitution of the aesthetic and political for participants of the punk scene and ask what “the political” might entail for the city’s marginalized punk youth. In pursuing a local punk aesthetics that is both righteous and profane, to borrow descriptive terminology from Dick Hebdige, I argue for close formal analysis of musical, artistic, and other social performance. I employ formal analysis to evaluate the flourishing of punk in the context of “el DeFectuoso”—as residents name the hard-scrabble, global South metropolis of Mexico City—decades after punk’s initial arrival in Mexico. Deluezian network theory and social movement theory more broadly help me argue for a politically constituted music “scene,” created largely through U.S.-Mexico cross-border relations, without fixing its boundaries or stultifying its politics. Additionally, I explore the affective dimensions of punk performance, the role of music in subjectivization, and the importance of the body trained intersubjectively for both listening and performing. It is at the points of convergence of these three approaches that I locate a punk aesthetics as at once a punk ethics, animated by an ideal of “direct action.” Within chapters organized through broad themes like networks, violence, labor, and solidarity, I address topics from the harsh, hard-working vocal performances punks employ to the various anarchist currents that shape an always-tenuous, specifically Mexican punk solidarity, constituted through practices like street sing-alongs, the creation of alternative DIY networks of exchange, iv and fanzine writing and design. Within these routes of investigation, I elucidate the ways in which participants in Mexico City’s punk scene use profanity and outrage in the performance of a righteous ethic that informs their struggles to maintain solidarity and make a difference, through an explicitly political social network that is nevertheless grounded in aesthetic experience. v Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................................viii 1. Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 1.1 Big City ....................................................................................................................................1 1.2 El Chopo..................................................................................................................................5 1.3 Ethnography as a Non-Punk “Extranjera”................................................................... 13 1.4 Theorizing Encounters ....................................................................................................... 26 2. Encounters..................................................................................................................................... 35 3. Networks....................................................................................................................................... 43 3.1 “El Chopo” and “La Banda”: A Brief History of Rock in Mexico City ................ 43 3.2 Rockers and Radicals: Divisions Among “La Banda Punk”.................................... 54 3.3 Urban Tribes: Representations of Youth Culture in Modern Mexico City............ 63 3.4 The Righteous and the Profane........................................................................................ 71 4. Encounters..................................................................................................................................... 77 5. Labor .............................................................................................................................................. 88 5.1 The Hard Work of Screaming.......................................................................................... 93 5.2 The Affective Labor of Hardcore Punk.......................................................................102 5.3 Speech, Song, and the Written Word ...........................................................................113 5.4 Exemplary Performance and the Construction of Heroic Punk Voices................121 5.5 Gendering Punk Performance—Women’s Work ........................................................132 5.6 Getting By, Making Good in El DeFectuoso ...............................................................141 6. Encounters...................................................................................................................................143 7. Violence........................................................................................................................................152 7.1 Amor y Rabia ....................................................................................................................158 vi 7.2 Sonic Vehemence: Speed, Volume, Noise....................................................................163 7.3 Affective Overdrive .........................................................................................................169 7.4 Performances of Toughness: The Slam and the Portazo .........................................173 7.5 Nostalgia and Self-Defense in El DeFectuoso............................................................181 8. Encounters...................................................................................................................................189 9. Solidarity.....................................................................................................................................201 9.1 An Introduction to Anarchism.......................................................................................203 9.2 From Direct Action to “Transfer Cultures”: Experiments in Anarchy.................211 9.3 Anarchism(s) in Mexico ..................................................................................................222 9.4 Solidarity, Friendship, Affinity.....................................................................................232 9.5 A Poetics of Punk Solidarity..........................................................................................243 9.6 Conclusions........................................................................................................................250 9.7 Postscript ...........................................................................................................................254 References.........................................................................................................................................256 Biography.........................................................................................................................................271 vii Acknowledgements It gives me great pleasure to reflect on the networks of friends and colleagues whose support has sustained me over the long process of researching and writing this dissertation. Firstly, I send my thanks to all of the people I came to know during my time in Mexico City’s punk scene for allowing me to hang out and learn from them. There are two people in particular, friends to whom I send my warmest gratitude for their many kindnesses during my fieldwork period. In keeping with the anonymity I practice in the thesis, I won’t name them here. But they know who they are. A number of friends helped me as informal Spanish teachers, language exchange partners, and academic colleagues. For their kind assistance, conversation, and companionship, I am grateful to Susana Doña Gomez, Francisca del Solar Díaz, Luis Alberto Marmolejo Vidal, Rodolfo López Hernández, and Diana Carolina