This weekend I saw the Mexican band Cafe Tacuba, here in the Mexican capital of the Midwest, Chicago. It is a band I have long loved and it was my second time seeing them, the first being over a decade ago at Slim's in San Francisco.
About 18 years ago while in college I discovered the band. While going through a bit of discovery around my ethnic identity, embracing my Latinidad and Mexicanidad—I still feel strongly for both and for my American-ness, too—and also while going through a very rough break-up, a friend who lived in the residence hall next to mine suggested that the drama I was experiencing reminded her of Café Tacuba’s song, Esa Noche.
The song tells of love lost, but how ironically enough, as you lose your love you find a new one, and just as the old love returns realizing what she had given up, you find that you have moved on. The song ends on an ambiguous note because it is not clear whether the newfound love is actually a person or whether it is loneliness and solitude that the singer has embraced.
The band Café Tacuba, started in the late 80s as Mexico slowly emerged from financial crisis, is itself a band of ambiguity: from its androgynous lead singer, and his lovingly insulting identity-Pinche Juan (Fucking Juan-among other names that Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega has gone by such as Cosmé and Anonymous), its mixture of genres and eras in music, to its embracing of both street culture and slang and high poetry.
There is a whole list of bands from Mexico that are simultaneously modern and traditional. Distinctively Mexican (rancheras, cumbia, mariachi), hip hop, metal, and rock and roll all at once: Lila Downs, Julieta Venegas, Café Tacuba, Rodrigo and Gabriela, to name just a few.
To me this mixture can be seen on other parts of Mexican culture. Daniel Hernandez, the editor of the Mexico City edition of the fashion, art, and music magazine, Vice, describes in great detail the raging Mexican cultural evolution in his book about youth in Mexico, “Down and Delirious in Mexico City.” He describes a fashion scene that rivals Paris, tribes of urban youth with creativity that rivals youth in Los Angeles and New York City, and how this explosion of cultural production is related to Mexico’s struggle to break through into the first world with its growing middle class.
One of the best chapters in the book is about Emo culture. Emos can roughly be described as somewhat effeminate, depressed, youth who perform their emotions through their clothes and taking over of public spaces where other youth hang out such as plazas and malls. There is a strong reaction against them, to the point that they are attacked and beaten. Hernandez struggles to figure out what this reaction is about. He concludes that it is that much of who they are is self-centered and superficial; they are suburban and middle-class, and while they are described as a tribe of their own, there is not much that unifies them at all other than their own existential angst about the banal. Other groups who define themselves more substantively deride them for this shallow attempt at trying to occupy a social space in Mexico. Other groups see them as insincere, as standing for nothing, as copying the styles of others without truly understanding the underlying meaning of those styles. What Hernandez notes most of all is that Emos seem to be representing the emptiness that often comes after all of your basic needs are met—he has a bit of an epiphany when he realizes that many of these youth come from middle class homes and are dropped off at the Zócalo in cars or that they hang out at affluent malls.
Mexicans love their suffering. It is integral to their identity. They rightfully own this privilege as they have long had much to suffer about. They certainly still do, as we saw a weekend where teachers have protested the capitalistic reforms that the government is imposing on schools, a year where students from upper-middle class backgrounds have demonstrated against government corruption and rigged politics in the “Yo Soy 132” movement, where the return of the PRI makes one wonder if the country will ever be able to move to a more democratic system, to the continued drug violence that has ensnarled parts of the country for nearly a decade.
That said, Mexico has experienced steady economic growth for several years now, despite the larger downturn worldwide. It has slowed as of late, but it is healthy nonetheless. But there is the ever-present worry of moving backward, and perhaps even scarier is the worry of moving forward into the unknown. This is especially true when that future has its own set of downsides. Suddenly having money, or democracy, or “high art” may seem glamorous, but it comes with a fight to find meaning and purpose or to be faced with no meaning at all.
The crowd at the concert was interesting because it represented many sides of Mexico. There were recent immigrants wearing cowboy boots and leather belts, women with strong indigenous features wearing mini-skirts and high heels, incongruent with what is typically worn at a rock concert. There were children as young as five and some pre-teens there with their parents (at a concert taking place at 9pm on a Friday). There were hipsters with ear gauges, piercings and tattoos, some who appeared and sounded like they had only recently arrived from Mexico and others who spoke only English. I can only imagine the various social classes from where people came, paying for $50 tickets and $7 beers, for some just another night out, for others their only night out this year.
It was really unclear for a moment what the individuals in this motley crew had in common. But then the music blared-a techno march, a polka, in Spanish, in Chicago, and the crowd heaved up in down, in unison, sweaty, all Mexican, and something yet to be determined. Like the song, love was lost, and a new one has been found, but it is lonely and unknown.
"Mi Soledad siempre he pertenecido a ti
Ay Soledad! siempre he pertenecido a ti"
Que Viva.
