El Chopo
El Chopo
You see them everywhere. Ear gauges the size of tennis balls, piercings in any place where skin can be pinched, hair shaved, or dyed, or bangs square across the forehead, tattoos creeping from all corners of their clothing, leather jackets with enough spikes to give a balloon something to worry about. They are the punks, rockeros, and emos of Mexico city. On Friday I visited a pulquería (a bar which specializes in pulque, the ancient, lightly-alcoholic, fermented agave drink with viscous consistency and mild sour flavor) that was a center of this cultural landscape. The entire place was covered in a neon psychedelic mural of pre-Columbian iconography. The bartender wore a rat tail that dragged below his waist. There was a jukebox that played seemingly anything but stayed on System of a Down for the length of my visit. While Toxicity played, a young lesbian couple, drenched in leather and skull related imagery, passionately made out over their cups of pulque. I should add that it wasn’t exclusively an underground scene. There was also a regular crowd of business looking older folks in well kept dress shirts enjoying the ambience.
The counter culture of Mexico and Mexico city has been interesting to me for as long as I have been trying to learn Spanish. “Los Malaventurados no Lloran” by the Mexican pop punk band PXNDX was one of the first songs I really understood the lyrics of. When I found out that according to their wikipedia page the band had faced so much controversy over alleged plagiarism of American punk bands that a group of dedicated haters that called themselves “Anti-PXNDX” was formed, I was fully intrigued. To care so much about artistic integrity was appealing to me. Then in college listening to Radio Ambulante, the Spanish Language program which tells lesser known stories of Latin America, I heard about the great Emo vs Punk battle of Mexico city, and how it really was about Emo’s fighting for the right to be openly queer. Walking around Mexico city and seeing these darkly flamboyant people I felt close to something real and great. I also felt embarrassingly inadequate and uncool.
Regardless, Saturday morning I made my way to Tianguis El Chopo, the open market for all counter culture music related things which also holds a free concert in the afternoon. Walking there, I knew I was getting close as I began to see hints of leather, patches, and chains, moving in the same direction as me. From the entrance, the market looks like any other open air market, if slightly more official, little tents and colorful umbrellas pack in an unassuming street corner, but looking into the first stand and it is clear where I am. T-shirt stands peddle exclusively black t-shirts from all the 80’s hits The Cure, Guns and Roses, Metallica, and many more. There is also plenty of Mexican band memorabilia of bands I have never heard of. I save the seemingly most popular one “Los Caifanes” to listen to later. The next stands sell communist and leftist merch. There are shirts of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary war hero who fought the newly independent Mexican state in an attempt to get land reform before being assassinated. I bought a t-shirt with the logo of the Zapatistas, a recent group which fought a war for a communist state independent from the Mexican government in the mountains of Chiapas, and won. Deeper into the market the clothes become more intense. One shop sells exclusively black lace panties with skulls. Another sells only piercing materials. Two guys asked me if I'd like to buy weed and hold out little baggies. If weed makes you paranoid there are also shops for herbal cigarettes of mint and rose to help with anxiety. In another section, women selling vegan chicken wings hold signs in support of abortion rights.
I’m too early for the concert so I stop at a food stall and buy an early lunch of carne encacahuatado, a peanut mole served from a clay plot alongside a stack of fresh tortillas. I sit on a little plastic stool and watch the busy street corner. I buy a communist paper from a couple of marxist guys and read about student protests, how the recently discovered CIA agents in the region of Chihuahua are another symptom of American capitalist Imperialism, and how AI is not inherently bad, it is only used for bad by a broken capitalist system. The paper also has a Mexican woodprint on the back cover of Epstein cradling Trump like a baby as Trump sucks on a gun like a pacifier which I’m not sure I entirely understand, but I like regardless.
After lunch I head back to the center for the start of the concert. On my way I am passed by a group of wailing women handing out little leaflets of a poem.
“I don’t intend to be your suicidal girl…If I paint my hair It will be out of capriciousness not to look like the women of your unfaithful dreams,” reads the poem.
In short, I am not your manic pixie dream girl.
The concert area of El Chopo is rather small, a little stage and a large tarp for shade which already is full of expectant fans. These are the fans who are here to show out. Mohawks spiked and dyed, faces blasted white and black with starlike eyeliner and diamond eyebrows, it is oppressively hot and still everyone is wearing at least ten pounds of leather and metal. The crowd is shockingly inter generational. There are a whole bunch of teens who despite their layers of makeup and intense clothes are unable to hide their adolescent attitudes which alternate rapidly between deep self consciousness and childlike joy. There are also a group of 30 year old looking folks who look on with mild amusement as if they had stumbled upon a mildly interesting park event on their way to brunch. They too though are in full counter culture garb. Then there are the elder punks who watch from an oh so cool 100 meters further back. These guys have the same crazy hair and piercings and many also have sweet motorcycles, but their skin is that kind of glistening leather you can only get from a lifetime of living fast. These days, this older crowd seems mostly to just chit chat with old friends. I even see one older guy has brought his daughter.
The crowd as a whole does smell vaguely of weed but only vaguely. And the old guys are holding the occasional beer, but it seems mainly to serve to show they still have it and not necessarily as a means to an end.
When the band comes out, they are a bunch of middle aged guys in all black with sunglasses, and baseball caps. After a quick warmup the lead singer screams “What is upp bitches!” and they slam into an aggressive metal song. The lead singer gutterally screams and groans for its entirety as he flails around stage. When the song ends he reminds the crowd to buy t-shirts and look for their new album on youtube.
By the second song a circle forms around a budding moshpit in which mostly men don bandanas and ski masks and posterize as they dance-walk in circles until they crash into each other and give each other a little shove. It seems part of it is to put on an angry face but I catch them occasionally smiling. It feels like boyish play to me more than anything. Even the older guys who join in have a childlike glint in their eyes.
After five or six songs the band thanks the crowd and asks them to come together for a photo. Which starts a cascading photo shoot where all the kids pose with their friends and celebrate a successful Chopo. I even got asked by one girl I hadn't talked to for a photo. Unsure of what to do I put my arm on her shoulder and gave an aggressively wholesome smile as she held up her hand in a rock symbol.
Another guy comes up and asks about my drawings. He thinks they're cool. Mexico City has a big history of being a rock city, he tells me. They tried taking Chopo away and we fought back. “We got signatures and everything. We are the only market that is a cultural heritage site protected by the government,” he says with pride.
It is true, in 2023 El Tianguis del Chopo was declared a cultural heritage site by the Mexican government. I think it is well deserved. Mexicans care deeply about almost everything, their partners, their sports, their politics, they care. What makes the counterculture of El Chopo a coherent group is that these people, whether they be emo’s, punks, feminists, communists or anarchists, care deeply about imagining a better world. One free from homophobia, sexism, or the oppressions of poverty. Or at least for the punks the world is shit and they are the only ones that seem to actually give a fuck. It makes me happy that a government can look past a little weed and skull themed panties to see that a dedicated space for kids to get together and give a fuck is a cultural treasure. The world needs people who care. Especially these days.
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