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Thursday, March 20, 2008

Emos under attack

By Jeremy Schwartz | Thursday, March 20, 2008, 02:38 PM

In the last couple of weeks, a particular subculture of Mexican youths, who dub themselves “emos,” have come under violent attack throughout the country. Two weeks ago in the otherwise quiet colonial capital of Queretaro, mobs of kids attacked the emos in an attempt to force them out of the city’s main plaza. A week later, the violence arrived in Mexico City, when emos who hang out at the Insurgentes Metro stop were attacked by gangs of punks and soccer fans. Rumors of more attacks in Mexico City and the northern state of Durango are floating around the Internet.

So who are these emos, and why so much hate? Emos here in Mexico are bound by a specific fashion style (black clothes, tight jeans, huge bangs, black eye makeup) and ideology: according to several Internet sources, a strong chord of sadness, depression and sense of being misunderstood by the larger society runs through emo thought. Bands like Good Charlotte are emo favorites. And self mutilation is apparently common among kids heavily into the emo scene.

Anger against the emos has come from many quarters: punks and goths who think emos are ripping off their culture, homophobes who don’t find emos masculine enough, and those who simply seem threatened by a group that is so different than the mainstream.

Here are a couple examples of anti-emo anger from a Mexican website: “I HATE EMOS!!! They are not even people, they are so stupid, they cry over meaningless things…My school is infested with them, I want to kill them all!” and “We’ve never seen all the urban tribes unite against one single tribe before…Emos, their way of thinking is for crap, if you are so depressed please do us all a favor and kill yourselves!”

Emos have begun to fight back, organizing marches in Guadalajara and Mexico City. And voices have begun appearing warning of a creeping intolerance in Mexican society. Gilberto Rincón Gallardo, a columnist for the El Porvenir newspaper, argued this week that tolerance is the foundation of any healthy democracy. “If a group of young people like (emos) decides to get together and live life in a certain manner, and doesn’t hurt others, it’s the obligation of the Democratic state to protect them…It’s easy for an eccentric and easily identified minority group to be stigmatized and discriminated against…It’s the responsibility of the authorities to make sure the threats aren’t carried out and the aggressions are punished.”

Emos are by no means a Mexican phenomenon. They are yet another example of a fashion and subculture that has leapt across the border. Yes, the U.S. has its own emos, as this slightly alarmist TV news segment shows us.

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