Music scholar Kelley Tatro provides an ethnographic account of Mexico City’s punk scene in Love and Rage: Autonomy in Mexico City's Punk Scene. Despite having musical training, Tatro does not perform or identify as a participant in the scene, establishing this positionality early and often. Instead, the author forgoes traditional ethnographic methodologies such as formal interviews in favor of a deeply immersive and often personal account of this frenetic, and sometimes fractious, musical collective. Love and Rage is a theoretically rich and detailed account of dissent and autonomy in the capital city.
The capital city is one of the largest and most dangerous in the world. Tatro opens the monograph with a detailed description of street vending that serves as an introductory marker of autogestión. Roughly translated as “self-management,” autogestión is a key concept to which Tatro will return throughout the book. While autogestión loosely aligns with the familiar punk term “DIY” (do-it-yourself), it also evokes a worldview that engages the history of anarchism in Mexico and opposition to government oppression (35). To frame the theoretical orientation, Tatro borrows the concept of “sowing” and “seeds” from Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón and refers to the figure frequently.
Chapter 1, “Sowing,” builds on the short prologue to more fully flesh out the idea of autogestión and explain the motivations of political dissent in Mexico City. Kelley Tatro cites desconfianza, or a generalized mistrust of authority, as common among participants in the punk scene. Tatro explains that punk stereotypes are rooted in mistrust by insiders and outsiders alike, fears shaped by the Mexican government throughout the twentieth century in its positioning of rock music generally. The tumultuous 1970s (“lost decade”) saw the Mexican government crack down on youth culture and rock-music performance, which also led to a paucity of rock music recordings and media coverage. It is in this context that the burgeoning Mexico City punk scene latched on to anarchism in all its subjective forms, informed by a long history of revolutionary politics and activists such as Magón.
Tatro calls this distrust and pointed anger rabia, or rage, in chapter 2. Careful to differentiate violence and self-defense, Tatro leans on anthropological and ethnomusicological work in affect theory to frame the chapter. Employing “affective overdrive” to describe the intensely loud and powerful experience of the slam, the author devotes a substantial section to the communal dance practice. Both a “dance of energy” and a “dance of friendship,” the slam is ultimately a “dance of solidarity,” Tatro argues. Physically demanding and fatiguing, the slam symbolizes trust and mutually dependent responsibility among punk-scene participants, who experience catharsis while keeping each other safe and free from injury. The author also details the influence and crossover of metal and hardcore in the punk scene while making these distinctions clear through a series of short vignettes called “seeds.” These inset asides are peppered throughout the book, often alongside twenty-five essential (and sometimes visceral) photographs by Yaz “Punk” Nuñez.
Rage gives way to dissent in chapter 3. As the intensity of rage is also pleasurable, protests become a “clear parallel in which feeling a motivating rage can be a stimulant to individual and collective enjoyment” (86). Tatro explains that underground rock in Mexico was a form of protest itself and recounts this history in the chapter. As schisms developed between punk and hardcore, reliance upon the anti-authoritarian basis of anarchism continued to inform dissent and rage in Mexico City’s punk scene. Tatro also makes careful distinctions between punk and emo, informed by scene participants through informal ethnographic accounts. The author acknowledges that research in the scene does not lend itself to formal interviews, and while I found direct quotation and a sense of the individual to be lacking, the writing nonetheless contributes to the author’s goal of “thick” description.
Descriptions of this “thick” event coalesce in chapter 4, “Love.” Devoting a sizable portion of the chapter to fanzines or ’zines, Tatro more importantly frames affective ties in Mexico City’s punk scene as a discourse of friendship and solidarity by “grouping the two concepts together under the idea of ‘love’” (120). The driving force of autogestión motivates a constellation of practices toward revolution, including work ethic, local pride, mutual aid, outreach and training, and community engagement. Protests and workshops are opportunities for sing-alongs, where well-known “classic” punk songs are vociferously performed in a visible and audible act of solidarity. Chapter 5, “Autonomy,” serves as an epilogue which positions love and rage as “an affective circuitry,” one that promotes autogestión while allowing a range of diverse practices and individual experiences. Tatro closes the book with a glimpse of Mexico City’s punk scene in a post-pandemic world, one in which many of its spaces and venues have since shuddered. But one informant reminds Tatro, and the reader, that punk began underground and to the underground it returns, “waiting to regenerate in whatever climate might meet their scrappy will to flourish in a post-pandemic world” (168). I found Love and Rage a fascinating account of punk history and lived experience in Mexico City punctuated by a message of hope, community, and ultimately, love. The author splendidly dispels stereotypes about punk-scene participants and does a good job to situate Mexico City’s position in the global punk scene. Dealing with a musical collective known for its material culture, the book favors a description of material ephemera (CDRs, bootleg DVDs, ‘zines) over access to them. While I missed a companion website or links to musical examples, the visceral photographs and vignettes seeded throughout Love and Rage help to sound out the voice of autogestión in Mexico City’s punk scene.
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[Review length: 933 words • Review posted on December 04, 2023]