Editor’s Note: The Selective Echo is always pleased to bring guest postings from Mark Alvarez, a Salt Lake City attorney who is living in Mexico with his wife, Lorena. Mark shares a well-informed perspective about anti-emo protests and violence that have occurred in Mexico City and Queretaro.

“A civilization could be judged by the diversity it attains and the unity it retains.”
–W.H. Auden

Emos have generated controversy in Mexico for their lifestyle and the challenges they present to an open society.

What is an “emo”? Emos claim to be closely in touch with their emotions and feelings. They advocate for the right to emote, to fully express themselves. One emo declared to the newspaper Milenio: “Emos do not reject. [Our values are] tolerance, respect and liberty. Live and let live.” The emo movement is concentrated among adolescents.

Emos tend toward depression. Their hair is usually black and combed (or not combed) to cover one side of the face. Emos cultivate an androgynous image.

What caused the surge in emos? The answer is unclear, but the surge is real. Music is fundamental to emo culture. The word “emo” arose out of emotional hardcore, a kind of punk music from the 1980s. Commentators have identified the Dead Kennedys as an enduring influence on emo bands. Some critics of current emo culture assert that modern emos have strayed from emo roots.

Utah has contributed to the Mexican emo scene through Orem’s band The Used. The Used and My Chemical Romance may dispute the label “emo band,” but both bands are cited as influential in Mexico’s emo culture.

The emo movement largely had passed unnoticed in Mexico. Emos lived peacefully. Recent anti-emo propaganda and violence changed the perception and placed emos squarely in public view.

Three weeks ago in Queretaro, Mexico, approximately one thousand people gathered in a public plaza. Many went to oppose the emo presence. Emos were attacked in numbers up to 20 to 1, and 150 police had to step in to stop the violence. Several people were sent to the hospital and 25 people were detained. Last week in Mexico City’s Insurgentes Circle, police had to intervene to stop a fight between emo and anti-emo groups.

The anti-emo reaction has emerged from people who claim emos have stolen the identities of other youthful urban groups including punks, goths and skaters. These competing groups claim that emos are inauthentic, that emos are a fad that detracts from genuine movements. In addition, some critics associate emos with homosexuals. And indeed, many emos are open in their homosexuality, bisexuality and heterosexuality. Again, “live and let live” is a recurring theme.

Most disturbing in the investigation of anti-emo propaganda and violence is the involvement of radical right wing groups. The police are essential in preventing these illiberal influences from corrupting the discussion that the open society of Mexico needs.

Mexico and other societies should devote greater attention to encroachments on human rights whether they come from outside or inside the society. The newspaper El Universal has editorialized:

“The recent crusade against the emos (emo-bashing) is no different from persecutions suffered by other minorities, racial, sexual and intellectual. In Mexican cities, as well as in internet campaigns that manifest similar aversions in the United States, England, Germany, Spain and Colombia, people have spread bad information: that emos are not clear about the reasons for their attitude (only appearance matters) and that detractors punish emos to compensate for their own insecurities (in attributing them to otherness).”

The truth is that movements among people young and old are not pure. In today’s world, movements blend in a constant recombination and reordering of the past. Despite Gatsby’s claim, the past cannot be repeated; however, the past certainly can be reinvented. El Universal concluded that all the groups are pop, part of popular culture.

That culture, popular or otherwise, needs to reject combat for conversation about diversity, difference and coexistence. Greater understanding and perhaps appreciation should trump ignorance and suspicion.

The words of Tennessee Williams between a self-described spinster and a reverend battling for his sanity remain true in Mexico and elsewhere:

Hannah: I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency and his—

Shannon: What decency?

Hannah: Yes, for his decency and his bit of goodness, much more than I respect the lucky ones that just had theirs handed out to them at birth and never afterwards snatched away from them by…unbearable…torments, I…

Shannon: You respect me?

Hannah: I do.