mexico vs emo kids

In a surprising story, some anti-emo fans in Mexico have apparently taken things a little too far. According to Daniel Hernandez, who is covering the story, the spark came first in Queretaro earlier this month. An estimated 800 young people poured into the city's Centro Historico hunting for kids sporting "emo" looks.

By the next weekend, it had spread to Mexico City, where emo kids faced off at the Glorieta de Insurgents. There have also been reports of anti-emo violence in Durango, Colima, and elsewhere. The LA Weekly music blog notes:

In Mexico, emo culture is a butt of many jokes. It is either despised intensely or generally ignored. But it's only the despising sentiment that lately has been getting wide airplay. In the above clip, a Televisa on-air personality named Kristoff expresses a serious dose of anti-emo rhetoric and switches to English to say, on network television, "Fucking bullshit" to the emo movement. Some emos I've interviewed point to the Kristoff clip as a defining provocation of the current wave of anti-emo violence.

Things continue to escalate in Mexico where non-emo kids and emo kids seem to be at some sort of war. The latest updates from Daniel Hernandez note:

Emos and others staged a silent march for peace and tolerance through Queretaro's centro. A week ago on Wednesday, emos and their supporters in Mexico City demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the municipal justice department. The action was organized by a Mexico City gay-rights organization, highlighting the contention of some that the anti-emo movement is homophobic, among other undercurrents.

One rumor I heard today said that on Saturday pro-peace and tolerance punks will rumble with anti-emo punks, once and for all.

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&quot;I just want to tell you one thing. Emo is just a &quot;mamada&quot; [a stupid thing]. It is something for 15 year old girls, who have just started growing hair you-know-where, who get really emotional because they like the singer of the band, not because they like the music. Number one. Number two: is it necessary to create a new genre to express emotions? Don&#039;t we have enough? Don&#039;t we have enough with death metal? Don&#039;t we have enough with punk? Don&#039;t we have enough with Camila, with Sin Bandera, Jose Jose [all latin artists]. Do we really need to create a new genre that says &#039;Everyone else is wrong! They do not fulfill us emotionally&#039; Fucking bullshit [word i can&#039;t understand]! There is no movement! There is no way of thinking! There are no musicians. You are getting confused, mixing up punk, hard rock, and the screamo, and you mix all the current styles, all to give meaning to your stupid fucking movement. It is not a movement&quot;