Mexico Declares War On Emo

By Brock Thiessen

Published Mar 26, 2008

Chances are if you aren’t emo, you hate emo. But you likely don’t hate this straight-haired, massacre-lined subculture as much as the Mexicans do. In recent weeks, a wave of emo bashings has swept across Mexico, several news agencies have reported, fuelled by punks, rockabillies, goths, metalheads and basically anyone who’s not emo.

According to Daniel Hernandez, who’s been covering the anti-emo riots on his blog Intersections, the violence began March 7, when an estimated 800 young people poured into the Mexican city of Queretaro’s main plaza "hunting” for emo kids to pummel. Then the following weekend similar violence occurred in Mexico City at the Glorieta de Insurgents, a central gathering space for emos. Hernandez also reports that several anti-emo riots have now also spread to various other Mexican cities. Via the Austin American Statesmen, several postings on Mexican social-networking sites, primarily organising spot for these "emo hunts,” have been dug up and translated. One states: "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!”

Another says: "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 favour and kill yourselves!”

More recent reports state that the emos have begun to fight back against the other "urban tribes” and organised marches in Guadalajara and Mexico City, escalating the violence and leading to increased police presence. Also, some Mexican newspapers, such as El Porvenir, have called for government intervention to protect the emos, writing, "It’s the responsibility of the authorities to make sure the threats aren’t carried out and the aggressions are punished.”

Several clips of the violence have surfaced on YouTube, but since we at Exclaim! spent our high school days studying French rather than Spanish, we can only make out the repeated mention of "emos.”