Attacks began on 7 March when, according to Wired, “several hundred people went on an emo-beating rampage in Querétaro, a town of 1.5 million about 160 miles north of Mexico City.”

The next week punks and rockabillys harassed emo kids in Mexico City, prompting police protection and a TV news story. Meanwhile the emos have organised anti-violence protests (pictured).

Hat-tip to Alex Willemyns for one of the oddest headlines — but this is for real.

The core issue is a clash between Mexico’s macho culture and emo’s sexual ambiguity. Yep, it’s just good old-fashioned gay-bashing.

[O]nly in the past year have emos begun to make their presence felt in the streets. In response, many of the established so-called tribus urbanas like punks and metalheads are responding with violence…

[B]y some accounts, the emo subculture is identified with homosexuality in Mexico. As Mexico City youth worker Victor Mendoza told Time.com: “At the core of this is the homophobic issue. The other arguments are just window dressing for that.”

Perhaps not so old-fashioned: we can drag a web 2.0 angle into this…

Many of the attacks have been planned, or at least fomented, on violently anti-emo websites like Movimiento Anti Emosexual, which features videos of physical violence sprinkled liberally with anti-gay sentiment. Last.fm’s Anti Emo Death Squad group has almost 4,000 members.

Weirdly enough, Gustavo Arellano, the author of Ask a Mexican and an editor at OC Weekly, thinks this could all be a positive for Mexico.

“It’s a great clusterfuck for the American mind’s idea of Mexico,” Arellano said. “This teaches the rest of the world that Mexico is not just a bunch of cactuses and sombreros.”

Yeah, Gustavo. It teaches the rest of the world that Mexico is populated by ignorant, medieval fuckwits who are a long, long way from being fit to inhabit the 21st Century.

More at the Intersections blog, and Mexican newspapers La Jornada’s stories on the original attacks an the follow-up.

[Photo: "Protesta de emos en la ciudad de México el miércoles pasado" from La Jornada. Photographer: María Meléndrez Parada.]

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