Performing hardness: Punk and self-defense in Mexico City

Abstract

Even before the ‘drug war’ put Mexico in the international spotlight for episodes of extreme violence, Mexico City had developed a reputation for violence and insecurity. For young city dwellers, the multiple forms of violence they experience have often included police repression of youth culture. Over the decades since the arrival of punk rock in 1970s Mexico City, punk scene participants have developed a discourse of self-defense as part of their response to the various acts and threats of violence that inform their daily existence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City, this article details how punk scene participants use practices around musical performance as tools for the constitution of ‘hard’ subjects, performing violence as a means of protecting themselves from the difficulties of contemporary life in urban Mexico.