The Mexico City-Los Angeles Cultural Mosh Pits

This essay chronicles the career of pioneering Mexican rock band Maldita Vecindad y los Hijos del 5° Patio. I argue that in a post-Chicano movement period, Maldita has become a borderless cultural institution infl uencing a generation of Mexicans on both sides of the border. Maldita has sought linkages with Mexicans from north and south through manifestos and music and through the revitalized figure of the pachuco. With its rock anthem "Pachuco," Maldita looked back to Mexican film actor Germán Valdés and his hybrid pachuco character, el Tin Tan, to explain a new rebellious Mexican punk spirit that drew inspiration from past musical fusions. Maldita returned to the same working-class musical milieu, the "quintopatiera" tradition, that gave rise to 1940s music of the pachuco phenomenon evident in compositions by Mexican Americans Don Tosti and Lalo Guerrero. Thus Maldita combines rumba, mambo, bolero, and danzón with new rock genres, infusing its music with cultural openness

Anthem · Art · Art history · Character (mathematics) · Cultural phenomenon · French horn · Humanities · Literature · Musical · Openness to experience · Phenomenon · Popular music · Punk · Sociology · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Music History and Culture · Philosophy · Psychology · Youth Culture and Social Dynamics