La Onda (The Wave) was a multidisciplinary artistic movement created in Mexico by artists and intellectuals as part of the worldwide waves of the counterculture of the 1960s and the avant-garde. Pejoratively called as Literatura de la Onda by Margo Glantz in the beginning, the movement quickly grew and included other art forms with its followers called "onderos", "macizos" or "jipitecas". La Onda encompassed artistic productions in the worlds of cinema, literature, visual arts and music and strongly addressed social issues of the time, such as women's rights, ecology, spirituality, artistic freedom, open drug use and democracy in a country tightly ruled by the PRI. According to Mexican intellectual Carlos Monsiváis, La Onda was "a new spirit, the repudiation of convention and prejudice, the creation of a new morality, the challenging of proper morals, the expansion of consciousness, the systematic revision and critique of the values offered by the West as sacred and perfect."
La Onda in music
La Onda originated with the introduction of U.S. and British rock and roll into Mexican music culture. Throughout the world, rock and roll was spreading and taking root as "a wedge and a mirror for societies caught in the throes of rapid modernization". Eric Zolov, author of Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture argues that "rock was a wedge in the sense that it challenged traditional boundaries of propriety, gender relations, social hierarchies, and the very meaning of national identity" which the Mexican PRI (or the Institutional Revolutionary Party) was struggling to define.Refried, p10
By the late 1950s, "youth from the middle classes began to form their bands…practicing as best they could versions of hit songs in English by their favorite foreign rock'n'rollers".Refried, p62 The youth of Mexico began to identify with the youth of the United States and the United Kingdom, and it was only a matter of time before they were also inspired by the social activism of other modernizing countries.
After the 1968 Mexican student movements ended in the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, a native hippie movement known as jipitecas grew in its wake and expanded to the entire country as well as parts of the US and Central America. By 1969, a new wave of Mexican rock music began to emerge, fusing Mexican and foreign music with images of political protest. This movement was called La Onda Chicana, culminating in a two-day "Mexican Woodstock" known as (Avándaro), which attracted ca. 300,000 people in September 1971.
La Onda in literature Starting in 1965, La Onda made its mark on the "new Central-American novel" and other genres. The wave of popular Mexican novels in the 1960s, "emphasized the sentiments of the new urban middle-class adolescent and the influence of United States culture, rock music, the generation gap, and the hippie movement." La Onda influenced many Mexican authors and intellectuals, like José Agustín, liberal priest Enrique Marroquin, ecologist Carlos Baca and Parménides Garcia Saldaña.
Alberto Blanco and Gustavo Sainz became icons of the movement; some writers who were not part of the movement but sympathised with it were Elena Poniatowska, Gabriela Brimmer, Jose Emilio Pacheco and Octavio Paz.
La Onda in the cinema and theater
La Onda had icons like Alejandro Jodorowski, the Gurrola bros. And Sergio García, making the Super 8 film synonymous with counterculture. Iconic films which gained worldwide attention varied from the women's liberation-oriented ones like José Agustín's "5 de chocolate y 1 de fresa" to Jodorowski's psychedelic avant-garde masterpiece El Topo.
La Onda in drug use and spirituality In the realm of hallucinogenic drugs, La Onda'''s icon was shaman María Sabina.
Society from the Mexican Revolution to the 1970s Mexican society had undergone a tremendous change after the Mexican Revolution; a period of modernization pushed by the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Mexican society had a great deal to do with the growth and popularity of the Mexican counterculture. "The country’s transformation from predominantly rural to urban, the expansion of national industries, the emergence of a mixed economy with a high profile, and the expansion of educational institutions all fostered the impression that Mexico had finally emerged from the blight of underdevelopment and was on the road to peace and prosperity". The PRI wanted Mexico to become an evolved and prosperous country, like the United States.
As Mexican society grew more and more inspired by and connected to other foreign countries, the cultural dos and don’ts became more similar to those of other countries, especially those of the United States. As rock and roll music and American television, and movies arrived in Mexico, the youth changed and slowly evolved into a rebellious stage inspired by the youth rebellion of the United States. One of the major ways in which the youth of Mexico began to rebel was by listening to and performing rock and roll. At first, they would perform famous songs in English from famous English-speaking rock and rollers like Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. The Mexican government saw a chance to reach Mexican youth by supporting rock and roll music and helping Mexican musicians play rock and roll music. The government hoped to change the meaning of the music. Instead of rebellion, the music would inspire support for the Mexican government and promote becoming upstanding citizens. But "government efforts to blockade the arrival of foreign music indirectly contributed to the emergence of a native rock’n’roll product, and more and more rock and roll bands began to emerge.Refried, p62
Rock and roll represented a connection between the youth of Mexico and the trend-setting youth of America. Both countries had modernized rapidly after World War II, and an effect of this modernization was a desire for a unifying identity that separated from that of past generations with a Revolutionary identity, and especially from that of their parents and grandparents who fought for and brought about the Mexican Revolution. The harder the PRI tried to control the identity of Mexico’s citizens, the more the youth of Mexico felt it necessary to fight back.
Mexican rock and roll bands needed a place to perform their music that was accessible to everyone. They began performing in places like Cafe Cantante, a rock club that allowed everyone to access the counterculture. The youth of Mexico identified with the youth of the United States, but unfortunately, were only able to witness a small part of the American counterculture, and that in other countries, so they had to interpret and express what they saw through their music. Besides television, film, and literature, the youth of Mexico only had one true way to experience the counterculture in a unified way, and that was through music. The Cafe Cantantes "thus served as a kind of transcultural performance space where the styles, gestures, and sounds of the youth culture from abroad were transposed for a Mexican audience".Refried p100 The Mexican government felt a need to shut down the clubs because they "fomented [ed] rebellion without a cause' leading to increases in juvenile delinquency. As the cafes were raided and shut down, the counterculture of the 1960s grew and was inspired to question and challenge authority.
The counterculture was no longer just about rock and roll. Now, in the early 1960s, youth were also adopting foreign fashion and attitudes towards authority, and rock music was again becoming a wedge against traditional social values and a vehicle for free expression".Refried, p.102 The Mexican government was very focused on projecting cultural unity, and the youth of Mexico felt it was important to express themselves and their feelings about this rigid modernization and unification through their music and clothing.
As the decade went by, hippies, or jipitecas, emerged among the youth of Mexico. Politically conscious students began to openly defy societal norms, like the hippies did in the United States. They needed to break the bonds of society and find new ways to express themselves. Young men wanted to break out of the mold set by their fathers. So they had to look disheveled and wrinkled, because the older generation of men looked very manicured and put together, and dressed much more conservatively. Girls had a similar problem, but also had to fight for a new freedom, where they had the same rights and opportunities as men. But both genders were beginning to fight for their rights to express themselves, be original, and be individual.
Politics: Single-party government After the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican government worked for a time to legitimize the acts of the new Constitution and to settle the country into stabilized governance. For a time, Mexico boasted "high levels of popular participation, featured a wide array of opposing political parties, and observed peaceful transfers of power from one administration to the next". But an authoritarian government eventually emerged. "The combination of favorable international circumstances and internal conditions enabled the governing party to become a monopoly party of government during the three decades after 1940".Concise, p240 Presidents like Álvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles, and Lázaro Cárdenas wanted to perpetuate the teachings of the Revolution and solidify revolutionary ideals into Mexican society. But after the Mexican Revolution, the government not only wanted to solidify the Revolution's ideals, it also wanted to improve the government and elevate the status of Mexico to a modern, First World power. In the 1940s, they began "to industrialize the country, using an import-substitution policy...displacing the traditional center of gravity, which had been the countryside, to the cities". This shift, and their focus on the middle-class family, eventually led to the first phase of La Onda, in which the children and grandchildren of the Revolutionaries began to challenge authority and individualizing and express themselves through rock and roll music and foreign fashion trends.
By the 1960s, the import-substitution model was no longer working. The enthusiasm with which the Mexican government had fostered towards economic growth and political stability was slowly stifling the Mexican people. In the 1950s, Northern Mexico witnessed "a vigorous mobilization of peasant groups that invaded lands under the direction of organizations with relatively radical ideologies, outside the official structures".Aguilar, p184 By the late 1960s, "the monopoly party had deepened its control over the political processes and took credit for the economic expansion that resulted".Concise, p.241 Now, it was not only Mexico's middle-class youth who were rebelling against the authoritarian government. The working class was rebelling also, against the old industrial institutions and fighting for better pay and protection from the companies and the government.
Economics: A widening gap between the middle and lower classes Mexico's economy expanded substantially after World War II. As it expanded, the country became prosperous, and the population became more middle class. More and more factories were built, bolstering the economy, but resulting in lower pay for workers, the people who kept the economy afloat. Mexican politics and economy went hand in hand when "political stability [under Ávila Camacho] encouraged enough foreign capital back into the country to bolster high rates of growth".Concise, p.243 Mexico's "emphasis on economic development...has focused on those activities, industry and commerce that are most efficiently undertaken in urban areas, where there is an adequate supply of labor, credit, transportation, and communication". This emphasis on urbanization eventually led to the worker and student movement of the 1960s.