The Festival Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro (also known as the Festival de Avándaro or simply Avándaro) was a historic Mexican rock festival held on September 11–12, 1971, on the shores of Lake Avándaro near the Avándaro Golf Club, in a hamlet called Tenantongo, near the town of Valle de Bravo in the central State of Mexico. The festival, organized by brothers Eduardo and Alfonso Lopez Negrete's company Promotora Go, McCann Erickson executive and sports promoter Justino Compean and Telesistema Mexicano producer Luis de Llano Macedo, took place at the height of La Onda and celebrated life, youth, ecology, music, peace and free love, has been compared to the American Woodstock festival for its psychedelic music, counterculture imagery and artwork, and open drug use. A milestone in the history of Mexican rock music, the festival has drawn anywhere from an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 concertgoers.
The festival originally scheduled 12 bands booked by music impresarios Waldo Tena and Armando Molina Solis' agency, but a total of 18 acts performed outdoors during the first, sometimes rainy weekend, before a massive crowd. The event was captured in film by, among others, Cinematográfica Marco Polo, Telesistema Mexicano, Cablevision and Peliculas Candiani. Audio was captured by Polydor Records and a live radio broadcast was sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company. Images of the festival were captured by professional photographers like Nadine Markova, Graciela Iturbide, Pedro Meyer and others.
The Super 8 short films Avándaro produced by Gutiérrez y Prieto of Cablevision and directed by Alfredo Gurrola and Tinta Blanca en Avándaro produced by Raul Candiani of Peliculas Candiani and directed by Humberto Rubalcaba were the only films exclusively about the first festival. They were exhibited at international film festivals and theaters in 1972. Other movies, which partially used footage of the festival, were the Cinematográfica Marco Polo film "La verdadera vocación de Magdalena" produced by Anuar Badin and directed by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo and the Super 8 films "The year of the rat" by Enrique Escalona and "La segunda primera matriz" by Alfredo Gurrola.
An accompanying soundtrack with a selection of the live recordings produced by Luis de Llano's company LUDELL/BAKITA Records and named Avandaro, por fin... 32 años después (Avandaro, at last ... 32 years later), was finally released in 2003.
Before Avandaro: Massive events, student repression and La Onda By 1971 Mexico, ruled by the PRI, had organized two of the most important sporting events in the world: the 1970 FIFA World Cup and the 1968 Summer Olympics, gaining a fresh and modern image its government wanted to show to the outside world. At the same time, its government had violently repressed political youth movements known as the Tlatelolco massacre and the Halconazo, which in turn gave way to the so-called Mexican Dirty War of the early 1970s.
The Mexican hippies, called "jipitecas" by Catholic priest and scholar Enrique Marroquin, created a multidisciplinary movement called La Onda (The wave). In accordance to their hippie values, La Onda did not advocate a violent overthrow of the PRI, but it did advocate change. By 1969 the government had already banned the musical Hair after a unique performance of it in Acapulco, censuring the rock band Los Shakes (which included stars Pixie Hopkin, Mayita Campos and Nono Zaldivar), investigating impresario Alfredo Elias Calles (grandson of late president Plutarco Elias Calles) and deporting foreign actors and producers like Michael Butler, Gerome Ragni and James Rado. Such actions were heavily covered by local and American media like The New York Times and Time. Writer Carlos Monsivais, who witnessed the event, wrote an extensive article about the incident in his book Dias de guardar. Also in 1969, the band Pop Music Team had suffered censorship due to their hit "Tlatelolco" (which only had two weeks of radio airplay) and in February 1971 in Monterrey, a collective band called Sierra Madre, led by Teja Cunningham, and a state-of-the-art lights spectacle named "Music and light show" had faced repression after a failed attempt to hold a three-day concert, called Concierto Blanco (white concert) inside the State government palace in Monterrey's main square. The violent incidents after the White concert, which were extensively covered by the media, seriously damaged then Nuevo Leon governor Eduardo Elizondo's political career.
News from Cuba (Varadero '70), Colombia (Festival de Ancon), Argentina (Festival Buenos Aires Rock), Chile (Festival de los Dominicos "Piedra Roja"), England (Isle of Wight) and films from American festivals like "Monterey Pop" and "Woodstock" fueled the desire for the jipitecas to host their own major counterculture event. The opportunity arrived in the spring of 1971.
History Trying to resurrect their popular auto racing spot, Circuito Avándaro, after being cancelled in 1969 as a result of the fatal accident of racing driver Moisés Solana, Promotora Go owners brothers Eduardo and Alfonso López Negrete in partnership with McCann vice-president Justino Compeán decided to organize a massive auto race with live rock music acts and consulted then Telesistema Mexicano promoter Luis de Llano Macedo to video-record the motoring event and to hire Javier Bátiz and La Revolución de Emiliano Zapata, two of the most popular Mexican rock acts of the time. Luis de Llano was at the time producing a section named La onda de Woodstock in the Jacobo Zabludovsky's program Hoy Domingo (Today Sunday). De Llano assembled a team of around 330 individuals to organize the music part of the festival, among them reporter/musicologist Jaime Almeida, screenwriter Armando Molina, publicist Carlos Alazraki, and MCs Roberto Naranjo and Eduardo Davis. Molina, himself an impresario and musician from La Maquina del Sonido fame, was appointed Music Coordinator. The music coordination was in the hands of the company ArTe, owned by Molina and Waldo Tena (of Los rebeldes del Rock fame). After many negotiations and declining invitations Molina proceeded to book 12 bands. Designer Joe Vera was hired to design the official poster and tickets were sold at AUTOMEX-Chrysler agencies across the country for MX$25. Jacobo Zabludovsky heavily supported and promoted the festival in his daily news program "24hrs" and he was one of the few mainstream broadcasters to defend it in its aftermath.
The venue
Expectations According to Justino Compean, five hours were bought to live-broadcast the auto-race to be intercalated with the rock concert videotaped the previous night. As was reported in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, a maximum of 25,000 attendees, 122 pilots with their staff (with their number expected to reduce after the technical inspections) and 12 Mexican bands with a possible last-minute inclusion of American bands to bolster the event was expected. The bands were going to play from Saturday 7 pm to Sunday 7 am, making way for the auto race to start in public roads around the lake. 2 weeks before the event, the 5 hotels in town were already booked. In the TV Azteca documentary "Historias Engarzadas: Alex Lora" Alex Lora explained that this possible "inclusion of American bands" was going to be a surprise visit by Santana.
Live Radio Broadcasting Sports promoter Justino Compean and Radio Juventud General Manager Ramiro Garza made a deal with then Coca-Cola Company Marketing Director, Vicente Fox Quezada, to sponsor the live radio broadcasting of the music and the live-TV broadcast of the auto racing event.
Lighting and sound systems Héctor Yaber from Telesistema Mexicano was in charge of the lighting system and Gustavo Cota from the company Audiorama S.A. of the PA system. All equipments were transported by the company Mudanzas Galván of José C. Galván Castro.
Security The security was going to be in charge of the State of Mexico's Judicial Police chief Cuauhtémoc Cardenas (not the politician of the same name), who was going to receive support from 200 state troopers, 120 army troops and 50 Special Agents from the Secretariat of the Interior as well as Valle de Bravo's Fire Department. Nevertheless, reports of the total amount of security agents were mixed. Variety reported a total of 700 law-enforcement agents.
Terms between the organizers and mayor Montes de Oca The festival president Eduardo Lopez Negrete and Valle de Bravo's then-mayor Juan Montes de Oca Loza agreed that no liquor was going to be sold. Beer would be sold only with a meal. In an in-depth radio/video interview with radio host Rafael Catana, Armando Molina stated that mayor Montes de Oca suggested to Valle de Bravo's inhabitants to be polite with the hippie crowd as they felt being overwhelmed by the excessive numbers of them. In the end, not a single Valle de Bravo inhabitant complained about the hippies.
Cancellation of the auto race Early Saturday morning it was decided, as stated by Alfonso Lopez Negrete, in an on-site interview made by a Telesistema Mexicano, to cancel the auto race due to the quantity of festival attendees which surpassed all expectations.
The Circuito Avandaro auto-race was going to be suspended for decades to come since authorities tied the sport with massive crowds.
The music
Pre-festival As stated by Armando Nava, Alex Lora and De Llano in the Memorias de un cierto dia: Avandaro documentary, tens of thousands of jipitecas were already on-site since Thursday 9, so activities begun (Thursday) with special shows and even some impromptu concerts bands like El Amor, Dug Dug's and Three Souls in my Mind offered while doing their sound-check. By Saturday 11 at 6AM, the number of attendees were already in the hundreds of thousands, so Molina and De Llano decided to formally start the festival with a "Pre-festival". The acts which performed were:
Carlos Baca (Yoga session and ecology lecture) Eduardo Ruiz Saviñón and UNAM's experimental theater troupe with Carlos Steward. (Performed The Who's "Tommy" rock opera) La Ley de Herodes (band of the famous Arau family.) Zafiro La Sociedad Anonima Los Soul Masters La Fachada de Piedra with Larry Sanchez (39.4)
Festival La Fachada de Piedra concluded their act at approx. 5pm. After a brief pause the festival resumed as follows: Los Dug Dug's El Epilogo La División del Norte Tequila Peace & Love El Ritual Bandido Los Yaki with Mayita Campos Tinta Blanca El Amor Three Souls in my Mind
At around Sunday 9am, Three Souls in my Mind finished their act and the massive exodus started.
Festival development As stated by Armando Molina in the official soundtrack (narration part) and by his then assistant Jaime Almeida, the whole festival was held in peace with the only problem being that the attendees destroyed the barricade and invaded reserved areas of the light towers and even the stage. In the official soundtrack desperate calls for order from Molina's assistant Roberto Naranjo and band members from Dug Dug's, El Epilogo, and Peace and Love can be heard. At one point, an attendee fainted and Tequila's world-class Mexican-American singer, Maricela Durazo, ordered the crowd to take good care and protect her. As many thousands of jipitecas were on-site since Friday 10, co-organizer Luis de Llano stated the famous phrase: "They survived for three days sharing rain and mud; that was in attempt to have an identity."
Francisco Martinez Gallardo, chief of the medical team and voluntaries of the improvised in-site hospital stated: "There was one case of acute appendicitis, 20 intoxicated with pills, 50 with marijuana, 5 with alcoholic congestion, 5 cases of gastroenteritis and some with wounded heads, ankle fractures and burns."