By Ntd.la @ntdla
(Editor's note: Once again, we turn to the archives of our friends at NTD.la, who in 2015 published an article commemorating a great moment in the history of Latin American rock: the Rock y Ruedas Festival, held in 1971 in Avandaro, two kilometers from Mexico City. With the fortieth anniversary of this event approaching, it's a good time to remind everyone of what happened in those days, with the entertaining account from our Argentine colleagues.).
Feeling nostalgic for the celebration of mega rock festivals like Lollapalooza, Rock al Parque, or Vive Latino, we remember the most massive and cheapest in the history of Latin American rock: the Avándaro Rock and Wheels Festival, in 1971. For three days, 250,000 Mexicans lived together in peace and love, but from then on rock music was persecuted by the State, like nowhere else. There was a time that was truly beautiful and free, when large numbers were not needed to summon such a multitude. For instance, the largest and most popular rock festival in the history of the continent fIt was organized in one week and with a budget of 40,000 Mexican pesos. A steal.
Woodstock was the model to follow in Avándaro. Legend has it that the organizers of a car race asked a producer, Armando Molina, to bring together some rock bands to play. They expected about three thousand people at most, and didn't do any press coverage. But a few days before the race, young men and women began hitchhiking from all over the country. On that September 11, 1971, the Avándaro circuit, overlooking the Valle Bravo, It dawned packed with hundreds of thousands of people, and the race was suspended, of course. It rained during the three days of the Festival, and the hippie encampment turned into a vast mud pit. On the first day, the supplies in the small town of Avándaro ran out, and the army had to drop supplies from helicopters.
These were turbulent years in Mexico. In 1968, as the country prepared to host the Olympic Games, a youth movement erupted against the PRI's party system. Ten days before the start of the Games, on October 2, 1968, the army violently suppressed a demonstration in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, which ended in the massacre of more than 300 protesters. Starting in Tlatelolco, All that youthful discontent with political censorship had been channeled into rock culture. All eyes in Mexico were on Avándaro, trying to understand what was happening there.
About ten bands played, and they did it for peanuts., and the shows were broadcast on the radio. Each show was total chaos, basically because people stormed the stage while the bands were playing.The most memorable image of the festival is what they call "The Naked Woman of Avándaro"., A young woman named Alma Rosa González López went on stage and danced naked during the show. Peace & Love, The band that closed the festival. It was during the song Marijuana, while the crowd chanted the chorus, which the singer Felipe Maldonado shouted, urging them on “Everyone sing ”fuck your mother’”. For the authorities, this was the final straw. The PRI could tolerate 250,000 hippies dancing naked, They could tolerate the slogans of '68 being waved all the time, the odes to marijuana, but never that insults be exchanged publicly on the radio. President Luis Echeverría immediately ordered the broadcast to be stopped. The quick-thinking press launched a demonization campaign the following day. that more than two tons of cannabis and 50,000 liters of alcoholic beverages had been consumed, that the young people rolled around in the mud in large orgies, and that the festival was plagued by guerrillas.
A few days later, President Echeverría enacted a law, where rock shows and the distribution of rock records were prohibited in the Federal District. Thus began what was called “The Black Hole of Rock in Mexico”"A 15-year period in which rock music circulated clandestinely. It was then that Avándaro, the largest and cheapest rock festival in history, became a foundational milestone." and at the same time the curse of Mexican rock.
