Caracazo´s NOISE
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The echoes from the anarchist punk bands of Venezuela (1995/2008)
cene. S k n u P a l e u Venez gy o l a e n e G d n a Lethargy
An Anarchist report By: Rafael Uzcategui Traslate: Rodolfo Montes de Oca
Venezuela is a north South America country it shares with its pair’s poverty and the exclusion of the majorities, but also it owns characteristics outline that it of different way. While in Latin America the military regimes reigned, in the Caribbean country the democracy settled, and formally at least, since 1958. Also, its period of armed insurgent fight lasted one decade less than different with the strength that the guerrilla warfare showed in the rest of Latin America. Throughout the continent the countries tried to replace the exports following the prescription of CEPAL, when in Venezuela its highest oil rent internalized the culture of the call “port economy”.
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While in countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico they attest punks since the end of the decade of 70´s, in Venezuela almost 10 years are due to hope to know the first expressions the “NO FUTURE“. Also, while in Peru, Colombia and Chile the punk is a phenomenon extended between the popular classes of the suburbs, in Caracas his first big wave is located in the east of the city, cradles of the “children good” - rich.
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The same spirit to crosscurrent is reiterated in the appearance of the first
counterculture expressions “punk” in the cradle of Simon Bolivar.
At the end of the decade of 80´s in Venezuela punk is developed to the first generation. Bands like Seguridad Nacional, Sentimiento Muerto, Zapato 3, Desorden Público, Cuarto Reich, Chicaracas chicas y El Enano de la Catedral, among
Reactively before this situation, on the one hand, and like a strategy before the present violence in the concerts, the movement anarchopunk that has been developed in the last years has backed down in visibility, with respect to the previous years, assuming characteristic of ghetto. Although they develop initiatives in different cities, and maintain communication channels to each other, they have not been able to articulate a political and/or social answer against the situation of the country, and maintain weak relations with the world no-anarchopunk. In many dimensions, due to the generational rupture, division
of the basic social weave, institutionalization of the speech and counterculture practice and the absence of independent social movements, almost begin a zero route starting off. Therefore, the reversion of this scene depends, largely, of breaks of a false political polarization - in as much struggle interbourgeois by the control of the oil income and the resurrection of the values of independence, autonomy and self-management in the citizen and popular initiatives of the country The punk today in Venezuela is not dead, but in intensive therapy.
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expression, whereas an alternative” movement promoted by the own bolivariano government begins to be developed “, by means of the subsidy of spaces, rock concerts and, particularly, different nuclei from the calls “circus arts”.
Members of Rajatavla Group (1988) others, they were the pioneers of a sort concerned to the country by the “children of papa” who, in their vacations to Europe and the United States, absorbed the last death rattles of the first big wave world-wide punk. Letters of protest, clothes by halves between London and San Francisco, first fanzines and alternative magazines and until a “miniteca” - a portable discotheque formed the original scene of the countryThe majority of these groupings changed to other musical styles, becoming popular with the edition of his first discs on the part of great records companies. The beginning of the
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Nevertheless, the intense political polarization that deed in the country in that year, and which among others reaches its greater intensity in period 2002-2005, when it happens a coup d'etat against president Chávez, national unemployment summoned by main the power station of workers and the traditional union of the industralists, events, fragments and disperses all the scopes of the Venezuelan society, of which it does not save the cultural world nor the own one moved “punk”. The circuits, spaces and activities are reduced to their minimum
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the advances of the technology outside made that them simpler bands to accede to the recording studios and the Internet to occur to know.
During these years concerts are realised punks with money of mayorships and governments, with logistic and security provided by the police organisms and whose platforms exhibit the electoral propagandistic unfolding of the movement of president Chávez. Use of resources state on the one hand of movement punk, consequently, historically weak scene independent, because before the possibility of realising events with high resources, without having to strive in his organization, it motivated the abandonment of the selfsustaining way that had characterized, in his majority, to the local punk. In this point it is necessary to stand out, on the other hand, the development of a movement skinhead more nationalist than antiracist, who settled down diverse connections with the bolivariano process.
following decade is greeted by a series of events that are going to promote, to influence and to model the appearance of one second Venezuelan generation of punks. The devaluation of the Bolivar (1983) The Amparo Massacre (1988), El Caracazo (1989) and the two military fail coup (1992) it is the context in which the punk leaves the urbanizations of the East of Caracas to extend to districts and zones of middle-class of the city, including the Universities. In this stage, as well, nuclei of punks in cities of the rear area are developed visibly: Maracaibo, Barquisimeto, San Cristóbal, Merida and Valencia. In Caracas, for example,
The third generation of
punks Venezuelan, initiate in 1995, is decidedly anarchist. Época de Recluta, Crisis Política y Los Residuos, they are the bands that do of transition between both stage, open the phantom for the rest that would be developed until the end of the decade, when the musical groupings of anarchist punk take his first steps that more would be known inside and abroad. Apatía No, Doña Maldad and Los Dólares. The bands accompany and participate in the edition of the newspaper the Libertario, doing material concerts and discs to benefit and distributing in the events. It is in these years in which these bands begin to denominate themselves specifically like “anarchopunks” and in which the different expressions even initiate a small alternative circuit in several cities of the country, receiving the visit of foreign bands like Garrote Vil (Islas Canarias), Argies (Argentina), Desarme (Colombia) and Cojoba (Puerto Rico) and initiating for the local bands his first tours beyond the borders. They are the times in which the activism from the punk tries to extend socially, organizing events like the Libertaria Culture Fair and later the Anarchopunk Fair.
At the beginning of the Venezuela year 2000 it undergoes the commercial height of the punk promoted by the screens of MTV, and so one fourth generation of punks begins Venezuelan, developing to different styles and proposals, retaking the fashion attitude and carefree from the punk of the first generation. Thus, the tendencies were three: the neopunk on the one hand, who touched in the premises nocturnes and wished to be fichado by record seals, the punk that vindicated the call “old school” and the attitude of 80s and 90s and, at last, anarchopunk with Apatía No, Doña Maldad and Los Dólares, publish first viniles of Venezuelan punk, and generally,
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it is a punk decidedly politicized, trying to develop to own channels of expression and diffusion. The capital sees develop three epicenters around which they orbit punks of the city: the Ateneo of Caracas, soothes of the Rajatavla Group that counted on its own bands (Holocausto, 27-F, Devastación, Víctimas de la Democracia, Deskarriados, Odio Que?, Primero Venezuela), fanzines (Caracas Resiste y Ataka) and a political speech that it vindicated, generally, the fights of national liberation and the parties of left of the continent, having like equivalents political the parties communist and Liga So-
cialista (local Marxist-Maoist group) Secondly was the wellknown group generically like Altamira, because they were concentrated in this place of the city, that also owned its own musical groupings and publications, having a speech of mescolanza between the “No Future” nihilism and the pseudoanarchism. In last term they were punks of the Central University of Venezuela, sometimes denominated like “ácratas” with their own bands (Autogestión, Octavo Pasajero, Allanamiento Moral) and magazines (Combate, La Gazeta) and a political speech more academicista and anarchist. Although all shared the attitude and philosophy “Do it yourself” between these three slopes the relations were not warm, arriving the confrontations at the physical aggressions and fights from gangs, especially between the two first, whose skirmishes would give material for a substantial dramatic narration. This second stage punk, politicized as much as a country mobilized in rejection of the application of the call “economic package” and the displeasure towards Carlos Andres Perez President, extends until 1994 or 1995.