Punk Persistence: Subversive Change and Continued Resistance in Celia C. Pérez’s The First Rule of Punk

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ This article derives from the fourth chapter, entitled “Counterstorytelling,” in my dissertation, Embodying la Resistencia: Activist Praxis in Latinx Children’s and Young Adult Literature. In that project, I argue that young, Latinx activists are able to produce change through embodied actions. In a chapter on counterstorytelling, I examine The First Rule of Punk as a text that visualizes activism through Malú’s zines and folds Malú’s body into her resistance through her punk aesthetic.

² Further, adults often disregard or even malign youth who engage in activism. I have written on this topic before, particularly with regard to young Latinxs, in “Carmelita Torres and Bodies of Resistance: Reclaiming Young Latinas’ Bodies within Hegemonic Discourse.”

³ I suggest those interested in more information about Latina punk read the work of Alice Bag. Her article “Work that Hoe: Tilling the Soil of Punk Feminism” and memoir Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage: A Chicana Punk Story capture her unique firsthand experiences with Latina punk movidas.

⁴ Patricia Zavella agrees, “Punks embrace the ethic of do-it-yourself (DIY), which disavows materialism and consumerism … This DIY approach reflects the fact that Latino punks are marginalized economically and have limited access to production and distribution facilities” (29). The financial implications for Latinx punks is not explored in The First Rule of Punk, but certainly influences the moves Malú makes, especially her own DIY ethics.

⁵ According to Adela C. Licona, “Some researchers argue that revolutionary pamphlets in the United States are zines’ precursors while others find links to relatively more recent discourses, such as fan newsletters (including science fiction fanzines) of the 1930s, punk manifesto/scrapbooks of 1970s, and Riot Grrrl Zines of the 1990s. Still others trace the emergence of zines to alternative, of‑color, and feminist presses as well as to liberation movements” (2). Licona’s work on third-space zines provides an excellent basis for a deeper analysis of Malú’s zines in The First Rule of Punk.

⁶ Interestingly, punk is often considered “outside the frame.” That Malú views this as a bad thing speaks more to her own sense of dislocation and peripheralization in the Latinx community than it does to punk and its countercultural implications.

⁷ For scholars, too, Latinx punk is difficult to define and reconcile. Because of its subcultural nature, it is difficult to pin down specifics (and punks would want it to be that way). Further, punk’s roots in European music, aesthetics, and protest dominates scholarship. Marissa López explains, “the history and significance of Chican@ and Latin@ punk is rarely recognized in studies of the genre” (902).

⁸ The Bracero Program, instituted in 1942 as a result of the executive order dubbed the Mexican Farm Labor Program, brought millions of Mexican men to the U.S. on short-term work visas to fill in for American labor lost during World War II. Despite the government sanctioning of this work, those who participated in the Program faced extreme prejudice and much of the public sentiment surrounding their labor laid the foundation for contemporary biases against both documented and undocumented fieldworkers (see the Library of Congress’s “1942: Bracero Program” for more information).

⁹ For more information about Alice Bag, I recommend her memoir Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage a Chicana Punk Story. Bag recounts in the opening pages her own movida’s impact on her mobilization of her audience – “I sing into the faces in the front rows. They are my current, my source of energy. I urge them to engage. I know there’s something in them, some inner carbonation lying still, waiting to be shaken. It’s fizzing in them as I shake them up. Shake, motherfucker, shake! I want you to explode with me” (7). The reciprocal nature of Bag’s performance invokes the call and response nature of activism, and her music is like the rallying cry of an organizer speaking through a megaphone to a crowd.