Punk Spreads

Chicago

Los Crudos

Formed in the early 1990s, Chicago’s Los Crudos, and their singer Martin Sorrondeguy, were one of the most extraordinary hardcore bands in the United States to fuse punk’s broader political protest to central questions of Latino life in the U.S.: immigration, racist violence, and linguistic difference. Latino punk bands such as the Plugz, the Zeroes, and the Bags, were integral to the L.A. punk scene in the late 1970s, and hardcore bands in Latin America like Alerta Roja (Argentina), Narcosis (Peru), Masacre 68 (Mexico), as well as U.S.-based hardcorelike Dogma Mundista and others paved the way, but Los Crudos helped broaden the audience for punk sung in Spanish and, in songs like “Hardcoregoismo” (Hardcoregoism) or “Somos los mojados” (We’re the Wetbacks), criticized the xenophobic and anglocentric members of any punk scene. Through their record label Lengua Armada they forcefully cleared a space for Latino punk and Latino identity in the heartland of the U.S as they sang songs in Spanish (often introduced with English translations), played Latino community centers as well as traditional punk clubs, and supported Latin American hardcore bands during their own tours in Mexico, and South and Central America. Los Crudos joined the local and global politics of race and ethnicity in songs like “Levántate” (Rise Up) and “Asesinos” (Murderers), with the latter’s indictment: “Bush (murderer), Pinochet (murderer), Hitler (murderer), Baby Doc (murderer), murderers!” In 1998 Martin Sorrondeguy and other members of Los Crudos formed the queercore band Limp Wrist, marking another significant challenge to hardcore’s unwritten dogma of machismo, as well as homophobic stereotypes of gay men as essentially effeminate. With Los Crudos and Limp Wrist, Sorrondeguy renovated punk rock at the turn of the millennium by amplifying its queer and Latino roots.

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