The battle of Los Sillones: When Mexican emos and punks declared war in 2008
Any former emo during the scene’s mid-2000s peak will know all too well the besieged community that came with its tight-knit membership, a necessary countermeasure to the scorn and ridicule from both jocks and metalheads alike. The grief endured could be bad, but never Los Sillones bad.
The emo subculture hit Mexico just as hard as Europe and the United States around 2002. Before long, the uniforme de rigueur could be spotted among the corners of the alternative youth up and down the Latin country: skinny-jeaned androgyny, boys experimenting with makeup, and the essential jet black bangs covering an eye, all hooked on the day’s MySpace online outlets of emo introspection and a furious fandom for the pop-punk behemoths My Chemical Romance, Paramore, and Fall Out Boy, plus Mexco’s very own Panda, Delux and Kudai.
Trouble was, emo’s import into the country brought with it all the gripes and grievances from their punk peers. Posers, miserably wallowing in whiny angst, and a cheap hijack of the alternative heritage many a punk thought during emo’s high-school heyday. Coupled with Mexico’s heavy machismo, seeing the effeminacy on display with contempt, plus a potent socio-economic tension wrapped in emo’s perceived middle-class status, all simmered over to a boiling point in 2008. All it took was popular TeleHit music show presenter Kristoff Raczyñski to mock the emos and deride the community as a “stupid bullshit movement” for a spark to the febrile tinderbox.
Shots were fired. Previously, all alternative kids across the disparate camps perused the Tianguis Cultural del Chopo flea market in downtown Mexico City in relative harmony during the scene’s former ‘time of peace’. Yet harassment and threats of violence quickly escalated; emos under such abuse, they had to forge a new hangout at the tucked-away Los Sillones club in the Glorieta de los Insurgentes roundabout. Such a move hadn’t gone unnoticed.
While early conflicts were based on casual bullying and occasional fracas à la mods and rockers, the anti-emo campaign slid into nasty territory, “Do your duty and kill an emo” slogans were gleefully plastered on social media and chanted in real life, as well as taking on a homophobic dimension with the cluster of Movimiento Anti Emosexual bashing gangs.
Such emo prejudice was spreading like wildfire across the nation. A potent precursor was inflamed over in Querétaro City, where around 800 punks and metalheads joined forces to attack emos, but the big battleground was held the following week at Mexico City’s Los Sillones club. On 16th March, a massive emo demonstration was launched demanding their right to live life free of discrimination and pleading for tolerance.
The punks saw an opportunity for a scrap, however. Verbal abuse turned into flying projectiles, followed by the two camps engaged in an epic duel of studded-belt fisticuffs so massive in their numbers that even the 100-odd police force couldn’t quell the violence, and news teams were on the ground for urgent reporting on the urban warzone.
What finally made the battling belligerents throw down their arms? Like an act of divine intervention, a yatra of Hare Krishnas who were in the area for their usual Saturday roundabout chant immersed themselves among the throngs of fighting kids and managed to dial down the violence and corral the teens to sing along to their ritualistic drums and songs. While signing no truce papers, an uneasy peace was established there and then amid the enlightened glow of the Hindu monks.
The emo punk wars pretty much ended on that day. A few minor skirmishes were reported in 2009 in the Tampica area, but otherwise, the emo subculture had reached its end around the world anyhow, and the kids were out in the world as young adults not long after. The Battle of Los Sillones is looked back on now among its veterans with some affectionate nostalgia nearly 20 years later, former punks and emos returning to the old Glorieta de los Insurgentes haunt and wielding a mock fight in March 2025 to mark that day’s 17th anniversary.
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