Presenter: Adam Buchanan
Faculty Mentor: Sharon Luk
Presentation Type: Oral
Primary Research Area: Humanities
Major: English
Punk music has created a multinational community for radical political discourse among Latino youth through the creative expression of their emotions, via intense lyrics and musicality, toward a hegemonic society that has consistently worked to confine them to the lower class. Drawing primarily from George Sánchez’s article, “Face of the Nation: Race Immigration, and the Rise of Nativism in Late Twentieth Century America”, David Ensminger’s book Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation, and several other articles pertaining to the specifics of the growing Latino Punk culture in California, I argue that the counterculture of punk music encourages the diverse exchange of ideas by those who society deems undereducated, too extreme, and ultimately unimportant in the conversation about sociopolitical and geographical standings in the United States. Because of punk music, the Latino youth voice has even greater importance as it is that of the repressed and subjugated which would otherwise go unheard and therefore allow the social structure to go unchanged.