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 Vallarta Living | Art Talk | February 2007 
Coming Home: LA Gangster Style Finds a Place in Mexico
 Jeremy Schwartz - Cox Texas Newspapers
| | Cholos grew out of Chicano, or Mexican-American culture, and found their greatest expression in East Lost Angeles. |
Federico Gama is a groundbreaking photographer from Mexico City. His acclaimed recent exhibition, Top Models: Mazahuacholoskatopunk, documented the emergence of punk, gangsta and gothic dress among recent indigenous migrants to Mexico City.
Gama has long been interested in questions of cultural identity within Mexico City youth groups. A few years ago he did another project about cholos living in the notorious slum of Nezahualcoyotl.
Cholos grew out of Chicano, or Mexican-American culture, and found their greatest expression in East Lost Angeles. The gangster-influenced cholo attire includes bandannas slung low over the eyes, flannel shirts with only the very top button buttoned and distinctive black and white tattoos.
Cholo style was most definitely a result of the Mexican immigrant experience in the southern U.S. as opposed to a style found in Mexico itself.
Yet, Gama explains, a group of youths who grew up minutes from the heart of Mexico City have found their Mexican identity within a culture born thousands of miles away and in a different country.
Gama says many of the Neza cholos learned of the culture from friends or relatives who had immigrated, and adopted it as their own. These new generation cholos even pepper their speech and graffiti with English words in an attempt to mimic the Spanglish of their cross-border peers. Their music, art and lowriders seem to have been magically transported. |
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