The festival, organized by brothers Eduardo and Alfonso Lopez Negrete's company Promotora Go, McCann Erickson executive and sports promoter Justino Compean and Telesistema Mexicano producer Luis de Llano Macedo, took place at the height of La Onda and celebrated life, youth, ecology, music, peace and free love,[1][2] has been compared to the American Woodstock festival[3] for its psychedelic music, counterculture imagery and artwork, and open drug use.
[4][5][6][7][8][9] The festival originally scheduled 12 bands booked by music impresarios Waldo Tena and Armando Molina Solis' agency, but a total of 18 acts performed outdoors during the first, sometimes rainy weekend, before a massive crowd.
At the same time, its government had violently repressed political youth movements known as the Tlatelolco massacre and the Halconazo, which in turn gave way to the so-called Mexican Dirty War of the early 1970s.
By 1969 the government had already banned the musical Hair after a unique performance of it in Acapulco, censuring the rock band Los Shakes (which included stars Pixie Hopkin,[17] Mayita Campos and Nono Zaldivar),[18] investigating impresario Alfredo Elias Calles (grandson of late president Plutarco Elias Calles) and deporting foreign actors and producers like Michael Butler, Gerome Ragni and James Rado.
[24] Also in 1969, the band Pop Music Team had suffered censorship due to their hit "Tlatelolco" (which only had two weeks of radio airplay)[25] and in February 1971 in Monterrey, a collective band called Sierra Madre, led by Teja Cunningham, and a state-of-the-art lights spectacle named "Music and light show" had faced repression after a failed attempt to hold a three-day concert, called Concierto Blanco (white concert) inside the State government palace in Monterrey's main square.
De Llano assembled a team of around 330 individuals to organize the music part of the festival, among them reporter/musicologist Jaime Almeida, screenwriter Armando Molina, publicist Carlos Alazraki, and MCs Roberto Naranjo and Eduardo Davis.
Early Saturday morning it was decided, as stated by Alfonso Lopez Negrete, in an on-site interview made by a Telesistema Mexicano, to cancel the auto race due to the quantity of festival attendees which surpassed all expectations.
As stated by Armando Molina in the official soundtrack (narration part)[42] and by his then assistant Jaime Almeida,[43] the whole festival was held in peace with the only problem being that the attendees destroyed the barricade and invaded reserved areas of the light towers and even the stage.
As many thousands of jipitecas were on-site since Friday 10, co-organizer Luis de Llano stated the famous phrase: "They survived for three days sharing rain and mud; that was in attempt to have an identity.
Since the festival was being broadcast live through Radio Juventud and relay stations all over the country, some segments of society took this as a direct threat to the establishment ("Marihuana" for advocating open drug-use and "We got the power" for wrongly associating it with a possible popular uprising).
[55] As Guadalajara Cardinal José Garibi y Rivera condemned it,[56] popular liberal priest and festival attendee Enrique Marroquin praised it, publishing in Piedra Rodante a controversial article in its defense called "God wants the rain so we can unite.
[58] Monsignor Vazquez Corona was then heavily criticized by then rector of the University of Guadalajara, Dr. Garibay Gutiérrez, in his 1972 book about the festival "El gran desafio: Volver a pensar".
[59] Union leader Fidel Velazquez simply called the festival "a Bacchanalia", Attorney General Ojeda Paullada labelled it as a "witches' Sabbath" and President of the Senate, Enrique Olivares Santana, yelled in a press conference: "Let there be no more Avandaros in the Republic!".
Finally and under pressure, president Luis Echeverría made a strong statement against the festival, saying: "While we regret and condemn the phenomenon of Avándaro, it also encourages us in our belief that only a small part of our youth are in favor of such acts and entertainment.
[101][102] Among many others, the most notorious ones were: In spite the spirit of the age and that many people were completely naked swimming in the lake, walking in the middle of the crowd or even on stage without a problem as can be seen in the film, one woman, as the band La Division del Norte was playing, performed a striptease and caught the attention of the cameras.
[121] In 2001, a bitter dispute between the owner of the magazine Manuel Aceves and then collaborator and music critic Oscar Sarquiz about the veracity of the interview took place in La Jornada newspaper.
[119] Shot by Telesistema Mexicano cameramen under direction of Carlos Alazraki, those tapes were destined to become part of the planned TV special but were confiscated by their own company as soon as Luis de Llano showed up for work.
In a 2001 interview, Luis de Llano recalled this situation and stated that may he find the tapes he will produce a movie with them though it is widely believed that they were sent to a storage in Tijuana, and that years later the whole place burnt out.
[124] An independent investigation, as shown in the Las glorias de Avandaro documentary, made as a request through the Federal Institute of access to information (IFAI) produced the official document proving that, indeed, the government did not confiscate the tapes.
On November 25, 2019, the Mexican Senate gave a formal recognition to different musicians who took part on the festival as well as a tribute to Molina, effectively putting an end to 48 years of Government censorship to Avandaro.
Other organized by the Mexico City government, which included the participation of Maricela Durazo and other Avandaro musicians together with the Symphony Orchestra of the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico, conducted by Enrique Barrios, and another organized by producer Ricardo Ochoa -from Peace & Love- who organized several acts including live rock concerts with limited room capacity due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as live streaming events such as a conference by Luis de Llano, a videotaped message by filmmaker Alfredo Gurrola, an interview with father Enrique Marroquin, different contemporary rock bands, an Angel Blanco performance of Blas Galindo's electric guitar piece[135] and a special homage to Armando Molina.