Throughout the world, rock and roll was spreading and taking root as "a wedge and a mirror for societies caught in the throes of rapid modernization".
[5] By the late 1950s, "youth from the middle classes began to form their own bands…practicing as best they could versions of hit songs in English by their favorite foreign rock'n'rollers".
This movement was called La Onda Chicana, culminating in a two-day "Mexican Woodstock" known as (Avándaro) which attracted ca.
The wave of popular Mexican novels in the 1960s, "emphasized the sentiments of the new urban middle-class adolescent and the influence of United States culture, rock music, the generation gap, and the hippie movement.
"[citation needed] La Onda influenced many Mexican authors and intellectuals, like José Agustín, liberal priest Enrique Marroquin, ecologist Carlos Baca and Parménides Garcia Saldaña.
[9] La Onda had icons like Alejandro Jodorowski, the Gurrola bros. and Sergio García, making Super 8 film synonymous with counterculture.
The Cafe Cantantes "thus served as a kind of transcultural performance space where the styles, gestures, and sounds of the youth culture from abroad were transposed for a Mexican audience".
[15] The Mexican government felt a need to shut down the clubs because they "foment[ed] rebellion without a cause' leading to increases in juvenile delinquency".
Now, in the early 1960s, youth were also adopting foreign fashion and attitudes towards authority and rock music "was again becoming a wedge against traditional social values and a vehicle for free expression".
[17] The Mexican government was very focused on projecting cultural unity, and the youth of Mexico felt it was important to express themselves and their feelings about this rigid modernization and unification through their music and clothing.
For a time, Mexico boasted "high levels of popular participation, featured a wide array of opposing political parties, and observed peaceful transfers of power from one administration to the next".
[19] Presidents like Álvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles, and Lázaro Cárdenas wanted to perpetuate the teachings of the Revolution and solidify revolutionary ideals into Mexican society.
In the 1940s they began "to industrialize the country, by means of an import-substitution policy...displacing the traditional center of gravity, which had been the countryside, to the cities".
[20] This shift, and their focus on the middle-class family eventually led to the first phase of La Onda, in which the children and grandchildren of the Revolutionaries began to challenge authority and individualizing and expressing themselves through rock and roll music and foreign fashion trends.
In the 1950s, Northern Mexico witnessed "a vigorous mobilization of peasant groups that invaded lands under the direction of organizations with relatively radical ideologies, outside the official structures".
[23] Mexico's "emphasis on economic development...has focused on those activities, industry and commerce, that are most efficiently undertaken in urban areas, where there is an adequate supply of labor, credit, transportation, and communication".
The Mexican government had been dealing with the effects of La Onda as minor social rebellions inspired by the American counterculture movement.
Mexico's economic situation improved in the 1950s with the Bracero Program and with a "Export-Import Bank approved $150 million loan to finance transportation, agriculture, and power facilities".
Another factor was the Korean War which "had increased world prices, provided opportunities for Mexican exports, and led to the inflow of foreign capital".
[29] Throughout the time of Mexico's economic stability under the PRI, there were many minor protests to question the moral credibility of the Mexican government.
[30] The 1968 student movement was the "articulated restlessness and rage for much of the youth of a middle class which had come of age during Mexico’s acclaimed modernizing 'miracle' and which afterward opened the floodgates of cynicism and everyday resistance to a political system bent on maintaining control".
In 1968, the student movement "challenged the legitimacy of the system and proved, by the bloody repression it suffered, that [the Mexican Government] had an authoritarian core".
[33] Protesters wanted a mass movement that would force the government to reform the official party and provide greater opportunity for political participation.
Economic growth after World War II and the stability that ensued led to overall declines in poverty and inequality, but the "opportunities created for the middle sectors did not match their expectations and instead created a large population of upwardly mobile young people whose dreams and aspirations" grew faster than the Mexican economy.
Through literature, music, and art, Mexico's youth connected and amassed into a larger group that included students, peasants and industrial workers.
No longer was the younger generation fighting against conservative family values with rock and roll music, beatnik literature, and daring fashion.
After the Tlatelolco Massacre, a new wave of La Onda emerged ‒ that of the jipitecas, or hippies, who rebelled against the status quo and preached peace and democracy above a strict authoritarian government.
As many bands were hired to participate, a rock festival was organized to promote the auto race ‒ but instead turned into a "Mexican Woodstock" with a huge number of Mexican rock bands such as Los Dug Dug's, El Epilogo, La Division Del Norte, Tequila, Peace and Love, El Ritual and so many more playing to a crowd of over 300,000 people for two days.
This huge music spectacle culminated all the effort of La Onda, describing "a modern sense of movement and communication, as in radio or television 'wavelength'".
La Onda, which had started as a teenage rebellion against conservative parenting, had turned into a political movement fighting for democracy in an authoritarian government, and lastly returned to a musical demonstration, but instead of violently rebelling against authority, it taught passive resistance, peace, and unification.