The Other Side: Fault Lines, Guerrilla Saints, and the True Heart of Rock 'n' Roll (Haymarket Series) - Hardcover

Martinez, Ruben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0860913708 ISBN 13: 9780860913702

Publisher: Verso, 1992

Synopsis

Stories from the front line of the war in El Salvador are juxtaposed with tales of Hollywood-mythological childhood, and the history of Los Angeles, the city-stage where today many of the world’s political, cultural and aesthetic battles take place—both symbolically and literally. The parade of characters ranges from Latin American revolutionaries in exile to hip-hop teens in the US inner city; the endless “changing of the guard” in a transitional generation which came too late for Che Guevara and too early for the fall of the Berlin Wall. In scenes from Mexico City, Havana, Tijuana and Los Angeles. Martinez profiles the young guerillas-turned-relief workers of the 1986 Salvadorean earthquake, devotees of an innovative Latino “rocanrol“, graffiti gangs and their nightly “bombing runs”, and the vibrancy of youth culture in the barrios.

About this title

Reviews

Born of Mexican-Salvadoran parents and raised in Los Angeles, Martinez seeks to reconcile his disparate selves--Mexican, Salvadoran, middle-class Angeleno, barrio dweller, poet--in this uneven collage of journalism, diary entries, poetry and criticism. The strongest sections include a searing account of an El Salvador rocked by an earthquake, death squads and poverty; a tribute to a friend who died of AIDS; a survey of Mexico City's rock 'n' roll and pop groups battling for the cultural soul of Mexico's youth; and a portrait of Tijuana's young painters and performance artists, who negate that city's image as "backyard whorehouse to the States." In some pieces, Martinez takes a lot of time to reach obvious conclusions. "How far can kids really go with it?" he asks of L.A.'s graffiti artists after offering an aesthetic analysis of their scrawls; in a spirited report on a Havana film festival in 1988, he determines that Castro's glasnost -like campaign is a sham. Illustrated.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0860913708
• ISBN 13: 9780860913702
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184