Interview: Vida Subterranea / Ultrasonidos Zine
Vaca from Vida Subterranea recently contacted us to do an interview for their e-mail newsletter, which is packed with interviews, reviews, playlists, and more. They recently compiled articles from past newsletters into the first issue of Ultrasonidas, a new print zine (which we look forward to seeing more issues of!). We answered Vaca's questions, but also asked him to answer a few questions in return so we could learn more about the newsletter/zine project, and the surrounding context in Mexico City!
CF: Introduce yourself/selves and Vida Subterranea! How long have you existed, who is involved, what do you do, and why?
Vaca: Hello Hello! I’m Vaca but we are a very very loose collective that comes and goes. We started the screen printing project as a way to survive economically. The quality of work here in Mexico City is really bad and the salaries even worst! Its impossible to live with minimum wage. We started bootlegging shirts as a side hustle and ended up doing it full time for almost 11 years now. At a point we had a record store but got bored doing it. Mainly because records became too expensive and somehow a luxury item.
We have been doing screen printing for something close to 25 years. We mostly been doing zines and punk (and non punk stuff) with a DIY approach for ever. We use to do an old blog called Blog de Noticias Anarcopunk that gathered punk news and events from all over Latin America, a zine La Ciudad Mas Fea del Mundo with only 3 issues and wrote in an anarchist newspaper called El Libertario. Now we are back at writing in our newsletter that comes out every 3-4 months and compiled yearly in Spanish in our new zine Ultrasonidos.
We also book shows and do illegal parties here and there, depending on the level of energy/the season/availability/interest friends join us and help us out. We were really inspired by reading Hakim Bay at a young age and took that approach of Temporary Autonomous Zones to our “activism” and how we relate collectively. When things get too institutionalized they start to suck, that is why we try to book our shows in weird places that aren’t supposed to have shows. But sometimes, just sometimes we have to book things in bars.
CF: Explain your initial motivations for starting a newsletter.
Vaca: It all started when we didn’t want to depend economically on Meta. The band shirts we bootleg and probably our content isn’t mainstream or cool enough, plus we are not content creators we only print and write. So eventually we got buried by all good stuff (and crap) that people are putting out on instagram. Honestly we always hated meta and social media in general, but it was a way of surviving after migrating and it was a cheap shot to try put things out there to get notoriety to make it through.
As we were saying we always made blogs, zines, etc. So it was a matter of time we end up making something public again with our thoughts on the underground on the Newsletter. It started as a way to let people that support us know we are alive and making lots of stuff directly in their email. But at the same time we didn’t want to just make advertisement and add a little bit of writing, recommendations, reviews and interviews on it. There is nothing we hate more than advertising in general, plus we believe in building community and a sense of connection by ideas and aesthetics not consumption.
Small, engaged and informed communities might be the only thing that will protect us and let us survive right now on these weird times of ultra capitalist mega states that are growing like weed everywhere. Since we sell our art internationally we write in English and sometimes Spanish when we feel like. The idea is to make people think for a bit and find something else besides consuming.
CF: There are many things about the online/e-mail newsletter that I found really refreshing and appreciate:
- You can easily read it on a website without logging in to something
- There is essentially no 3rd party tracking on your website!
- There are never links to Instagram or other closed corporate platforms, which is really rare for something where there is so much art involved
- Mixes are uploaded to archive.org in addition to soundcloud
How intentional were all of these little decisions?
Vaca: Thanks! Yes the website is pretty bare bones. We are not computer savvy at all and if we could we would have something more complex on our site (adding English/Spanish automatic translations, keeping a blog to better arrange the newsletter and its archive, make it a ton faster to load, etc.). but we do our best! We try using open source programs and keep it as clean as possible from tracking (from what we know). We could do better but it is what it is!
We guess we come from the old times of the internet were you had to research for information and we kept doing that ever since. Pirating movies, books, downloading mp3s and flac files is something we do daily. We like finding media, digging till we find its source of the good stuff, we don’t want an algorithm to show us what we like and avoid what we don’t. Mainly because we ourselves don’t even know what we like or what is out there.
We LOVE Archive.org and support it a lot! We spent hours upon hours on that site!
CF: It seems like the newsletter started out for self-promotion for the shop, but of course you could not resist the DIY punk zinester inside. Over time it has progressively become more of what you expect from a zine, of course culminating in the physical Ultrasonidos zine! How do you see this further progressing in the future? The newsletter online appears to be only in English and the zine is in Spanish. What gives! Is this to reach a more international audience online?
Vaca: Yes its true it has changed with each issue! Since we sell our art internationally we write in English and sometimes Spanish when we feel like it and don’t give a fuck about our customers jajaja. The idea is to make people scratch their heads a bit and make them feel the same trip we feel when we translate things, research and digging deep on the internet to find stuff out ourselves.
We feel so guilty that most of our Newsletter is in English tho… But people in LATAM barely has any money to go by let alone buy a band shirt. We still sell locally way cheaper and try to trade as much as possible in our local community with other people. We prefer to keep close to our people face to face and we keep the net for international things only.
The zine Ultrasonidos started gathering all our writings in the newsletters we have been putting out for years and translate it into a full Spanish zine with extra content/design on top. The idea is for it to be the kind of pocket magazine that happened in the 80s over here like Banda Rockera, Revista Duda and even some pop shitty magazines for teenagers from the 1990-2000 like Tu and Grita but made by fans for fans. We try to keep it punk in attitude but we are not gonna lie we love all sorts of music if its raw, aggressive and has something to say. Some friends wrote for this first number and tons more will start writing in the next one. We wanna cover all underground with emphasis on punk and electronics with an obsession with the occult, the underworld. But some friends are already writing some articles on noise, movies, etc. We want to keep it a once a year thing cuz it takes a ton of work to make plus we wanna keep the quality high! So if you feel identified with these perspective shoot us an email and write for our zine: vidasubte@gmail.com
We come from a small country (Venezuela) so looking internationally has always been a thing to propagate ideas while living under the military government of Chavez. It was such an authoritarian, conservative, militaristic and square country we were always looking outside for alternatives. Punk, electronics and the underground are so deep, complex and multilateral over here in Mexico City tho that we prefer to live it with in our own bodies and not read about it. Live it, document it and commune in person. The internet is one thing, its awesome but we prefer the real world honestly. There is where we put most of our effort designing, writing and making things happen. That is why the zine is the upgraded version of the newsletter for locals in Spanish. Internet is just a tool.
CF: You've mentioned to me that Meta is very dominant in the Mexico underground scene. So, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook (all parts of Meta). Can you describe the local digital landscape? Which of those apps do people use most for chatting or sharing shows? Are there big Instagram accounts everyone has to follow or big groupchats?
Vaca: Sad to say it but META IS KING for older people (25-40) over here! We haven’t seen any data about it but we are sure Mexico must be one of the countries with the most Facebook active users in the world. It has been a place to document everything, create groups, exchange ideas, fight about everything (including ideas, schisms and cancellations), find news (and fake news), spread memes, communicate and promote events. We didn't use it but most of the shows and events are promoted there. We even miss a lot of things for so long until we opened a “secret” one just to snoop around a see what is happening out there on the boring universe of Facebook. For real you can get completely lost sometimes without a profile in the city…
Its sad, but even flyer and poster culture its gone from physical media. Mexico use to be, since the Mexican Revolution, a power house in the poster culture. Now its gone, AI is everywhere and things just look shittier and shittier. Its a pretty cacique culture over here so people look up to certain FB personal accounts to see what a single person is promoting. I think facebook events use to be a thing but not any more… honestly we are the wrong person to ask… we just follow our human friends suggestion and they point us to the cool shows every weekend. Instagram is not as big and is mostly used by middle class people that speak English but that is changing fast for the last 3-4 years.
But its a weird city too and not everything is grim... Even tho there is tech and people are glued to their phones there is a vibe in the city that is trapped in time. We always joke about it with our friends, the city is on a constant loop trapped in 90s-2000s. People are really protective of their ways of life still, things don’t really change that fast and modernity is sometimes avoided, even tho gentrification is spreading like wildfire. We love this city, we are its defenders and so its the city itself. Its madness and chaos over here, so many different scenes, regions, classes and realities cross the daily life of everyone living in this wild valley.
Younger people do use Tiktok and some Snapchat but on that department we are completely lost!
CF: Can you add some historical context to the last question? What was it like in Mexico before Meta? Take us back to pre-digital and give the timeline for getting from no-internet to Meta domination. Where there important websites, forums, or other online things that were used after the Internet arrived but before corporate social media took over?
Vaca: As we were telling you, we are migrants so we don’t really know about the state of the scene before Meta. What we can tell you is that the city was very different from far away before facebook and instagram got in. People use to gather around collectives before. La JAR/La Furia de las Calles for example was a famous collective in the 90s-2000s that use to book shows, loved open source, linux and ran events. It was so cool, they did EPIC shows in town and book tours for huge bands in the region like SIN DIOS and RATTUS. There is a big tianguis culture over here in the country. Tianguis are open markets that take over a street or many blocks during a day of the week to sell stuff. Its like a farmers market but more working class, less expensive and just part of the daily life. Markets were huge before the colonization in Mexico and they are still a BIG thing every week, some are “themed” others are just to buy fruits an vegetables in your hood. El Chopo is a punk and rock tianguis that has been happening since the 80s and a mayor spot to propagate DIY ideas, culture and all its vices too. El Chopo started after a big group of young people wanted a spot to share their records, shirts, zines and culture. A big expo happened at the Chopo University Museum about rock record covers and people gathered outside to trade and sell merch. People are good with their hands and the approach of making things you cant get for your self is just natural. Many people from all around the urban area still travel to this tianguis every Saturday to buy and trade stuff. El Chopo is another mayor spot and where most of the big zines in the 80s-90s-2000 and still today gather at. Now it has changed a lot, for better or for worse is full of clothing, lots of crap made in china but there is a stage in the back for free shows, young wild looking misfits kids and an anarchopunk area where people trade zines and talk shit. Another spot is Okupa Che, a squat in the university that was taken over in the 90s and was another hub for connections back in the day and still is. El Carrusel del Rock in Neza is another spot were people gather back in the 90s, its just a bar but always a supporters of underground rock and so on. There is infinite spots/perspectives on punk over here its naive of us to think we know it all specially back in the day when we didn’t live here.
Might be a cheap shot but the word of mouth is really big thing over here in the city, people are really social. That is a thing, those apps are only an American way of looking at social relations, friend-unfriend, like-dislike, etc. Things are more grey over here, more dirty, more gritty…. Trying to categories everything is such a white peoples aseptic way of looking at human interactions, the world is so complex an app cant categorize everything even if they think everything is math.
CF: What resistance or alternatives are there locally to Meta and the like, besides your newsletter and zine? Have your efforts helped push things in a positive direction? What gives you hope in this particular struggle?
Vaca: We don’t know… calling our newsletter a point of resistance in Mexico might be a stretch, specially when its in English. We are just looking for other ways of relating besides an app. Specially when this app rewards the kind of people that are just talking about themselves all the time, their controversial or fashionable opinions that break flesh and bone communities and basically promote the most boring mainstream people ever that have nothing to say besides looking cool on selfies. The zine on the other hand we think its a reason to talk to our community, engage with it and give back objects that we think are valuable to the community itself. We are not saviors tho… we just do what we can with that in mind.
At one point a few years ago we found ourselves submerged in a culture of people that wanted to meet us cuz our presence on instagram and not for what we were making or thinking. So sad to say but that pushed us to put more time and effort in our newsletter/zine than in the app years ago. Honestly that is what give us hope, the local bookstore/coffee shop in our hood that support us and buys our zine to sell, the punks at the local tianguis of our printshop where we buy our vegetables weekly that update us with all the shows and fests happening every weekend or the other local printshop we work with to finish cutting our zine.
CF: The addictiveness and easy popularity of USA corporate social media like Meta's products has played a large part in connecting our punk and DIY communities internationally This is indisputably a positive effect (especially as borders tighten around the world). But I think we agree it has come at a great cost as we are now dependent on these apps for this connection. What are your thoughts on trying to navigate out of dependence on these apps into more DIY and healthier alternatives, without losing those networks and connections?
Vaca: We book a 2-3 shows/parties a year and we mostly do it for friends or friends of friends. We had so many bad experiences depending upon, trusting or organizing via instagram before. The app has created a whole culture around it where people build relationships based on aesthetics and amount of followers only. Everything is disposable even social relations. Reality shows up fast when you actually have to do things together that doesn’t have anything to do with liking a story or re blogging something cool. It's a bummer because some people are probably nice, their art is actually awesome but when you talk to them in person... they have nothing to say, no ethos, barely have any interest or if they do you can just see it on their profile.
We think the old mantra is the way to solve all these problems: get together with your friends, start making music, a zine or a venue, book your own shows and invite other people to join. In a few years it will pay back in the form of meaning we promise!
CF: Give us a scene report for Mexico City! What new bands are you excited about? Where do shows happen? Are there any important DIY spaces or initiatives?
Vaca: Damn! Its so HUGE over here, we think its probably the biggest punk scene in the world besides maybe Indonesia so making a whole scene report will take us too long to complete and probably feel guilty for missing so much. The downtown area and surroundings is filled with bands, where we mostly live and hang on our daily life since its such a large city. We are not gonna lie its more lower-middle class over here, most punks speak English and they are well connected internationally. You probably already know a ton of these bands and they are fucking awesome by the way!
But we are fans of all the small local acts and we prefer to highlight some of those here instead! Smaller shows on the outskirts of the city tend to be more DIY, in houses and most of the time the family hosting the show is involved and present in it. We are supporters of FIN DEL MUNDO a band we saw the other day and is very similar to the vibes of SS-20, female singer excellent vibes. CADA MINUTO NACE UN IMBECIL is a young anarchopunk tupatupa band with a drummer that kicks ass! PUNKS DE LA MONTAÑA is probably the best punk band happening right now in the city, Tupa-Tupa punk with awesome inspiring lyrics, perfect live show and they have that Mexicore vibe that is hard to imitate. Finally OOVA is sick band from all over the suburbs of the city. Young wild people kicking ass for sure and they play like every weekend, they are punk machines!!!
Sign up for the Vida Subterranea newsletter here, and keep your eyes open for future issues of Ultrasonidas!
