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Rock Music and Resistance in Mexico

In this talk, author Adriana Díaz Enciso will tell us about the ways in which rock music has been an active participant in diverse forms of resistance in Mexico.

She’ll draw from her experience as a radio producer and presenter in the 1980s for Radio Universidad de Guadalajara, as a rock journalist for several decades, lyricist for rock band Santa Sabina, and a member of the musicians, artists and students’ collectives that organised mass concerts in the 1990s in support of the indigenous communities that constituted the grassroots of the EZLN (National Zapatista Liberation Army), as well as fighting the misinformation that was then rampant about the war in the state of Chiapas.

Rage, hope, activism, great music and great fun will be part of her reminiscences about the last decades of the 20th Century in Mexico, when rock music was very much part of a wider national awakening.

This event is in-person.

Speaker

Adriana Díaz Enciso

Adriana Díaz Enciso was born in Mexico and has lived in London since 1999. She has published (in Mexico) several books of poetry, four novels and two collections of short stories. In 2022 she published in the UK the poetry pamphlet Flint (Contraband Books).

She’s the author of many lyrics for Mexican rock band Santa Sabina and has written for the stage and TV. Her most recent novel, Ciudad doliente de Dios (Doleful City of God), published in Mexico by Alfaguara and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), is inspired by William Blake’s Prophetic Poems.

Her latest literary translations include George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil (UNAM, 2021) and Walter de la Mare’s Seaton’s Aunt, which will appear in 2023. She has contributed to over 30 literary publications in Mexico, the UK and other countries, including all major Mexican literary journals, and is a columnist for Literal Magazine.

She’s been a trustee for Modern Poetry in Translation. With artist Pato Bosich she co-curated the exhibition “Beyond the Shadow of the Ship”, around Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, for the Three Highgate gallery. She’s currently working on her fifth novel, and is a beneficiary of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.

Event details

Lecture Theatre 3, BH(NE) 0.01
Bush House
Strand campus, 30 Aldwych, London, WC2B 4BG