I went to Mexico City from May 28th to June 11th, 2011. Only when I got back did I notice a few things...
I can usually spot racist/white supremacist symbols from a mile away, and being in Mexico City was no exception. My first shock, a visibly same-sexed male couple displaying their affections...and one of them wearing a black t-shirt with the German eagle and a swastika! It immediately threw me off and set me on alert. Panicked, I passed by the couple with my friend and asked her urgently, "did you just see that?!" After retelling what I saw, we made the decision to circle back and take another look (first look for her). Pretending to take a picture of the angel of liberty, she too saw the couple and the shirt. They went to sit down and display their passionate embrace.
I really did see this. I was thrown by the fact that dude was gay, a shade of brown AND wearing this shirt! Did he know the history behind it? What's the reason? I was thoroughly confused, but the matter was not pursued due to my massive language barrier.
Mexico City has a 'Museum of Tolerance' (probably not the actual name) that my friend and I visited and the first in-your-face exhibits had to do with the holocaust. For less than ten U.S. dollars people could see this and other displays of genocide. My friend's future mother-in-law made a joke saying something along the lines of 'if it's in a museum, it doesn't exist in Mexico City.' That is to say that tolerance and other things are not evident outside of museums. It made me wonder.
Especially when my friend and I went to an alternative clothing shop in a different neighborhood. Aside from the t-shirts and skateboard decks, the first thing my eyes averted to was a leather wallet...with a swastika stitched onto it! What gives?! I could only hope that this is some reclamation of a symbol that initially had positive roots, but has, since the Third Reich, been associated with evil, racism, and white supremacy.
It makes me wonder how deep the racism and light-skinned supremacy goes in Mexico City. It may or may not be a connection to such. More thoughts on that to come, I guess.
If he was involved in anything that has to do with fetish or BDSM (which is an umbrella of other subcultures) there is a lot of fetishism for Nazi regalia, especially outside the US. It seems to have been inherited from biker imagery, like the Hell's Angels wearing SS-skulls and lightning bolts. That being said, the swastika wearing fellow who was visibly "non-Aryan" might actually have been part of a racist group, which are found scattered throughout a lot of surprising places, most notable Russia, places with ethnically arab populations, and parts of South America. Obviously, where necessary, the emphasis on racial particulars can be ignored in favor of the xenophobic and anti-foreigner sentiments of Nazism. For some reason, seeing the Nazi symbols in places that suffered the most death and destruction due to their proximity to Germany seem to have the most widespread neo-fascist issues, like Russia. But honestly, I have never heard of mexico having a noticeable Nazi movement until this post. I guess it could have just been plain ignorance... too bad there's so much at stake if you wanted to just ask since Nazis tend not to be known for their hospitality or openness.
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