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Unresting
Luis Güereña, 1959–2004
BY JOSH KUN

Luis Güereña barely lived above ground. His sunken, one-bedroom box of a home in Tijuana’s hooker barrio, La Coahuila, was in the back of a chain-link-fenced parking lot that was built on top of it. You had to know it was there to see it from the street, where it was hidden from view by a night watchman’s booth and rows of cars that alternated between Front BC and California plates. The house belonged to Güereña’s family, and he lived there for almost 20 years, bootlegging his water and electricity from the neighboring water plant, until he was found dead there January 11.

There was an American passed out in the bathroom; there were syringes on the floor. Some are saying he broke up with his beloved crystal meth long enough to kill himself with heroin. Others are saying the meth just finally conquered his heart. Doesn’t really matter. The local paper reported his passing before his mother had even been informed.

When I first met Luis, in the mid ’90s, he was still thriving as the gringo-baiting fire starter of the punk band Tijuana No! His dark and cavernous living room — where it could feel like 2 a.m. on the hottest of summer afternoons — was a punk-rock museum. I remember a poster from a 1981 Clash concert covering a hole in his chipped tiled walls and a black-and-white photograph of Luis when he was seven sharing a frame with a battered Sex Pistols sticker. There was a photo collage of friends that he captioned "Fuck Authority!"

Before Tijuana No! started taking off in 1989 and before he did a stint in LA (rooming with John Doe), Luis booked California punk bands at Tijuana clubs. He was a punk who grew up at the border, which meant that — as much as one loudmouth in battered Vans and a "Beaner" T-shirt could do on his own — he refused to allow the border to exist. There were too many Tijuana kids without visas or money who could never make it to San Diego to see the Germs or the Cramps, so Luis smuggled punk across to them. He was a punk coyote in reverse, bringing the Dead Kennedys into Tijuana safely, then hooking them up with Los Negativos and Solución Mortal for a show at the Casa de la Cultura. His house was an emergency motel for Social Distortion and Johnny Thunders.

Luis was a charismatic time bomb, and on stage he performed the way he lived. He liked to drop his pants. He liked to spit in the air and catch it in his mouth. He goosestepped in Statue of Liberty masks and Uncle Sam hats; he wore a Hitler moustache when he pretended to be Pete Wilson. Other than a messy encore of "Pobre de ti," the only guarantee of a Tijuana No! show was that Luis would piss somebody off: the crowd, security, the club owner, even the band they were opening for. (Luis lore has it that the night after Tijuana No! opened for Rage Against the Machine at a Zapatista concert in Mexico City, he told Zack de la Rocha he thought he was a fake.)

Luis didn’t care. There was only one way to be, and that was Luis’s way, even if he could never really tell you what that way was. Fortunately, he was funny, an anti-everything clown who made you laugh while you imagined taking a swing at him.

The first time we ever hear Luis on record, on Tijuana No!’s ska-soaked 1993 debut, he’s doing impressions of his favorite American icons: a dopy, aw-shucks gringo cowboy looking to scalp Indians and a megaphone-wielding border patrol agent who in broken Spanish tells a group of Mexicans that they’re too ugly to cross the border. In the credits to the band’s second album (and their best), 1994’s Transgresores de la ley (RCA), Luis thanks the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) and "absolutely no one." The third time the band hit the studio, the ecstatic mess of 1999’s Contra-Revolución Avenue (RCA), he screamed through the noise almost as if he knew it would be his last chance. "No countries, no flags, no systems, no politics, no armies, no wires, no passports, no language, no boundaries, no treaties, no ideologies, no religions, no colors, no walls."

Bush’s new immigration plan is the kind of thing that would have inspired a Luis rant. I can almost hear him scoffing at NAFTA, quoting Subcomandante Marcos, then pulling up his shirt and showing me the belly scars where the Border Patrol stabbed him (even if they were really from a cholo who tried to beat him up). Because for all of Luis’s excesses, his convictions were under control. Mexicans should be treated justly by the US government. Mexicans should be treated justly by the Mexican government. People should not die crossing the border. Politicians should tell the truth. Equality is more important than money. Music should be subversive.

In his coffin, Luis wore a suit and a tie with the Pep Boys’ Manny, Moe, and Jack drawn on it. Someone put in a copy of Tijuana No!’s first demo tape, and next to it, a microphone that, trust me, he will find a way to use.


Issue Date: March 12 - 18, 2004
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