UC Irvine

The name of the Mexican literary style called “de la onda” can be interpreted in various ways. One can understand it to represent a type of literature that emerged in the sixties as part of a movement that spanned different cultural areas, and that generally was known as a counter-cultural movement. This literature was a channel of expression for youth, and most importantly of narratives written by young writers. But many of its contemporaries considered it to be simply about sex, drugs and rock’n roll, and that as such it was representative of youth named chavos de la onda, and not necessarily part of the literary sphere. This tension continues until today, and this dissertation analyzes why the name “de la onda” produces dissimilar exegesis.

In Chapter I, we cover the elements that we consider essential to this literary style: the City, adolescents characters, and colloquial language. The combination and fusion of these elements was something new in Mexican literature at that time. Through the description of each element, we understand the relevance and the reason of that combination. In Chapter II, we review the elements that, in spite of their appearing in the texts of “de la onda”, are not essential to this style. They are sex, drugs and rock and roll. We explain the reason for their appearance in the texts of this literary style, since they were part of the cultural environment of that decade. In Chapter III, we discuss the reaction of part of the casa letrada (cultural establishment) regarding this literary style, and how they connected this narrative to a social youth movement called chavos de onda, coinciding with the government’s representation of this population as disaffected youth. All Chapters reconstructs the social environment by gathering books and newspaper sources from publications especially through cultural supplement named Siempre!