A 90’s boy

I’m a 90’s boy…or at least that is something I repeat a lot. Why? Because I hate the 80’s and the whole fascination with what it’s just a myth. It’s all fashion, I know, and thank God we are about to turn the page and start remembering the 90’s, because the 80’s were pure crap! Politically, it meant propaganda, a USA President who used to be an actor and it was going to be the first in line of a succession of morons, a lot of invasions to Latin America, the support to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (seeds for pain to pay later), the end of counter-culture and the beginning of enslavement with a tie. In music it meant a lot of rock stars who looked like women and the excess of music as an industry. In fashion, a bunch of…well, bad taste, there’s no other word for it, (well, those were actually two words). Period. And of course there were some cool shit going on, but I was too little to even care. I had toys and old cartoons. That was about it. It was in the 90’s where I began to be more aware of it all and I became a fan of music, saw the CD’s and Internet becoming popular (remember ICQ? And chat rooms?) and affordable, saw an American President who played Sax (while he got his d*ck sucked) and saw a bunch of artists that were all about the attempt to recover a shock long gone in the industry. Movies went a little shittier as well as pop music, and there was Vainilla Ice but hey! I never said it was perfect! Those were my teenager years (as if I have escaped them).

It is funny however how some people have called me a bluff just because I don’t know some music or some Anglo reference of that decade. “And you call yourself a 90’s boy??”. Fucking idiots seem to forget that there is a whole world out there who doesn’t speak English and that have their own culture, their own events. As a 90’s boy in the Caribbean I saw other things besides the things I just mentioned; I saw 440, the rise and fall of merengue music, Chevy, El general, Vico-C on the top, Soda Stereo, the good times (were they any?) of Maná, The cup of life, Draco Rosa, Bunbury, Bersuit, Manjar de los dioses, oh and there was Daddy Yankee with a mustache…I mean, a hole of other shit going besides the Anglo world. But of course, to be a 90’s boy means to fit under the limited definition of the people who dared to say that I don’t have a fucking clue of the 90’s …and God forbids I don’t know any reference that didn’t make it to the island, even though they know shit about the 90’s in other parts of the world. It is the same arrogant ignorance (an oxymoron I know) of thinking that the whole world needs to know and follow your culture while you know shit about the other cultures. Or is it just plain old-fashioned colonialism? The mentality of the colonizer but without assuming any responsibility in the world of fake happiness?

So I am sorry, beyond your limited expectations I am a 90’s guy….I was too little in the 80’s and it was in the 90’s when I developed my tastes and personality….just a different 90’s from the one you know…just a bit. So, I’m glad we are about to forget about the 80’s and celebrate the 90’s…which means different things along the different latitudes.