The worldly, political, contagious hardcore of Mentira
Ricardo Flores arrived in Kansas City a few years ago for a job with the Mexican consulate. He came from Orlando, and before that Mexico City, and before that Chiapas, one of Mexico’s southernmost states, where he was born and raised.
Flores is 30 and came of age in the early days of the internet, where his first glimpse of punk culture came via a friend who had downloaded Ramones clips and skate videos soundtracked by ska bands. As a teen, and into his twenties, he formed punk bands, which weren’t particularly common in the sparse rock scenes in places like Puebla and Chiapas. Most of the bands, Flores says, sounded like Oasis or the Doors. And the shows tended to be sketchy.
“It was all kids from a very low-income background in really rough neighborhoods that always lacked the minimum services expected in a somewhat developed city,” says Flores. “There was a lot of substance abuse, alcoholism, and violent macho attitude related to soccer gangs. Still, those are the most raw shows I’ve ever been to.”
By the time he graduated high school, Flores found himself interested in law — partially, he believes, due to the cynical and inquisitive worldviews his punk-rock upbringing encouraged. He studied in both Puebla and England, and since graduating law school he has chosen to focus on helping others, rather than embracing the more lucrative opportunities lawyering can provide.
Hence his work with the consulate, where he counseled Mexican immigrants on their rights, helped them find financial assistance, and communicated with immigrants and their relatives to facilitate transportation between countries when a family member was sick or dying. When I first spoke with Flores, a year ago, he said that, apart from a rising fear inside the Mexican community he interacts with, little had changed in terms of policy since the inauguration of Donald Trump.
But things are different now. ICE detentions nearly doubled from 2016 to 2017. Removals rose as well. Flores resigned from the consulate earlier this year due to what he calls the constant “red tape” that comes with the work.
“I also started to have friction with my supervisors, which led to me making some unpopular decisions regarding some cases that made them very unhappy,” Flores says. “Therefore, they didn’t want to renew my yearly contract — something I knew would happen at the time.”
He goes on: “Consular work, especially regarding Mexico and the United States, is a very amazing but exhausting thing. You get overworked, underpaid, and never thanked, but still, the stories you get to become part of and the ability you have to help even in a very small way — it’s something that no one can take from you and makes it worth it.”
After getting married earlier this year, Flores waited for his permanent residence card for several months longer than it had taken others in the area in years past. The amount of interviews required to be granted permanent residence — and, following that, citizenship — will also likely increase in the coming years. Through his work these days, at Cross-Lines Community Outreach, Flores says he has met immigrants from Central American countries that have had their temporary protected status (TPS) work permits revoked under Trump.
“Regulations have gotten harder,” Flores says, “but I feel like they’ve always been hard. I remember hearing old horror stories from immigrants. To me, it was always awful, it was always terrible, but people didn’t care as much back then because, maybe, Obama was a nicer face to look at, and he wouldn’t talk about things that Trump does. But there has been a change.”
Cross-Lines helps in providing basic relief to immigrants and others living in poverty. But without the work permit he’s waiting on, any full-time position where Flores can use his knowledge of the law and help to the fullest extent — not to mention gain some tangible peace of mind — remains outside his grasp.
The personally dispiriting process of immigration and the increasingly outrageous decisions of the current administration are enough to drive even the most sane of us up a wall. Thankfully, Flores has a sturdy outlet. He and three friends play in one of the most punishing Kansas City punk bands in recent memory.
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One of the few things Flores knew about Kansas City prior to moving here was that Beta Boys, a punk act now based in Olympia, Washington, was once a KC band. Not long after arriving, he met Dakota Shipp, a former member of the group, who introduced him around the KC punk community.
“I’ve been playing in punk bands for 10 years [and] I was really not trying to start another hardcore band,” says Anthony Manganaro, a staple of the KC punk community. “But then I met Ricardo and saw he had the drive to get over here and create his own path in life. [I wanted to] hear what he had to say. I was like, ‘Yup, I’ll start another hardcore band with this guy.’”
Mentira formed in 2016 — Shipp and Josh Holloway rounded out the quartet — after quickly bonding over a love of modern Spanish punk bands. By the end of that year, a bruising, six-song demo was complete. It’s something like global hardcore, weaving the Spanish psychedelia of acts like Una Béstia Incontrolable and Destino Final into the aggressive drive of British d-beat and Japanese hardcore.
But the use of Latin rhythms and grooves is what really distinguishes Mentira from its peers. At countless dank Midtown basements and cramped DIY venues, the cumbia and reggaeton drum patterns played by the band have peeled away even the most committed wallflowers and thrusted them into the mosh pit. The songs shift tempo on a dime and operate at dizzying speed. Mentira generates an almost primal desire to move around.
“If you’re not making people dance, you’re fucking up!” Manganaro says, paraphrasing the influential funk drummer Bernard Purdie.
This distinctive style of punk — “estilo loco” the band members have called it — is beginning to receive attention from the national DIY community. Thrilling Living, the independent punk label of former Maximum Rocknroll coordinator Grace Ambrose, just released Mentira’s new 7-inch, Toda Tu Vida Es Una Mentira. The songs were recorded in Manganaro and Shipp’s apartment. Mentira also recently completed its first tour of the West Coast, an outing made more difficult due to the fact that Flores can’t fly, given his current immigration status.
These frustrations make it into the songs. Flores’ lyrics embrace punk’s eternally popular themes — inequality, injustice, pain in general — but do so from a perspective that rarely reaches Midwestern ears. For example, the new EP’s final song, “La Trengua,” was inspired by the stories of Chiapas author Rosario Castellanos, who wrote about the clash of Western and indigenous cultures — and the ensuing tragedy and suffering — in southern Mexico. On the title track, Flores sings about the self-imposed ignorance many people engage in for the sake of their own joy.
“Naturally we look for distractions — I do that as well — because you want to live your life happily,” Flores says, in regard to the existence of things like police brutality, poverty, animal exploitation — take your pick. “But it’s hard, once you see the truth.”
There isn’t really a happy ending to this story. Maybe there’s a lesson, though: we can fight to make the world a more livable place for oppressed people, and we might as well dance to Mentira like our lives depend on it.
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