Vive Latino

Vive Latino

Vive Latino - Festival Iberoamericano de Cultura Musical is an annual rock music festival held in Mexico City. It is one of the most important rock en español music festivals in the world, featuring a great variety of Latin and Spanish groups of many genres.

The event takes place in Foro Sol usually in between the months of April and May. The duration of the festival has been either one or two days, depending on the number of live acts, but since 2010 the festival's length is of three days. The first edition was in 1998, and has been repeated yearly ever since (except for 1999 and 2002). The number of stages has changed over the time, ranging from 2 to 4.

The festival's concept is to every year gather important and newcoming bands from all over Ibero-America during three days to create a space for alternative music and new proposals from different Spanish-talking bands. In the history of the festival there's been a series of important musical performances by many arstists from Latin America and Spain, such as Café Tacuba, Enrique Bunbury, Charly Garcia, Aterciopelados, Los Tres, Caifanes, Bersuit, El Cuarteto de Nos, Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas, Los Planetas, Gustavo Cerati, Los Amigos Invisibles, Babasónicos, Miguel Ríos, Celso Piña, Los Jaigüey, El Tri, Los Ratones Paranoicos, Nortec Collective, Sepultura, Divididos, Transmetal, Ángeles del Infierno, 2 Minutos, Control Machete, Los Bunkers, etc.

Besides Ibero-American musical acts, the festival has been opened for proposals from all over the world, with special appareances by Latin bands located in the U.S. such as Los Lobos, Tito & Tarantula, Devendra Banhart, Ill Niño, Brujeria, The Mars Volta, Los Straitjackets, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Ozomatli, and Los Abandoned. The festival bill has also had non-Spanish speaking acts like The Magic Numbers, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Chemical Brothers, Urlaub in Polen, Blasted Mechanism, Calexico, Jane's Addiction, The National, DeVotchKa, Deftones, and Marky Ramone among others.

Every year the festival's line up has a strong presence in the ska and reggae acts, having big figures of the genre such as The Wailers, The Skatalites, Desmond Dekker, Fishbone, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Steel Pulse, Reel Big Fish, and Save Ferris, besides the performances from important ibero-American bands like Panteón Rococó, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Ska-P, Los Autenticos Decadentes, Desorden Público, and Maldita Vecindad.

As the festival itself is not limited to rock acts, as has often acts of entirely different, unrelated, kinds of music. This, however, proven to be disastrous at the 2007 edition, which included a Reggaetón act by Calle 13, that angered a big section of the public, which booed and even threw bottles and objects at the stage forcing the band to leave.