Rockdrigo, the nopal prophet

Rockdrigo, Rodrigo González (born Christmas Day, 1950),  left his native Tampico at 18 to study psychology at Universidad Veracruzana, in search of  a better understanding of  his own, and his nation’s complicated psychic makeup.

Rebelling against the prevailing Freudians in Mexican academia of the time,  he abandoned the University, but continued his studies with the indigenous psychologists of the Huastaca, whose well-known mushroom therapies was sometimes credited by González both with his keen insight into his, and the general Mexican, psyche.

Arriving in Mexico City in 1977, he immediately identified himself as a Chilango… one burdened with a rich and complex tradition, forced to make one’s way in the heartless contemporary urban world.  And, as the “nopal prophet,” gave his fellow Chilangos… and fellow Mexicans… a rare insight into their own complex psychology, in a most unFreudian setting.

In other words, he pioneered Mexican rock… creating a style based in the tradition of the humor of the cantinas and streets, the love ballads and lullabies of the countryside, mixed with the cynicism of the Mexican intellectuals and wrapped up in the new internationalism of the post-1968 generation.

Although he presented himself as a street musician, his was an increasingly influential public figure, sought out not only by musicians but by the intellectuals and artistic community as well. It is said, “He ate the City… and the City ate him,” dying at the age of 34 during the 1985 earthquake.