My country is fucked

The teens call their public orgies ponceo. On a typical Friday afternoon in the Chilean capital of Santiago, hundreds gather in a leafy urban park for a few hours of sexual experimentation. Surrounded by passing strollers, they trade partners multiple times—mostly engaging in anonymous rounds of oral sex. When the party is over, no contact information is exchanged. Same-gender interactions are commonplace, as the lines between hetero- and homosexuality are blurred, partly by the alcohol and drugs consumed, but also by shifting social mores held by Chilean youth, in contrast to their conservative parents. "Ponceo is about having fun," says Natalia Fernandez, a 15-year-old with pink hair and a pierced chin. "This time I had seven partners."

Fernandez, like many others in the park, is wearing an anime T-shirt. Drawing inspiration from Japanese anime culture, the teens refer to themselves as "Pokemones." Their behavior, though, doesn't quite resemble that of the cartoon characters that once obsessed young TV watchers around the world. "It's shameless," says Gina Mazzini Aliste, a middle-aged woman in the park that day. "They act like ponceo is a competitive sport."

Not surprisingly, the Pokemones have become the subject of a national debate in the media, as the conservative Catholic society grapples with this new affront to its traditional values. In a country where abortion is banned and divorce was legalized only a few years ago, and where the specter of Augusto Pinochet's authoritarian regime still hovers over political discourse, the Pokemones are at once radical and inevitable. Radical because they are shocking Chilean society to its core. Inevitable because they are darlings of a booming neoliberal economy, which has provided them with all the material accoutrements necessary to be Pokemones. Yet along with sexual rebellion, these teens are also defined by their consumerism, a characteristic that neatly conforms to Chile's free-market ideals.

Indeed, the Pokemones are outfitted with the latest clothing and technological gadgets. Their look is androgynous and exaggerated: clad in low-slung, tight-fitting jeans, both boys and girls wear multiple piercings, dyed and waxed hair, and thick black eyeliner. They have their own Web sites, even their own slang, but what does it really mean to be a Pokemon? Curiously, the teenagers do not seem to hold any particular convictions about their identity in a political or sexual sense. Instead, their movement is mostly about image. "It's basically a fashion thing," says Raul Barra, a tall 19-year-old with piercings down the sides of his nose. "A Pokemon has a certain style and does ponceo."

Despite the group's controversial implications for identity and sexuality in the 21st century, there is virtually no discussion of a common cause at gatherings or on their Web sites and blogs. The Pokemones do not have a political creed, preferring apathy to engagement. Yet their existence as a movement is fundamentally political because of the contrast it marks vis-à-vis the dictatorship, under which freedoms were violently suppressed. "I guess we don't really think about politics or anything," says Valentina Espinosa, a petite 16-year-old whose teased platinum hair adds about six inches to her tiny stature. "We're not for anything, but we're not against anything, either—well, except our parents getting mad at us for being Pokemones."

Sociologists have labeled the Pokemones an "urban tribe," a term they have also applied to hippies, punks, and goths. But unlike those that came before it, this is the first "urban tribe" here born in the Internet age. As such, communication technology is key—Pokemones have hundreds of contacts on instant-messaging programs, and they regularly upload videos and photos to sites like YouTube and Fotolog. But despite the expanded capacity for communication, theirs may be the first movement in which debate about its goals is noticeably absent.