As it did with other far-flung regions throughout the world, American rock & roll and English beat music indeed managed to find its way across and over borders to Latin America in the 1960s (numerous South American countries had outstanding garage scenes). However, when it came to the Mexican-based Los Checkmates, the band had a somewhat more organic, innate predilection to Western rock. That's because it wasn't exactly a homegrown entity, but instead was a patchwork of locals and expatriates both, some of whom originated north of the Rio Grande in Canada and America.
Canadian Dave Atherton, at the time a college student at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, started up Los Checkmates in 1966. His family had moved to the country two years previously when his father, an employee of an international rubber company, took an assignment there.
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