Heavy Metal Music in Latin America

NelsonVaras-Díaz is professor of social-community psychology in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. Daniel Nevárez Araújo received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Eliut Rivera Segarra is clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico.

Section I: Understanding Metal Music in Latin America

Chapter 1: Conceptualizing the Distorted South: How to Understand Metal Music and its Scholarship in Latin America

Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra

Section II: A Soundtrack for a Violent Context

Chapter 2: “Decomposición cerebral:” The Salvadoran Civil War and the Birth of Salvadoran Brutal Death Metal

Christian M. Pack

Chapter 3: Metal and Dictatorship, A Chance Association?: A Case Study on Chilean Metal

Maximiliano Sánchez

Chapter 4: Death Metal and its Roles in Colombia’s Armed Conflict: The Case of MASACRE

Pedro Manuel Lagos Chacón

Chapter 5: Sounds of Exclusion and Seclusion: Peruvian Metal as a Model for Cultural Self-segregation

José Ignacio López Ramírez Gastón

Section III: Decolonizing Local Histories through Music

Chapter 6: Heavy Metal in Havana: Assessing the Scene’s Cultural Development from 2007 to the Present

Miriela Fernández

Chapter 7: “Por siempre Heavy Metal:” A Historiographic Approach to Uruguayan Heavy Metal in the Shadow of the Dictatorship

María Ximena Rodríguez Molinari

Chapter 8: Metal and Politics in Argentina: A Case Study on Ricardo Iorio and the Audiences That Follow Him

Manuela Belén Calvo



Chapter 9: America, Avenge Yourself: The Emergence of Combative Discourse and Other Recent Directions in Contemporary Argentinian Metal

Emiliano Scaricaciottoli

Section IV: Marginality and Cultures of Resistance



Chapter 10: Maximón in The Maximones: The Transfiguration of a Deity as a Resistance Tactic in Guatemalan Metal Music

Mario Efraín Castañeda Maldonado

Chapter 11: La Periferia: Metal Music in the Marginal Context of the State of Mexico

Alfredo Nieves Molina

Chapter 12: Metal Völkisch: A Comparative Analysis of the Sociopolitical Perspectives Found in European Metal and Brazilian Metal

Guilherme Alfradique Klausner

Section V: Liberation through Metal Music



Chapter 13: Heavy Metal Music as Liberating Praxis in Latin America: A “Psychology of Liberation” Perspective

Eliut Rivera-Segarra, Jeffrey W. Ramos, and Nelson Varas-Díaz

Chapter 14: Metal Migration: The Latin American Diasporic Experience in Heavy Metal

Daniel Nevárez Araújo