Meet the LATIN AMERICAN metal bands making a difference.
Colonialism in Latin America has led to violence and deprivation, but as a new film shows, metal bands are making real changes in their own countries and communities
The 70s may have seen the birth of heavy metal, but the genre truly went global in the 80s. Trickling south of the US border, tape-trading networks helped lay the foundations for thrash, black and death metal scenes everywhere from Brazil to Argentina, Australia to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. But where Brazil and Argentina embraced heavy metal as a form of post-dictatorial liberation, emergent scenes in and bordering Central America still faced an uphill battle against ongoing social, political and military issues in their respective countries.
“The very first interview I did, I was told ‘metal in Latin America isn’t about entertainment’,” explains filmmaker Dr Nelson Varas-diaz. “When you start travelling through places in South America or the Global South, you notice how people use metal in different ways; not just as a thing they consume to think about the world critically – it’s how they engage with the world.”
This observation has served as a key ingredient in the acclaimed documentaries and books Nelson has produced on heavy metal in Latin America, covering everywhere from the Caribbean to Argentina, Chile and Peru. Far from merely cataloguing bands and fans in each country, Nelson’s documentaries explore how heavy metal impacts their lives. But where his previous film, Songs Of Injustice, explored how metal was used as a mirror for the brutal realities historically faced by Latin American metal fans, his fourth outing, Acts Of Resistance, looks at how metal is changing those realities, focused on stories playing out in Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador.
“This documentary is the most important in the series”, he admits. “We’ve gone from documenting scenes to explaining the relationship between metal and culture, how [people] are critical about culture and now how people engage in changing culture. That small step between listening and doing is what’s missing from how we conceptualise metal.” D espite Donald Trump treating Latin America as a catch-all boogieman, each country is distinct and has its own story. Nelson’s film explores the shared scars of colonialism and interventionism, while
“DESPOTIC GOVERNMENTS HAVE THREATENED PEOPLE”
DAVID ROSALES, CURARE
giving equal weight to the unique issues facing each nation, not sugarcoating his portrayal of the stark realities people face. “Colonialism isn’t a thing of the past – people are still living through its effects now”, he says. “These musicians are concerned with putting out great music, yes, but also engaging with social justice agendas, and those two things are very hard to combine. Particularly when you’re in a poverty-stricken context.”
While deprivation plays a strong role throughout the documentary, it is particularly prevalent in the opening segment, which follows the Internal Circle – a group formed in the Guatemalan town of Sumpango to combat extreme poverty and lack of education. They frequently put on shows and team up with local bands to collect money and supplies for children who would otherwise miss school due to personal circumstances (ranging from a need to work to a simple lack of access to the nearest school). They even require that all attendees of shows put on in association with the Internal Circle bring blank notepads that can be donated to the children. This approach is characteristic of the stories Nelson tells throughout Acts Of Resistance – metal is being used to build a better society from within, rather than existing outside it.
This theme becomes even more prevalent when the story moves on to Colombia. Set against a backdrop of violence (enacted by a mixture of government forces, paramilitary organisations and rebel groups including FARC – the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia),
Colombia’s extreme metal scene reaches back to the initial global spread of extreme metal in the 1980s. Bands like Masacre (not be confused with Floridian death metallers Massacre, nor Chilean thrashers Massakre) formed in 1988 and used metal to reflect the gory realities they faced during the conflict. Thirty years on from releasing their debut, the band feel the themes they explored are still depressingly relevant.
“Through art and culture we could demonstrate and protest”, explains Masacre vocalist Alex Okendo. “[Our debut album] Reqviem was a sample of the crudeness in Latin metal, sung in Spanish and exposing the stark realities of a country that lived and still lives in the middle of the war caused by the great drug trafficking problem. But we are
proud to have created metal music with meaning and with educational content to try and transform our youth; we want people to know our reality and how we need change in Latin America.”
“There are many bands that address the armed conflict”, adds Sebastian Rodríguez, guitarist of Colombian death metal troupe Tears Of Misery. “What we tell in our songs is not based on fantasy, but on a palpable reality. Full of death and hatred, but also as a symbol of remembrance and hope that once we know our history, it will not repeat itself in the same way.” O f course, this change needn’t always come on an international or even national scale. One of the other subjects interviewed for the Colombia segment of Acts Of Resistance is Johan Andrés Niño, an EX-FARC member who openly speaks about how being a metal fan helped him adapt back to civilian life after the conflict, and helped him during his six-year imprisonment after he was captured by the government in 2011. “During all that, metal always accompanied me”, he says in the film, going on to explain how friends put on benefit shows (“called the Terrorizer fests”) that were organised ‘for the freedom and in solidarity with Johan Andrés Niño, imprisoned by the Colombian State’.
Nelson weaves an overarching narrative that speaks to the fierce individual pride and drive of each person, and their metal journeys.
This relationship is particularly apparent for the film’s final subjects, Ecuadorian folk metal troupe
Curare.
“WE’RE TRYING TO TRANSFORM OUR YOUTH”
ALEX OKENDO, MASACRE
Formed in 2001, they create vibrant protest music that mixes shades of
Afro instrumentation and Andean rhythms into a folk metal pot. Their key goals are to raise awareness of issues facing indigenous peoples in Ecuador who have suffered as a result of shady land-grabs and mining damage to natural resources.
“In the Amazon, and in the foothills of the Andes of Ecuador – one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world – we experience the same [deforestation] problem as in Brazil on a miniature scale”, explains drummer/ vocalist David Rosales. “Despotic governments for decades have tried to expand the oil frontier in the territories of ancestral peoples, threatening even uncontacted peoples. In our songs and live shows we always try to talk about these issues and we have supported the organised communities of the affected areas, hoping to make these issues visible.”
“It is something that we have talked about in Curare since we began”, explains guitarist/vocalist
Juan Pablo Rosales. “Heavy metal
was born on the fringes, as a cultural expression of the working-class in Birmingham away from the mainstream. The same is happening with Andean music, but there’s a sense of shared community, belonging and inclusion in both cultures.”
“These indigenous themes aren’t a suit they put on to please the
“WE HOPE OUR HISTORY WON’T REPEAT ITSELF”
SESBASTIAN RODRÍGUEZ, TEARS OF MISERY
audience; they’re done with respect for their community,” adds Nelson. “Ask Curare why environmental issues matter to them and the Rosales brothers will tell you their father was a biologist and worked in the national forest. It’s part of their lives, and part of their survival.”
‘Survival’ seems to be the universal theme of Acts Of Resistance. But where for some it suggests narrowly getting by, Nelson’s documentary shows a series of metal scenes unified in their defiance, determined to enact lasting change upon the world. Whether that be the Internal Circle educating the next generation, Curare preserving cultural land or just Tears Of Misery participating in livestreams as a way of getting their music across the planet, there is a strong sense of boldness that demands the world start paying real attention to the passionate and diverse metal scenes of Latin America.
ACTS OF RESISTANCE: HEAVY METAL MUSIC IN LATIN AMERICA CAN BE WATCHED EXCLUSIVELY VIA HAMMER AT HTTPS://TINYURL. COM/ACTSOFRESISTANCEFILM