"¡Represión!": Punk Resistance and the Culture of Silence in the Southern Cone, 1978-1990

“¡Represión!”: Punk Resistance and the Culture of Silence in the Southern Cone, 1978-1990

Hay Un Chanco En El Ala, p. 10

Emily Simpson Honors Thesis Seminar Professor David Farber 27 March 2013

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I. Introduction On the night that Los Violadores played the show that many would thereafter refer to as “the birth of punk in Argentina,” another band was scheduled to headline.1 Eduardo Camilli, a relatively famous figure in Argentine national rock, had secured the auditorium at the Universidad de Belgrano for his La Rosanroll Band, and then invited the punks to play after the fact. Few expected that the event would prove anything more significant than an enjoyable evening of music. In the weeks leading up to the show, Los Violadores played along with the rules of the conservative, upper-class university community – helped in part by the group’s founder, Hari B, who was then studying business administration at the university, even agreeing to change their name from the subversive “Los Violadores (The Violators)” to the more acceptable “Los Voladores (The Flyers)” on all signs and posters advertising the event. When the evening of 17 July 1981 arrived and the auditorium began to fill with people, only about thirty of those in attendance could be considered punks. The remaining hundred or so identified either as hippies or merely as concertgoers out to have a good time.2 The first group, Trixy y Los Maniáticos, performed without incident while the punks moved to occupy the first few rows. The hippies, content to wait out the concert until La Rosanroll Band took the stage, remained near the back of the auditorium. Then Los Violadores exploded onto the stage, and the crowd of punks exploded along with them. Singer Enrique Chalar, better known as Pil Trafa, pointed his microphone accusingly at the hippies in the back throughout the set. Shouting revised lyrics of the group’s most popular track, “Represión,” he charged them with assisting the repressive dictatorship through their apathy and laziness.

“Repression in the UB! / The rockers of Belgrano are lying in the street / without a fucking thing to do. / Fucking hippies, dirty rockers.”3 Members of La Rosanroll Band tried to convince Los

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Violadores to leave the stage and begged the audience to remain calm, but it was too late. The punks began ripping chairs from the ground and throwing them at the hippies, inciting a riot that forced university employees to call for help.4 Within minutes, police stormed the auditorium. Venue personnel quickly pointed out Pil Trafa and the other members of Los Violadores as those who provoked the incident. Police officials did not settle for charging the punks with a minor offense and letting them go. Instead, they took them to jail, where they interrogated and beat them throughout the night.5 Despite the brutal ordeal, the members of Los Violadores emerged determined to denounce the system they despised – the system controlled by a military regime that aimed to eradicate any measure of subversion or dissent.

A similar system existed in Chile as well. Punk subcultures in the Southern Cone formed at the height of similarly repressive dictatorships that relied on a culture of silence fostered by state terrorism to subdue their respective populations and perpetuate unquestionable authority.

Many citizens, fearing that the state would treat any voiced discontent as subversion, remained silent – including many of the popular rock musicians of the time, who cowed to government censorship in an effort to maintain their lifestyles. “Our resistance was that we wanted to do away with all that bullshit that Argentinian rock represented back then, the apathy and compliance with the government,” Pil Trafa later affirmed.6 Thus, the night of 17 July 1981 spawned a movement of punks that rejected the barrier of silence and refused to be anything but loud in their opposition to the military regimes.

Like Los Violadores, punks created a unique form of resistance to dictatorial power that extended far beyond rioting in university auditoriums by making noise amidst the rampant silence. Punks in the Southern Cone frequently organized youth protests against widespread

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social injustice, addressing issues from police oppression to animal abuse. They documented the process in personal fanzines, which they would then distribute to other punks and activists.7 Interested individuals could obtain information about protest opportunities from flyers distributed at shows. In order to somewhat protect the identities of those involved against state retaliation, written materials included the date, time, and location without revealing any personal information about the organizers. Visible defiance in addition to explicitly political lyrics and band names reveal an overt social consciousness that pervaded the punk subcultures in Chile and Argentina even more so than in their far-removed predecessors in Great Britain and the United States.

Though Southern Cone punk communities remained relatively small, their actions aligned with other leftist tides of resistance against the Pinochet dictatorship and military junta.

Examining the origin and development of punk subcultures in Chile and Argentina throughout the 1970s and 1980s challenges the current historical understanding of the parameters of resistance within these countries. Southern Cone punks built on a subculture of protest developed in white, working class communities abroad to craft their own, nationally specific opposition to repressive dictatorial regimes and reclaim free spaces within a culture of silence.

As such, my research contributes to two major scholarly conversations: the political nature of punk subcultures, particularly as they relate to resistance efforts, and patterns of dissent against both the Pinochet and military junta governments. Many scholars have addressed each topic thoroughly but separately, failing to realize the historical possibilities of connecting the two.

Punk scholarship in particular bears a historically Anglo-centric focus, a move that stems from the subculture’s origins in Great Britain and bestows the English scene and its particular

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iteration with primacy in much of the subsequent scholarly discourse. The key introduction to this subculture of rebellion can be found in sociologist Dick Hebdige’s groundbreaking work Subculture: the Meaning of Style.8 He roots the development of punk subcultures in the breakdown of consensus in post-war Britain, suggesting that the movement provided a tangible outlet for the extreme alienation felt by the predominantly white working-class youth in a period when both the economy and faith in the government declined.9 Later scholars consistently fail to move beyond that conception of punk as rooted in the white working-class, even as they broach topics relatively far removed from the initial “class of ’77.”10 An Anglo-centric analysis of punk fails to address the origins of similarly minded subcultures elsewhere, the variant trajectories that may arise as a result of different historical circumstances, or the initial method of transfusion across national boundaries. Despite the habitual focus on punk subcultures as predominantly Anglo or Anglo-U.S. constructs, much of that scholarship has been useful in identifying basic unifying philosophies and models of resistance – particularly anarchism and the do-it-yourself aesthetic.11 Both philosophies emphasize individual agency and the importance of genuine community over hierarchical institutions of the state.12 As punk began to develop in Argentina and Chile, extreme government oppression imbued those same ideals with overt political meanings and transformed them from mere elements of philosophy into tactics of survival – a discussion never considered by most of the canonical analyses of punk.

Some existing scholarship, such as the Rockin’ Las Américas compilation, addresses the connection between musical subcultures and political activity in Latin America – yet punk is notoriously absent in discussions about Chile and Argentina. The literature for those countries instead focuses on post-authoritarian memory rock in the former and rock chabón in the latter,

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both heirs of the dictatorial rule and social oppression of the 1970s and 1980s instead of their contemporary forms.13 The text’s main editors, as well as scholars associated with each movement, argue the importance of widespread popularity in determining music’s relevance to Latin American politics, although they offer an alternative understanding to the term “popular.”

As the editors argue in the introduction, “‘authentic’ popular music had an intrinsic didactic intent: to raise social and political awareness,” in contrast to the contrived notion of commercialized popularity.14 However, Southern Cone punks criticized popular music movements for their apathy during the years of authoritarian government and accused them of compliance as a means to remain uncensored.15 Punk’s didactic intent, on the other hand, did not fall victim to the terrorized silence.

Many scholars have analyzed resistance to state terrorism in the Southern Cone in this period through the acts of students, religious institutions, journalists, political prisoners, and guerrillas.16 Patricia Marchak, an anthropologist and sociologist, frames individual resistance through a series of interviews conducted fifteen to twenty years after the beginnings of state terrorism in 1974. Though she does not address elements of subcultural resistance, her model aligns closely with the one I aim to create in my research.17 As self-proclaimed “punkademic” and cultural critic Zack Furness insists, “punk is neither a homogenous ‘thing’ nor is it reducible to a specific time, location, [or] sound…”18 Resistance and dissent practices adopt a similar state of ambiguity. Punks in the Southern Cone documented their existence for themselves, in a community as varied as it was unified by the common goal of resistance; to access that narrative is to compile a series of individual efforts without reducing them to a composite whole.

By creating and distributing subversive music, fostering a sense of community in opposition to state terrorism, and documenting abuses against the public, punks contributed to

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the struggle against the authoritarian regimes of the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s.

Neither punk chroniclers nor South American historians have given these efforts their due. This alternative narrative of dissent highlights both the danger and importance of challenging state oppression. Punks spoke out when the authoritarian state dictated otherwise – not to make noise, but to confront the silence.

II. Mapping Dissent: Why Argentina and Chile?

The use of punk as a vehicle to craft opposition to similarly repressive military dictatorships justifies the dual analysis of scenes in both Argentina and Chile. Because the regimes relied heavily on mechanisms of terror to discourage any attempts at subversion and cultivate a culture of silence that alienated their citizens from one another and from the international community, the punk subcultures that developed in the Southern Cone did so almost completely in isolation from those that existed in Europe and the United States.

Therefore, the punk subculture that would arise first in Argentina under the military junta provided a model for development that most closely matched the political and social situation in Chile under Pinochet. The Chilean scene had its first tentative beginnings around the same time that Argentina returned to democracy, allowing for increased channels of communication between the two subcultures. Argentine zines began to feature Chilean correspondents and Chilean venues played host to Argentine bands embarking on transnational tours for the first time, even though the Pinochet dictatorship still reigned supreme.

However, the disparity in the timelines of dictatorships and punk subculture development between Argentina and Chile warrants an individual analysis of each country for the sake of clarity. I will introduce each country through a brief, tightly crafted history of its respective military regime in order to set the scene for the development of punk subculture in opposition

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before moving into an in-depth analysis of the ways in which punks fought for the reclamation of autonomous space in their repressive societies. Adhering to the timeline of punk rather than that of dictatorship, I will begin with a discussion of Argentina and end with an investigation of Chile in comparison.

III. State Terrorism and the Military Junta in Argentina, 1976-1983 Punk in Argentina evolved as a subculture of opposition – to repression, to silence, to uncertainty. The environment of terror and uncertainty created by the military junta, as well as the culture of silence it fostered, guided the subculture’s development along a uniquely national path despite its origins in Great Britain.

The death of longtime Argentine reformer Juan Domingo Perón and the ill-equipped government of his wife and successor, Isabel, provided a perfect opportunity for the military coup that assumed power on 24 March 1976.19 A U.S. State Department report prepared six months after the fact notes that the coup, led by General Jorge Rafael Videla, was initially “welcomed by many and accepted by nearly all Argentines as a necessary step to restore order and prosperity.”20 Other early reports suggest a similar trend of acceptance among the population that the newly established military junta would rule temporarily, reinstating limited political activity once the country had stabilized.21 Argentines’ view of the junta as one of moderate inclinations quickly vanished in the wake of intensified state actions against any perceived subversion, collectively known as el Proceso (Process for National Reorganization). General Videla and his cohorts failed to distinguish between terrorism and dissent, blurring the lines between those committing acts of violence against the state and nearly anyone opposing government policy – a group that included a wide range of civilian opinion, including those who would identify themselves as punk. Videla

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followed the doctrine developed during Argentina’s “dirty war,” countering dissent with kidnapping, torture, and murder carried out by decentralized units, allowing the government to maintain some degree of deniable plausibility in the eyes of the international community.22 Much like el Proceso itself, terror in Argentina occurred not as a single event, but as a process. The unpredictability of kidnappings and arrests engendered an overwhelming sense of fear in the population intended to encourage obedience to the state and eradicate even the slightest hints of dissent, cultivating a dominant culture of silence.23 Members of labor unions, journalists who worked around censorship laws, university students, leftist political party members, and outspoken members of the Church remained particularly at risk throughout the junta’s reign. Apart from vocal opposition, youth was the most dangerous characteristic an individual could possess in this environment – most punks boasted both. One man who fled Argentina in 1977 at the age of nineteen laments, “How can I tell you? I felt afraid all the time.

Afraid of being young…If you were young and different, that was dangerous.”24 The junta rooted much of the terror in the unknown – embodied particularly in “los desaparecidos,” those individuals who simply vanished without a trace. At the direction of the government, military groups kidnapped subversives and held them at secret prisons and concentration camps without any hope of due process. Officially, they were known as DAMs (personas bajo dispicion autoridad militar) – what a U.S. analyst referred to as “disappeared but alive non-recognized prisoners.”25 Most of the disappeared never returned, resulting in a staggering thirty thousand uncertain fates between the coup in March 1976 and the restoration of democratic rule on 30 October 1983.26 The junta refused to acknowledge them, and their families feared for their own safety if they did – thus the culture of silence solidified.

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IV. Punk in Argentina, 1978-1983 That punk arose in Argentina during a period of considerable censorship and isolation from the international community begs the question of how and why elements of the subculture permeated the country in the first place. The answer, as is the case with many transnational innovations, lies in economics. From roughly December 1978 to February 1981, the upper and upper-middle classes in Argentina experienced a period of economic growth combined with a strengthening of the Argentine dollar that allowed for families to travel abroad on vacation.27 For many, these trips merely offered a bit of sightseeing, but for some young people foreign travel offered access to forbidden cultural materials. The junta forbade the importing, sale, or transfer of music in English – particularly anything that encouraged rebellion against the state.28 Many of the British records that caught the attention of Argentine youth – the screeching discontent of the Sex Pistols or the unrelenting criticism of The Clash – fit both categories.

A few of the young men who would later become pioneers of punk in Argentina, such as Hari-B of Los Violadores, used their foreign travels as opportunities to purchase and smuggle British punk records back to their homes. At this point, according to singer Pil Trafa, “punk rock couldn’t be banned, because basically people did not know it existed.”29 This would change quickly once it breached the country’s borders. The initial arrival of punk as music in Argentina between 1978 and 1979 coincided with some media outlets beginning to represent punk as style, albeit one to be satirized. One rock magazine in particular, Expreso Imaginario, portrayed punks as stupid, unmotivated individuals who merely chain-smoked and drank to excess.30 Even so, many Argentine youth, dissatisfied with the big shows and plastic idols of early bourgeois antiestablishment rock, found themselves drawn to the contentious combination of sound and style.31 This would spawn the first wave of Argentine punk, from 1978 to 1980, which embraced the

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music, fashion, and general sense of rebellion of its British counterpart before it began to develop its own distinct ideology.

The first wave of Argentine punks violently separated themselves from what they viewed as the apathetic or compliant segments of society, those who willingly looked the other way while the junta inflicted terror on anyone deemed subversive. As Gerardo, a punk who collected his memories of the early subculture, wrote, “We started not knowing anything but criticizing everything.”32 Beyond the dictatorship itself, punks attacked those who appeared apathetic or compliant with the current political situation. Hippies in particular drew criticism for their tendency to go along with the changes in society so long as their lifestyle remained unthreatened.

In his zine Argentina: Punk de los 80, Gerardo printed a picture of a police officer and a hippie embracing, both smiling and raising a peace sign, and noted, “this generation wasn’t ours.”33 Many punks echoed a similar sentiment with regard to national rock in Argentina at the time, desiring more definitive action against the state and feeling that current popular musicians supported the dictatorship by not challenging it.34 This first wave of Argentine punk broke almost entirely away from the sounds of the popular rock music it so despised in a reflection of its anti-systemic nature.35 Driving bass lines, screaming vocals, and loud distortion in the vein of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” replaced quieter melodic riffs and clear harmonies. However, finding like-minded musicians initially posed a challenge to punk’s development. Hari-B, upon his return from London, placed an ad in a music newspaper in the hopes of discovering fellow local punks who had also become aware of and interested in this new, raw incarnation of rock.

By 1978 he had forged a few friendships and formed Los Testículos, who played their first show by the end of the year. During the first tumultuous years of the band’s existence, Los

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Testículos underwent what would come to define the “typical” experience of a punk band under the military junta – a series of raided gigs, a contested name change to Los Violadores, the limitations of an interim singer’s semi-clandestine life due to his father’s political activities, and the shocking loss of bassist Beto Villaverde, who abandoned music altogether to become a career police officer. Punk, with its many difficulties and risks under a ruthlessly repressive dictatorship, required both bravery and dedication from its adherents. Not everyone could tough it out. Los Violadores found a few who could in early 1980, the line-up finally settling to guitarist Hari-B, drummer Gramática, bassist Stuka, and singer Pil Trafa.36 According to Trafa, the members of Los Violadores lacked a definable ideal in the beginning, unsure of how to convey their feelings musically in an organized fashion. “We were young…We were angry and we wanted people to take notice,” he recalled in a 2010 interview.37 Punks during these years consistently expressed in their products and recollections the theme of punk as a vehicle for releasing repressed frustration and anger under the dictatorship in Argentina; it serves as the preceding step to the idea of punk as a lifestyle and ideology that would develop over time. Esteban Cavanna, author of the definitive history of Los Violadores, notes, “In a society used to lies, the most revolutionary turns out to be neither wordplays nor the usage of a forbidden term in a song’s lyrics but communicating the desperation of what is seen on the streets.”38 Even without strictly defining an ideology of opposition, Los Violadores fused punk with the brutal realities of the dictatorship – the constantly visible military uniforms, the disappearances, the torture – and gave voice the anguish and anger that stemmed from it. As Gerardo remembered, Los Violadores in their beginnings were 100% punks, visual, attitude, sounds – the way they played, their gigs were censored. The first time I saw them at the end of ’82 I couldn’t believe it. Raw and wild screaming against repression and the military civic dictatorship, imagine the fury they used to sing with.39

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Around that same time, the second, more political wave of punk in Argentina became more pronounced – largely due to la Guerra de las Malvinas, or the Falklands War, against Great Britain.40 Most of the underground punk scene, Los Violadores included, actively opposed the war from its beginning, viewing it as a bloody and poorly executed attempt by the junta to regain popular support. Ironically, many popular musicians and aging hippies benefited from the conflict, as it led the military regime to incorporate national rock music into its propaganda campaign. English-speaking music remained banned from the airwaves, but the junta actually forced radio and TV stations to start playing Argentine rock for the first time in years – a precursor to the large music festival they would later organize in support of the war. Most musicians who participated claimed that they did so in solidarity with the soldiers, not with the military regime, but punks called out the charade for what it was: the pursuit of fame.41 In a surprising twist, Los Violadores received an invitation to play the festival; disgusted, they rejected the opportunity for a career boost, and continued to openly criticize those bands that chose to participate.42 If Los Violadores exemplified the rage and fury of the first wave of Argentine punk, Alerta Roja transitioned to the self-awareness and social consciousness that would characterize the second. At the age of seventeen, Sergio Spatavecchia adopted the nombre de batalla “Mongo” and served as the front man for the band that would eventually be known as Alerta Roja.43 Unlike many of his punk cohorts, Mongo came from a relatively low-class background.

Born on the island Maciel and raised in Geril, he garnered a reputation for himself as a poet from the barrio. He accessed punk music through several of his upper-class friends from Belgrano, though he fit the part perfectly on his own – he dressed all in black and spoke out against everything. The band underwent a series of name changes due to increasing state censorship, a

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trend that reflected the dictatorship’s awareness of punk as a vehicle for subversion. Urban police officials – the same who gathered intelligence on other suspected enemies of the state – began to take note of the more popular punk bands in an effort to target their gigs more effectively. Mongo and his band attempted to circumvent this profiling, starting out as Los Psicópatas (The Psychopaths) and briefly playing as Estado de Sitio (State of Emergency) before finally settling on Alerta Roja (Red Alert, to reflect the state in which Argentina lived) during the beginning stages of las Malvinas.44 Though punk would solidify its association with anarchism in the years directly following the dictatorship, under the supposedly democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín, Mongo and the rest of Alerta Roja – Pablo Strangler, Fernán, and Daniel Garcia – inspired the subculture’s first evolution and paved the way for later anarcho-punk bands like Sentimiento Incontrolable, Todos Tus Muertos, Tumbas NN, Mutantes del Kaos, and Los Corrosivos.45 When the band released its first – and only – album in 1983, punk had existed long enough in Argentina to establish a small sense of community among its members. This nascent community afforded punks the perfect opportunity to move away from the initial rebellious outburst, to convey the message of here we are, we are punk beyond merely adopting the style, sound, and anger of its early years. Argentine punks could not easily build up from such a volatile base, as several people joined the scene to experience the rush that came with such visible rebellion and fell away from it when more rigorous ideology settled in. “The people didn’t understand punk,” Mongo claimed in a 2010 interview, “just like they don’t understand it now. We weren’t drunks or Nazis. We simply sang revolution, we wanted a change much more dangerous. We were apolitical, totally anarchist.”46 Though Alerta Roja and Los Violadores were at the forefront of Argentine punk bands during the years of the dictatorship, the two did not account for the entire subculture – an

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important thing to note when considering the scope of punk as a vehicle for dictatorial opposition. Los Baraja, the pioneers of punk in La Plata and the first to move beyond the Buenos Aires bubble, remained a constant presence from 1981 to 1985, frequently playing their UK-style music alongside the similar sounding Los Violadores. The group’s founder, journalist Marcelo Montolivo, eventually abandoned his career to participate in the punk scene wholeheartedly.47 Their singer, Marcelo Pocavida, would later join Cadáveres de Niños – one of the more popular bands of the democratic period.

Punks Felix and Gamexane also played in multiple bands spanning the military junta and its demise. As teenagers in 1979 they played in Los Laxantes, which disbanded in 1982 without leaving many recordings behind. While active, the band and its members garnered a widespread reputation for rowdiness at shows – a common method of relieving frustration beyond the music itself. Their first gig at Abba Café Concert ended famously with the pub’s owner, Esteban Mellino, turning off the sound altogether. They would also share partial responsibility for the incident with Los Violadores and the hippies at the Universidad de Belgrano.48 Both incidents revealed the need for punk subculture to carve out its own space within the dictatorial culture of silence, as those that already existed either did not or could not support such a loud and violent negation of the status quo.

Many other bands – such as Trixy y Los Maniáticos, notable for featuring the first female vocalist in Argentina – quickly formed and dissolved throughout this period due to the variety of difficulties involved in so loudly participating in a subversive group. Under the later democratic regime of 1983, bands enjoyed the privileges of recording and touring without threat of imprisonment, enabling them to survive longer and so reach a broader audience beyond their small communities. The military junta ensured that no such privileges existed under its rule,

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forcing the punk community to create what punk theorist James C. Scott calls “autonomous sites” – spaces where young punks could gather to overcome their alienation and mobilize themselves as a social and political force, however small.49 For punks in Argentina, this reclamation of space adopted three forms: musical recordings, gigs, and revistas subte (zines).

The prohibitive cost of vinyl and the scarcity of record labels during this time period severely limited the potential of musical recordings as shared autonomous zones, though bands did record on cassette tapes and release them in small production when they could.50 Cassettes were accessible, economical, and afforded bands plenty of space to fit an entire album’s worth of songs without sacrificing too much quality. Unfortunately they also degraded quickly, resulting in the loss of many of the original recordings from the junta era.51 At the time of their production, however, cassettes passed from punk to punk as a method of communication. The transmission of recorded material between scenes in Buenos Aires, La Plata, and Mar del Plata allowed the subculture to expand at a time when bands could not tour or occasionally even appear publicly.

Most of the cassette tapes in circulation throughout the dictatorship period were roughly recorded demos as opposed to polished releases, which did not appear until 1983. Alerta Roja self-released the first official Argentine punk record that year, a tape of twenty-one tracks entitled Derrumbando la Casa Rosada that ran for forty-five minutes.52 Los Violadores followed shortly thereafter with their debut LP, a popular self-titled collection of twelve songs that they had recorded immediately after Pil Trafa joined the band in 1981. With the support of independent label Umbral, they successfully distributed the album throughout much of South America in the early years of the democratic period.53 Los Baraja and Los Laxantes never recorded their own albums, but songs from each appeared on Invasión 88, a compilation of

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Argentine punk that, despite its focus on the mid-to-late 1980s, included earlier material as well.54 Due to the scattered nature of cassette recordings and album releases, Argentine punks primarily constructed a shared experience of community and autonomy at live musical performances, or gigs. Bands struggled to locate safe and tolerant venues, finding that many existing bars, restaurants, and traditional auditoriums refused to cater to anyone involved with the punk subculture out of either fear or distaste.55 Surprisingly, Le Chevalet, a French restaurant in Barrio Norte, would be the first to open its doors to the Argentine punk subculture in 1981.

When owner Botto Jordán decided that he wanted to give his trasnoches (late-night events) an air of rebellion, Juan Pablo Correa convinced him to reach out to the few performance-ready bands – at which time only Los Violadores, Trixy y Los Maniáticos, and Los Laxantes would qualify.56 During the months that followed, punks transformed Le Chevalet into a temporary autonomous zone where they could begin to consolidate the ties of community face-to-face. The lack of soundproofing and the rowdy nature of shows alerted police forces to their presence, and the resulting wave of raids and mass arrests – which often led to the prolonged imprisonment and torture of participants – forced punks to relocate after a mere six months. While it lasted, however, the space proved instrumental in uniting the first wave of punk in Argentina.57 Café Einstein, an old house located in the Balvanera district, served a similar purpose.

Owned and operated by Omar Chabán, Sergio Aisenstein, and a German named Helmut, the small, brightly colored space housed countless punk gigs throughout the 1980s.58 People of all stripes attended events at Café Einstein in the hopes of discovering other like-minded individuals in a safe space. On Tuesday evenings, everyone would gather for group meals and enjoy free drinks. Compared to the isolative nature of the dictatorship’s culture of silence, which

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encouraged citizens to keep to themselves and break ties with anyone potentially under suspicion of subversive activity, Café Einstein was the epitome of community. Those bold enough to declare their discontent began to rebuild what the dictatorship had demolished. According to Chabán, “Einstein is a place of the irreparable, a place where everything that was asleep woke up…We have fun confidently. It isn’t a place for ‘good vibes.’ Here people can feel bad or good, but mostly things happen.”59 In addition to the spaces in which they occurred, gigs themselves became temporary autonomous zones through which punks reclaimed the freedom to express their anger, their frustration, and their pain. Adriana Franco recalled early shows at Le Chevalet: “one could whistle, participate, scream, throw something into the air…”60 While the bands played as loudly as they could, shouting their lyrics rather than singing them, audience members would crash into each other, pull one another up off the ground, and crush together in a constantly moving mob – an overtly physical reinforcement of their connection as much as it was an outlet through which to vent the suffering they shared. Beyond the walls of the venue, the junta’s culture of silence continued its oppressive reign, but within them, punks relied on this cacophony of noise as a vehicle for reclaiming a small degree of freedom. “We bent the rules,” claimed Los Violadores.

“No chairs, no stillness. Jump, dance, spit on us, and bring the idol down.”61 The threat of mass arrests imbued the gigs with an additional sense of urgency and emotional charge. “We didn’t know if we would come back,” wrote Gerardo. “More than once we left in tears.”62 Gigs also provided the opportunity for punks to sell or give away the latest issues of their zines. The production and distribution of zines, or revistas subte as they were known in Argentina, provided another space in which members of the punk community could speak out against the dictatorship and develop their own ideology in conversation with one another. Most

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zine writers shied away from journalistic language, preferring emotionally charged outbursts of thought. Revistas subte bestowed upon them the agency to say what they felt and to share information about their other projects without fear of retribution by the state. Hardly any authors attached their real names to the publications; the only way to identify them would be to trace the nombre de batalla back to its source, a sizeable feat for anyone outside of the punk community.63 Due to narrow distribution and the lack of a central archiving system, very few publications from this period have survived. The early issues of Vaselina published by Los Violadores drummer Gramática in 1980 and 1981, for example, remain elusive.64 Many of the more well-known and long-lasting punk zines in Argentina have fared better, but they did not arise until the mid-1980s, in the early years of the democratic regime.65 Fortunately, Argentine political magazine El Porteño frequently published articles either penned by punks or related to punk subculture in its Cerdos y Peces supplement and archived issues far more thoroughly. One such issue contains a “manifesto” collectively written by Los Violadores in 1983 about the nature of being punk – the first definitive ideological statement printed by punks in Argentina. It reads, in part, Being punk is an engaged and nonconformist way of life in a country like this, where there are many people choosing not to get involved with anything, people who prefer to be a mass in order to have a better time…[B]eing Punk is a 24-hours-a-day commitment: from the clothes used up to the way of behaving, it is a form of shocking, of going to battle…punk is reactive because it assumes alienation and doesn’t suggest any alternative solution…We are not political, we are social. We talk about things that happen to people like us, working class without future, without prospects, ruined, dishonored, and humiliated by all the misery that ruined this country.66 While not universally agreed-upon, the manifesto opened the door for further discussions on what punk in Argentina really meant beyond the sound and the fury. Punks began carving out an ideological autonomous space for themselves in addition to the physical and emotional ones they had already unearthed. The process would take years, stretching far into the new democratic

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government, but it retroactively shaped the understanding of how punk subculture interacted with and developed alongside the military dictatorship. Most zines published between 1985 and 1988 included some discussion of what punk meant in Argentina beyond its music and its style.

Gallo, editor of Unica Salida, established in its first issue that punk “aims to be an alternative method of living and fighting.”67 An article in Rebeliòn Rock later emphasized, “the only thing that matters is your way of thinking.”68 As Argentina’s borders opened up and government censorship eased, this ideology would also take on an international character. Punks communicated more freely with like-minded individuals abroad and imported ideas – new outlooks on anarchism in particular – as well as music. Yet the legacy of the military junta, the near-impenetrable culture of silence, and the unknown fate of the thirty thousand desaparecidos ensured that punk subculture in Argentina remained uniquely rooted in national identity despite its international origins and inclinations.

An anonymous author captured this sentiment in a piece written for La Contracultura: “Our activity isn’t a copy or a style even though the punk mentality is universal…we just want people to realize that other ways of life exist.”69 V. The Long Rule of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, 1973-1990 Following the model provided by the subculture in Argentina, punk in Chile developed in opposition to a culture of silence fostered by a brutally repressive military dictatorship. Though Pinochet assumed power three years before the Argentine junta, the punk subculture that arose in Chile did so nearly seven years after that of its neighbor. The delay hardly matters in light of the scene’s quick evolution from a scattering of bands to a veritable underground movement, intent on reclaiming space and freedom from those who had stolen it.

Simpson 21 According to historian Peter Kornbluh, military bloodshed during and following the 11

September 1973 military coup against Chile’s democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende was so widespread “that even the CIA’s own sources could not accurately tally the casualties.”70 Six weeks later, the junta prepared a classified summary of the violence: fifteen hundred civilians massacred (of that, roughly three hundred either executed by firing squads or shot in the street) and nearly fourteen thousand arrested and held at approximately twenty secret detention camps. The military targeted those involved with Allende’s Popular Unity government, political activists, labor unions, factory works, and shantytown dwellers, but anyone suspected of subversion or undesirable affiliation was at risk as well.71 General Augusto Pinochet, the commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, served nine months as president of the junta before assuming the position “Supreme Chief of the Nation.”72 Though he initially pledged to significantly curtail human rights abuses – particularly the mass arrests without cause, the execution of “subversives” without trial, and the unacknowledged disappearance of citizens – he did no such thing, creating and fostering a constant sense of terror throughout the country that resulted in a culture of silence designed to stifle dissent. Instrumental in this effort was the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), the Chilean secret police agency. Accountable only to Pinochet, DINA served to eliminate any perceived enemies of the state, circumvent legal praxis, develop diverse methods of torture, and strike fear into the hearts of the populace and any lesser military services that may have considered a coup of their own.73 Most notably, DINA operated Villa Grimaldi – a secret detention and torture facility that ran around the clock in the capital, Santiago. There, and at all other DINA facilities, agents would employ the same commonly used “interrogation techniques” to extract information from

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prisoners. One military officer described the torture methods as “straight out of the Spanish Inquisition.”74 Ultimately, slightly over one thousand Chileans vanished during the seventeen-year Pinochet dictatorship – contributing to the total thirty-five hundred cases of disappearance, killing, torture, and kidnapping that occurred as a “planned and coordinated strategy of the government,” as documented by the 1990 Truth Commission report.75 VI. Punk in Chile, 1985-1990 Unlike its more exclusive relative in Argentina, the Chilean punk scene developed within the framework of a larger underground movement that included painters, photographers, writers, dancers, and performance artists who worked closely with one another. Sonically, this counterculture demanded an alternative to the right-wing music that dominated the airwaves and the widely popular folkie protest songs of and inspired by Victor Jara.76 Los Prisoneros responded to this need with their formation in 1983, initially bearing an overt similarity to the screeching sounds of 1970s British punk. However, the group quickly adopted a more polished, synthesizerbased sound in the increasingly popular new-wave style, and signed with the international megalith EMI music label in 1985.77 With the pioneers of the musical underground elevated far beyond its grasp, a few new groups emerged to take their place and form the core of Chile’s punk subculture. That same year, Daniel Puente, Iván “Vanchi” Conejeros, Miguel Conejeros, and Sebastián “Tan” Levine formed the Pinochet Boys, Chile’s first decisively punk band. The group positioned themselves directly in opposition to the government of General Pinochet from its inception, refusing to abandon their provocative name and explicitly confronting elements of repression and violence in their lyrics.

“For anyone creating music in the 1980s, it was difficult not to be punk with repression

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everywhere,” Conejeros noted.78 In that regard, the Pinochet Boys firmly established the model of punk as a vehicle specifically for crafting resistance against the dictatorship.

In fact, many Chilean youth who had formerly pursued other methods of opposition turned to punk as a more direct way to express their discontent and create autonomous spaces.

Sergio Cristián Sáez Jara, commonly known by his stage name “TV Star,” gained recognition as a notable underground painter before he performed as the vocalist of Dadá.79 Rubén “Roli” Urzúa joined Fiskales Ad-Hok as a bassist upon leaving a period of militant activity with los Juventudes Comunistas. “No one knew how to play anything,” he recalled of the band’s early days. “We didn’t even have instruments. It was pure desire and a few attempts at constructing a drum kit out of cardboard.”80 This inevitable lack of prior musical training also lent itself to punk expression – content mattered more than skill, and the sound needed only to inspire a kind of unified catharsis of shared trauma.81 Punks therefore used their experiences under General Pinochet and the repressive policies of his government – including media and cultural censorship, police raids, targeted disappearances, executions, and curfews – as a focal point for generating and shaping their subculture. “Our idea was to create musical extremism,” explained Fiskales Ad-Hok singer Álvaro España. “Punk rock to castigate Pinochet.”82 Nearly every other punk band that formed under the rule of the dictatorship echoed a similar sentiment, evident in tracks such as Dadá’s “Yo Odio a los Políticos (I Hate Politicians)” and Ocho Bolas’ “Corrupción. (Corruption).”83 Far from obscuring their criticism in lyrical wordplay or subtlety, punks produced pieces of direct political resistance that exposed the shared trauma of living under a bloody and oppressive regime.

Simpson 24 As in Argentina, punk resistance efforts and the reclamation of space in Chile took the

form of musical recordings and zines, but gigs assumed a position of greater importance.

Santiago-based unions, also under attack by the Pinochet regime, played a central role in procuring and solidifying venues for live punk performances. In June 1986, the Pinochet Boys rented the shed of el Sindicato de Taxistas (union of taxi drivers) to house Chile’s first punk festival, which boasted a line-up that included Zapatilla Rota, Niños Mutantes, Índice de Desempleo, Corruption Girls, and the debut of Dadá.84 El Trolley, another union of trolleybus and taxi drivers in the El Aguilucho sector, developed a reputation as a space for punk after hosting the 1987 Bienel Underground – a farewell to Dadá vocalist and beloved punk personality TV Star.85 Amidst the scattered, chaotic gigs typical of punks in both Chile and Argentina, these two shows illustrated the possibilities of organized planning and subcultural unity.

Many punks still found comfort in the chaos. Gigs provided opportunities for community organizing, but they also created spaces of acceptance for those who, as Fiskales Ad-Hok put it, “want to go to vent their rage, their hatred, their pain, their discontent and rebellion in a catharsis of peers where nobody looks at you askance if you are different.”86 The band gained a particular reputation for inspiring an intense physical experience at their shows unlike any other Chilean group, a tendency often reflected in their choice of unusual venues.87 In 1987, they played the Galería Bucci but could not contain the performance within the building. Journalist Jordi Berenguer recalled of the show: “We wanted to dance in the streets and feel that we could have free spaces in Santiago, the capital of the Pinochet dictatorship.”88 That desire for uninhibited visibility and public freedom adopted another form in the emphasis on bodily autonomy. Much like peers in Argentina and even internationally, Chilean punks dressed in all black, dyed and styled their hair in unnatural colors and shapes, and

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employed the use of shocking or subversive symbols to distinguish themselves from the rest of the population.89 By consciously privileging “body politics” over “party politics,” punks reinforced their opposition to the system in its entirety. They resisted visibly and without the use of institutions employed by a society that they viewed as completely diseased from top to bottom. Any space punk created, its adherents adopted completely as their own.90 Those spaces, while providing shelter and acceptance for many subversive youth, also attracted targeted violence by the state. The Pinochet Boys in particular suffered from consistent police harassment throughout their short duration, eventually forcing them to leave Chile altogether and attempt to tour through Argentina and Brazil. Their final performance at la Casa Constitución, which directly precipitated that flight, ended early when glass bottles started flying to and from the stage. Keyboard player Miguel Conejeros recounted, Everything degenerated when we started breaking bottles on the stage, and those that weren’t broken shot into the audience, from which they returned to the stage, and so on…Later, the usual: blackout lights, the cops, screaming, fighting, blood, drunks, etc.91 Even prior to that gig, the Pinochet Boys experienced one of the biggest attacks against the punk community when the police raided their rehearsal space in July 1986 during the birthday party of friend Rafael Guíñez. Most punks in Santiago at that time attended the party, with eighteen later going to jail under various suspicions.92 The raid left the house and all the equipment inside completely destroyed, in effect demolishing the safe haven where the band and their friends lived as a tribe of sorts. For months afterward, a van with tinted windows parked outside the space, keeping watch until the punks abandoned it altogether.93 The event even garnered coverage by local newspaper La Cuarta, which described the raid as such: “In Chile, [punks] debuted creating a tremendous scandal in a quiet suburb of the capital, which left eighteen detainees.”94 While a distorted recollection of events, the piece hinted

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at a wider awareness of the punk community in media outlets throughout Chile. Where the punk subculture remained rather insular in Argentina, here it breached the boundaries and consciousness of everyday society. A radio program called “Melodias Subterráneas (Underground Melodies)” embodied this shift in a more positive light. Created by University of Chile student Rolando Ramos and a group of his friends in 1983, the program included punk bands – from Chile and beyond – in nearly every one of its broadcasts. Throughout its existence, “Melodias Subterráneas” served as a venue for young musicians to debut their tracks locally in a cost-free manner and to promote one another’s work. Dadá submitted a four-track cassette, resulting in the debut of their song “Yo Odio a los Políticos.” The same happened with Fiskales Ad-Hok and “Apestan los Burgueses (The Bourgeoisie Stink).” Authorities finally ordered the university to cancel the program in 1987, citing their dislike of songs about torture and corrupt bureaucrats.95 Chile showcased the potency of punk as a vehicle for unified opposition against the Pinochet dictatorship, an important distinction when one considers the scene’s slight unraveling in the years directly following the return of democracy in 1990. Of the original Santiago pioneers, only Fiskales Ad-Hok survived the transition. They began to associate more closely with the trash circuit after the dissolution of the last similarly minded punk band, and still perform occasionally to this day. The Pinochet Boys realized quickly after their decision to leave Chile that they no longer had a reason to exist; without Pinochet, without the dictatorship, they lost their purpose. “No hay futuro,” they announced after a concert in Brazil. “There is no future.”96

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VII. Conclusion Despite the international origins and influences of punk subcultures in the Southern Cone, their role in crafting resistance to brutally oppressive military dictatorships made them geographically distinct. Unlike punks in Britain, who were largely white working-class youth railing against a severe economic downturn, those in Argentina and Chile boasted middle or upper-middle class backgrounds. Relative economic security and the subcultures’ small size ensured that, at least throughout the duration of the dictatorships, punk would behave mostly as a subculture of opposition to particular forces – namely, the repressive military regimes. The collapse of that single enemy in both countries caused a slight fragmentation of the punk scenes, which until that point remained unified by the shared experience of trauma and the desire to carve out some degree of autonomous space for expression within a culture of silence.

The late 1980s in Argentina and the 1990s in Chile would represent a shift back towards the international community, with the subcultures expanding to include global issues in the context of Third World struggle and more typical U.S. and Anglo punk causes like animal rights and anti-racism. Punks established communication with other similarly minded individuals throughout the United States and Europe throughout this period as well, exchanging ideas through zine and cassette mailing. Even so, they continued to develop and promote their own unique interpretations of punk. Refusing to write songs in English, for example, reinforced the ties to national identity, and consistently anti-systemic themes in lyrics recalled the shared experience of living under military rule.

Punk in the Southern Cone served above all as a vehicle for the reclamation of space and freedom within societies suffering from disappearances, torture, executions, and censorship in the name of stability. These subcultures provided the opportunity for young people to build a

Simpson 28

community in opposition to a system that stripped them of their voice. By encouraging noise in all aspects – instruments turned up all the way, maximum distortion, lyrics shouted instead of sung, brightly colored hair and offensive clothing – and promoting an inclusive, hazlo tu mismo philosophy, punk offered everyone the opportunity for expression. While not easy, safe, or even fully remembered, punk created a space in Chile and Argentina for those who needed it – for the ones who refused to ever be quiet.

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Notes

1

Alfredo Sainz, “Arde Belgrano: Los Violadores en La UB, 17 de Julio de 1981,” in Derrumbando la Casa Rosada: Mitos y Leyendas de los Primeros Punks en Argentina, ed. Daniel Flores (Buenos Aires: Piloto de Tormenta, 2011), 40.

2 Ibid., 41-44.

3 Sainz, “Arde Belgrano,” 48. *All translations throughout the paper are mine, unless otherwise noted.

Lyrics as written in the original Spanish: “Represión en la UB / los rockeros de Belgrano están tirados en la calle / sin un carajo que hacer / hippies de mierda, rockeras sucias.”

4 Ibid., 50.

5 Ibid., 50.

6 Pil Trafa, interview with Lucho in Maximum Rocknroll #301 (June 2008): 64.

7 Dekadencia Humana, Argentina: Punk de Los 80 (2010): 8, accessed 23 October 2012, http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/mihistoriasobreelanarcopunkenargentina.

8 Hebdige, Subculture: the Meaning of Style, 9-16. For the purposes of this paper, I will adopt Hebdige’s definition of subculture as what emerges when “the consensus [is] fractured, challenged, overruled, and resistance to the groups in dominance cannot always be lightly dismissed or automatically incorporated.”

Though this model is based in sociology, it provides a solid foundation for understanding punk as a subcultural field of history instead of merely as a genre of music.

9 Ibid., 62-63.

10 Zack Furness, Punkademics: the Basement Show in the Ivory Tower (Brooklyn: Minor Compositions, 2012), 18. Furness provides possibly the best critique of the overemphasis of punk’s origins, heroes, and musical contributions in academia – what he refers to as a certain kind of “orthodoxy” – as well as the frequent misinterpretation of Hebdige’s text as a “punk-as-style paradigm.” The “class of ‘77” commonly refers to the first group of British and American punk bands: Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones, Buzzcocks, The Damned, The Undertones, and Siouxsie & the Banshees.

11 Craig O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise! (Edinburgh: AK Press, 1999), 71. It is important to note here that anarchism within punk communities does not necessitate the complete collapse of government or require efforts to do so. These communities can and do exist within political systems that rely on institutional hierarchy. They may choose to interact with and acknowledge those systems or not, but very few violently oppose their existence. For more on anarchism, see discussions in Appendix A. 12 Daniel Sinker, ed., We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet, the Collected Interviews (New York: Akashic Books, 2001), 11. Sinker emphasizes the do-it-yourself, or “DIY,” ideology as “the foundation that the entire [punk] culture is built upon.” He and O’Hara identify zine-making, independent show promoting, band formation, and the self-recording and release of tapes and records as facets of the DIY phenomenon throughout the punk subcultures of Europe and the United States.

13 Walescka Pino-Ojeda, “A Detour to the Past: Memory and Mourning in Chilean Post-Authoritarian Rock,” in Rockin’ Las Américas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America, ed. Deborah Pacini Hernandez et. al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 290-311. Pino-Ojeda’s argument centers upon the idea that Chilean rock in the post-authoritarian era imposes the private memory on recreated stigmatized musical forms, purging the pain and trauma in the form of tribute; Pablo Semán, Pablo Vila, and Cecilia Benedetti, “Neoliberalism and Rock in the Popular Sectors of Contemporary Argentina,” in Rockin’ Las Américas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America, ed. Deborah Pacini Hernandez et. al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 261-289. Rock chabón as defined in this essay returns to the broader roots of social discontent, focusing on issues of economic hardship and the general disdain of authority for the lower classes.

14 Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste, and Eric Zolov, eds., Rockin’ Las Américas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 10.

15 Pil Trafa, interview with Lucho in Maximum Rocknroll, 64-65.

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16

I do not aim to challenge the existing scholarship on the nature and history of the Pinochet dictatorship and Argentina military junta, as it has been thoroughly documented and analyzed from a number of perspectives. I merely mean to add to it another narrative of resistance and provide further insight into the nature of political dissent in the Southern Cone throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. For further reading on authoritarianism and state terrorism in South America, see Patricia Marchak’s God’s Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999) and Peter Kombluh’s The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: New Press, 2003).

17 Patricia Marchak, God’s Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1999), 1.

18 Furness, Punkademics, 18.

19 Jennifer S. Holmes, “Political Violence and Regime Change in Argentina: 1965-1976,” Terrorism and Political Violence 13.1 (2001): 145-146, accessed 17 October 2012, doi: 10.1080/09546550109609673.

Holmes notes that the coup has been called “the most predicted coup in Argentine history.”

20 U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research, “Argentina: Six Months of Military Government,” Report No. 603 (30 September 1976): 7.

21 U.S. Department of State, telegram from the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, “Videla’s Moderate Line Prevails,” 30 March 1976, 3. The authors of the telegram refer to the Videla coup as “moderate in character,” meaning that initially the military did not officially direct their takeover at any particular group or sector. The official U.S. position iterated in the final pages of the document was that “this was probably the best executed and most civilized coup in Argentine history.”

22 Richard Feinberg, U.S. Department of State, briefing memorandum, “President Videla: An Alternative View,” 19 November 1977, 1; Harry W. Shlaudeman, U.S. Department of State, “ARA Monthly Report (July),” 3 August 1976, 3. Both documents stress the problematic nature of defining action against “subversion,” as the term lends itself to vagueness and broad interpretations. It is precisely this ambiguity that allowed the Argentine junta to attack civilians in their efforts against terrorism, even as only an estimated 15% of those affected were active terrorists.

23 Marchak, God’s Assassins, 5-7. Dissent, as mentioned previously, encompassed any disagreement with government policy but also extended to any actions that could be perceived as threatening “Western civilization and Christianity.” In the environment of the Cold War, that particularly addressed leftist movements that even slightly attacked capitalism.

24 Ibid., 21. Marchak redacted or changed the names of every subject she interviewed for publication. This subject’s name is printed as Walter.

25 U.S. State Department, letter from Tex to Michelle and Jim dated 26 April 1978.

26 Marchak, God’s Assassins, 3; U.S. Department of State, memo from the American Embassy in Buenos Aires to Secretary of State, “The Problem of Those Who Disappeared,” 28 March 1978, 2. The memo notes that the conventional government explanation for the disappeared is that they “(1) have gone underground (2) were terrorists who were killed by their companions (3) have fled the country (4) had been killed in battle and bodies were unrecognizable or (5) were the victims of counter-subversive excesses.”

27 Daniel Flores, ed., Derrumbando la Casa Rosada: Mitos y Leyendas de los Primeros Punks en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Piloto de Tormenta, 2011), 17.

28 Dekadencia Humana, The Rise of Punk in Argentine: A Personal Account (2010): 3, accessed 8 October 2012, http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/the_rise_of_punk_in_argentine.

29 Pil Trafa, interview with Ingacio Brown, DEAF SPARROW Zine, 2010, accessed 23 October 2012, http://www.deafsparrow.com/Los-Violadores-Retrointerview.htm.

30 Dekadencia Humana, The Rise of Punk in Argentine, 1. That portrayal of punks would last for several years and frequently comes up in discussions of punk in Argentina.

31 Ibid.

32 Dekadencia Humana, Argentina: Punk de los 80, 3.

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33

Ibid.

Adriana Franco, “La Larga Noche de Todos Estos Años,” in Derrumbando la Casa Rosada, ed. Daniel Flores (Buenos Aires: Piloto de Tormenta, 2011), 22-23.

35 Dekadencia Humana, The Rise of Punk in Argentine, 2.

36 Federico Gómez Levitanas, “When Punk Came out to Confront the Idiots in Power,” Shit-Fi, accessed 16 March 2013, http://shit-fi.com/articles/LosVioladores.

37 Pil Trafa, interview with Ignacio Brown.

38 Esteban Cavanna, El Nacimiento del Punk en la Argentina y la Historia de Los Violadores (Buenos Aires: Interpress Ediciones, 2001), 13.

39 Dekadencia Humana, The Rise of Punk in Argentine, 5.

40 Federico Gómez Levitanas, “When Punk Came out to Confront the Idiots in Power.” Argentina and Great Britain have long contested the sovereignty of las Malvinas – islands that lie in the south Atlantic just east of Argentina. After a devastating economic crisis and civil unrest following the transfer of power within the military junta, acting president General Leopoldo Galitieri, along with fellow leaders Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo and Admiral Jorge Anaya, hoped to mobilize the population’s long-standing patriotism towards the islands in the hopes that it would help to re-legitimize their rule. Argentine forces invaded las Malvinas on 2 April 1982, taking the British by surprise, if only for a brief moment. During the ensuring seventy-four days of conflict, a total of 907 individuals died (nineteen of them civilians, three women killed by friendly fire) and another 1,965 suffered non-fatal injuries. Many on both sides of the conflict consider it needless and excessively bloody, especially given the heightened tensions of the Cold War. 41 Federico Gómez Levitanas, “When Punk Came out to Confront the Idiots in Power.”

42 Pil Trafa, interview with Ignacio Brown.

43 Nombre de batalla literally translates to “battle name,” but in this case it refers to the pseudonyms or stage names adopted by many punks in Argentina to either protect their true identities (and that of their families) or cultivate a certain type of punk identity separate from their lives beforehand. The latter practice is common among punk scenes throughout the United States and Great Britain, while the former remains relatively unique to Argentina, Chile, and other countries under severe government repression.

44 Mongo, interview with Dekadencia Humana in Argentina: Punk de los 80, 3.

45 Dekadencia Humana, The Rise of Punk in Argentine, 2. I use the phrase “supposedly democratic” because, despite the junta lifting bans on political parties and allowing elections to occur in October 1983 after the disaster of las Malvinas, the same police squads that enforced dictatorial rule and inflicted years of terror upon the population remained in place. The military continued to wield great influence over government affairs even after its eviction from power, creating friction with the forces of democracy.

Though Alfonsín made great progess in reducing corruption in public office and accounting for those who disappeared during the military junta through the creation of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), he was also forced in December 1986 to pass the “Ley de Punto Final (the Full Stop Law),” a measure which granted amnesty to all acts committed before 10 December 1983. The law would remain in effect until the Supreme Court ruled to overturn all amnesty measures and allow investigations to continue in June 2005.

46 Mongo, interview with Dekadencia Humana, 3.

47 “Los Baraja” in Gente Que No (Buenos Aires: Piloto de Tormenta, 2009), 212; Marcelo Montolivo, profile on LinkedIn, accessed 17 March 2013, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marcelomontolivo/10/475/84. Alerta Roja guitarist Pablo Strangler would also join Cadáveres de Niños.

48 Sainz, “Arde Belgrano,” 50; “Los Laxantes,” Gente Que No, 224; Federico, “Todos Tus Muertos,” Kill From the Heart, accessed 15 October 2012, http://www.killfromtheheart.com/bands.php?id=43. Felix and Gamexane, after a brief period of backpacking through Latin America and completing compulsory military service, respectively, went on to form Todos Tus Muertos in 1985 with singer Fidel. Todos Tus Muertos is an interesting example of Argentine punk in that it blends typical punk influences (Bad Brains, The Clash, Dead Kennedys) with post-punk gloom, ska, and reggae. Fidel’s ancestors were slaves brought 34

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to Argentina in the 19th century – a pretty unusual occurrence in the mostly white, middle and uppermiddle class scene.

49 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 120. Scott does not address punk communities in general, nor those in Argentina in particular, but his work covers similar subcultures of dissent throughout history and I therefore believe the term to be applicable to this research. For the purposes of this paper, “autonomous site,” “autonomous zone,” and “autonomous space” will be used interchangeably to identify the same concept.

50 Dekadenica Humana, The Rise of Punk in Argentine, 1, 5.

51 Martín Sorrondeguy, interview with Alan O’Connor in Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy (Toronto: Lexington Books, 2008), 106.

52 “Alerta Roja,” Gente Que No, 210.

53 Federico Gómez Levitanas, “When Punk Came out to Confront the Idiots in Power.”

54 “Los Baraja,” Gente Que No, 212; “Los Laxantes,” Gente Que No, 224.

55 Dekadencia Humana, The Rise of Punk in Argentine, 2.

56 Franco, “La Larga Noche de Todos Estos Años,” 19.

57 Ibid., 29-31.

58 Marcelo Dance, “Café Einstein,” Verduro Kosida, 11 June 2009, accessed 20 February 2013, http://verdurokosida.blogspot.com/2009/06/cafe-einstein.html. Café Einstein also hosted a wide variety of events, mostly experimental theater, and shows beyond the scope of punk. As such, I would hesitate to classify it as a punk venue – a more appropriate term would be “underground,” or perhaps even DIY. It simply provided a new space for punk shows in the interim between the demise of Le Chevalet and the advent of el Parakultural in 1986, which would quickly become the hotspot of punk activity during the early years of democracy.

59 Anonymous, “El Desopilante Café Einstein,” Cerdos y Peces 1.1 (August 1983): 13, accessed 8 October 2012, http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/cerdos_y_peces_n_1.

60 Franco, “La Larga Noche de Todos Estos Años,” 27.

61 Los Violadores, “Ser Punk,” trans. Federico Gómez Levitanas, Cerdos y Peces #3 (October 1983): 16, accessed 17 March 2013, http://shit-fi.com/fromthearchive/LosVioladores.

62 Dekadencia Humana, The Rise of Punk in Argentine, 2.

63 Dekadencia Humana, Argentina: Punk de los 80, 10.

64 If any preserved copies do exist, they are likely in the possession of any number of anonymous punks that would be impossible to track down. After extensive research and exhausting all of my personal contacts, I have only been able to unearth zines from 1985 onward, which do frequently refer back to the punk subculture as it existed under the dictatorship but are not from that period.

65 These include Luis Alacrán’s Rebelión Rock (1985), La Furia (1986), La Contracultura (1986), Patricia Pietrafesa’s Resistencia (1986) and ¿Quien Sirve a la Causa del Kaos?, Chary’s MOCO (1986), and Gallo’s Unica Salida (1987). I have been able to access at least one, if not multiple, issues of each.

66 Los Violadores, “Ser Punk,” 16.

67 Gallo, ed., Unica Salida #1 (July 1987): 4, accessed 23 October 2012, http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/unika_salida_uno_1987.

68 Luis Alacrán, ed., Rebelión Rock #6 (June 1988): 23, accessed 23 October 2012, http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/rebelion_rock_numero_6_1988. For more on the scene’s later ideological interpretation of punk, see Appendix A. 69 “¿Punx?,” La Contracultura #2 (December 1986): 10, accessed 23 October 2012, http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/contracultura.

70 Peter Kornbluh, introduction to The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: The New Press, 2003), xiii; Ibid., 153. Allende’s election made Chile the first Latin American country to select a socialist president, despite the fact that the country was once a designated showcase for the Alliance for Progress – a “U.S. effort to stave off revolutionary movements in Latin America by bolstering centrist, middle-class, Christian Democratic political parties” – in 1964.

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U.S. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger opposed Allende’s position in power as well as his peaceful plan for socialist reform, known as the Via Chilena, within the context of the communist/anti-communist dichotomy of the Cold War period, preferring to support an overthrow of legitimate government.

71 Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 153. Many executions were carried out by a Chilean Army death squad known as the Caravan of Death, which would travel by helicopter throughout the country to systematically murder specific individuals held in detention centers. The NGO Memoria y Justicia estimates the total number of victims at ninety-seven.

72 CIA, “Biographic Handbook: Chile,” (November 1974): 1. The junta collectively created the position “as a means of consolidating and improving the decision-making powers of the executive over the cumbersome, inter-service structure,” and selected Pinochet in a nod to the military’s oldest institution.

Originally the position was supposed to rotate among junta members in an effort to promote harmonious and unanimous decision-making, but Pinochet retained it until 1988.

73 Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 157. DINA was active for roughly six months before its official institutionalization on June 14, 1974 by Junta decree no. 521. Pinochet consistently denied that the organization answered directly to him, claiming that it reported to the junta government as a “specialized agency which can provide systematic processed information…in the areas of National Security and Development.” Beyond systematically destroying the opposition of the Left, DINA also infiltrated upper levels of the government to ensure complete loyalty to Pinochet.

74 Ibid., 161-163. Practices included: tying prisoners to a metal bedspring and applying electrical current to sensitive body parts (“the grill”), suspending victims on a metal bar by wrists or wrists and knees for long periods of time while applying electric shocks and beatings (“la parilla”), forced immersion in a vat of urine, excrement, or frigid water (“the submarine), and slamming open hands repeatedly against the ears of the victim, eventually leaving them deaf (“the telephone”), among others. Prisoners would often be forced to watch family members and loved ones receive the same treatment to encourage their cooperation.

75 Ibid., 163; United States Institute of Peace, “Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation,” (February 1991): 160-161, accessed 4 December 2012, http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-chile-90.

76 Martín Nuñez, interview with Robert Beshara on 26 March 2012, accessed 15 November 2012, http://cimmfest.org/on-punk-and-politics-in-chile/. Jara, a politically active communist songwriter, established the Nueva Canción Chilena movement under the Allende government. Shortly after the military coup, he was arrested, tortured, and eventually shot to death with forty-four bullets, his body later thrown into the street of a Santiago shantytown. His neo-folkloric style inspired a new kind of popular music that would provide the model for more moderate elements of protest songs.

77 “Los Prisoneros,” Archivo Punk, last modified October 2011, accessed 17 March 2013, http://archivopunk.cl/sitio/2011/10/los-prisioneros/.

78 “Pinochet Boys,” Archivo Punk, last modified October 2011, accessed 17 March 2013, http://archivopunk.cl/sitio/2011/10/pinochet-boys/.

79 “Dadá,” Archivo Punk, last modified October 2011, accessed 17 March 2013, http://archivopunk.cl/sitio/2011/10/dada/.

80 “Fiskales Ad-Hok,” Archivo Punk, last modified October 2011, accessed 17 March 2013, http://archivopunk.cl/sitio/2011/10/fiskales-ad-hok/.

81 Bassist Rodrigo Hidalgo of Dadá also amusingly pointed out that the alcohol-induced spirit of the time didn’t allow either band or audience members to notice subtleties, which punk conveniently tends to avoid on the whole.

82 Malditos: La Historia de los Fiskales Ad-Hok, directed by Pablo Insunza (2004; Santiago, Chile: Puntociego Comunicaciones, 2004), DVD. Quote in the original Spanish: “Nuestra idea era hacer extremismo musical. Punk rock para putear a Pinochet.” The literal translation of putear is “to bitch,” but it fails to capture the strength of the verb in its original language.

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83

See Appendix B for the lyrics to each song, among others.

“Dadá,” Archivo Punk; “Pinochet Boys,” Archivo Punk.

85 “Dadá,” Archivo Punk. TV Star dealt with epilepsy throughout his entire life. On the afternoon of September 11, 1987, while walking alone after a fight with his partner, he suffered a seizure that caused him to hit his head on a concrete barrier and fall backwards onto the street, ten feet below. Theater director Vicente Ruiz, a good friend and patron of TV Star, organized the concert in his honor.

86 Malditos, directed by Pablo Insunza.

87 “Fiskales Ad-Hok,” Archivo Punk.

88 Jordi Berenguer, “Punk en Chile: existe y resiste,” El Ciudadano, 14 February 2009, accessed 10 March 2013, http://www.elciudadano.cl/2009/02/14/6010/punk-en-chile-existe-y-resiste/.

89 “Dadá,” Archivo Punk. The late Dada vocalist TV Star supposedly debuted the more extreme elements of punk style with his brightly dyed hair and safety pin pierced ears.

90 Martín Nuñez, interview with Robert Beshara.

91 “Pinochet Boys,” Archivo Punk.

92 “Dadá,” Archivo Punk.

93 “Pinochet Boys,” Archivo Punk.

94 “Dada,” Archivo Punk.

95 Sickboy, 13 August 2010 (10:46pm), post on “Melodias Subteránneas,” Foro Santiago Hardcore, http://santiagohc.fr.yuku.com/topic/13681; “Dadá,” Archivo Punk; “Fiskales Ad-Hok,” Archivo Punk.

96 “Pinochet Boys,” Archivo Punk. Punk regained a bit of its momentum in the late 1990s in Chile, resulting in a small boom quite similar to the one the Argentine subculture experienced in the late 1980s under their own democratic regime.

84

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Appendix A: Punks Define Punk, a Selection of Manifestos and Musings In the years following the dictatorship in Argentina, punks began to print more decisive statements of their ideology. Below are a few selections from different zines, which reveal some of the common understandings of what punk meant and uncover some of the differences of opinion. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

La Contracultura #2 (December 1986): 10.

Just as in other cities of the world, punx in Argentina developed as a reaction to a system of capitalism and injustice. The majority thinks of punks as violent drunks and drug addicts…the police unjustly bother us constantly. Our activity is not a copy or a style even though the punk mentality is universal. We don’t follow a dogma, we aren’t divided, and we don’t have leaders. We hate authoritarianism; we love natural freedom and we fight for it, for that reason, we are anarchists. We don’t want everyone to be punx or to think the same way, we just want people to realize that other ways of life exist, like we have shown.

Universo Surbabano, “Punk no es una moda,” Unica Salida #1 (June 1987): 4.

For some, punk is synonymous with violence, dressing strangely, and spitting while doing drugs and drinking. For others, it is degenerate youth dependent on loud music with lyrics that preach violence, chaos, and destruction…Punk aims to be an alternative method of living and fighting.

Rebelión Rock #6 (June 1988): 23.

The only thing that matters is your way of thinking, dress and style your hair as you sing.

All rebellious styles have something in common: we are all young, but not our enemies, and we will not unite to fight against oppression when we are forty. We must act now.

Think with your head, not with your ass!!

Patricia Pietrafesa, R.A. ASKO #1 (December 1988).

Here much has happened with punk…a lot has changed. And I believe that anyone that truly looks into [the scene] can realize that many of the things that are today emerged not from a movement, but from a people that move. I don’t believe in movements [because] they are like political parties; someone says that a movement exists, and then one clings to guidelines or rules or whatever identifies the movement. Punk died when it turned into a movement, when people started to take “fillers” of what the idea is. Everything rotted when punk wanted to transform itself into a movement, [when] it started being an individualistic thing.

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Appendix B: Recommended Listening / Lyrical Transcripts Click on the song title to be directed to an online audio version. All translations are mine.

“Estás Muerto” Los Violadores You have no choice or opportunity, Don’t look for your future – no, no!

You’re dead, you’re dead before birth.

Your life is a program, you depend on it.

You want the office, the bank, the shop.

You’re dead, you’re dead before birth.

But we don’t want anything, Only that it dies, only that it dies.

Our own death will be your tomb.

We will be your hell, your hell.

You’re dead, you’re dead before birth.

You will be what it wants, not what you say, You will be what it says, not what you want.

So it is, our great society.

“Derrumbando la Casa Rosada” Alerta Roja How far they are coming with this process of inflation.

How low they are falling With this junta of perversion.

There is no exit, there is no salvation For your regime of repression.

Dismantling la Casa Rosada, Dismantling la Casa Rosada today.

Trenches in the street, urban barricades, Searching for the revolution.

What’s happening? You are burning, And your guards are collapsing.

There is no exit, there is no salvation For your regime of repression.

“Que Vive Punk”: A Playlist of Repression and Opposition 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

“Yo Odio a los Políticos” Dadá “Corrupción” Ocho Bolas “Pinochet Boys” Pinochet Boys “En la Radio” Alerta Roja “Represión” Los Violadores “Pánico” Los KK “Absurda Realidad” Ocho Bolas “En Mi Tiempo Libre” Pinochet Boys 9. “Punks” Los Baraja 10. “Baila Esta Vez” Trixy y los Maniáticos 11. “Estado Decadente” Los KK 12. “Sucio Poder” Los Violadores 13. “Estamos Juntos” Los Baraja 14. “Botellas Contra el Pavimento” Pinochet Boys 15. “Resistiré” Fiskales Ad-Hok

Appendix C: Visualizing Punk in Argentina and Chile

Chile, 1991

Hay Un Chancho En El Ala, p.8 Argentina

Argentina, 1986

Basta! #1, back cover Argentina, 1988

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Rebelión Rock #6, p. 25 Argentina, 1988

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Argentina, 1980

Argentina, 1985

The Rise of Punk in Argentine, p.3 Argentina, 2010

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The Rise of Punk in Argentine, p.1 Los Baraja

Argentina: Punk de los 80, p.2 Los Laxantes

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Argentina: Punk de los 80, p.3 Alerta Roja

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“Pinochet Boys: la historia desde dentro,” El Ciudadano Pinochet Boys

“Fiskales Ad-Hok,” Last.fm Fiskales Ad-Hok

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Primary Source Bibliography Periodicals: Alacrán, Luis, ed. Rebelión Rock #1 (September 1985). Accessed 13 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/rebelionrock1 Alacrán, Luis, ed. Rebelión Rock #5 (September 1987). Accessed 13 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/rebelion_rock_numero_5_1987_bs_as Alacrán, Luis, ed. Rebelión Rock #6 (June 1988). Accessed 13 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/rebelion_rock_numero_6_1988 Anonymous. “El Desopilante Café Einstein.” Cerdos y Peces #1 (August 1983): 13. Accessed 8 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/cerdos_y_peces_n_1 Anonymous. “¿Punx?.” La Contracultura #2 (December 1986): 10. Accessed 23 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/contracultura.

Basta! #1 (April 1988). Accessed 13 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/revistabasta Basta! #2 (198?). Accessed 13 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/revistabasta2 Briggs, Justin and Cissie Scurlock, eds. Maximum Rocknroll #301 (June 2008).

Cerdos y Peces #1 (August 1983). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/cerdos_y_peces_n_1 Charlo, ed. 74MTS #1 (198?). Accessed 13 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/74mts Chary, ed. MOCO Punkzine #2 (1987). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/punk Chary, ed. MOCO Punkzine #5 (1987). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://www.mediafire.com/?enowjnx2wzz Chary, ed. MOCO Punkzine #7 (January 1987). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/moco_numero_7_1987 Dance, Marcelo. “Café Einstein.” Verduro Kosida, 11 June 2009. Accessed 20 February 2013. http://verdurokosida.blogspot.com/2009/06/cafe-einstein.html.

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Dekadencia Humana. Argentina: Punk de los 80 (2010). Accessed 23 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/mihistoriasobreelanarcopunkenargentina Dekadencia Humana. The Rise of Punk in Argentine: A Personal Account (2010). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://www.issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/the_rise_of_punk_in_argentine La Contracultura #2 (December 1986). Accessed 23 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/contracultura La Furia #3 (December 1986/February 1987). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/la_furia_punkzine Los Violadores. “Ser Punk.” Translated by Federico Gómez Levitanas. Cerdos y Peces #3 (October 1983): 16. Accessed 16 March 2013. http://shit-fi.com/fromthearchive/LosVioladores.

Pietrafesa, Patricia, ed. Resistencia #1 (1984). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://www.issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/resistencia_numero_uno_1984.

Pietrafesa, Patricia, ed. Resistencia #8 (198?). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://www.issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/resistencia_8_part_1, http://www.issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/resistencia_8_part_2. ¿Quien Sirve a La Causa del Kaos? #1 (1985). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://www.mediafire.com/?rmj8wrd9eskacd6 ¿Quien Sirve a La Causa del Kaos? #2 (1987). Accessed 8 October 2012. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/quien_sirve_a_la_causa_del_caos_2_1987 Government Documents: Feinberg, Richard. U.S. Department of State. “President Videla: An Alternative View.” 19 November 1977. National Security Archive Online. “30th Anniversary of Argentine Coup” collection. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm.

Shlaudeman, Harry W. U.S. Department of State. “ARA Monthly Report (July).” 3 August 1976.

National Security Archive Online. “30th Anniversary of Argentine Coup” collection. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm.

United States Central Intelligence Agency. “Biographic Handbook: Chile.” November 1974.

National Security Archive Online. “Chile and the United States” collection. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm.

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U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research. “Argentina: Six Months of Military Government” Report No. 603, 30 September 1976. National Security Archive Online. “30th Anniversary of Argentine Coup” collection. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm.

U.S. Department of State. Letter from Tex to Michelle and Jim. 26 April 1978. National Security Archive Online. “30th Anniversary of Argentine Coup” collection. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm.

U.S. Department of State. “Videla’s Moderate Line Prevails.” 30 March 1976. National Security Archive Online. “30th Anniversary of Argentine Coup” collection. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm.

United States Institute of Peace. “Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation.” (February 1991): 160-161. Accessed 4 December 2012. http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-chile-90.

Interviews: Mongo. Interview with Dekadencia Humana. Argentina: Punk de los 80. 2010. 3. http://issuu.com/dekadenciahumana/docs/mihistoriasobreelanarcopunkenargentina.

Nuñez, Martín. “On Punk and Politics in Chile.” Interview with Robert Beshara. CIMMfest. 26 March 2012. http://cimmfest.org/on-punk-and-politics-in-chile/.

Sorrondeguy, Martín. Interview with Alan O’Connor. Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy. Toronto: Lexington Books, 2008. 93-117.

Trafa, Pil. Interview with Lucho. Maximum Rocknroll. June 2008, #301. 64-65.

Trafa, Pil. Interview with Ignacio Brown. DEAF SPARROW Zine. 2010. http://www.deafsparrow.com/Los-Violadores-Retrointerview.htm.

Albums: Alerta Roja. Derrumbando la Casa Rosada. 1983.

Fiskales Ad-Hok. Mataratas. 1987.

Los KK. KK Urbana. 1989.

Los Violadores. Los Violadores. 1983.

Various Artists. Invasión 88. Radio Tripoli, D-1001, 1988.

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Miscellaneous Internet Sources: “Melodias Subteránneas.” Foro Santiago Hardcore. http://santiagohc.fr.yuku.com/topic/13681.

Montolivo, Marcelo. Profile on LinkedIn. Accessed 17 March 2013. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marcelo-montolivo/10/475/84.

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Anderson, Leslie F. “Of Wild and Cultivated Politics: Conflict and Democracy in Argentina.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 16.1 (2002): 99-132.

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Barros, Robert. “Personalization and Institutional Constraints: Pinochet, the Military Junta, and the 1980 Constitution.” Latin American Politics and Society 43.1 (2001): 5-28. Accessed 30 September 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177011.

Berenguer, Jordi. “Punk en Chile: existe y resiste.” El Ciudadano, 14 February 2009. Accessed 10 March 2013. http://www.elciudadano.cl/2009/02/14/6010/punk-en-chile-existe-y-resiste/.

Cavanna, Esteban. El Nacimiento del Punk en la Argentina y la Historia de Los Violadores.

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Constable, Pamela and Arturo Valenzuela. A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet. London: Norton, 1991.

Crassweller, Robert D. Perón and the Enigmas of Argentina. New York: WW Norton & Company, 1996.

“Dadá.” Archivo Punk. Last modified October 2011. Accessed 17 March 2013. http://archivopunk.cl/sitio/2011/10/dada/.

Duncombe, Stephen and Maxwell Tremblay, eds. White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race. New York: Verso, 2011.

Dunn, Kevin C. “Never Mind the Bollocks: the Punk Rock Politics of Global Communication.”

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Federico. “Todos Tus Muertos.” Kill From the Heart. Accessed 15 October 2012. http://www.killfromtheheart.com/bands.php?id=43.

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Flores, Daniel, ed. Derrumbando la Casa Rosada: mitos y leyendas de los primeros punks en Argentina (1978-1988). Buenos Aires: Piloto de Tormenta, 2011.

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Franco, Adriana. “La Larga Noche de Todos Estos Años.” In Derrumbando la Casa Rosada: mitos y leyendas de los primeros punks en Argentina (1978-1988), edited by Daniel Flores, 19-37. Buenos Aires: Piloto de Tormenta, 2011.

Furness, Zack. Punkademics: the Basement Show in the Ivory Tower. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions, 2012.

Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.

Translated by Cedric Belfrage. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973.

Gómez Levitanas, Federico. “When Punk Came out to Confront the Idiots in Power.” Shit-Fi, Accessed 16 March 2013. http://shit-fi.com/articles/LosVioladores.

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Malditos: La Historia de los Fiskales Ad-Hok. Directed by Pablo Insunza. 2004. Santiago, Chile: Puntociego Comunicaciones, 2004. DVD. Malott, Curry and Milagros Peña. Punk Rockers’ Revolution: A Pedagogy of Race, Class, and Gender. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2004.

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Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.

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Pacini Hernandez, Deborah, Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste, and Eric Zolov, eds. Rockin’ Las Américas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

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Pino-Ojeda, Walescka. “A Detour to the Past: Memory and Mourning in Chilean Post Authoritarian Rock.” In Rockin’ Las Américas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America, edited by Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste, and Eric Zolov, 290-311. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

Ponce, David. “Pinochet Boys: la historia desde dentro.” El Ciudadano, 13 August 2010.

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Prashad, Vijay. The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. New York: The New Press, 2007.

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Semán, Pablo, Pablo Vila, and Cecilia Benedetti. “Neoliberalism and Rock in the Popular Sectors of Contemporary Argentina.” In Rockin’ Las Américas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America, edited by Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste, and Eric Zolov, 261-289. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

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Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

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