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

Finally! With this pathbreaking volume, the vitality and iconoclastic spirit of Latin American metal studies scholarship becomes accessible to English readers. Heavy metal now belongs to the whole of humanity, but its intense, community-affirming roar has special significance in the Latin American region as a rallying cry for anti-colonial resistance and self-assertion in the context of oppression, injustice, and war. This collection of insightful essays on metal culture in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and the Latin American diaspora deserves mandatory reading status for metal scholars, Latin America specialists, and cultural theorists of all persuasions.

• SECTION I: UNDERSTANDING METAL MUSIC IN LATIN AMERICA 5Chapter 1 Conceptualizing the Distorted South: How to Understand Metal Music and Its Scholarship in Latin AmericaNelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-SegarraSECTION II: A SOUNDTRACK FOR A VIOLENT CONTEXT 37Chapter 2 Decomposición Cerebral: The Salvadoran Civil War and the Birth of Salvadoran Brutal Death MetalChristian M. PackChapter 3 Dictatorship and Metal in Chile: A Causal Relationship?Maximiliano Sánchez MondacaChapter 4 The Role of Death Metal in the Colombian Armed Conflict: The Case of the Band MasacrePedro Manuel Lagos ChacónChapter 5 Sounds of Exclusion and Seclusion: Peruvian Metal as a Model for Cultural Self-SegregationJosé Ignacio López Ramírez GastónSECTION III: DECOLONIZING LOCAL HISTORIES THROUGH MUSIC 131Chapter 6 The Metal Scene in Havana, Cuba: An Assessment of Its Cultural Development from 2007 to 2017Miriela Fernández LozanoChapter 7 In the Shadow of the Dictatorship: A Historical A