The Mess is a column from journalist Richard Villegas, who has been reporting on new, exciting sounds flourishing in the Latin American underground for nearly a decade. As the host of the Songmess Podcast, his travels have intersected with fresh sounds, scene legends, ancestral traditions, and the socio-political contexts that influence your favorite artists. The Mess is about new trends and problematic faves whilst asking hard questions and shaking the table.
We’re going there. We’re talking about it. Even if things get a little messy.
Rock n’ roll is on a generational comeback. Since transitioning from the rock en español boom of the ‘80s and ‘90s into our age of reggaeton and corridos hegemony, guitar music has endured as a nostalgic totem of countercultural icons and a rite of passage for the indie at heart. But following the pandemic, kids around the world rediscovered the comfort of forming a band, staving off apocalyptic isolation with collective noise, which coalesced into exciting new scenes in Chile, Argentina, Central America, and Spain. Just like our political spectrum and mental health, rock, too, emerged irrevocably changed, no longer an impenetrable boy’s club but the barometer for a changing music industry where women and LGBTQ+ people would rather flip the table than fight over scraps. These guitar heroines represent the vanguard of rock’s evolution and survival, leading some of the freshest screamers on the continent and working tirelessly to steer the institutional status quo towards a more equitable landscape.
“On one hand, the music industry is just that, an industry, so it coexists within a capitalist world that’s sexist, classist, and racist,” says Barbi Recanati, whose ferocious live performances and moody post-punk have propelled her to the forefront of Argentina’s rock scene. She’s a bit of an authority on the matter, penning the book Mostras del Rock, which highlights the genre’s unsung female icons, including Ma Rainey and Rosetta Tharpe, also lending its name to her show on the national radio institution Futuröck FM. “The industry’s mainstream exploits what happens in the independent scene,” she adds, “so it’s logical and even predictable that the most interesting and groundbreaking artists right now are women.”
“I like designing a 360-degree fantasy,” muses La Piba Berreta, an art-punk fairy known for amplifying heart-pounding performances with immersive staging and lights. I caught one of her Buenos Aires shows in 2024 and was blown away by the euphoric crowd, barely-there costumes for her entire band, and kinetic set pieces that assembled into a giant spider. “My shows follow a narrative, which is a powerful tool to make your body inextricable from the music,” she adds. “Sitting with the band creating costumes is a kind of fun that transports you back to childhood innocence, and we’re living through such horrible social realities that the stage has become a life-saving place of play and joy.”
At this point in history, sharing tales of discrimination and a lack of representation should be redundant. But just last year, Chile’s feminist music festival and research platform Ruidosa released a study that “examined an estimated 400 festival lineups across seven countries in Latin America and U.S.-based Latine events, showing that only one in five artists at major festival stages were women and that less than one percent were headliners. It also found that only 20 percent of the festivals’ performances featured women solo acts or all-women bands.” These numbers are a regression from the past decade, where strides in progressive legislation and inclusive language have been rolled back in a far-right pendulum swing that once again deems women and LGBTQ+ acts as risky bookings.
“It’s the death knell of pluralism we thought would come with #MeToo and never arrived,” says Chilean shoegaze queen Chini.png, whose latest album Vía Lo Orozco unpacks the precariousness of independent artistry in the wake of streaming and post-pandemic venue decimation. “From my generation, the men who were cancelled started playing and touring again as if nothing happened, and the women who were victims of sexual and professional harassment were labeled ‘difficult’ and excluded from the circuit.” In her email to Remezcla, Chini.png also notes how the market prioritizes soloists as easier to mold and sell, countering this ingrained loneliness with shout-outs to colleagues in metal (Crisálida, Egregor), psych (Paskurana, Gomitas Ácidas), and the organizational work of UDARA and Femfest.
Do not mistake these accounts for some trite war of the sexes, but rather of archaic paradigms changing after years of hard work. In 2016, Colombia’s massive public outing, Rock al Parque, introduced the “Girl Power” stage to mixed reviews, praised for its call to action but criticized for relegating most diverse talent to a single, easy-to-miss space. Over time, these acts have been better integrated into the legacy festival’s programming, with statistical data from Bogotá’s government reporting higher satisfaction rates from audiences and women’s growing presence on the bill. Argentina took matters one step further when, in 2019, landmark legislation was passed requiring a minimum 30 percent female presence on all live music lineups of three or more acts.
“[Working in public office] allowed me to confront everything I’d criticized for so long: doors that only opened for friends, favoritism among men, and a lack of democratic access to funding,” remembers Paula Rivera, who championed a gender-inclusive agenda as former Vice-President of Argentina’s INAMU (Instituto Nacional de la Música). Today, she co-owns and operates the Buenos Aires venue La Casa de Lolita alongside the writer Lolita Campos, curating a mix of live music, readings, and industry talks to empower the local arts community. Her work at INAMU, in tandem with the country’s mighty feminist movement, transformed clandestine demands into codified inclusivity. “[La Ley de Cupo] was a watershed moment that put the conversation on the table, on television, on radio, in people’s homes, among bookers, in venues, and among male musicians. There was pushback at first, but now it’s normal practice,” she says.
“We made a list of all the things we hated from past experiences at festivals and bazaars to improve how we approach event production,” reflects Mexican rock powerhouse Elis Paprika, whose organization Now Girls Rule has poured vital resources and training back into the community for over a decade. The brand is a DIY hydra for networking, label services, artist management, festival booking, and, most notably, La Marketa, a quarterly fair that brings women musicians and illustrators together to sell merch and connect directly with fans. “La Marketa draws upwards of 5,000 daily attendees and every artist keeps 100 percent of their sales,” she boasts with pride.
For this piece, women from a multitude of territories shared their experiences of art and hustle, pushing their sound in narrow scenes and tapping solidarity networks for support. In the Dominican Republic, folky singer-songwriter turned grunge valkyrie Gaby de los Santos acknowledges that, “Yes, spaces here are limited and dominated by men, but, thankfully, the vast majority have been respectful and encouraging, never doubting my abilities to execute my vision.” In Uruguay, the gravelly-voiced blues singer and guitarist Flor Sakeo remembered past hostilities, and, while undeterred, she adds that, “It’s important to keep talking about it. With age, you start to understand the violence you endured without even realizing it, and then you speak with other pibas and find comfort in each other.”
In Buenos Aires, recent blistering shows from Lucy Patané, Dum Chica, and Buenos Vampiros have made abundantly clear that women are not rock’s future, but rather its riveting present. Hard rock power trio Eruca Sativa just wrapped three opening gigs for AC/DC at the gargantuan River Plate Stadium, while headbanging banshee Marilina Bertoldi returned triumphant from her first U.S. tour. And watch out, because screamo queen Marina Fages just unveiled an explosive new album titled Atalaya Avalancha. But if you think the crucial role of rockeras stops at the stage, think again.
“The community of women and queer people in music has become larger and stronger, so now it’s easier to survive in the independent world,” says Barbi Recanati, considering the broader implications of this new era. “The audience has expanded, and now spaces are run by people from our community—sound engineers, lighting techs, DJs, curators. All of them make art a safer space, motivating even more young women to exist and participate with the rest of us. I think the future of art is optimistic and feminist; the industry’s, not so much.”