Latino punk is punk music created by Latino people in Latin America and the United States. The angst and protest qualities of punk music and style have had a strong appeal to Latino youth in the U.S., and to the people in Latin America. It is impossible to pinpoint the exact location or moment when Latinos began engaging in the punk subculture. However, Latin American rock began showing aspects of punk music during the mid-1960s with the Peruvian band Los Saicos; this band reflected many aspects of other proto-punk bands such as the Yardbirds. The Saicos were predecessors to some of the most influential proto-punk bands in the U.S., such as New York Dolls, MC5, and The Stooges[1]
Punk music began engaging a wider variety of artists and audience in the late 1970s and 1980s, either in Latin America or in the U.S. By the mid-1970s, the aesthetics promoted by glam rock in the United Kingdom had created a social gap between the audience and the artist. The punk scene that began to sprout during that era shared more commonalities with the youth audience, while still retaining some attributes from glam rock.
Punk music presented itself as the voice for white teenage angst, without the arrogance and verbosity of glam rock. The punk genre rooted itself in a music and style that created by the working class without the intellectual posturing of its previous genres. It was a genre created by and for the white working class in the United Kingdom. During the late 1970s, punk's social basis for creating commonalities with its fans, and its integration of style and instruments from reggae allowed for punk bands of different ethnicities to integrate themselves into the social scene in the United Kingdom.[2]