The Research Seminar in Latin American Studies is pleased to present:
Desborde subterráneo: Punk en Lima 1983-1992
Book launch and panel discussion
March 1, 2017, 3:00-4:30pm
Research Institute, 1st Floor, Liu Institute for Global Issues
With Jon Beasley-Murray (FHIS), Alejandra Bronfman (History), Gastón Gordillo (Anthropology), and the author, Fabiola Bazo (SFU and Independent Scholar).
Desborde subterráneo is a collection of fourteen essays and chronicles about the rise of a punk scene in Lima, Peru, in the difficult 1980s. It tells the story of what was a countercultural mood, more than a movement, that was filled with attitude and desperately individualistic, and that sought to subvert a conservative society through punk rock and graphic art depicted in fanzines, posters and concert installations.
Punks in Lima were better known as “subtes.” They were mostly young men who had grown up during the dictatorship of the revolutionary government of the armed forces and reached adulthood around the time that Peru returned to democracy in 1980. The political and socio-economic context of Peru in the 1980s was one of “no future.” This context both fed the nihilist spirit of the “subtes,” and also led to divisions within the scene. By the end of the decade, the punk counterculture reproduced the social and class polarization of Lima and imploded. Desborde subterráneo recovers stories that have been preserved orally for thirty years, and its research is based primarily on primary sources: direct testimonies, fanzines, as well as mainstream media publications of that period.
Fabiola Bazo is an Adjunct Professor of Latin American Studies at Simon Fraser University. She is also editor of webzine Subte Rock where she has published her research on underground rock.