‘A fascist tried to electrocute us on stage’: the musicians who took on the Chilean junta

Under Pinochet, artistic expression in Chile was its own form of resistance. Fifty years on from the coup, performers are keeping the flame of protest alightBy the time Los Pinochet Boys formed in Santiago, Chile, in 1984, its teenage members had already spent a decade living under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. You’d hear of their gigs only through word of mouth, while the few flyers that circulated held just the bare details of the event; their name alone meant they were under constant threat.“Those were extremely dark times,” says Daniel Puente Encina, the band’s bassist and vocalist. “The fear of being detained or tortured to death was always present.”