Abstract
<jats:p>The article uses the examples of music and murals to exam-ine how cultural works are employed within the context of Latin American authoritarian regimes to challenge societal power hierarchies and hegemony. It explores the functions these works perform and the meanings they convey. Protest art from the second half of the 20th century reflected Latin America's main problems: poverty, inequality, limited access to land, political violence, repression, and war. Analyzing music and murals as forms of protest expands our under-standing of the mechanisms of anti-authoritarian mobiliza-tion, making this topic especially relevant. This research is based on Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony, James Scott's theory of everyday resistance, and a construc-tivist understanding of the enemy image. The study aimed to identify how music and murals served as counter-hegemonic languages that formed the image of the enemy in Latin Ameri-ca during the second half of the 20th century. The author concludes that music and murals performed similar political functions and used similar strategies to portray the enemy. They employed the binary dichotomy of "us versus them," contrasting "the people" against impersonal "anti-popular forces." The enemy was metaphorically encoded or repre-sented as an immoral force and absolute evil, or represented through the consequences of his actions. These strategies emerged in response to conditions of repression and censorship that limited political expression. These strategies were collectively aimed at delegitimizing military dictatorships and building solidarity and faith in victory. Music and murals also created a collective memory that perpetuated the victims of political repression.</jats:p>