When Brazil hosted the original Rock In Rio in 1985 it solidified Latin America's ties with heavy metal as a genre, cementing the region as a new destination for bands looking to adoring crowds away from the usual routes of Europe and the US. But while the region has boasted a bubbling undercurrent of underground scenes (from black and death metal to thrash, heavy metal and beyond) in the near-four decades since, very few bands from Latin America have become household names in metal, with Sepultura seemingly the only band to threaten to genuinely cross over into the mainstream pantheon.Luckily, filmmaker (and Professor at Florida International University) Nelson Varas-Díaz has been working tirelessly to shine a light on metal emergent scenes in the global south. Across the documentaries The Metal Islands, Songs Of Injustice and Acts Of Resistance (all of which are currently available for free on YouTube), Diaz has explored not just the stories of the bands that emerge but how heavy metal is impacting and benefitting communities in countries like Cuba, Chile, Columbia and Argentina (amongst others) and intersecting with local culture.