Colombia is reckoning with a dark chapter of its conflict: how paramilitary groups and police systematically persecuted, displaced, and killed young metal music fans in the 1990s and early 2000s, branding them "satanists" as part of so-called "social cleansing" campaigns.
The persecution, documented by Infobae and Colombia's National Center for Historical Memory, targeted metalheads—young people whose only "crime" was wearing black clothing, growing long hair, and listening to heavy metal music. In cities like Santa Marta, the Bloque Resistencia Tayrona of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) worked alongside the feared F2 police unit to eliminate what they saw as threats to traditional values.
"One policeman told me to my face: 'Hey, asshole, if you think you're going to come with your shitty little music to Santa Marta you're wrong, this place is not for you, get out of here, you fucking devil worshipper,'" one survivor recounted. Young metal fans learned to survive by cutting their hair, avoiding black clothes, observing curfews, and staying home—or fleeing entirely.
The violence extended beyond Santa Marta. According to the Prosecutor General's report "Tribes of the Devil," paramilitaries in Nariño, Antioquia, and Boyacá threatened and killed metalheads across multiple departments. In Boyacá, a group called "MOLISS" (Movement for the Cleansing of Satanic Sects) specifically hunted metal fans. In February 2026, a former paramilitary received a 27-year sentence for these crimes.
The persecution flourished amid Colombia's "Satanic Panic"—a moral panic fueled by religious groups, conservative politicians, and propaganda from the United States claiming rock music contained subliminal satanic messages. When serial killer Luis Garavito murdered hundreds of children in the 1990s, authorities initially blamed "satanic sects" rather than investigating properly, intensifying stigmatization of metalheads.
In Colombia, as across post-conflict societies, peace is not an event but a process—requiring patience, investment, and political will. The country's 2016 peace agreement with FARC ended five decades of guerrilla conflict, but confronting the full scope of paramilitary violence—including cultural persecution—remains incomplete. The National Center for Historical Memory's 2022 "Sounds with Memory" project represents a crucial step in documenting these silenced stories.
"When power needs an enemy, it always finds a 'devil' to point at," one researcher noted. For Colombia's metalheads, their visibility—their refusal to conform—made them targets in a conflict that tolerated no difference from imposed traditional norms. Today, survivors can wear their band shirts and leather jackets with more freedom, but the wound remains open, a reminder that moral panics carry deadly consequences when combined with armed power.
