Grandes éxitos

History

Formation and early years (1979–1985)

In March 1979, Jorge González and Miguel Tapia, both fourteen years old, and Claudio Narea, thirteen, met during their first year at Liceo 6 (later renamed Liceo Andrés Bello) in the San Miguel district of Santiago. González and Narea discovered a shared enthusiasm for Kiss, the affinity that first drew them together. In 1980, together with brothers Álvaro and Rodrigo Beltrán, they formed "Los Pseudopillos" (the Pseudo-Thieves), a vocal quartet that recorded more than a hundred humorous a cappella songs using household objects as percussion; the name came from a biology-class mention of the word pseudopod.

In parallel, González and Tapia pursued a more ambitious project, imagining themselves as Chile's answer to John Lennon and Paul McCartney and mistakenly believing the Lennon–McCartney duo had divided songwriting labor cleanly between lyrics and music; Tapia initially wrote lyrics while González composed on piano or guitar, before González took over the words as well. Because Tapia referred to the Beatles as "Los Escarabajos" ("The Beetles"), Narea nicknamed the pair "Los Vinchukas," after the vinchuca insect discussed in the same biology class. González and Tapia soon invited Narea to join, and Álvaro Beltrán joined shortly afterward; the group also acquired a second-hand drum kit that had previously belonged to a cumbia band. The quartet debuted at their high school on 14 August 1982, appearing two months later at the Liceo No. 1 Javiera Carrera, an all-girls school. Days after graduating from high school, a dispute over money to buy a bass-drum pedal split both Los Vinchukas and Los Pseudopillos.

Three months later Narea reconciled with González and Tapia, while Álvaro Beltrán stayed away. Now a trio determined to pursue music professionally, they sought a more serious name, first choosing "Los Criminales" ("The Criminals") before Tapia proposed "Los Prisioneros" — a name he felt better reflected their reality under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship; Tapia would later formally register the band name as his own property with Chile's Ministry of Economy in December 1986. The band debuted under the new name on 1 July 1983 at the Festival de la Canción del Colegio Miguel León Prado.

That year González enrolled at the University of Chile School of Arts to study music, meeting future Aparato Raro member Igor Rodríguez, future Banda 69 member Robert Rodríguez, and Carlos Fonseca, with whom he quickly formed a close friendship; Fonseca invited González to his family's record store, Discos Fusión. González soon left the university to work at the shop, and Fonseca also abandoned his studies to focus on the store and his radio program, Fusión Contemporánea, on Radio Beethoven, where he planned a year-end special showcasing new Chilean artists. González brought Fonseca a demo he had recorded at home on a cassette radio, along with a live recording, and Fonseca — astonished by what he heard — asked to re-record the songs for the broadcast. When Fonseca finally met the full band and suggested replacing Narea, whom he considered a weak guitarist, González and Tapia refused, telling him that "Los Prisioneros were the three of them together."

Commercial breakthrough and censorship (1986–1988)

Released on 15 September 1986 under state of siege conditions imposed after an assassination attempt against Pinochet, the band's second album, Pateando piedras, embraced a far more synthetic, elaborate sound built on keyboards, synthesizers, sequencers, samplers and electric drums. Narea later wrote that seven of the tracks had no bass guitar, only keyboard bass, that all drums were programmed, and that three tracks had no guitar at all; the shift produced the first serious musical friction with González, and Narea, uncomfortable with the new working method, at times left sessions early and did not participate fully in every track.

Songs from the album, including "Muevan las industrias" (on unemployment), "¿Por qué no se van?" (aimed at Chile's cultural elite) and "El baile de los que sobran" (on inequality in education), became touchstones of 1980s Chilean pop music and resonated across Latin America. Author Fabio Salas Zúñiga wrote that Pateando piedras "establishes an argument about youth marginalized by the dictatorship's economic policy and a brilliant class vindication." The album sold 5,000 copies in its first ten days — a first for a young Chilean band — and reached 20,000 copies sold with a second platinum certification within two months and two days, a feat unmatched by any Chilean artist since the Nueva Ola era. The band officially launched the record with two shows at Estadio Chile before more than 11,000 fans, filling the venue on consecutive nights for the first time in its history.

Despite this success, the band was excluded from the February 1987 Viña del Mar International Song Festival despite specialized outlets naming it Chile's most popular group at the time; the bill instead featured Argentina's Soda Stereo, which — unlike Los Prisioneros — had full access to the media outlets that were still censoring the trio, feeding a public rivalry in which both bands mocked each other in interviews and concerts, with Los Prisioneros at one point declaring that "Soda Stereo is the rock that Pinochet loves." Two decades later, both bands' members admitted the feud had largely been driven by envy and mutual admiration.

The band toured Uruguay, Argentina and Peru in late 1986 and 1987. At Uruguay's Montevideo Rock festival, in November 1986, the group shared a bill with Soda Stereo, Fito Páez and Sumo, but its records went largely unnoticed there, and the band never returned. In Argentina, the band played the Chateau Rock festival in Córdoba on 28 March 1987 and the Estadio Obras Sanitarias in Buenos Aires on 4 April; according to Narea, the band was poorly received by Argentine audiences, while the local press asked only about Pinochet. Peru proved a very different story: three of the band's songs charted in the national top ten, with "El baile de los que sobran" holding the top spot for more than six weeks, and in September 1987 the band drew 14,000 fans to Lima's Plaza de toros de Acho bullring. The band achieved comparable success in Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia during the same period.

Corazones and Narea's departure (1989–1992)

In February 1989, Narea discovered that his wife, Claudia Carvajal, had been having an affair with González; he stayed with the band, in his own account, largely because it was his only source of income and the group was about to begin a third Colombian tour, but the situation grew steadily more strained. González later said much of the material for the band's fourth album was drawn directly from this period, and he credited some of the songs to his first experience with ecstasy in 1988. In August 1989, Narea performed live with the band for the final time until the 2001 reunion, at a private event for EMI Odeón executives.

That October, financing arranged through EMI's international contacts secured US$70,000 to record the band's fourth album in Los Angeles — its first sessions outside Chile — with Argentine producer Gustavo Santaolalla rather than González at the helm for the first time. Neither Narea nor Tapia took part in the sessions — the former estranged from the direction the album was taking, the latter unable to travel because of a visa problem — and three songs the guitarist and drummer had composed together, expecting to repeat their collaborative role from La cultura de la basura, were left off the final track list, including an early version of "We are sudamerican rockers." Narea would later say: "The law said Jorge González was the composer of the group."

In January 1990, Narea attended the sole rehearsal for what would become Corazones and privately decided to leave the band, telling no one until informing Tapia a month later. Publicly he attributed his exit to "artistic differences," although speculation about the affair persisted; two years later he said bluntly that "the story doesn't have a woman's name, but that of a dangerous madman, who is Jorge." In his 2014 memoir, Los Prisioneros: Biografía de una amistad, Narea went further, writing that he left because González had become obsessed with him.

Released on 20 May 1990 as a duo effort by González and Tapia, Corazones marked a decisive stylistic break, built around a lush synth-pop sound and introspective, romantically themed lyrics that nonetheless retained an undercurrent of social critique, particularly around machismo and classism. Recorded, mixed and mastered at Entourage and Mad Dog studios in Los Angeles, it became the band's first project made entirely outside Chile and, within about a month of a slow initial reception on radio, the best-selling album in Chile that year, going quadruple platinum with roughly 180,000 copies sold, and earning a U.S. release through Capitol Records. Its lead single, "Tren al Sur," earned a nomination for Best Latin Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990 and would later be named one of the 50 greatest Latin pop songs of all time by Rolling Stone, and one of the 25 masterpieces of Spanish-language rock by Billboard. Journalist Iván Valenzuela, among the first to review the record favorably, wrote in Wikén that he hoped it would "become, over the years... a key piece of Chilean pop music."

Solo careers and hiatus (1992–2001)

During the 1990s each member pursued separate projects. With Profetas y Frenéticos, Narea released two albums, Profetas y Frenéticos (1991) and Nuevo orden (1992); neither was a commercial success, though the band is now considered one of the more influential Chilean acts of the decade. Narea released his solo debut, Claudio Narea, in 2000, to warm reviews but a lukewarm public response. Tapia and Aguayo formed the techno-pop duo Jardín Secreto, releasing two albums — Jardín Secreto (1993) and El sonido de existir (1997), the latter featuring contributions from González — that went largely unnoticed.

González's own solo debut, Jorge González (1993), underperformed commercially in Chile but scored a major hit with "Fe" in Mexico, to the point that the reunited band later felt obliged to perform the song live upon returning to the country, and it remained in the setlist through 2004. Narea claimed that in 1997 he and Tapia had royalties from Los Prisioneros record sales withheld to help cover the debt from González's costly solo album, despite having no involvement in it and the band not existing at the time. Subsequent González solo releases, including El futuro se fue (1994), the experimental technocumbia project Gonzalo Martínez y sus congas pensantes (1997) — savaged by Chilean critics but praised in Europe's underground scene — and Mi destino (1999), proved commercially and critically divisive.

A first attempt to reunite the original trio came in 1994, when businessman Luis Venegas offered each member 10 million pesos as an advance for a concert; Narea and Tapia discussed the offer together and were willing, but González, focused on his solo career, declined to respond, and later personally rejected the proposal when Narea visited him. A more concrete rapprochement occurred at the end of 1995, when Fonseca contacted González about collaborating on a compilation album, and González himself suggested including Narea. On 12 July 1996, EMI released the double-CD compilation Ni por la razón, ni por la fuerza — an ironic play on the Chilean national motto "By reason or by force" — with cover art depicting the band members dressed and renamed as founding fathers of Chile; the set included rare mixes, live cuts, and material recorded under the aliases Los Apestosos and Gus Gusano y sus Necrofílicos Hemofílicos. It sold 100,000 double-disc copies and received double-platinum certification within three weeks — more than any other Chilean band recorded during that decade.

At the end of 1996, the three original members played together privately in a rehearsal space owned by Narea, with journalist Marisol García as the sole witness; none of the three discussed the reunion with the press. In 1998, González formed a trio called Los Dioses with Tapia and Venezuelan singer Argenis Brito, touring Chile and Peru under the billing "Lo mejor de Los Prisioneros" and performing the band's classics; González's worsening drug addiction led him to collapse on stage and leave the group in March 1999 without an album ever being released, and Tapia and Brito continued briefly as a duo, Razón Humanitaria, before disbanding. In 2000, González entered a detoxification clinic in Havana, Cuba, to treat his addiction. That October, Warner Music released the tribute album Tributo a Los Prisioneros, featuring eighteen Chilean acts including Glup!, Lucybell, Los Tetas and La Ley, with González contributing backing vocals; a month later, EMI Odeón released the live compilation El caset pirata, drawn from recordings made between 1986 and 1992, which sold 20,000 copies.

Reunion (2001–2003)

On 5 September 2001, the original trio announced its return after twelve years with a re-recorded single, "Las sierras eléctricas," though the song received limited radio play. The band made its first public appearance in years at the Feria del Disco in October, announcing a concert at Estadio Nacional for 1 December that drew crowds to Paseo Ahumada; a television appearance on De pe a pa drew a 32-point rating share, and combined public interest sold out the venue so quickly that a second date, 30 November, was added.

More than 140,000 people ultimately attended across the two nights, making Los Prisioneros the first act to fill the Estadio Nacional twice consecutively without promotional giveaways. During the first show, González referenced the stadium's history as a detention center following the 1973 coup, criticized politician Joaquín Lavín, and attacked the United States for its complicity in the coup and its perceived hypocrisy in declaring a "war on terror." More than 300 accredited media outlets, including the BBC, CNN, MTV, Telemundo, the Chicago Tribune, Billboard and Rolling Stone, covered the shows, with additional outlets sending correspondents from Venezuela and Peru.

On 18 February 2002 the band signed a contract with Warner Music for a live album and DVD. A press conference later that month to announce the album and a national tour instead focused on González's arrest days earlier for possession of cocaine; González defended music piracy on the grounds that records were too expensive, while Narea disagreed, calling piracy "organized mafia."

The live double album Estadio Nacional (using the second night's recording, which excluded the criticism of Lavín) went double platinum with 30,000 copies sold in five days, topping Chilean sales charts. The reunion tour, which began in Osorno in March 2002 — drawing 61,000 people in southern Chile alone — closed in Viña del Mar that May, and the band went on to tour Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Spain, the United States and Mexico through the following year. A companion double-DVD, Lo estamos pasando muy bien, released in September 2002 and directed by journalist Carmen Luz Parot, sold 9,000 copies in twenty days and went on to become, briefly, the best-selling music DVD in Chilean history, before being surpassed the following year by a release tied to the children's program 31 minutos.

On 30 November 2002, Los Prisioneros returned to Estadio Nacional to close that year's Teletón telethon; before the first song, González remarked ironically on how corporate "avarice" and "good business sense" — raising prices, paying less tax, advertising — could nonetheless be redirected into helping the event's beneficiaries, then altered the lyrics of "Quieren dinero" to reference Lavín, politician Hernán Büchi, businessmen Andrónico Luksic and Anacleto Angelini, and the Pinocheques scandal. In February 2003, after performing in Peru, González gave an interview to the newspaper Correo in which he called Chileans "shit," "lazy and thieves," and said he was sometimes ashamed to be Chilean; he had also told a Chilean press conference before the show that Chileans were willing to use their weapons against Peru and Bolivia. The remarks drew a formal accusation in the Chamber of Deputies of Chile of violating the State Security Law and widespread public anger, and Las Últimas Noticias labeled González "anti-patriotic." González publicly apologized "to 99% of Chileans" at a Warner Music press conference on 6 February 2003, clarifying that his comments had been aimed at large businesses that had enriched themselves during the dictatorship.

Second breakup (2003–2006)

Los Tres frontman Álvaro Henríquez joined the band as guitarist for a covers album, En las raras tocatas nuevas de la Rock & Pop, recorded amid the fallout from the press conference and including versions of songs by the Rokes, the Beatles and Gilbert O'Sullivan alongside two re-recorded Los Prisioneros tracks. Poor production quality and the awkward "Prisionellis" tag hampered a co-headlining tour with Café Tacuba, which drew fewer than 5,000 people per show and total album sales below 1,000 copies. Henríquez performed with the band for the last time on 14 December 2003 in Curicó, and the band's website confirmed he was no longer a guest member in early 2004.

Sergio "Coti" Badilla, previously the band's live sound technician, was introduced as a full member on 30 January 2004; González moved to lead guitar as in the Corazones era, with Badilla on second guitar and programmed bass parts. Gonzalo Yáñez, initially a guest, was confirmed as a full member on 9 June 2004 in Talca. This lineup recorded the band's sixth and final studio album, Manzana, released in 2004 with guest contributions from Henríquez and Beto Cuevas; critic Marisol García wrote that the record recovered the "rock force" neglected on the 2003 self-titled album, its electric guitars used "without timidity." The album included "Azota," a Spanish-language version of Devo's "Whip It," and "Acomodado en el rock and roll," widely understood as a jab at Narea. Its lead single, "El muro," addressed U.S.–Mexico border tensions, while the record sold only around 9,000 copies domestically but found greater traction in Peru, Colombia and Mexico.

By late 2004, Yáñez left the band amicably, feeling he had never grown comfortable in the role of guitarist and wanting to focus on his solo career. Fonseca departed as manager in early 2005, saying he wished to prioritize his family, though he later admitted he had come to view the band as a "dead horse" after a 2005 dispute with González in Cali, Colombia, which González refused to acknowledge. Warner Music's contract with the band also expired around this time, removing all of the band's Warner-era albums from its active catalog.

On 9 April 2005, the band held a farewell concert at Estadio Santiago Bueras in Maipú, attended by only 8,000 people — half the venue's capacity — reflecting the band's diminished domestic profile even as González had already relocated permanently to Mexico City. By August, Tapia's inability to relocate to Mexico meant the band could not rehearse or write new material, and the members agreed to fulfill remaining tour commitments and disband on 1 March 2006. The band played its final concert in Chile at Coelemu on 10 February 2006, then performed one last time at the Aula Magna of the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas on 18 February 2006, where Tapia confirmed to a local newspaper that the group was disbanding. Reports described a tense final show, lasting barely an hour, in which González briefly confronted the crowd and left the stage, prompting jeers of "traitors," before his brother Marco convinced him to return and finish the set alone; González and Tapia parted on bad terms afterward, González returning to Mexico and Tapia to Chile.

After the breakup

Multiple offers to reunite the original trio followed the 2006 split, including for the 2012 Maquinaria Festival, all declined. In 2014, González rejected a Chilevisión proposal that would have reunited him only with Tapia for an Estadio Nacional concert. Tapia expressed repeated openness to reuniting, including a reported attempt to bring the band back together around the 2019 social unrest, which he said González supported but which one unnamed figure blocked; Narea denied knowledge of any such plan. During the 2019 protests, González, asked whether he would consider reuniting given the circumstances, replied: "Honestly, no. That's over. Better to leave it there. We need to look for the new Prisioneros." The closest the trio came to an on-stage reunion afterward was in 2017, at the inauguration of Santiago's Boulevard de la Música, when Narea and Tapia attended in person while González appeared only via a pre-recorded video.

Narea and Tapia began performing together again in January 2009 at La Cumbre del Rock Chileno II, and from late 2010 released material as the duo "Narea y Tapia," offering songs as free downloads that were downloaded more than 1.5 million times across more than twenty countries within two months. González, meanwhile, assembled backing bands to perform La voz de los '80 in full for its 26th anniversary in 2010, and repeated the exercise with Corazones in 2012 and 2014, accompanied on both occasions by Aguayo. In November 2015, Tapia joined González at the Nada es para siempre tribute concert at the Movistar Arena Santiago, marking González's first public reappearance since a serious health crisis earlier that year; the pair performed "El baile de los que sobran" together for the first time in nearly a decade.

In February 2015, González suffered a stroke — described medically as a subacute ischemic cerebellar infarction that had gone undetected for roughly ten days — while performing at a festival in Nacimiento, in southern Chile; he was hospitalized in critical condition, first in Hualpén and later transferred to Santiago for rehabilitation. A La Tercera report later found that González had in fact suffered a series of undetected minor strokes over the preceding seven months. MRI scans revealed damage to his cerebral frontal lobe affecting his speech, memory and reasoning; after initial distrust of conventional medicine, González worked with doctors to regain much of his ability to speak and sing. He gave what he described as his final live performance at La Cumbre del Rock Chileno in January 2017.

On 31 August 2011, EMI reissued the band's first four albums, billed as newly remastered; fans disputed the claim, alleging the masters were unchanged since a 1995 remastering, which González said he had not even been consulted about, though all four releases nonetheless entered Chile's ten best-selling albums that year. In 2012, EMI's catalog passed to Universal Music Group, though La voz de los '80 — distributed under a separate arrangement that lapsed that year — and the live album Estadio Nacional fell outside the transfer, leaving the debut album briefly out of print until it returned in 2014, for its thirtieth anniversary, on CD, cassette and vinyl and made its streaming debut.

Musical style and influences

Los Prisioneros described their own music as new wave, though González repeatedly insisted the band was fundamentally a pop rather than rock act. In a 1990s MTV interview, González went further, dismissing the word "rock" itself as "ridiculous" and describing bands such as the Doors and Led Zeppelin as "big businesses disguised as rebels," adding: "When we started, in [19]83, the word rock was already ridiculous. We've never defined ourselves as a rock band." In a 2011 interview, he said he believed the band had "definitely been a technopop band more than a rock band."

When the band members were in high school, they listened primarily to the Beatles, Kiss, Queen, Supertramp and the Bee Gees. Their sound, however, was decisively shaped by the British punk band the Clash, particularly the 1980 album Sandinista!, which Narea and González first heard on Radio Concierto in March 1981; the band was struck by the record's blend of punk, reggae, rap, jazz, disco and even waltz, delivered with a sense of humor unlike the more traditional rock they had grown up on. Narea later said the Clash's influence went beyond music: "Their songs showed a defined political stance, which made us aware of many things, and we decided that... if we made music, we could not stay silent in the face of what was happening." This influence, both musical and lyrical, is most audible on La voz de los '80 and La cultura de la basura, as well as in the imagery of the "We are sudamerican rockers" video, and led the band to further explore artists such as the Specials, the Stranglers, Bob Marley, the Cars, Adam and the Ants and Devo — while repeatedly denying any influence from the Police, a comparison drawn by several critics. The Chilean band Bambú credited Los Prisioneros's "No necesitamos banderas" as the first reggae song ever recorded in Chile.

By the mid-1980s, González and Tapia had immersed themselves in the technopop of Depeche Mode, Ultravox, Thomas Dolby and Heaven 17, alongside new wave acts such as the Cure and indie groups including the Smiths and Aztec Camera. For Corazones, González cited the influence of melodramatic Latin pop singers such as Salvatore Adamo, Sandro, Camilo Sesto, Julio Iglesias, Nino Bravo and Los Ángeles Negros, as well as contemporary electronic and pop artists including George Michael, Pet Shop Boys, Rick Astley, The Human League and acid house pioneers A Guy Called Gerald and The KLF. Eduardo "Coto" Ibeas, frontman of Chancho en Piedra, said it was "too risky and brave" for the band to have completely overhauled its sound between its first and second albums, moving from Clash-style guitars to synthesizers, "and yet still sound like themselves."

Lyrics and social legacy

Although González repeatedly rejected the label of a protest band — arguing that the group's lyrics reflected everyday frustrations rather than a partisan ideology, and that people criticized capitalism "not because they've read Marx, but simply because they don't have enough money to buy everything television tells them they need to be happy" — Los Prisioneros' songs became closely identified with opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship. Narea, in his 2009 memoir Mi vida como prisionero, wrote that although the band members had no direct family experience of political imprisonment and did not attend protests themselves, they came to detest the dictatorship as events such as the Caso Degollados unfolded around them, and concluded: "I believe we belong to that period whether we like it or not." Fonseca, for his part, maintained the band's original ambition was simply commercial success rather than protest, adding: "That's why Jorge gets uncomfortable when asked about this, because he never felt he was writing protest songs."

The song "¿Quién mató a Marilyn?," written by Tapia, satirized Chilean television's obsessive coverage of Marilyn Monroe's death as a way of avoiding coverage of human rights abuses under the dictatorship; a line referencing communists and Sandinistas was reportedly flagged by censors at the time. Live audiences responded to the song by chanting "los pacos" (a colloquial term for police), which on one occasion in Lota prompted police intervention to stop a concert; audiences likewise chanted "Pinochet" during performances of "¿Por qué no se van?", though that song was nominally directed at snobbish artists rather than the military.

"El baile de los que sobran" in particular has endured as an anthem of social protest well beyond its era, having been sung during Chile's 2011 student mobilizations and the 2019 estallido social, as well as during Colombia's 2018 and 2019–2021 national strikes, Peru's 2020 protests, and demonstrations in Argentina and Mexico. In 2016, Chilean deputy Gabriel Boric quoted lyrics from the song during a parliamentary debate over abortion decriminalization, while for the song's thirtieth anniversary the feminist performance collective LASTESIS reworked "Corazones rojos" with additional verses addressing gender-based violence. González has said on multiple occasions that he finds it saddening that "El baile de los que sobran" remains as relevant as when he wrote it. Songwriter Javiera Mena has described Corazones as a political record in its own right for the way it embedded social critique within seemingly personal, ironic lyrics, likening González's approach to that of the Pet Shop Boys.

Relationship with the press

González in particular maintained a famously poor relationship with right-leaning Chilean media throughout the band's history. In 2001 he explained: "Much of our relationship with the media has to do with the fact that all our growth has been between us and the public... [What authority do] the people at El Mercurio [and] Copesa [have to negotiate], who are interested in installing a far-right government so they can pay less taxes and have more money." In September 1987, when objects were thrown at the band during its performance at Lima's Plaza de Toros de Acho, the Chilean press focused its coverage on the incident rather than on the band's commercial success in Peru, with El Mercurio running the headline "Los Prisioneros Attacked in Peru." González said the band understood from that point on how the domestic press would frame their activities whenever they performed outside Chile.

Following Narea's dismissal, González accused him of aligning with right-wing media and speaking ill of the band both before and after his departures, calling him self-mythologizing as the band's "soul" while suggesting González and Tapia had "sold out"; Narea, in turn, denied trying to destroy the band and said right-wing outlets had in fact given Manzana considerable coverage. By the band's final years, the Chilean press largely ignored its 2004–2005 tours of the Americas or dismissed them as failures, reporting only on the disputed final Caracas show, which González contested in an interview with Rolling Stone.

Legacy

Los Prisioneros are widely credited with helping to break Chilean rock out of the cultural isolation imposed after the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, paving the way for bands such as Aparato Raro, Cinema, Upa!, Valija Diplomática, Aterrizaje Forzoso, Electrodomésticos, Banda 69 and Fulano. Between the band's initial breakup and its 2001 reunion, its records sold more than 700,000 copies, a figure exceeded in Chilean music history only by Los Ramblers' "El rock del Mundial"; during the reunion era the band surpassed 800,000 additional units sold and more than forty platinum certifications domestically, alongside roughly a million records sold abroad and 200,000 attendees at reunion-era shows in Chile alone. Three of the band's four original studio albums — La voz de los '80 (No. 3), Corazones (No. 9) and Pateando piedras (No. 15) — were included on the Chilean edition of Rolling Stone's list of the 50 best Chilean albums of all time. "We are sudamerican rockers" made history as the first music video broadcast by MTV Latin America upon its launch in October 1993.

Chilean radio host Sergio "Pirincho" Cárcamo said in 2006 that while Chile had historically produced musical "tribes" rather than unified movements, Los Prisioneros were among the rare acts to genuinely capture the feeling of their era, alongside Los Tres in the 1990s. Author Fabio Salas Zúñiga ranked the band alongside Los Jaivas as one of the few Chilean acts to compete on equal footing with foreign rock groups for domestic audiences, and noted their unusually strong popularity in Peru and Colombia. The band's music continues to circulate on streaming platforms and remains among the most-listened-to catalogs by any Chilean artist internationally, with particularly large audiences in Peru, Mexico, the United States and Colombia.

Awards and recognition

Chilean media attention grew markedly after the success of Pateando piedras; Super Rock magazine named the band Chile's best group, the album its best of the year, González its best songwriter, and "El baile de los que sobran" its best song, with equivalent honors following in Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. In 1991 the band received the Laurel de Oro award as "best rock-pop group," and its 1991 and 2003 Viña del Mar appearances earned it the festival's torch and seagull awards. The 1998 music video for "Sexo," directed by Cristián Galaz, won the Coral Negro award at the Havana Film Festival.

Band members

Discography

La voz de los '80 (1984)

Pateando piedras (1986)

La cultura de la basura (1987)

Corazones (1990)

Los Prisioneros (2003)

Manzana (2004)