By José Gandue @spinning zone

How many times in the course of our lives will we be promised the end of the world? How many media headlines have announced that the planet is about to explode?, Will it rot in its own feces, or will we end up getting hot, feeling hell on our skin, or, on the contrary, the freezing of our veins? How many days in our pandemic lockdown have we longed to see a nuclear weapon fall on our roofs? How many of us are desperately looking at the newspapers as we watch the news from Ukraine, Gaza, Punjab, North Korea, or Ecuador? Have you seen the tremendous number of would-be prophets and messiahs who promise us radically better days in contemporary times if they assume power in their country? These are the same ones who talk about good citizens who need to eliminate evil from the Earth. The forces of heaven, some say. 

But it's not all bad. The whole apocalypse thing has its good points. It gives us the chance to laugh at the macabre feelings the subject itself evokes. It's gotten us watching good movies, like Terminator, Matrix (The first in the series, let's not exaggerate), 12 Monkeys, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (one of my favorites, with a great soundtrack), etc. It has also made us play with philosophical hypotheses and mental lotteries, recreating what our last hours on the planet could be like, so that, in the end, if there is alcohol involved in the conversation, to have the legitimate permission to argue any nonsense and laugh about it. The issue shouldn't stress us out; when what has to happen happens, we won't have much to do (we've heard this from Schwarzenegger, Cruise, and even Greta Thunberg herself, who's been missing these days).

The end of the world has also allowed us Listen to fun, party-like, nostalgic and explosive music made in recent decades in Latin America. Today, in reference to the new year, we've put together a playlist of 24 songs from punk, cumbia, pop, rock, folk, and other sonic textures, which, at times, Some used humor, others despair, and some resignation to describe the authors' feelings in the face of the catastrophe (we even included Gloria Trevi herself, damn it). You can listen to this playlist as many times as you need. Anyway, for now we can promise you that you have plenty of time while Kim Jong-un fancies his missiles and Trump returns to power. Or Milei invents a libertarian red button to blow up humanity.