Latino punk is punk music created by Latino people in Latin America and the United States. The angst and protest qualities of punk music and style have had a strong appeal to Latino youth in the U.S., and to the people in Latin America. It is impossible to pinpoint the exact location or moment when Latinos began engaging in the punk subculture. However, Latin American rock began showing aspects of punk music during the mid-1960s with the Peruvian band Los Saicos; this band reflected many aspects of other proto-punk bands such as the Yardbirds. The Saicos were predecessors to some of the most influential proto-punk bands in the U.S., such as New York Dolls, MC5, and The Stooges

Punk music began engaging a wider variety of artists and audience in the late 1970s and 1980s, either in Latin America or in the U.S. By the mid-1970s, the aesthetics promoted by glam rock in the United Kingdom had created a social gap between the audience and the artist. The punk scene that began to sprout during that era shared more commonalities with the youth audience, while still retaining some attributes from glam rock.

Punk music presented itself as the voice for white teenage angst, without the arrogance and verbosity of glam rock. The punk genre rooted itself in a music and style that created by the working class without the intellectual posturing of its previous genres. It was a genre created by and for the white working class in the United Kingdom. During the late 1970s, punk's social basis for creating commonalities with its fans, and its integration of style and instruments from reggae allowed for punk bands of different ethnicities to integrate themselves into the social scene in the United Kingdom.

In the late 1970s, many punk bands began appearing in Los Angeles, among them many Latino and Chicano punks like The Zeros, The Stains, The Plugz, The Bags, Thee Undertakers, Nervous Gender, The Brat, The Gun Club, Los Illegals, Los Angelinos, Felix and the Katz, Odd Squad, Union 13, and The Cruzados. Most of these bands did not consider themselves Latino punk bands, but artists challenging the mainstream just like their non-Latino peers.

However, in the late 1970s Latino/Chicano punks in East L.A began organizing gigs in their own communities. These bands were part of a punk movement called The East Side Renaissance, who dedicated themselves to bringing to light the local Chicano/Latino bands in their own neighborhoods.

The Latino hardcore punk scene in the U.S. exploded during the 1990s due to all the political issues facing Latinos, such as Prop 187, NAFTA and the Zapatista Uprising. Policies that specifically targeted the Latino community all across the U.S. during the 90s pushed Latinos and Latinas to begin singing and writing hardcore punk as a form of angst and protest. Bands from cites like New York, Chicago, El Paso, Texas, Los Angeles, and Santa Fe, New Mexico had prominent hardcore Latino punk bands in the 1990s. Among the most notable Latino hardcore punk bands were:

In contrast to their white punk peers, these bands were discriminated against for singing about the struggles of minorities that whites did not want to hear about. Latino hardcore punk bands began to sing about the direct problems that they, their families, and their Latino communities were facing. The themes of these problems were the violation of immigrant rights; particularly the abuse of Latino immigrant workers.

Up to these days there are several Latino members among many prominent American punk bands, such as Roger Miret from Agnostic Front, Freddy Cricien from Madball, Mike Muir from Suicidal Tendencies, Kid Congo Powers from The Gun Club, Ron Reyes from Black Flag, Mario Rubalcaba from Hot Snakes, and Jorge Herrera from The Casualties, among others, having written several songs in Spanish as a homage to their Latin American roots. La Armada, founded by Dominican-Americans, incorporates traditional Caribbean beats into their hardcore punk and metal.