This introduction to a colloquy on Latin American protest song illustrates the rewards that analysis through semiotics and intertextuality can bring. Manabe argues for Peircean triadic semiotics (icon, index, symbol) over Saussure's arbitrary dyad, then layers Genette's five-part intertextual taxonomy, coupled with Briggs and Bauman’s intertextual gap, as explanatory tools. Case studies ("Plástico," "Himno del 1° de mayo," "El pueblo unido," "El baile de los que sobran," "Himno a la moderna mujer") illustrate contrafacta, genre-as-topic, and participatory music, closing with reflections on digital media's role in circulating and sometimes depoliticizing protest song memory.