(Latin American Spanish: [el ˈpweβlo wˈniðo xaˈma(s)seˈɾa βenˈsiðo]; English: "The people united will never be defeated") is a Chilean protest song, whose music was composed by Sergio Ortega Alvarado and the text written in conjunction with the Quilapayún band.

[3] According to Sergio Ortega Alvarado, he composed the song after hearing a young man shout the phrase while he was walking home in Santiago in June 1973.

The song was recorded for the first time in Chile in 1973 during a massive Quilapayún concert in the Alameda, Santiago,[4] three months before Augusto Pinochet's coup d'état that overthrew Allende and began the period of military dictatorship.

Shortly before the concert, Salvador Allende had appointed Sergio Ortega Alvarado as Cultural Ambassador of the Popular Unity government, a position he briefly shared with Víctor Jara, who was assassinated days after the coup.

[5][6] The first official release in which the song appeared was during June 1973, in the live album of various performers Primer festival internacional de la canción popular published by the DICAP label, in which they participated, in addition to Quilapayún closing the album with "El pueblo unido..." and "Las ollitas", other renowned exponents such as Inti-Illimani, César Isella, Isabel Parra, Tito Fernández and Alfredo Zitarrosa.

[7] Due to its revolutionary theme, its facility to be interpreted in different languages, and its ability to transcend beyond political affiliation, this song has numerous versions, corresponding to different eras and musical styles.

In 1978 the Italian singer and composer Gianfranco Molle released the album Horo da opozicio with an Esperanto version of the song translated by Renato Corsetti.

The same phrase was chanted for the first time in Tahrir square in Egypt on 25 January 2011 in what turned into massive protests that lead to the ousting of president Hosni Mubarak.

The 2013 song "Control" by Big Sean featuring Kendrick Lamar and Jay Electronica samples the recording by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayún.

[12] During the 2019–20 Latin American protests which began from the home of the slogan, it became a resistance motto for protesters in both Chile, Honduras, Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Peru, Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil ("O povo unido jamais será vencido") and Venezuela calling to end the corruption of governments and caudillism.

[13] In 2022, Turkish-Kurdish music band Geniş Merdiven ("Wide Staircase") taking its name from Mikis Theodorakis's song "O Antonis" made an adapted translation into Turkish and began to sing it in concerts with an interlude in Spanish.