BOGOTÁ, Colombia—Upon joining antigovernment protests that have shaken Colombia over the past week, pastry chef Charlie Parra pulled out a spoon and a measuring cup he normally uses to make cheesecake and tiramisu.

Then, like a cowbell player in a country band, he whacked his stainless-steel cup in rhythm with throngs of demonstrators banging pots and pans Tuesday night in a ringing rejection of President Iván Duque.

“It’s very small,” Mr. Parra, 30 years old, said of his impromptu noisemaker. “But it’s very loud.”

Following sometimes deadly protests in Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador, Colombia is the latest country to embrace the Latin American tradition of publicly expressing anger with the status quo by flailing at cookware. Protesters knock wooden spoons against fry pans. They hammer pressure cookers with meat tenderizers. When put to tea kettles, salad tongs become drumsticks.

The practice is known as the cacerolazo, which comes from the Spanish word for stew pot, cacerola. It is an earsplitting form of protest in which empty pans and skillets suggest empty stomachs. And it often works. Cacerolazos were a central feature in protests that in years past helped bring down governments from Ecuador to Argentina.