They smashed his hands with the butts of their rifles, smashed the fingers with which he played the guitar, and cut off the tongue with which he sang his songs.
They kept him in this state for four more days in a soccer stadium near the Palacio de la Moneda that the coup leaders turned into a concentration camp for thousands of detainees. They shot him on September 16, 1973, 50 years ago. During his confinement he wrote the poem “We are five thousand”, better known as “Chile Stadium”, which today bears his name. He was referring to the number of people locked up in that compound after the numerous raids by the coup plotters. After writing it, he handed the pages to a prisoner who took them out hidden among his clothes.
The body of Víctor Jara was found four days after his murder in the vicinity of the Metropolitan Cemetery cwith 44 bullet impacts. His wife, the English dancer Joan Turner, recognized the body in the morgue. He was buried almost clandestinely in a niche in the General Cemetery of Santiago. Shortly after Joan she decided to leave the country with her daughters, carrying in her luggage all the records that she could take from Víctor Jara to make them known from England to the world. The Pinochet regime declared them “subversive material & rdquor; and his intention was to destroy them all. Two weeks ago, almost fifty years later, the Chilean Supreme Court sentenced seven army officers to between eight and twenty-five years in prison. One of the convicted, Brigadier Hernán Chacón, 86, committed suicide after hearing the sentence.
Today he is only remembered as a singer-songwriter but Víctor Jara was also, when he was assassinated, a theater director with a long history of successes and a professor at the State Technical University. It was in the premises of this University where Pinochet’s military detained him with six hundred other people., between teachers and students, on September 12, 1973, the day after the coup against Salvador Allende. Before, the military shelled the rectory while a hundred soldiers fired their machine guns at the building.
Víctor Jara was the fifth child of a marriage of poor peasants in the province of Nuble. Later the family moved to Los Nogales, a marginal suburb of Santiago. His mother, Amanda Martínez, who died when Víctor was 15 years old, played the guitar and sang at family gatherings, and from there the boy’s love of music arose. Poverty prevented him from continuing his studies after primary school and he spent two years at the San Bernardo Redemptorist Seminary where he received higher education and was introduced to Gregorian chant. After military service, he worked as a transporter for a furniture factory while studying theater at the University of Chile and singing in the choir. He began directing his first plays, met the actress Gabriela Medina, his first partner, and was part of the folk group Cuncumen, with whom he traveled through Europe and recorded an album of Christmas carols and the LP “El folklore chileno”, which It included two of his compositions, one of them “The Miner’s Song”. In those years, meeting Violeta Parra changed her life. In 1970 she recorded her first album as a soloist and the following year “Canciones folkloricas de América & rdquor; with Quilapayun.
A militant of the Communist Youth of Chile, aware of the proletarian and anti-imperialist causes, his work became increasingly identified with his political commitment. His song “Questions for Puerto Montt & rdquor ;, dedicated to the victims of the Pampa Irigoin massacre, in which eleven people died due to the repression of the forces of public order during the government of Eduardo Frei, became a hymn against dictatorships. He identified himself with the principles of Popular Unity and participated in the electoral campaign that brought Salvador Allende to power. His album “Canto libre & rdquor; It is entirely a work dedicated to the hope placed in that government. In the last year of his life he had returned to folk song with “Canto por traversura & rdquor ;, a compilation of peasant songs and carried out research work that he used on his album “La población & rdquor ;”. He worked on two other albums that he did not record, despite which his discography is one of the richest and most interesting of the seventies. During the three years that the Popular Unity government lasted, he supported Salvador Allendesang in Cuba and the Soviet Union and organized a tribute to Pablo Neruda when the Chilean writer was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Since Víctor Jara’s death, countless tributes have been held to his figure and his music, streets, cultural centers and foundations have been dedicated to him throughout the world. Spanish singers like Serrat and Víctor Manuel and numerous Latin Americans recorded many of his songs. The world of rock, so apparently far removed from the protest song, paid tribute to Víctor Jara by recognizing him as one of the 15 rock and roll rebels, according to “Rolling Stone” magazine. The Scottish musical group Simple Minds dedicated their song “Street Fighting Years” and Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield dedicated his first solo album to his memory. U2 mentions it in their song “One tree hill” and The Clash in “Washington bullets & rdquor ;.
Years after his death, the singer’s wife published “Víctor Jara. A (not) truncated song & rdquor; and the Spanish historian Mario Amorós recently wrote his biography “Life is eternal & rdquor ;, a title taken from the verses of“ I remember you Amanda & rdquor ;, his best-known song.
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