In the days following the military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, folk singer and guitarist Víctor Jara was arrested and taken to the Estadio Chile, a sports hall that the Pinochet dictatorship had converted into a mass prison camp. There he was tortured and murdered.
His torturers smashed his hands and drove him around the stadium, taunting him to play the guitar. This brutality was symbolic. Jara was a public figure, a musician whose work was inextricably intertwined with democratic hopes and the rise of the working class – so much so that his music was said to be more powerful than a thousand machine guns. Silencing him was supposed to silence the masses – but that didn’t work.
Jara’s songs survived, carried by recordings, memory and communities in Chile and elsewhere. The stadium where he died now bears his name. His music is still sung generations later – from Joan Baez to Bruce Springsteen to Bad Bunny.
Justice comes late
Unfortunately, legal responsibility usually only follows with a long delay after the end of authoritarian regimes – this was also the case in Jara’s case. After decades of searching, the lieutenant responsible was finally tracked down in Florida, where he had fled after the regime collapsed. Together with the Center for Justice and Accountability, my colleagues and I filed a civil lawsuit against him in the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida – based on the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act, alleging arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killing and crimes against humanity.
And so: Even if justice is sometimes a long time coming, music is still part of the force that ultimately leads a society to reject a regime and hold it accountable – to move towards transitional justice.
Authoritarian regimes have always feared the power of music. From performance bans to imprisonment, exile, torture and worse, they have repeatedly targeted musicians whose work transforms political outrage into a common language. Across decades and continents, authoritarian governments have responded to protest music with frightening consistency.
Bans, exile, persecution
In apartheid South Africa, singer Miriam Makeba was forced into decades-long exile after criticizing the regime; their music was banned at home while it was heard abroad. In the 1960s, the Greek military junta issued a decree banning the music of Mikis Theodorakis – the composer was imprisoned and driven into exile. And in Cold War Czechoslovakia, underground musicians were stripped of their licenses, arrested and harassed for refusing state-mandated aesthetics.
More recently, artists such as Kurdish singer Nûdem Durak in Turkey, Uighur pop star Ablajan Awut Ayup in China, and Russian band Pussy Riot have been persecuted under broad security laws, imprisoned for lyrics deemed subversive, or labeled extremists for performances that challenge official narratives. In each of these cases, the state’s response reveals a common fear: authoritarianism thrives not only on fear but also on division. Protest music counteracts this – it creates a sound space of resistance.
Regimes react this way because music – especially in moments of oppression – becomes a force amplifier. It unites communities, promotes critical thinking, mobilizes opposition and inspires action. We are currently experiencing elements of this again: from Bad Bunny’s halftime performance as a sign of unity and love in the face of ICE raids, the colonial history of Puerto Rico and the rhetoric against Latin America, to the return of resistance songs from past decades.
These include Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” about institutionalized racism and police violence in the context of the Rodney King verdict, the Cranberries’ ultimate anti-war anthem “Zombie” and System of a Down’s “BYOB (Bring Your Own Bomb)” as a protest against the Iraq War; plus Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio,” about the National Guard’s shooting of students at Kent State, and Creedence Clearwater’s “Fortunate Son,” about elites who avoided military service. Unfortunately, many of these songs are more relevant than ever, given the atrocities committed against innocent civilians in conflicts around the world and extrajudicial killings of U.S. citizens at home.
The song that survived
As regimes continue to attempt to silence artists, history suggests a persistent irony: the more aggressively a regime combats music, the more lasting its message often has an impact.
Hardly any story illustrates this more clearly than the Jaras. Decades after his murder and years after the collapse of the Pinochet regime, the law came onto the scene – not as a replacement for music, but as a means against forgetting. In a U.S. civil case, a jury found a former Chilean military officer liable for Jara’s torture and murder and awarded his family damages, creating a documented record of the atrocities committed. Based on the evidence obtained in this trial and by Chilean authorities, the officer, Lieutenant Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nunez, is now facing charges in Chilean courts. Justice came late – but it came, with a binding record and a guilty verdict. The result is legal recognition: what happened had weight. And still has it.
Music alone cannot force accountability – but the law can ensure that violence does not disappear into denial or historical amnesia. Legal processes compel evidence, assign responsibility, and turn testimony into history. What authoritarian regimes seek to eradicate, the law preserves.
Cultural repression as a system
In cases of persecuted artists, legal accountability has confirmed that cultural oppression is not a fringe phenomenon of authoritarianism – it is at its core. These procedures recognize that attacks on artists are attacks on collective expression as such.
Authoritarian regimes attack artists because they know their power. What they don’t understand, however, is resonance. A shot echoes once – a song echoes through generations. Songs endure because they are made to be repeated. They can be sung quietly or loudly, publicly or in secret. Texts written for one struggle can inspire another decades later. This continuity explains why protest songs from earlier eras resurface in moments of political tension.
Music teaches people to hear themselves as part of something bigger – and to resist. Law teaches the world how to remember. Together with lawyers and judges, artists transform voices into rights, recognition and justice. So music remains the common sound space of resistance.
Christina Hioureas is a lawyer in New York specializing in international law, representing clients before international courts and arbitration tribunals. She is also a visiting professor at the UCLA School of Law and the USC Gould School of Law, where she teaches human rights law courses. She served as a lawyer for the widow and daughters of Chilean folk musician Víctor Jara and won a historic verdict against the lieutenant responsible for his torture and execution during the Pinochet dictatorship.
