{"id":12702,"date":"2018-09-10T20:16:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T19:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/victor-jara\/"},"modified":"2018-09-10T20:16:19","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T19:16:19","slug":"victor-jara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/victor-jara\/","title":{"rendered":"He sang on behalf of the people: Victor Jara, 1932-1973"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-12701\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/a23a0ae51427faf30f15028f2734ffcd.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"670\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/a23a0ae51427faf30f15028f2734ffcd.jpg 670w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/a23a0ae51427faf30f15028f2734ffcd-600x358.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/a23a0ae51427faf30f15028f2734ffcd-300x179.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/a23a0ae51427faf30f15028f2734ffcd-441x263.jpg 441w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/a23a0ae51427faf30f15028f2734ffcd-1x1.jpg 1w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/a23a0ae51427faf30f15028f2734ffcd-10x6.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 670px) 100vw, 670px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Jenny Farrell<\/strong> memorialises Victor Jara.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Forty-five years ago, on 11 September 1973, the Chilean military under the command of General Pinochet and backed by the USA, overthrew the democratically elected, socialist government of Salvador Allende.<\/p>\n<p>Allende had won the election in September 1970, and was faced even before taking office with the enmity of the Chilean right, and the US government. The CIA planned a coup almost immediately after Allende\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n<p>Allende\u2019s platform was one of for radical transformation: land redistribution, the nationalisation of major corporations (particularly the US-owned copper holdings), and fundamental changes in health, education and housing provisions. His government was well into this programme when initially middle-ranking military officers and later businessmen and generals put a violent end to Chile\u2019s socialist reform.<\/p>\n<p>During the 1973-90 Pinochet dictatorship, 3,095 people and about 1,000 &#8220;disappeared&#8221;, Chile&#8217;s Truth and Justice Commission has stated. Bodies are still being found today.<\/p>\n<p>Victor Jara, communist and celebrated singer, was one of about 5,000 people arrested in the immediate aftermath of the coup, who were taken to the Chile stadium in the capital. There he was tortured and his hands broken. Even at that horrendous hour, Jara resisted and tried to give hope to those about to die, by singing \u201eVenceremos\u201d, the unofficial national anthem of the Unidad Popular movement, and the prisoners sang with him.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uGazscDbUkI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Along with many of his compatriots, Jara was murdered in this stadium. When Joan Jara went to identify her husband\u2019s body, she found it riddled with bullets, with the wrists and neck broken and twisted.<\/p>\n<p>Victor Jara was born 85 years ago, on September 23, 1932 into a family of farm workers. He learned Chilean folk traditions from his mother, Amanda, learnt to play the guitar and piano, became a singer, and joined the Nueva Canci\u00f3n Chilena (Chilean New Song) movement. The movement began as a small folk club, Pena Los Paras, led by Violeta Parra, an important influence on Jara in the late 1950s. Parra created a new kind of folk music in Chile, combining modern song with traditional forms. She established pe\u00f1as, musical community centers. These launched many revolutionary artists.<\/p>\n<p>Victor\u2019s widow, Joan Jara comments:<\/p>\n<p><em>The spring of his songs lay in a deep identification with the dispossessed people [\u2026], a deep awareness of social injustice and its causes and a determination to denounce such injustice [\u2026] in addition to the need to do something to change things<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In Jara\u2019s<em> Manifiesto, <\/em>written shortly before his death and released posthumously, he sings:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/en8yqVxuT-U\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>I don&#8217;t sing for love of singing,<br \/> or because I have a good voice.<br \/> I sing because my guitar<br \/> has both feeling and reason.<br \/> It has a heart of earth<br \/> and the wings of a dove,<br \/> it is like holy water,<br \/> blessing joy and grief.<br \/> My song has found a purpose<br \/> as Violeta would say.<br \/> Hardworking guitar,<br \/> with a smell of spring.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>My guitar is not for the rich no,<br \/> nothing like that.<br \/> My song is of the ladder<br \/> we are building to reach the stars.<br \/> For a song has meaning<br \/> when it beats in the veins<br \/> of a man who will die singing,<br \/> truthfully singing his song.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>My song is not for fleeting praise<br \/> nor to gain foreign fame,<br \/> it is for this narrow country<br \/> to the very depths of the earth.<br \/> There, where everything comes to rest<br \/> and where everything begins,<br \/> song which has been brave song<br \/> will be forever new.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Victor Jara was murdered on 16 September 1973, aged forty. To his dying breath, he used his art to sing on behalf of the people. His last song was smuggled from the stadium of death by survivors:<\/p>\n<p><em>There are five thousand of us here<br \/> in this small part of the city.<br \/> We are five thousand.<br \/> I wonder how many we are in all<br \/> in the cities and in the whole country?<br \/> Here alone<br \/> are ten thousand hands which plant seeds<br \/> and make the factories run.<br \/> How much humanity<br \/> exposed to hunger, cold, panic, pain,<br \/> moral pressure, terror and insanity?<br \/> Six of us were lost<br \/> as if into starry space.<br \/> One dead, another beaten as I could never have believed<br \/> a human being could be beaten.<br \/> The other four wanted to end their terror<br \/> one jumping into nothingness,<br \/> another beating his head against a wall,<br \/> but all with the fixed stare of death.<br \/> What horror the face of fascism creates!<br \/> They carry out their plans with knife-like precision.<br \/> Nothing matters to them.<br \/> To them, blood equals medals,<br \/> slaughter is an act of heroism.<br \/> Oh God, is this the world that you created,<br \/> for this your seven days of wonder and work?<br \/> Within these four walls only a number exists<br \/> which does not progress,<br \/> which slowly will wish more and more for death.<br \/> But suddenly my conscience awakes<br \/> and I see that this tide has no heartbeat,<br \/> only the pulse of machines<br \/> and the military showing their midwives&#8217; faces<br \/> full of sweetness.<br \/> Let Mexico, Cuba and the world<br \/> cry out against this atrocity!<br \/> We are ten thousand hands<br \/> which can produce nothing.<br \/> How many of us in the whole country?<br \/> The blood of our President, our compa\u00f1ero,<br \/> will strike with more strength than bombs and machine guns!<br \/> So will our fist strike again!<\/p>\n<p> How hard it is to sing<br \/> when I must sing of horror.<br \/> Horror which I am living,<br \/> horror which I am dying.<br \/> To see myself among so much<br \/> and so many moments of infinity<br \/> in which silence and screams<br \/> are the end of my song.<br \/> What I see, I have never seen<br \/> What I have felt and what I feel<br \/> Will give birth to the moment\u2026<br \/> <\/em><br \/> Estadio Chile<\/p>\n<p> September 1973<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hY84jqSyspI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In July of this year, 45 years after their crime, eight retired officers were sentenced to 15 years in prison for Jara\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jenny Farrell memorialises Victor Jara. Forty-five years ago, on 11 September 1973, the Chilean military under the command of General Pinochet and backed by the USA, overthrew&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":456,"featured_media":12701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1665],"tags":[2124,2199],"class_list":["post-12702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-2","tag-allende","tag-pinochet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}