Markin comment:
This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.
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Recalling Post-1973 Chilean Coup Murder of Victor Jara
Current mood: rebellious
Category: Music
(If you're a working-class folk music fan or a non-professional folk musician who hasn't had much luck finding a recent copy of Protest Folk Music magazine on the magazine rack in your local corporate bookstore chain outlet, following is an historical item about the murder of Chilean folksinger Victor Jara (that Arlo Guthrie & Adrian Mitchell wrote a great song about in the 1970s), which first appeared in the September 1, 1993 issue of the Lower East Side alternative newsweekly, Downtown, in my "Brief"/(Protest Folk Music) column:
One of the victims of the CIA's Chilean military coup in September 1973 was the Chilean folksinger Victor Jara. In a May 14, 1974 radio interview on WBAI-FM, Joan Jara described what happened to her husband:
"On the 11th of September [1973], Victor was due to sing at the opening of an exhibition about the horrors of civil war and fascism, to take place at the Technical University where Allende was to have spoken. He heard on the radio of the military operations taking place, heard of the bombings of Popular Unity radio stations, heard Allende making his last speech. But answering the urgent call for all workers to assemble at their place of work, Victor left home to go to the university less than two hours before the bombing of the presidential palace. He phoned me twice that day. It was impossible for him to come home again...But he gave me courage and told me he loved me. The rector, now a prisoner on Dawson Island, and several hundred professors and students, were trapped in the university building. The military fired against them all night to prevent anyone escaping. Some who tried to get out after nightfall were killed by machine gun fire.
"The next morning, Wednesday, the 12th of September at 9, the military moved into the university. Students and professors were taken prisoner. Victor was immediately recognized and given special treatment. I have been told by many witnesses...that he sang there in the stadium. That they broke his hands and after two days killed him with machine guns.
"Meanwhile, I waited for news of him at home with my children...A week afterwards, I heard that his body had been recognized at the morgue.
"It was an anonymous body among hundreds of other Chilean workers, students, university professors. Battered, bloody, half naked and riddled with machine gun bullets. I was lucky to have been able to bury my husband. Many disappeared into a common grave.
"The news of Victor's murder spread rapidly. It was reported on television and in a newspaper controlled, of course, by the military, as though it had been a natural death. Now the official version is that Victor was shot resisting arrest with a machine gun in his hand..."
(Downtown 9/1/93)
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=10#ixzz0zMQ3CjwC
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