My guitar is not for the rich
no, nothing like that.
My song is of the ladder
we are building to reach the stars.
Those were among the last words Víctor Jara ever wrote, for a song called “Manifiesto.” Mr. Jara was a popular Chilean folk singer who dwelt on themes like poverty and injustice. He was, in no particular order, a poet, a teacher, a theater director and a Communist Party activist — and all that was enough to get him brutally killed at age 40.
He was murdered by men under the command of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, leader of the 1973 military coup that, with America’s assent, overthrew the leftist government of Chile’s elected president, Salvador Allende, and imposed a ruthless dictatorship. During the Pinochet regime’s 17 years, some 2,300 people were known to have been killed or “disappeared.” About 1,000 others were unaccounted for and presumed to have died. At least 27,000 were tortured.
Mr. Jara, sometimes described as the Bob Dylan of South America, was one of the earliest victims and the most famous. His life, death and political afterlife shape this video documentary from Retro Report, whose mission is to examine major news stories of the past and show how they inform the present.
The Jara case remains very much alive in Chile. A judge there recently bore out the vibrancy of a quotation favored by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
This arc stretched 45 years. But four months ago, the Chilean judge, Miguel Vázquez, sentenced each of eight retired military officers to prison terms of 15 years and a day for the murders of Mr. Jara and of a former prisons director, Littré Quiroga Carvajal. A ninth man received a five-year sentence for helping cover up the crimes.
And in Florida another former officer, who found refuge in the United States, has been declared liable in a civil suit brought by Jara family members, and ordered to pay them $28 million in damages. A court in Chile has asked for the extradition of this man, Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nuñez, but the request remains unfulfilled. Mr. Barrientos, 69, remains at liberty in Florida, where he insisted to Retro Report that he was innocent of wrongdoing and felt “like a victim of political persecution.” Still, the arc may not be done bending.
Víctor Jara grew up poor, and made his own way from age 15. At one point, he studied for the priesthood, but lost interest amid a political awakening that steered him decidedly leftward. He gravitated toward theater and music, becoming part of a movement known as nueva canción, or new song, which infused traditional Latin American folk music with politically and socially inspired lyrics. “Song has great power to create awareness in the face of today’s challenges,” he said.
His activism, popularity and ardent support of the Allende government made him a marked man once the military seized power on Sept. 11, 1973. The next day, soldiers rounded up students and professors at State Technical University in Santiago, where Mr. Jara had taught theater. He and hundreds of others were led to the indoor Chile Stadium (renamed Víctor Jara Stadium in 2003).
He was quickly recognized and taken to the bowels of the arena, there to be tortured. Soldiers crushed his fingers with their rifle butts, and told him mockingly that he would never play the guitar again.