Victor Jara

Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez (1932-1973) was a Chilean musician, singer-songwriter, teacher, writer, and theater director.

The figure of Víctor Jara is an international reference of the protest song, although he never felt fully identified with that definition. He was one of the most emblematic of the musical-social movement called «New Chilean song», and one of the pillars in Latin American music.

After the coup that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, Jara was arrested the following day by the Armed Forces of the newly established military dictatorship, due to his militancy in the Chilean Communist Party. He was tortured by cutting off his fingers and his tongue so that he could not play his guitar or sing while they insulted him. After four days, he was assassinated with more than forty shots in the old Chile Stadium, which with the return of democracy was renamed "Víctor Jara Stadium".

Biography

Childhood

Víctor Jara was born on September 28, 1932. His place of birth is controversial. Some sources indicate that he was born in the town of San Ignacio, which was part of the then department of Bulnes. Other sources indicate the town of Quiriquina, one of the four towns in the commune of San Ignacio. In any case, he would have been born within the province of Ñuble. Later, as a child, he would have moved with his family to Lonquén.

In this regard, there is a recording of an interview the singer-songwriter gave in Moscow in 1970:

I was born in southern Chile, in the province of Ñuble, is a very rainy province and also shaken by earthquakes. My parents were tenants of a cast and my mother was the one who encouraged me in the music because she sang, there was always a guitar in the house. Later, when I was about 12 years old and for reasons of work, we approached the capital.

Victor Jara

He was born into a family of peasant parents, characterized by deep-rooted folklore. Her father, Manuel Jara, worked in the fields, and her mother, Amanda Martínez, originally from southern Chile, in addition to doing housework, played the guitar and sang. Víctor had four siblings: María, Georgina (Coca), Eduardo (Lalo) and Roberto.

Due to family needs, Víctor was forced as a child to help the family in the fields. Influenced by his mother, he also made contact with music at an early age, in addition to attending school.

Youth

The family moved to Los Nogales, where they met Julio and Humberto Morgado, Víctor's classmates in elementary school. The Morgado family provided Víctor, who dropped out of school, with a job in a furniture factory, helping the father of his classmates in his job as a transporter. When he was 15 years old, his mother died, which meant the dissolution of the family nucleus. At the same time, he was a partner of actress Gabriela Medina for three years.

On the advice of a priest, he entered the seminary of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, in San Bernardo. Víctor remembered his decision like this:

It was a very important decision for me to enter the seminar. In thinking about it now, from a tougher perspective, I think I did it for intimate and emotional reasons, for the loneliness and disappearance of a world that had until then been solid and lasting, symbolized by a home and the love of my mother. I was already related to the Church, and at that time I sought refuge in it. Then I thought that shelter would guide me to other values and help me find a different and deeper love that might compensate for the absence of human love. I thought I'd find that love in religion, dedicating myself to the priesthood.

Victor Jara

Two years after entering the seminary, he left the seminary after realizing his lack of vocation, after having practiced Gregorian chant and the interpretation of the liturgy there. After leaving the seminary, he served in the military.

Artistic Beginnings

After completing his military service, he joined the choir at the University of Chile, participating in the staging of Carmina burana, thus beginning his research and folkloric compilation work. At the age of 24, he joined a theater company, the Compañía de Mimos de Noisvander, and began studying acting and directing at the Theater School of the University of Chile. As an anecdote, since he had nowhere to sleep, he spent the night in the vicinity of the school.

In 1957, he joined the Cuncumén folk group and met singer-songwriter Violeta Parra, who encouraged him to continue his musical career.

At the age of 27, in 1959 he directed his first play: Similar to happiness, by Alejandro Sieveking, touring several Latin American countries. As a soloist with the folkloric group Cuncumen, she recorded his first album, a single that contained two Chilean Christmas carols. The following year, he participated as an assistant director in the production of the play La viuda de Apablaza, by Germán Luco Cruchaga, whose director was Pedro de la Barra, and directed the play La mandrágora , by Machiavelli. In 1961, and as artistic director of the Cuncumén group, he traveled through the Netherlands, France, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria.

In 1961 he composed his first song, Paloma, I want to tell you and continued working as an assistant director in the production of La madre de los conejos, by Alejandro Sieveking. The following year, in 1962, she would direct the play Ánimas de día claro , also by Sieveking, for the Theater Institute of the University of Chile (ITUCH).

He recorded the LP Chilean Folklore with Cuncumén, with two of his own songs: «Paloma quiero contarte» and «La canción del minero», at the time he began to perform the role of director in the Folklore Academy of the House of Culture of Ñuñoa, a job that he would perform until 1968. From that time, and until 1970, he was part of the stable team of directors of the ITUCH, in addition to working, between 1964 and 1967, as an acting teacher in University.

He also carried out, either as an assistant director or as a director, several productions, including one for the television channel of the University of Chile, also making a tour of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay with the aforementioned Clear Day Spirits, by Sieveking. In 1963 he was assistant director to Atahualpa del Cioppo in the production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle , by Bertolt Brecht, starring Marés González for the ITUCH.

He combined his theatrical activity with musical composition, and in 1965 he directed La remolienda, by Sieveking, as well as the production of La maña, by Ann Jellicoe, for the which received the Golden Laurel and the Critics' Award from the Círculo de Periodistas.

Singer-Songwriter

Jara acting in Helsinki in a protest against the Vietnam War (1969).

"Love to justice as an instrument of balance for the dignity of man", Victor Jara's prayer.

He served as artistic director of the Quilapayún group between 1966 and 1969, and until 1970 he performed as a soloist in the Peña de los Parra. Without leaving the theater, in 1966 he recorded his first LP as a soloist, Víctor Jara , released by the Arena record company. With the Chilean subsidiary of Emi-Odeón he recorded the following year Canciones folclóricas de América , together with Quilapayún.

In 1969, he staged Antígona, by Sophocles, for the company of the Theater School of the Catholic University. With the song "Plegaria a un labrador" he won first prize at the first Chilean New Song Festival, and traveled to Helsinki to participate in a world event in protest of the Vietnam War, as well as I put in your hands open. The song "Preguntas por Puerto Montt" belongs to this album, inspired by the massacre of Pampa Irigoin (Puerto Montt), in which eleven people died (including a three-month-old child) during the police repression of the government of Eduardo Frei Montalva. In that song he harshly criticized Interior Minister Edmundo Pérez Zújovic, who on June 8, 1971 would be assassinated by the extreme left group Vanguardia Organizada del Pueblo (VOP):

You must answer, Mr. Pérez Zújovic, why the defenseless people answered with a rifle. Mr. Perez, your conscience buried you in a coffin and will not clean your hands all the rain from the south.

In Berlin in 1970, he participated in the International Theater Conversation and in Buenos Aires in the I Latin American Theater Congress. At that time, she participated in the Popular Unity electoral campaign and presented the album Canto libre .

When Salvador Allende took office as president of Chile, Jara was named cultural ambassador, and in 1971 he composed the music, together with Celso Garrido Lecca, for the ballet Los siete estados, by Patricio Bunster that was put in the National Ballet (Banch). Together with Isabel Parra and Inti-Illimani, he entered the Department of Communications at the State Technical University. With the Dicap record company, he released the album El derecho de vivir en paz , which earned him the Golden Laurel for best composition of the year.

He worked as a music composer for continuity on the National Television of Chile from 1972 to 1973, and he investigated and compiled testimonies in Herminda de la Victoria, on which he would base his album La población. He also traveled to the Soviet Union and Cuba, and directed the tribute to Pablo Neruda for obtaining the Nobel Prize.

The peasants of Ránquil invited him to perform a musical work about the place, and as part of his social commitment, he took part in volunteer work to prevent the paralysis of the country caused by a truckers strike.

This commitment led him in 1973 to different acts in favor of the Popular Unity candidates during the electoral campaign for the parliamentary elections and, responding to a call from Neruda, he collaborated as a director and singer in a cycle of television programs television against war and fascism. He worked simultaneously on the preparation of several albums that he could not record, of which he managed to make only I sing for mischief .

His last presentation was given on the Peruvian television channel Panamericana Televisión on July 17, 1973.

Torture and murder

View of the Stadium Victor Jara today, where the artist was killed.

The coup d'état of September 11, 1973, headed by a military junta against President Salvador Allende, surprised him at the State Technical University, where he was detained along with other professors and students. They took him to the Chile Stadium, converted into a concentration camp by the military (current Víctor Jara Stadium, where there is a plaque in his honor with his last poem), where he remained for four days. They tortured him for hours (they burned him with cigarettes, broke his fingers, cut out his tongue, and subjected him to mock firing squads). On September 16, they shot him and his body was found on the 19th by residents of Población Santa Olga in the vicinity of the Metropolitan Cemetery, with 44 bullet wounds, along with the bodies of Littré Quiroga, director of the Gendarmerie, and Eduardo "Coco" Paredes, director of the Investigative Police (PDI).

During his internment at the Estadio Chile he wrote his last poem and testimonial "Somos cinco mil", also known as "Estadio Chile".

Acknowledgment of murder

Victor Jara's tomb in the General Cemetery of Santiago.

In 1990, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined that Jara was riddled with 44 shots on September 16, 1973 at the Chile Stadium and that he was thrown into some bushes around the Metropolitan Cemetery (on its north side extends Víctor Jara Park), on the banks of highway 5 South. He was then taken to the mortuary, where he was assigned the acronym NN, and where he would later be identified by his wife, the British-born choreographer Joan Turner. His remains were buried in the General Cemetery. The widow, years later, would mention that the Chilean newspaper La Segunda , the day after the burial, published a paragraph that implied that Jara had died without violence and that his burial had been of a non-violent nature. private.

As a tribute to his memory, 30 years after the military coup, in September 2003, the Chile Stadium was named after him until then.

On May 29, 2009, the Court of Appeals of Santiago de Chile ratified the imprisonment of ex-soldier José Paredes Márquez, who was accused of the singer's murder. At the time of the execution, Paredes Márquez was an 18-year-old recruit in the Chilean army. Paredes Márquez confessed to co-authorship of the murder, and confirmed that Jara's hands were broken by rifle butts during interrogation. shot, Jara had already died, due to a shot to the head by an army officer, for which the judge in charge of the case ordered the exhumation of his remains, in order to perform a second autopsy.

In June 2009, Jara's mortal remains were exhumed by court order for a study to determine the precise causes of death. The Spanish forensic anthropologist Francisco Etxeberria participated in the exhumation. On November 27, the Víctor Jara Foundation made public the results of the study. According to the same, carried out by the Legal Medical Service and ratified by the Innsbruck Genetic Institute, the artist died as a result of "multiple fractures due to gunshot wounds that caused a hemorrhagic shock in a homicidal context" and that he was beaten and tortured. during his time at the Chile Stadium, where he was detained. The text highlights that more than 30 bone injuries were found as a result of fractures caused by projectile wounds and others caused by blunt objects, other than gunshot wounds.

Judicial study of the murder

Victor Jara's Velatorio, held in December 2009.

Under the authority of Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes Belmar, in 2007 an investigation was carried out into the murder of Víctor Jara aimed at seeking responsibility. José Paredes, the confessed perpetrator of some of the shots (although he later retracted), and retired colonel Mario Manríquez, head of the detention center, were accused, being excluded from the prosecution as being responsible for the order of the murder, indicated by the relatives of Víctor Jara, as well as by organizations defending human rights. The former colonel Edwin Dimter Bianchi, known as The Prince, was also pointed out by fellow captives of the musician.

At the end of 2012, the special judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vásquez, issued a ruling to prosecute the seven soldiers who on that date were in charge of the prisoners confined in the Chile Stadium.

Those charged as perpetrators of the homicide were Pedro Barrientos Núñez and Hugo Sánchez Marmonti and as accomplices Roberto Souper Onfray, Raúl Jofré González, Edwin Dimter Bianchi, Nelson Hasse Mazzei and Luis Bethke Wulf. Pedro Barrientos Núñez fixed his residence in the United States in 1990, for which the judge ordered his international capture.

The description of the facts that the judicial order makes is the following:

a) That, on September 11, 1973, following the assumption of the de facto Military Government, the then Technical University of the State, was besieged by members of the Arica regiment of the Chilean Army, coming from the city of La Serena.

b) These troops proceeded, on September 12, 1973, after the shooting of projectiles of different nature, to occupy their units and to the mass arrest of teachers, students and administrative personnel who were in the educational establishment; persons who were then transferred in buses of collective locomotive until then Estadio Chile (now Estadio Víctor Jara), pre-established as a center of detention, with the coordination of the Administrative Command of the

c) That, among the learned teachers, was the popular singer and also researcher of that University, Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez, who joined the Chilean Stadium together with the group of detainees, to later be located with these in the grades of that sports hall.

d) That, during his detention, Víctor Jara Martínez was recognized by the military personnel installed inside the Chilean Stadium, being separated from the rest of the prisoners, to be taken to other units located in the Camarines, occupied as interrogation rooms and apprehensions, where he was physically assaulted on a permanent basis by several officers.

e) That, between 13 and 16 September 1973, interrogations of detainees were conducted in the interior of the Chilean State, without them due to prior judicial and/or administrative procedures, some of which were practiced by staff of the Second Military Prosecutor ' s Office at the time; and, among others, was interrogated Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez.

f) That, on September 16, 1973, the transfer of all detainees from the Chilean Stadium was carried out, with the exception of Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez and Littre Quiroga Carvajal, an opportunity in which Victor Lidio Jara Martínez was killed, a fact that occurred as a result of at least 44 bullet impacts, as specified in the respective autopsy report.

g) That, the body of Victor Lidio Jara Martínez, together with the bodies of three other people, was found by settlers in the later days, in the vicinity of the Metropolitan Cemetery, in a vacant lot near the railway line, with obvious signs of having received blows in the body and the bullet impacts detailed in the autopsy report.

The television program En la mira broadcast in May 2012 a report by journalists Luis Narváez and Pedro Azócar: "Who killed Víctor Jara?", which went on to be part of the indictment. In an interview for this documentary, Barrientos denied the facts, stating that he had never been to the Chile Stadium, did not know it and "did not know what the singer Jara was".

The widow, Joan Turner, and the couple's two daughters, Manuela Bunster and Amanda Jara, filed a lawsuit against Barrientos, which was filed in 2013 by the Center for Justice and Accountability, with headquarters in San Francisco (California). The civil trial began on June 27, 2016; During this, a federal court in Orlando, Florida, determined that Barrientos, who had obtained US citizenship, was guilty of torture and the extrajudicial murder of Víctor Jara, for which the jury determined that he should pay compensation for damages and damages of 28 million dollars to the family. At the beginning of July 2018, Chile reactivated the extradition request for Barrientos for the murder of the singer-songwriter and Littré Quiroga, director of prisons for the Allende government.

On July 3, 2018, the Chilean courts sentenced eight of the soldiers: Hugo Sánchez, Raúl Jofré, Edwin Dimter, Nelson Haase, Ernesto Bethke, Juan Jara, Hernán Chacón and Patricio Vásquez; sentenced to 15 years and one day as the authors of the murders of Víctor Jara and Littré Quiroga. In addition, as perpetrators of the crime of simple kidnapping of both victims, they were sentenced to three years in prison. On the other hand, former officer Rolando Melo was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison for concealing the homicides, and 61 days for concealing the kidnappings.

Burial and tribute

Once the forensic studies were completed in November 2009, an act of homage was held, from December 3 to 5, with the artist's mortal remains remaining at the headquarters of the Víctor Jara Foundation and buried in the General Cemetery of Santiago in a funeral procession that brought together more than 12,000 people. Unlike the almost clandestine burial carried out in 1973, after his murder, the burial on December 5, 2009, 36 years after his murder, was open and public.

The acts of homage and burial, as the then executive director of the Víctor Jara Foundation, Gloria Konig, pointed out, constituted a demand for "truth and justice for the artist and for all the political detainees, disappeared, and executed in Chile."

On January 19, 2020, Jara's grave was vandalized, it was suspected that those responsible were right-wing extremists.

His work

Theater

Among the works directed by Víctor Jara are:

• 1959 and 1963: Similar to happinessAlexander Sieveking.
• 1960: The mandragoraMachiavelli.
• 1962 and 1964: Light-day anomasSieveking.
• 1963: The invadersEgon Wolff.
• 1963: DuoRaul Ruiz.
• 1965: The stirringSieveking.
• 1965: The girl.Ann Jellicoe.
• 1966: The old houseAbelardo Estorino.

Works in which he assisted the direction:

• 1960: The widow of ApablazaGermán Luco Cruchaga, directed by Pedro de la Barra.
• 1961: The mother of rabbits, by Alexander Sieveking, led by Agustin Siré.
• 1963: The circle of chalkBertolt Brecht, directed by Atahualpa del Cioppo.
• 1966: Marat SadePeter Weiss, led by William Oliver.

Discography

Studio records

• 1966: Victor Jara
• 1967: Folk songs of America (with Quilapayun).
• 1967: Victor Jara
• 1969: I put your hands open...
• 1970: Free song
• 1971: The right to live in peace
• 1972: The population
• 1973: Song for mischief

Live Recorded Discs

• 1978: The recital
• 1996: Victor Jara in Mexico
• 1996: Victor Jara speaks and sings

Posthumous editions

• 1974: Victor Jara / Manifesto
• 1974: I remember you, Amanda.
• 1975: Victor Jara. Present
• 1975: Victor Jara. Last songs
• 1979: Victor Jara
• 1984: An unfinished song (‘an inconclusive song’)
• 1990: I sing to the human
• 1992: All Victor Jara
• 1997: Victor Jara present (collection Making History).
• 2001: Victor Jara speaks and sings
• 2001: Manifesto
• 2001: Musical anthology
• 2001: 1959-1969

Poshumous awards

Mural to Victor Jara made in the galpoon bearing his name.

• On September 22, 1973, a few days after the murder of Victor Jara, Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, in the scientific city of Nauchnyj (Crimea), baptized as (2644) Victor Jara to an asteroid of the main belt discovered by him.
• In a list prepared by the renowned magazine Rolling Stone, published on June 3, 2013, Victor Jara is named as one of the “15 rock rebels” roll, being the only Latin American to integrate the list.
• A fishing gulet built in 1917 in Denmark changed its name to that of the singer. Browse social and cultural events, and when it is not on the high seas it is in the museum of the port of Lübeck (Germany).
• The Teatro Víctor Jara, in the municipality of Santa Lucia de Tirajana, province of Las Palmas (Spain) was opened in April 1989 and is on Victor Jara s/n. It was built to offer artistic and cultural expressions. It offers an exhibition space for the demands of social groups where they can offer the population their work in the different fields of culture (music, theatre, end of course, carnival, conferences, Christmas and other events).
• The Scottish music group Simple Minds dedicated his song "Street Fighting Years" from the homonymous album (1989) to the memory of Victor Jara.
• James Dean Bradfield (vocalist and guitarist from Manic Street Preachers) released in 2020 his second solo album "Even in exile", conceptual album based on Victor Jara's life and death.
• On September 7, 2021, the City of Central Station approved the change in the name of the Avenida Ecuador in the section between the Alameda and Avenida General Velásquez, renouncing it as "Avenida Victor Jara" in honor of the singer who was arrested in the vicinity of the place in the framework of the Golpe de Estado de 1973, inside the former Technical University of the State (now USACH).
• The Fleet Foxes musical group included a song dedicated to Victor entitled "Jara" in his album "Shore"

In popular culture

Plaque in Barcelona in homage to Jara: «I do not sing for singing or for having a good voice. I sing because the guitar makes sense and reason."

Chilean singer-songwriter and theater director Víctor Jara created, recorded and edited an extensive musical work. After his assassination at the hands of the coup soldiers who overthrew the government of President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, he continued publishing and selling throughout the world, especially in Spanish-speaking countries.

The relevance of his artistic figure and his tragic death have led many singers and musical groups to dedicate songs to him. Jara has inspired multiple contemporary Spanish-speaking artists, and musicians in particular. For example, the posthumous letter from Ángel Parra, with strong political content referring to the events that occurred in Chile following the coup d'état. The letter was written in Paris in December 1987, while Parra was in exile.

In 2013 the theater company La Otra Zapatilla from Concepción premiered the play Víctor, a song to reach the stars. She won the Ceres award for best play and later participated in the Santiago a mil festival.

Different buildings throughout Chile also receive his name; Among them, the most symbolic and relevant is the stadium where he was assassinated, the former Estadio Chile, which is called Estadio Víctor Jara. An example outside the Chilean borders is the theater in the municipality of Santa Lucía de Tirajana on the island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain) named after Víctor Jara.

Since 1993, the Fundación Víctor Jara, a non-profit organization, has taken over Víctor's copyright, to organize and disseminate in an appropriate and artistically valid way the works of the director and singer-songwriter, either by initiative own or by third parties, such as the Víctor Jara Warehouse, an artistic-cultural center that operated at 2146 Huérfanos street (Brasil neighborhood, in Santiago Centro) from 2002 to 2013.

In the Chilean popular revolt of 2019, the song "The right to live in peace" was one of the most reproduced on the Spotify platform and was widely used in the streets to demand social justice and repudiate the action of the military and police commanded by the government of Sebastián Piñera, showing its validity in historical memory almost 50 years after its existence. murder.

Music

The relevance of the artistic figure of the Chilean singer-songwriter and theater director Víctor Jara, and his tragic death, have given rise to many singers and musical groups dedicating songs and musical albums to him, a compilation of which can be seen in Tribute Songs to Victor Jara.

Films and documentaries

• 1973: The tiger jumped and killed, but he'll die..., directed by Santiago Álvarez; Cuba.
• 1974: Compañero: Víctor Jara of Chileled by Stanley Foreman and Martin Smith (documentary); United Kingdom.
• 1976: Il pleut sur Santiago (It rains on Santiago), starred by André Dussollier, directed by Helvio Soto; music by Ástor Piazzolla; France.
• 1978: April Hat 30 Tagedirected by Gunther Scholz; Germany.
• 1978: The singer, led and starred by Dean Reed, written by Wolfgang Ebeling; Germany.
• 1999: The right to live in peace (documentary, DVD), directed by Carmen Luz Parot; Chile.
• 2001: Freedom highway: songs that shaped a centuryled by Philip King; United States.
• 2005: The land of the 1000 musicsepisode 6: “La protesta”, directed by Luis Miguel and González Cruz; Spain.
• 2007: Victor Jara's funeral, directed by Nélida D. Ruiz de los Paños and Cristián Villablanca R. Documentary in co-production with TV3 Catalonia (Spain), Paral·lel 40, Cristián Villablanca and Nélida D. Ruiz de los Paños; Spain/Chile.
• An unfinished song (An unfinished song), tentatively directed by Emma Thompson, starring Antonio Banderas. Inspired by the book Victor Jara, a truncated songJoan Jara. Not yet.
• 2019: Massacre in the stadiumNetflix's documentary.

Books

• Victor Jara, a truncated songJoan Jara.