Victor Jara
In the 1960s Victor Jara wrote songs of protest against the ruling elite of his country. He was one of the founding fathers of Chile’s ‘New Song’ movement which in 1970 helped elect the democratic popular unity government of Salvador Allente. As a result Chile’s right wing hated him.
On 11 September 1973 Victor Jara had been due to sing in the Santiago University. Instead, with the coup of General Augusto Pinochet, underway, he was arrested and led to Santiago’s boxing stadium. Over four days he was tortured, beaten, electrocuted, his hands and wrists broken, before finally being machine-gunned to death, at the age of 38. His widow, Joan, says his body was thrown to the street, and was later found in the morgue “among lots and lots of anonymous bodies” that she saw that day. The coup, backed by Nixon, was recently described by Colin Powell as: “Not a part of American history that we’re proud of.”
