Bruce Springsteen Performs Victor Jara’s ‘Manifesto’
Chilean folk musician and revolutionary hero Victor Jara was murdered 40 years ago today by soldiers led by Augusto Pinochet. He would be 81.
Jara, compared often with Bob Dylan (probably more correctly Phil Ochs) was the voice of the left in Chile during the rise of Allende to the presidency. He was a theater director, musician and what eventually got him killed, a supporter of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.
On September 11th, 1973 the United States backed a coup in the South American nation of Chile – their goal was to overthrow the Socialist President, Allende. They succeeded, Allende was murdered, or according to the coup leaders he killed himself. 40,000 supporters of Allende were rounded up in a soccer stadium and imprisoned. Many were killed, many more were ‘disappeared’ – among them Victor Jara.
Here is a a retelling of the last days of Jara – you can read more at this link.
“On the day of this tragedy, Victor Jara was at his job in the State Technical University, which was surrounded by the military, who took Victor Jara prisoner for five horrible days. During these days, he was forced to live in cold and dirty prisons without proper food or water, but other prisoners there with him testify that during these sufferings, he was only concerned with the welfare of his fellow prisoners.
Finally, the military brought Victor Jara and other political prisoners to the Stadium of Chile, the place where the concert for Allende has previously been held. There the military men tortured and killed many people. They broke Victor Jara’s hands (Note: many stories indicate that Victor Jara’s hands were cut off, but Joan Jara’s book about Victor indicates that when she saw him after his death, his hands were broken, so that is the version being used in this essay) so that he couldn’t play his guitar, and then taunted him to try and sing and play his songs. Even under these horrible tortures, Victor Jara magnificently sang a portion of the song of the Popular Unity party. After this, he received many brutal blows, and finally was brutally killed with a machine gun and carried to a mass grave.”
Roughly translated the lyrics of the original song are:
I don’t sing just to sing
niether because i have a good voice.
I sing because the guitar
makes sense and has a reason,
It has a heart made of earth
and wings of a little dove,
It’s like holy water
it blesses glories and sadness
Here my singing got stucked
just like Violeta used to say,
a working guitar
with a spring smell.
A guitar that doesn’t belong to the rich ones
nor anything like it.
My singing comes from the scaffoldings
used to reach the stars.
Because singing makes sense
when the veins palpitate
from whom will die singing
the truthful truth
not the brief flatterings
or the foreigner fames
but the singing of a lark instead
until the bottom of the earth.
There where everything arrives
and where everything begins
The song that has been brave
will always remains as ‘canción nueva’
A brief history of Victor Jara told through his music.
Sorry for the off topic comment but it is important I think. I just saw on ecowatch that Anglo American has announced it is pulling out of the Pebble Mine Project. I haven’t the time until tonight to check around for confirmation so anyone is welcome to follow up on it….
I just popped in to say that.
Just got an email from Natural Resources Defense Council – British mining giant Anglo American — the lead company behind the potentially catastrophic Pebble Mine — said that it was throwing in the towel on the project immediately!
This is spectacular, game-changing news for our long, hard-fought campaign against a mega-mine that threatens to destroy an American natural treasure: Alaska’s beautiful Bristol Bay.
Happy, happy!
I’ll just post another wee bit of the email (fair use, right Sarah?) only because I’m so happy. 😀
“The corporate giant had reportedly sunk more than $500 million into the Pebble Mine — a massive gold and copper operation that would produce some 10 billion tons of contaminated waste and threaten the greatest wild salmon runs on the planet.
For years the company asked us to believe that it could gouge a vast and toxic open pit out of the Bristol Bay wilderness without turning it into the kind of dead zone that surrounds other major copper mines.
Now it wants out. And it is willing to write down losses of $300 million to do it.”
WooHoo! This is wonderful news! Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard on this for so long-
YES WE CAN!
now if northern dynasty can drop out, then our vuictory will be almost complete. almost, because permanent victory wont be secured until bristol bay takes its rightful place in the national park system as a monument. still this is great news.
back on topic, that was a very moving tribute, played by a great artist.
Northern Dynasty stock lost 30% of its value in one day I gather. Seems like without their big brother partner they can’t hack it. Not surprising really.
I can only say this is a short term reprieve. The resource is still there. Next up will be china based companies.China has a great hunger for copper.
So goes the world.
Thank you Zach.
The whole shebang which culminated with the violent, bloody overthrow of the duly elected government of Chile, the black propaganda, bribes, all of it , which our own government dirtied our hands with still makes me sick to my stomach all these years later.
Thanks for posting. A dozen years ago, I thought, “Will anyone now remember Chile?”
Good to know that someone else remembers the other 9/11. Victor Jara and Pablo Neruda were the public faces of the thousands that died during and right after the overthrow. Springsteen shows us here that music and poetry are universal. Thanks for posting this.