Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

One of the most influential songwriters of the Latin American Nueva Canción (New Song) movement, Victor Lidio Jara Martinez was killed, along with thousands of Chileans, after newly appointed Army General Augusto Pinochet assaulted the Palace of La Moneda and killed President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. In the following days, participants of the Unidad Popular (the leftist coalition that supported Allende's presidency) were detained, tortured, and killed after being taken to the Chile and National stadiums. Victor Jara, who was born in the peasant village of Lonquen on September 28, 1932, was detained in the building of the Technical University in the College of Arts where he had taught. After being brutally separated from his friends, he was ordered to sing for the crowd of detainees in the stadium in which he had performed many times. Then he was tortured. On September IS, 1973, he was killed and his corpse abandoned in the street. Jara was a member of the Communist Party, where he joined Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda and the great songwriter and poet Violeta Parra, both of whom influenced him. He performed in many demonstrations and strikes and recorded memorable songs, both as a soloist and with the folk-based bands Quilapayun and Inti-Illimani. In 1971 he was named cultural ambassador for Allende's Unidad Popular. He also directed theater plays and ... log in or subscribe to read full text