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September. September 11th 40 years ago, the cataclysm of the Nixon/Kissinger/Pinochet coup that destroyed the elected government of Salvador Allende, leading to his death and the torture and murder of thousands. Included in their tragic number the great singer/songwriter, Victor Jara. His songs are loved and sung the world over for their unique combination of fierce passion for justice, humour, and often wonderful beauty. But without his wife, Joan Turner Jara, much of Victor's legacy would have been lost. Here then is a long overdue tribute to Joan, with much love.
A
MAGNIFICENT WOMAN ϟ by Paul Baker Hernández
Chile’s great - greatly-loved – singer, Victor Jara, is legendary. His music, with its wonderful
melding of fierce passion and great beauty, is unparalleled. 40 years after his
appalling martyrdom, his songs continue to be seminal for committed musicians
the world over, from Billy Bragg to Silvio Rodriguez, from concert halls to downhome
neighborhood bars. Their exquisitely-crafted demands for justice make them irresistible,
eternal, echoing out the very soul of humanity in its longing march to freedom.
However,
the widespread recognition of songs such as ‘Te
Recuerdo, Amanda’ and ‘Ni Chicha ni
Limona’’ is also due to the courage and decades-long dedication of one
remarkable woman. In late 1973, Joan Jara and her two small daughters were
airlifted to safety from the catastrophic tragedy that Chile had abruptly become,
leaving Victor dead. Without her British passport, she, Manuela and Amanda
would almost certainly have been disappeared as well, to be thrown onto the
growing heaps of disfigured dead or sold as ‘adopted’ daughters to friends of
the military. And, with them, much of
Victor’s music would also have perished; for the precious luggage they clutched
so close was heavy with the original masters of his songs.
Born in
London, Joan grew to become a fine dancer; to marry Patricio Bunster, an exotic
fellow-member of the Ballet Joos; to return with him to his native Chile. There,
she taught dance at the national university; there, Manuela was conceived;
there, Patricio abandoned her to court a contestant for Miss Chile. And there,
one of her most gifted students, a certain Victor Jara, with his wonderful
smile, gently came to her, helping her survive her depression and lifting her
out of her loneliness. Although he was
several years her junior, they lived together happily until his death, with Manuela
as much Victor’s daughter as their own physical child, Amanda. And after a
while, they even collaborated creatively with Patricio - in Joan’s words, ‘largely thanks to Victor’s extraordinary
bridge-building skills’.
Indomitable at 85, even after decades of
fruitless searching for justice both for Víctor and so many more victims of the
Kissinger/Pinochet horror, Joan launched the ‘Justicia Para Victor/Justice for Víctor’ campaign to mark 2013, the
40th anniversary year of their murder. After Víctor was recognized and set aside for
‘special interrogation’ during the coup that destroyed Dr. Salvador Allende’s
elected government and shredded the West’s pretensions to democracy forever, he
disappeared. Eventually, Hector, a young student pressed into service in the
Santiago morgue, risked his own life to bring Joan and her family the terrible
news – that his body had been found stacked among dozens of others, waiting to
be flung into a common grave.
“I’ll
never forget it,” Joan
told me once. “It didn’t look like Víctor
at first, he was so pale and thin, as though they had sucked all the life out
of him before killing him. And his hands and wrists were all wrong. They’d been
smashed with rifle butts. But I knew it was Víctor, my husband, my lover, my
only love.”
It was
only when Víctor’s remains were exhumed in 2010 that she also learned he had
been killed by a single shot to the head. Apparently some officers decided to
take revenge on him for his songs championing those impoverished by the unjust
system they supported, so, having smashed his hands and demanded that he still sing,
they played Russian Roulette with him for God knows how long before they felled
him with that one fatal bullet; then machine-gunned him where he lay. “Víctor is one of the well-known victims,”
Joan says. “If we can get justice for him
our hope is it will open the floodgates for all those others destroyed and
disappeared in that terrible time, those whose names are known only to their
loved ones.”
Eight men were
involved, most of whom are today awaiting trial in Chile. However, one of the
ring-leaders, Pedro Barrientos Nuñez, now a US citizen, has lived in Florida
for decades. So far, so surprisingly(!), the US government has refused to
comply with international law requesting his extradition to Chile. Thus the
primary focus of the Justice for Víctor campaign is that the chains of military
impunity be broken, that Pedro Barrientos be returned to Chile to face trial,
and that true justice be done for all the victims and their families.
Despite the campaign being taken up with
eagerness, Joan is not sanguine of its outcome, she knows it’s still an uphill
fight. For if the judges dare to set justice truly free, not only will the
lowly Barrientos and his friends have to face judgment but so too will the
lordly Kissinger and his accomplices in the US government. So she, together with all the families of
Chile’s unsung victims, is appealing to us for help. They stress that, in the
spirit of Victor’s own lapidary phrase, we’re
workers, not ‘Stars’, our solidarity should be something creative wherever
possible. So, how about a wee gathering September 11th to remember all the victims of that terrible date,
North American and Chilean? It could
be filled with music and dance, children’s games and Chilean wine. Here in
Nicaragua we’re organizing a great festival, entitled, Víctor Jara Sings Forever. On the smaller personal scale, if I can
scrounge up the airfare, I’ll be going to Chile to take Víctor’s songs back
home, so honoring the Chilean exiles who brought them to us in Scotland in the
first place; to thank Joan in person for the wonderful gift she has guarded so
faithfully and shared so humbly for so unutterably long; and to offer in
exchange my own composition, I Thought I
Heard Sweet Víctor, Singing in the Night, conceived in the very garden of
the house she shared with Víctor in Santiago. Then, let’s talk to news media
about the anniversary, ask them to play a song or two, or to read from Joan’s
own book, Victor – An Unfinished Song.
How about a special ceremony in your community of faith, or a special motion in
your trade union? … the possibilities are as unlimited as love itself.
In this rare video clip, from a television
interview given just months before his death, Víctor himself talks about the
importance of love in music and the struggle for justice, singing of course,
but also emphasizing the vital role of other magnificent women: his mother,
market worker by day, folksinger by night, and the tragic Violeta Parra, who, although
she killed herself shortly after writing her beloved Gracias a la Vida, Thanks to Life, played a vital role in the
development of his own music.
Again, in love, please send a message of
loving support to Joan, her family and the Fundación Víctor Jara through their
webpage: www.justiciaparavictor.cl,
thanking them all for all their tireless work, and, through them, reaching out
to all the doubly-tragic ones searching for their loved ones even still.
I caught a clip of Joan speaking at the
opening of the Justice for Victor campaign the other day. My memory of what she
said is, “Deja la Vida Volar (Let Life
Fly) is my favorite song today. We are determined to find justice for Victor
and for all those who died or were disappeared in those terrible times. But,
above all - after forty long, long, years - it’s time to celebrate the beauty
of the legacy Victor left us.”
In Joan’s honor then, and that of all the
magnificent women to whom humanity owes so much, let courage, justice and
beauty have the last word.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Singer, songwriter and
organizer, Paul Baker tries to follow Victor’s dictum: ‘We artists are workers,
not stars’. Passionate lover of snow, solitude and silence, the songs somehow brought
him to searing, chaotic, clamorous Managua, Nicaragua. ‘And I love it!’, he
says. ‘Talk about the power of music!’ In
Nicaragua, Paul works in music/ecological projects, with the ‘Víctor Jara Sings
Forever’ movement, writes singing English versions of his best-loved songs, and
has just completed ‘Pensé oír al dulce Víctor, en la noche cantar’ (I Thought I
Heard Sweet Víctor, Singing .. ), an original song begun in the Jara’s Santiago
home while working with them reclaim the stadia where Víctor and so many others
suffered and died. He tours USA/UK yearly with house/stadium concerts,
workshops, lectures, sermons, festivals, picket lines – bookings: paulbaker2004@yahoo.com
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