He pays tribute to the deep admiration he has for the New Chilean song, and perhaps because of the closeness he has shown to Chile in his work, the Spanish journalist and Doctor of History, Mario Amorus (49), decided that his new biographical work would emerge Victor Yara. As once were the biographies of Salvador Allende, Miguel Enriquez, Pablo Neruda And August Pinochet.
“I have the notes, I interviewed Joan Jara in 1999, I was at the Foundation, I met Patricio Bunster, his close friends. In fact, my best Chilean friend in Madrid is a person who knew Víctor in the Communist Youth and was imprisoned with him in the Chile Stadium.”
For this, Amorós carried out extensive documentary work, These included papers from the Casa de las Américas in Cuba, the archives of the Víctor Jara Foundation, archives from families in Mexico and Peru, the available bibliography, and an extensive body of archives in the press. “I highlight the interviews I found with Víctor published in Mexico, Peru or Cuba, which are very extensive. In it he thought intensively about his work and the situation in Chile,” he comments on Cult one afternoon in the offices of Penguin Random House Chile.
Spanish journalist and historian Mario Amorós. Photo: Luis Sevilla / THE THIRD.
And the result of these efforts will be published Life is Eternal: Biography of Victor Jarathrough expenses B In it he not only reviews the life, work and death of the artist, from his precarious and hard youth, military service, admission to the novitiate, arrival at the University of Chile to study theater, his musical career and as a theater director. . It also provides background information and discusses certain myths that have formed around the singer’s life.
In addition, and perhaps in one of the most remarkable aspects of the work, it describes what the artist’s last days were like since he played against Salvador Allende on the morning of 11 ‘état. He then went through a crossroads that began with his capture and transfer to Chile Stadium, cruel torture, murder, and later the discovery and burial of the body. Everything was counted as a few times, in a meticulous way.
How did you do that? Amorós has accessed key material: the 13,000-page file on the Victor Jara murder case. “I have devoted myself to reading and understanding an important portion of the summary of the inquest. That way I was able to put together a chronological story,” he states. This is by far the most complex part of the work process, he adds.
“Those who were at the trial were a mountain of testimonies. They declared more than 10 years ago about 80, 90 conscripts from year 73 who were in Chile Stadium. All officers prosecuted and later declared convicted. Of course also the people who shared the political prison and the torture in the Chile Stadium. It is not easy to survive this magma of information, to order it, to report it, to make it coherent, rigorous and attractive. It’s also a very short period of time, just a few days, so you have to choose (which testimonials you want to read). For example, I selected an army nurse who was sent to Chile Stadium to treat Víctor, with whom I could not speak and could only give her a painkiller or vitamin C.”
“There are also the testimonies of people who saw Víctor after the torture, the fear he felt at Chile Stadium, the concern for his family. We knew that, but here it is specified in great detail.
Spanish journalist and historian Mario Amorós. Photo: Luis Sevilla / THE THIRD.
One point Amorós makes clear is the birthplace of the singer-songwriter and theater director. There was always doubt as to whether it was somewhere in the province of Ñuble or Santiago. Based on the documentation, the Hispanic settles this point. Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was born on September 28, 1932 at 5 p.m. in Santiago. “This is stated both in the birth and death certificates issued by the registry office to the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation in November 1990, and in the Santiago constituency birth registration book of the registry office, a procedure that his mother filed on October 14 this year.”
This confusion was partly encouraged by the same singer. “There are interviews where Víctor contradicts himself, sometimes mentioning that he was born in Santiago, other times in Quiriquina or in Ñuble,” explains Amorós.
From everything you learned about Víctor Jara, what surprised you the most?
I would say that I was very surprised by the importance of his mother’s role, because of the musical legacy he passed on to him growing up, it was something I thought was beautiful to recreate, and in Víctor’s words, because it is he, in the interviews, who tells the readers about the importance of this legacy. I was also surprised by the quality of Víctor Jara as a theater director, the recognition he received in his time, with La Remolienda (1965) or with Ánimas de día claro (1962), which received absolute acclaim from the critics, and especially in the case of La Remolienda, which had an overwhelming success with the public. I was also surprised what happened to his last poem as he left the National Stadium in the last days of September 1973 with the help of a communist senator, Ernesto Araneda; On November 1, Hortensia Bussi handed him over to Italian journalists in Rome. That means all in just one month.
Spanish journalist and historian Mario Amorós. Photo: Luis Sevilla / THE THIRD.
One point you bring up is a dilemma that Víctor Jara went through between devoting himself to theater or music or choosing the latter. Do you think it was perhaps the biggest knot of conflict in your inner life?
I can’t know, only Víctor would know. What I know from the testimonies I have from those who worked closely with him, like Max Berrú, is the anxiety Víctor felt as the certainty began to set in that he had to make a decision about whether to increase his activity wanted to stay as a singer or in the theater. Little by little the choice became clear. In Chile in 1970, with massive political campaigns lasting months, he could not commit to rehearsing a play at the Antonio Varas Theater for 10 weeks during working hours. He lived it in agony. While it’s also true that in 1972 he staged two choreographies of mass events at the National Stadium, he was amazed at the communication skills these massive shows have to convey, for example, the history of the Communist Party, the history of the workers’ movement , the poetry of Pablo Neruda. All with the participation of hundreds of amateur actors who rehearsed for a few days and presented a lot of aspects of Chile’s history or a political message they wanted to install with it. Víctor was a constantly active creator, always looking for something new, which is why when he went to London in 1968 he marveled at British theatre, he marveled at that beatles, because they explode all forms. He was someone who was very creative and very open. Alejandro Sieveking said the album La población is like a play, with an approach, a development and a result.
Indeed, for Liverpool, Víctor Jara’s fanaticism was serious. So much so that Amorós cites a 1969 interview in which the singer-songwriter said of them: “They drive me crazy, not only as fabulous singers, but because of their approach to life, which breaks through all barriers of tradition and prejudice.”
If you search the internet for information about Víctor Jara’s final moments and death, you will find a statement – much repeated – that few bother to question: that to the man of i remember you amanda his hands were severed Just before he was finally executed, some go even further and claim that his tongue was also cut out.
The truth is it’s a myth with no real support and in his book Amorós shows it. In the information from the court record, the autopsy shows the places where Jara was damaged. “The autopsy conclusions confirmed that he sustained the lesions in his body (in the right nasal bone and left and right ribs) while he was alive.” No mention of severed hands.
Where did the myth come from? Amorós states in the pages of the Argentine morning newspaper La Opinión that it was in January 1974 that the testimony of an alleged witness to the events at the Chile Stadium, the Chilean writer Miguel Cabezas, was reproduced. This is what a study by Marcy Campos Pérez and Javier Rodríguez Aedo found. Only the name of the story reveals a certain exaggeration: “The singer and poet Víctor Jara died terribly mutilated while singing the party anthem in front of 6,000 prisoners.” In Cabezas’ imaginative story, an officer chopped off Víctor Jara’s fingers with an axe.
“Suddenly, by virtue of this legend, Víctor Jara, who in September 1973 was an unknown singer in Europe, became the ‘singer with severed hands’ – says Amorós –. Something horrible, because as Joan said, ‘The real thing is scary enough.’ The horror and barbarism of the Pinochet dictatorship was enough. That’s part of the story of Víctor Jara, it stayed in the collective memory, but rigorous historical research allows us to banish things that have endured.”
And he adds: “Joan Jara denied it from the start. I’m 49 years old, I didn’t grow up with this story of Víctor in my head, I read Joan’s book very soon, I bought it when I first came to Chile and I always knew that it wasn’t true because Joan herself had denied it”. In addition, a photograph of the above-mentioned article by Cabezas appears for the first time in La vida es eterna.
Citing the court record, Amorós reports that Víctor Jara – at the age of 40 – was murdered on September 15, 1973. He received an initial shot in the back of the head “while standing or kneeling with his back to his killer, who was supporting him with the muzzle of the gun on it.” Then, as he fell, he was riddled with bullets, “they hit him in the posterior sides of the lower extremities and in both hemispheres of the pelvic region.” Not only that, contrary to the versions that speak of 44 balls, Amorós states: “It was impossible to determine the exact number of gunshot wounds.” In addition, it points to the characteristics of the location of the events: “The crime could have taken place in one of the dressing rooms of the first underground of the Chile Stadium, a rectangular room 2.35 meters long and 2.30 meters wide .”
But something is still missing. “The Chilean judiciary has not said who was the material executor of the murder. That is not in the propositions”; emphasizes Amorós. “On the other hand, I fully agree with the lawyer Nelson Caucoto when he points out that this crime was not only the responsibility of those who were in the Chile Stadium, but that the military junta should have been consulted because of the relevance of Víctor Person. Caucoto has this hunch, it wasn’t possible to advance further, but I share it. There is currently no evidence to confirm this, but knowing the history of the dictatorship it is an educated guess.”