In August 1973, a month before he was tortured and murdered by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, Chilean singer-songwriter and theater director Víctor Jara experienced moments of heartbreak that chronicled the shattered days Chile experienced on the eve of the 9/11 coup. September. Perhaps, knowing what was to come, he did not just write a few verses that seem sadly foreboding today. He also got his wife, English dancer Joan Turnes, and their daughters Manuela and Amanda to take refuge in a house in Isla Negra, a town about 100 kilometers from Santiago, “in case it was too should there be a coup d’état there should be civil war,” says the book by Spanish writer Mario Amorós Life is Eternal. Biography by Víctor Jara (Penguin Random House) to be published February 27 in Chile and May 4 in Spain.
Víctor Jara was arrested the day after the coup, which will mark the 50th anniversary in September. He had gone to the State Technical University (UTE), where he worked, after hearing a call from Socialist President Salvador Allende. He was taken to the Chile Stadium, where he was tortured and executed along with the director of the National Prison Service, Littré Quiroga. The communist singer-songwriter received at least 23 gunshot wounds and his body was dumped on the public street, where he was recognized by passersby who notified his family. Eight ex-soldiers were sentenced for the crime.
For the biography of the author of songs such as “El derecho de vivir en paz” and “Te recuerdo Amanda”, Amorós reviewed hundreds of files and interviews that Jara gave in different parts of the world; He studied his discography, which marked a milestone in new Chilean song and Latin music, and delved into the more than 11,000 pages of the court record. He also spoke to his friends and family, who revealed these last days on Isla Negra, the same seaside resort where the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda lived.
One of those testimonies is that of his daughter, Amanda Jara, who shared what those moments were like. She recalled, for example, noticing her mother and father’s tension as a child when they saw “some naval vessels making movements” in 1973 and that despite that tension they “didn’t say anything”.
“One afternoon she and her father were walking on the rocky beach of the place that had fascinated Neruda in 1938, and while they were walking he began to invent the lyrics and music for a song and asked his daughter for advice. That composition of Isla Negra was lost, but he was able to record another, Manifesto, born from the depths, to express in a definitive way the reasons why he took up the guitar and popularized his singing,” he says of the book.
This intimate scene was detailed by his wife, Joan Jara: “He was quiet while he was working on the song, introverted and self-absorbed. I could hear him humming softly in the workshop while I worked at home. Sometimes she would come and call me to listen to her. Although she was beautiful, my heart sank when I heard her.”
The song is Manifesto, which he recorded in August 1973. “It was born from the depths, to definitively express the reasons he held the guitar: ‘That singing makes sense / when it’s throbbing in the veins / of those who will die sing / the real truths’ ‘ says Mario Amoros.
Return to folklore
On September 4, 1973, a week before his assassination, Víctor Jara, along with hundreds of supporters of President Allende, took part in the last Popular Unity (UP) demonstration: “They carried a banner that read: Cultural Workers Against Fascism. He was well aware of the serious political situation and the danger of a violent dissolution. He was afraid of what might happen to him, as he forewarned in some letters and in some of his songs and his family,” says Amorós.
And if at the end of the 1960s he left his successful theater career, especially in the UP, in favor of political and protest songs, he returned in 1973 to his origins, folklore. But he did it his way. “The last record of his authorship that he held in his hands was Canto por mischief, published in September 1973. It is a compilation of peasant songs. Surely it came as a surprise to some that he returned to pure folklore after The Right to Live in Peace and The Population. However, he pointed out that the recovery of these songs was another example of his commitment, as he penetrated even deeper into the popular soul by publishing compositions created by the workers themselves,” says his biographer.
And he adds: “In the last months of his life his musical output moved away from contingency and reached its highest level of devotion to poetry and beauty. In May 1973 he created Cuando voy al trabajo, inspired by the construction worker José Ricardo Ahumada. But unlike his fierce 1970 tribute to Miguel Ángel Aguilera, El alma llena de banderas, which ends with three “we will win,” this song ends with the refrain of a few stanzas shrouded in uncertainty: ” Working on the beginning of a story / without knowing the end…'”.
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS America newsletter here and receive all the latest news from the region