Four songs
1974; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 3; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/03064227408532320
ISSN1746-6067
Autores ResumoVictor Jara was a Chilean singer, guitarist and song-writer. Throughout his working life - except for the short period of the Allende regime - he was subject to various kinds of political censorship, personal smears and even physical attacks. He was forty when he died, on 14 or 15 September 1973. in the Estadio Chile in Santiago. The circumstances of his death are still shrouded in mystery. On the morning of 11 September he left his home to go to the Technical University, where he was due to sing at the opening of an exhibition later that day. The University became one of the centres of opposition to the military forces which overthrew the government of President Allende. Jara, together with the students and professors who had assembled there, was taken to the Santiago Sports Stadium which the victorious junta turned into a concentration camp. According to his fellow-prisoners who were later released, he was singled out for specially harsh treatment because he sang to keep up the spirits of the inmates. Guards in Chilean Air Force uniform are said to have killed him by breaking his spine and shooting him with their automatics. In the morning of 18 September - a public holiday commemorating Chile's independence from Spanish rule - Victor Jara's British-born wife was visited by a young civil servant who informed her that her husband was dead and lying in the municipal morgue. Together they went there, and Joan Jara identified her husband, his clothing torn, his spine and the bones of his hands broken, his body full of bullet holes. An official form attached to the body stated that it had been found in the street. Mrs Jara and the civil servant then buried her husband in a marked grave in a cemetery adjoining the morgue. She and her two small daughters now live in England. We are publishing these four lyrics by Victor Jara, translated by the well-known poet and playwright Adrian Mitchell in collaboration with the author's widow, as a tribute to his memory.
Referência(s)