It would be easy to call her the widow of martyr Victor Jara, who was murdered by the Chilean miliary (by army officer Pedro Barrientos) at the stadium in Santiago that now bears his name.
It would be easy to call her one of the many, many people who gave as much as they could to overturn the Pinochet dictatorship and bring the criminals to justice.
It would be easy to call her a cultural legend.
But to many Chileans, she was an icon. To many of us who moved in solidarity with the Chilean cause, she was an icon. To all who believe in human rights and justice, she was, and will always be, an icon.
You can read The Guardian piece, posted today about her husband’s life and death and her work in the arts and in human rights.
Chile’s leftwing president, Gabriel Boric, praised her as “a woman who struggled half a century for justice, who leaves us an imperishable legacy in arts and the defense of human rights.”.
The Universidad de Chile issued an announcement about her accomplishments.
Together
I can't say that I ever met her, beyond a handshake or a wave at a gathering or event. What fascinated me about her and Victor is their work before the coup d’état. When researching in Chile in the early 2000s, I heard stories about their openness and their passion in the late 1960s. ‘One person can change the world.’ They welcomed everyone to their house, almost like a salon, to exchange political ideas, new music that their friends had or reviews from the international press about various ballets. Smiles flowed freely. (So did wonderful Chilean wine!) They followed the student movements of 1968 (all over Latin America, Europe and the USA) and wept when the Nixonian counter-reaction came. The Allende victory increased their involvement in changing the country (and hopefully the world). They knew the dangers and chose to stand up, and work like hell, for their beliefs.
Her pursuit of Victor’s killer(s) is nothing short of remarkable (from The Guardian):
The investigation of Víctor’s death was reopened in 1999, and in 2016, a civil court in the US state of Orlando found Barrientos liable for Víctor Jara’s torture and extrajudicial murder, ordering him to pay $28m in damages to the family.
In 2018, eight more former officers were sentenced to 15 years in prison in relation to Jara’s murder.
Barrientos, who fled Chile in 1989 and became a US citizen through marriage was arrested in Deltona in October and is due to be extradited to Santiago on 28 November to face a criminal trial. His US citizenship was revoked earlier this year for failing to disclose his links to the Pinochet dictatorship.
I wrote about the coup in September here and some people responded with posts and musical clips of Victor Jara: 50 Years Ago: The Coup in Chile and the Death of the President (September 11th, 1973)
She will be missed but the dream carries on: change a mind, changing a neighborhood, changing a community, changing a country, changing the world.
Thank you for reading
Alejandro Morales
