And in the world a heart of darkness
A fire zone
Where poets speak their heart
Then bleed for it
Jara sang, his song a weapon
In the hands of love
You know his blood still cries
From the ground
My discovery of the man named
Victor Jara seems, as I write this now, to be an almost total act of collusion on the part of the
Fates. And though I am only beginning to learn of this amazing reformer and
martyr, already I find myself hovering between tears and a firestorm of anger as I think of him.
In the matter of a few weeks, I discovered
E2, finally bought
U2's
the Joshua Tree album and spent
MLK-day listening to another U2 song,
Pride in the Name of Love . Since that day, I noticed an article on Europeans
boycotting American made goods because of our abhorrent condolence of
capital punishment, and later another article mentioning how
George Bush Sr. had been the head of the
CIA, which we all know is just another way to spell
KGB. These seemingly disparate events would all be brought together.
Last night, I noticed the above lyrics, on my new CD, in a song called
One Tree Hill . Like so many other U2 songs, it is about
freedom fighters, and so I decided to learn about this Jara.
As I discovered, Jara is Victor Jara, a
Chilean poet, folk singer, and
activist. Like so many in Chile, Jara lived in extreme poverty. Despite being oprhaned at 15, he still managed to study at a university and a seminary. Guided by his strong morals and desire to help others, he joined the
Socialist Party in Chile. He spoke and sang across the country, a voice for the entire
reform movement. In 1970 Chile freely and democratically elected Doctor
Salvadore Allende as president of the first socialist country in
Latin America.
The peace and social reforms would not last long. In 1973, with the assistance of and funding from the United State's CIA, Chilean Army General Augusto
Pinochet led a brutal military
coup d'etat.
Allende committed suicide, "Only dead, they will force me out of the presidency," he had said. Thousands more were imprisoned and hundreds tortured and executed in the football (soccer) stadium in
Santiago. Amongst the dead, poet and reformer Victor Jara.
Survivors tell of being beaten, tortured with electricity, even dunked into vats of human waste. And they tell of the mass executions. And of Victor Jara, his hands cut off, the army officers forcing him to play guitar before executing him.
And so all those events of the past week have blended into a growing
outrage. Another freedom fighter, another martyr for the poor. As
Bono said in that song,
his blood still cries from the ground. It cries to me, and as an
American,
it is on my hands. Just like the twenty innocent men executed in my own country over the past thirty years.
I cry in my anger and outrage, and I will take up this blood-stained banner of reform. I will fight. I will speak my heart.
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
One more in the name of love