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I discovered Victor Jara's songs through some of his admirers like Robert Wyatt, the Clash, Calexico, and various others. Then Daniele Sepe made a beautiful album entirely dedicated to him, "Conosci Victor Jara?" and I happened to find this book.
Telling the story of such a multifaceted and charismatic man like Victor Jara could only be done by someone who knew him better than anyone else, his wife Joan, who, although English, through a series of chance circumstances, as always happens, met Victor in Chile at the university, raised two daughters with him, and became Chilean in every sense.
Reading her memories, of that distant and troubled country, of that strange political season full of expectations and pain is both beautiful for the lightness with which she tells of the lives that intersected in the hope of a better world but also sad and painful for how things turned out.
By now the memory of Victor Jara merges into the legend of his songs, musical poems that are heard around the world and recognized as symbols of freedom and struggle for the weakest. She recounts the genesis of some and the moments from which they emerged.
But with this book, Joan brings us back to the man.
The myth will surely follow its course, much like it has been for Che, but the man is different and entering his true dimension is quite impactful.
You discover, for instance, that as a graduate actor with a scholarship, he became a successful theater director, an activity that would be his true passion and with time, he devoted himself to song because he understood that this way he could reach more people, the public, to better and more effectively support his political commitment, as if it were a weapon.
You see the people he loved and was around, Violeta Parra, the Inti-Illimani, the Quilapayún, the comrades of the New Chilean Song, friendship with Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende, and then the travels, concerts, collaborations, Europe, Cuba and his meeting with Che, the theater and dance projects, in short, someone who never stopped, a protagonist of cultural and political ferment in Chile and beyond.
You hear the small and big stories he got involved in, always driven by that civil passion born from his peasant origins and supported with coherence up to the ultimate consequences.
Little rhetoric, you might say, but there is nothing rhetorical about his story.
Work yes, concreteness, continuous search to improve the fortunes of a people exhausted by hunger, natural calamities, and especially by an ever-greedy rich class supported by the USA, terrified by Castro and always hunting communists to fight.
You breathe art and courage, fear and exhaustion, always alternating, with happy periods and others of great tension. The period of electoral victories with hope ignited, then the preparations for the coup, very clear but inevitable with the related difficulties in fighting them and finally the coup with the massacres and disillusionment.
After Allende and his staff, he was among the first to fall into the net of Pinochet's infamous secret police.
Today is the anniversary of his death or at least the date indicated on his tombstone, although he might have been killed a couple of days earlier. A tombstone that has never been without fresh flowers since then.
That's where his story ends and another begins, infinite, like the song in the subtitle.
I've summarized for obvious reasons, but the reading is fluent and clear. A page of history and life that, for me, deserves to be increasingly known and that's what Joan Jara tried to do.
Read many years ago and recently picked up again, this book is, unfortunately, hard to find if not at flea markets or on eBay. It's a real shame and why it has never been reprinted is a mystery. It was part of the Continente Desaparecido series by Sperling & Kupfer, a beautiful publishing initiative. Ajò.
Don't miss revisiting the very beautiful review by Lector https://www.debaser.it/victor-jara/pongo-en-tus-manos-abiertas/recensione-lector and also that of AJM https://www.debaser.it/victor-jara/pongo-en-tus-manos-abiertas/recensione, the only two I found.
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