For Hernán Monardes, Jesuit
“Oh God, is this the world that you created,
for this your seven days of wonder and work?”
Victor Jara
“Sing now, if you can, you bastard!’
Chilean military officer (now known to the world as Pedro Barrientos) to Victor Jara just before the folksinger began to sing his last song: ¡Venceremos!, the hymn of Popular Unity, September 16, 1973.
Victor Jara, poet, singer-songwriter, and left-wing political activist was arrested at the Technical University (today the Universidad de Santiago) shortly after the start of the military coup of 11 September 1973 and on the 12th, Captain Fernando Polanco Gallardo, a commanding officer in military intelligence at the Estadion Chile recognized Jara as the well-known folk singer who had supported President Allende’s Popular Unity government. It was Captain Polanco who separated Jara from the group the prisoners he was held with and beat him severely before handing him over to the ‘custody’ of lieutenant Pedro Barrientos Nuñez in the infamous Estadio Chile.
The train crash-lands into the station.
But your house (this pigsty called “history”)
is no longer occupied.
This fucked-up house has been emptied a long time.
And still without rest its parade of naked ghosts,
of countless burnt witches and our sad lost holocaust dead
and all the comrades beaten in the Stadium
that day, that September day
they broke poor Victor’s hands…
(“What horror the face of fascism creates!
They carry out their plans with the precision of knives.
Nothing matters to them.”)
Now “why do we waste time hating each other”
i imagine you say,
from the pulpit of your knees
bent in prayer?
But it is years later and i am on a train
crossing these other Pyrenees
of broken bones, of age condemned
to this last firing squad, its murderous faceless cruelty
and everywhere without fail
there are still these military juntas, these crazy dictators,
(“Let Mexico, Cuba and the world
cry out against this atrocity!” Victor sings)
but ‘“..are the rich not also deserving of God’s love”
i hear you pray, over and over
to the bones that are left
to these overpaid torturers
and now
in this dark hour
these friends we find everywhere, more
dangerous than the enemy.
This train called progress crash-lands into the station,
but of course, the door doesn’t open.
There is only one door but none of us
could find the key,
not Christian nor Communist,
not Jesuit nor Jew nor “Chinaman”
not you nor me, now, years later
like a book left open on a table
written in a language of the future
this indecipherable scrawl no one can understand
– by a being not yet born.
Now, brother Hernán, in your bishop’s palace
or in your shanty town
we have come to the door of history
and found another mirror.
i came to the door and knocked and knocked,
one furious manifesto after another!
This knock of rage! This knock
that could not even bring the dead back to life!
This inexcusable knock no one can forgive,
likewise this message we all could have left
always littered with orphans, with innocent campesinos,
and mass graves.
Face it, comrade priest,
our liturgy instead of a lament
for a world with its god chained
and beaten by the hour.
What, now, my friends, (O, all these ghosts!)
maybe it is time
to say one last mass for the dead
that could bring all the living back to life
(or light their way into the future)?
But, somewhere, it is always Chile
both then and now (“how hard it is to sing
when I must sing of horror.
Horror which I am living,
horror which I am dying...”)
and the year
like the closed door of here and now
knows nothing of democracy
(even with its terror back in a box
– temporarily),
and always a lifetime too soon
we have woken up,
this door we have knocked and knocked on,
this book on the table with its indecipherable scrawl
see, here, brother,
it is only each man’s solitary prison cell
the train has arrived at its destination
this train at the dead-end of its tracks
and despite the smoke, the sighs,
the burning crematoria,
you are alone even in the dead of night
and not a single one of the neighbours
can say
why no one now
will ever answer
the fucking door.
séamas carraher
Note:
Chile’s Popular Unity government backed Salvador Allende as president of Chile from his election in 1970 until the military coup and Allende’s assassination in 1973. It was made up of most of the Left wing parties: the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Radical Party, the Social Democrat Party, the Independent Popular Action and MAPU (Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitario). They were also joined in 1971 by the Christian Left and in 1972 by the MAPU Obrero Campesino (a splinter group). The moderate Party of the Radical Left was also involved until 1972 when it joined the opposition (inside the Confederation of Democracy).
Image:
Mural a Víctor Jara, pintado en el galpón que lleva su nombre. Barrio Brasil, Santiago, Chile.
By Rec79 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Video:
Hymn of the Unidad Popular – ¡Venceremos!
Victor Jara – Chile Stadium (his last song) English translation
by Joan Jara. Read by Adrian Mitchell.
From the album Manifiesto [Canciones Póstumas]
Joan Jara:
Victor Jara and the story of his last poem http://www.mahmag.org/english/worldpoetry.php?itemid=380
Joan Jara:
Three chapters from Victor: An Unfinished Song
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/jaraunfinsong.html
Estadio Chile by Victor Jara
Somos cinco mil
en esta pequeña parte de la ciudad.
Somos cinco mil
¿ Cuántos seremos en total
en las ciudades y en todo el país ?
Solo aqui
diez mil manos siembran
y hacen andar las fabricas.
¡ Cuánta humanidad
con hambre, frio, pánico, dolor,
presión moral, terror y locura !
Seis de los nuestros se perdieron
en el espacio de las estrellas.
Un muerto, un golpeado como jamas creí
se podria golpear a un ser humano.
Los otros cuatro quisieron quitarse todos los temores
uno saltó al vacio,
otro golpeandose la cabeza contra el muro,
pero todos con la mirada fija de la muerte.
¡ Qué espanto causa el rostro del fascismo !
Llevan a cabo sus planes con precisión artera
Sin importarles nada.
La sangre para ellos son medallas.
La matanza es acto de heroismo
¿ Es este el mundo que creaste, dios mio ?
¿Para esto tus siete dias de asombro y trabajo ?
en estas cuatro murallas solo existe un numero
que no progresa,
que lentamente querrá más muerte.
Pero de pronto me golpea la conciencia
y veo esta marea sin latido,
pero con el pulso de las máquinas
y los militares mostrando su rostro de matrona
llena de dulzura.
¿ Y Mexico, Cuba y el mundo ?
¡ Que griten esta ignominia !
Somos diez mil manos menos
que no producen.
¿Cuántos somos en toda la Patria?
La sangre del companero Presidente
golpea más fuerte que bombas y metrallas
Asi golpeará nuestro puño nuevamente
¡Canto que mal me sales
Cuando tengo que cantar espanto!
Espanto como el que vivo
como el que muero, espanto.
De verme entre tanto y tantos
momentos del infinito
en que el silencio y el grito
son las metas de este canto.
Lo que veo nunca vi,
lo que he sentido y que siento
hara brotar el momento
hará brotar el momento.
Ay, canto qué mal me sales
cuando tengo que cantar espanto.
Ay, canto qué mal me sales
Ay, canto qué mal me sales.
Chile Stadium (In the Stadium)
Translated by Joan Jara
There are five thousand of us
in this small part of the city.
Five thousand of us here.
I wonder how many of us altogether
in the cities, in the whole country?
In this place alone
are ten thousand hands which plant seeds
and make the factories run.
How much humanity
exposed to hunger, cold, panic, pain,
moral pressure, terror and madness?
Six of us were lost
as if among the stars of space
One dead, another beaten as I never could have believed
a human being could be beaten.
The other four wanted to end their terror.
One jumping into emptiness,
another beating his head against a wall,
but all of them with the fixed look of death.
What horror the face of fascism creates!
They carry out their plans with the precision of knives.
Nothing matters to them.
To them, blood equals medals,
slaughter is an act of heroism.
Oh God, is this the world that you created,
was it for this your seven days of wonder and work?
Trapped between these four walls we are just a number,
a number which cannot grow,
its longing for death gradually increasing.
But suddenly my conscience wakes up
and I see this tide of murder has no heartbeat,
only the pulse of machines
and the military smiling sweetly, waiting…
Let Mexico, Cuba and the world
cry out against this atrocity!
We are ten thousand hands
which produce nothing.
How many of us altogether in the whole country?
The blood of our President, our compañero,
will strike more powerfully than bombs and machine guns!
That is how our fist will strike again!
How hard it is to sing
when I must sing of horror.
Horror in which I am living,
horror in which I am dying.
Seeing myself among so much horror
and so many endless moments
silence and screams
are the end of my song.
What I see, I have never seen before.
What I felt and what I feel now
Will give birth to the moment.
(Victor Jara)
‘Lieutenant’ Barrientos:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/27/victor-jara-pedro-pablo-barrientos-nunez-killing-chile
Barrientos, who now lives in Florida, has been accused of arbitrary detention; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; extrajudicial killing; and crimes against humanity under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), and of torture and extrajudicial killing under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). In June 2016 Barrientos was found liable for the 1973 torture and murder of the folk singer in Orlando, Florida.
It is still hoped that he will be extradited to stand trial in Chile.
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