by BENJAMIN DANGL
March supporting Chile’s President Salvador Allende. PHOTO/James N. Wallace
In her book, Victor: An Unfinished Song, Joan Jara recounts this scene “full of happiness, hugs and tears.” People pushed through the crowd, eager to congratulate Allende. When Joan neared the president-elect she remembers embracing him in a cathartic, bear-like hug. Allende said to her, “Hug me harder, compañera! This is not a time for timidity!”
The hope of that day ended in bloodshed just three years later. On September 11th, 1973 Allende was overthrown in a US-backed coup. The military dictator Augusto Pinochet took power, and led the country in a reign of terror which left thousands dead, tortured and traumatized. Among the coup’s victims were Victor Jara and Allende.
As part of the crackdown, armed forces searched the home of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda told the soldiers, “Look around—there’s only one thing of danger for you here—poetry.” He died days later of heart failure, on September 23rd.
Though the dictator and many of his accomplices have escaped justice – Pinochet died in 2006 at age 91 – the horrors of Pinochet’s reign are widely documented. The book Clandestine in Chile: The Adventure of Miguel Littín by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, tells the story of Littín’s 1985 return to Chile after living in exile since the coup. The story was told from Littín’s perspective.
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