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[1979:] Im Jahre 1977 entschlossen sich die schottischen Fußballbosse, ihre internationale Mannschaft nach Südamerika auf eine 3-Spiele-Tournee zu schicken - als Vorbereitung auf die Weltmeisterschaft im folgenden Jahr. Das dritte Spiel der Tour wurde in Chile gespielt - in demselben Stadion in Santiago, das 1973 als Gefangenenlager für politische Häftlinge benutzt worden war und in dem 5000 Häftlinge - einer davon Victor Jara - erschossen worden waren. Einige Schotten wehrten sich gegen dieses Spiel im Blut-Stadion, doch ihre Stimmen gingen in der allgemeinen Fußball-Begeisterung unter. (Notes Iain MacKintosh, 'Straight to the Point')
[1980:] Mit ehrenwerter Überzeugungskraft und großer sozialer Sensibilität stellt Victor Jara in seiner Person und seinen Liedern die Sehnsucht des chilenischen Volkes nach Freiheit und Demokratie dar und ist auf internationaler Ebene ein Zeichen für die Stärke dieser Bewegung ebenso wie für die Brutalität der faschistischen Diktatur unter Pinochet, zu deren ersten Opfern er gehörte. [...]
Victor Jara wurde am 28. September 1938 in Chillan als Sohn von Manuel, einem Landarbeiter, und der Wäscherin Amanda Jara geboren. [Er trat] 1966 erstmals [...] als Solosänger auf und gab damit einen wichtigen Impuls für die Bewegung des neuen chilenischen Liedes [...], mit dem er sich aktiv im Wahlkampf für die Unidad Popular einsetzte. Auf seiner in dieser Zeit produzierten LP 'Canto Libre' (1970) [...] beschrieb er mit großem Optimismus die Hoffnungen auf ein neues freies Chile nach der Wahl [...]. Nach dem Wahlsieg der demokratischen Volksfront Allendes unternahm Jara ausgiebige Konzertreisen [...].
Am 11. September 1973 riß eine Militärjunta die Macht im Lande an sich, einen Tag später wurde Victor Jara mit vielen Gefangenen ins Estadio Chile gebracht. Am 18. September mußte seine Frau Joan Jara den Leichnam unter Hunderten von Toten identifizieren. (Siniveer, Folk-Lexikon 142f)
[1998:] Anders als andere Diktatoren Südamerikas wurde [das ehemalige Staatsoberhaupt General Augusto] Pinochet nicht gestürzt, er mußte weder ins Exil noch hinter Gitter. Er hinterließ auch kein bankrottes Land. Nach einem 1988 verlorenen Referendum, bei dem er immerhin noch 43 Prozent der Stimmen gewann, gab er das höchste Amt an einen frei gewählten Zivilisten ab. Danach blieb Pinochet noch sieben Jahre lang Oberkommandierender des Heeres und der starke Mann der Streitkräfte. In diese Stellung war er schon Ende August 1973 berufen worden: von Volksfront-Präsident Salvador Allende. Der hielt den Provinzler mit dem bäuerlichen Gesicht und den dunklen Sonnenbrillen für einen ausgemachten Simpel: "Pinochet könnte nicht einmal die eigene Frau hinters Licht führen," sagte Allende. 19 Tage später bombardierten Kampfflugzeuge der chilenischen Luftwaffe auf Pinochets Befehl das Präsidentenpalais. Eigenhändig und mit der Kalaschnikow, die Fidel Castro ihm geschenkt hatte, [erschoß] sich Allende zwei Stunden später [...]. Ein Vierteljahrhundert und sechs Wochen sind vergangen seit jenem [...] Tag des blutigen Putsches, der die demokratisch gewählte Regierung Allendes aus den Amtszimmern fegte und die Demokratie der Andenrepublik für 17 Jahre erstickte. Über 3000 Menschen fielen dem Regime zum Opfer. Sie wurden hingerichtet, zu Tode gefoltert, in stillgelegten Bergwerken verscharrt. Zehntausende Chilenen mußten emigrieren; viele zogen in die USA und in westeuropäische Länder, wo ihr Leid und ihre Protestlieder großes Echo fanden. So erwuchs der Tyrann Pinochet zur Haßfigur einer ganzen Generation. [...] Pinochet selbst verstand sich als Schöpfer und Garant der neuen chilenischen Demokratie, als solcher wird er nicht nur vom Militär, sondern auch von einer breiten Schicht unter den 15 Millionen Chilenen verehrt. [...]
Gut tausend Tage hatte der Sozialist Allende an der Spitze einer Volksfrontregierung Chile regiert, ehe ihn Heereschef Augusto Pinochet stürzte. Er stand der ersten marxistischen Regierung der Welt vor, die durch Wahlen an die Macht gekommen war. Für die europäische Linke war Allende eine Lichtgestalt, ein Heros wie zuvor Ché Guevara. Nach seinem Tod demonstrierten Studenten in Berlin, Paris und London gegen "den US-Imperialismus". Pepsi-Cola und der Bergbaukonzern Anaconda hatten Allendes Gegner unterstützt. Präsident Richard Nixon sorgte dafür, daß Chile internationale Kredite verwehrt blieben.
Das Ausmaß der amerikanischen Intervention ist gut dokumentiert. Das Washingtoner Forschungsinstitut National Security Archive veröffentlicht jetzt kürzlich freigegebene Unterlagen im Internet.
(Declassified documents on US involvement in the coup against Allende)
Zur Überraschung der Amerikaner hatte Allende am 4. September 1970 die relative Mehrheit gewonnen. Nixon, erinnert sich Henry Kissinger, "war außer sich". [...] Er erteilte CIA-Chef Richard Helms am 15. September den Befehl: "Retten Sie Chile." Der Geheimdienst solle Allende "von der Macht fernhalten oder stürzen", wie aus den Dokumenten hervorgeht. [Ein Versuch, die chilenischen Christdemokraten zu bestechen, mißlang.] Die Amerikaner änderten ihren Plan. Jetzt sollten die Militärs putschen. Die CIA versuchte, in Santiago illoyale Offiziere zu gewinnen. Dies erwies sich als schwierig. Die chilenischen Offiziere würden immer nur "reden und reden", notierte Botschafter Korry verärgert. Nur der pensionierte General Roberto Viaux bot sich an [und scheiterte mit einem von den USA nicht unterstützten Putschversuch am 22. Oktober].
In seinen Memoiren behauptet Kissinger, er habe am 15. Oktober alle weiteren Vorbereitungen für einen Staatsstreich abgebrochen. Dem Vermerk der Sitzung zufolge forderte er, den Druck "auf jeden schwachen Punkt Allendes aufrechtzuerhalten". Am Tag darauf kabelte ein CIA-Offizier an die Agenten in Santiago, es sei "weiterhin unsere Politik, Allende mit einem Staatsstreich zu stürzen". Am 10. September 1973 hatte Nixon sein Ziel erreicht. Chile, von Allendes Wirtschaftspolitik ruiniert, stand vor dem Bürgerkrieg, das Militär beschloß einen Putsch. Die CIA, nicht direkt daran beteiligt, war eingeweiht, auch Allende wußte davon. [...] Der stolze Präsident dachte nicht ans Aufgeben: "Meine Regierung ist eine Scheißregierung, aber sie ist die Regierung des Volkes." [...] Allendes Leiche ließ Pinochet verscharren. Erst als er 1990 die Macht abgab, konnte sie identifiziert und feierlich bestattet werden. (Spiegel, 26. Oktober, S. 184-188)
[1977:] A Labour MP yesterday slammed the SFA [Scottish Football Association] for insisting that the proposed international in Chile this summer should go ahead. A new row broke out several days ago after SFA secretary Willie Allan stated that any player who refused to play in the match would face disciplinary action. Mr. Norman Buchan, MP for West Renfrewshire, said that the SFA didn't appear to comprehend what happened in the Santiago stadium where the game is to take place. It had been used as a concentration camp and was the scene of mass murder and torture. (Sunday Mail, 9 January)
[1977:] About 70 per cent of Scottish professional footballers voted in favour of the national team playing Chile in June. Only ten per cent were opposed. (Glasgow Herald, 22 January)
Officials of the SFA today refused to meet a delegation of three former prisoners of the Chilean military regime who called at their headquarters in Glasgow. All three were held prisoner in the Santiago stadium, where the match is scheduled to be played. Mr. Willie Allan was unable to meet them because he was attending a meeting. Mr. Ernie Walker declared that he could see no point in meeting the delegation. (Glasgow Herald, 8 March)
[1983:] In their preparations for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, the Scottish football team undertook to play Chile in the Santiago Stadium. During the military coup of 1973 the stadium had been used for the internment of five thousand people. It had seen, in particular, the mutilation and murder of the singer and songwriter, Victor Jara. It was with that in mind, rather than any developed theory about politics and sport, that I joined in opposing the match with this song. (Notes Adam McNaughtan, 'WordsWordsWords')
[1985:] Any time fascism rears its ugly head, the first victims are always the working class activists - the Communists, Socialists, Trade Union leaders - and the artists who take a stand on the side of the working class. On September 11th, 1973, Victor Jara, singer, songwriter, theatre director and Communist, was arrested during the Fascist coup of Chile and held in the Santiago Stadium. Two days later, after being subjected to appalling brutality, he was murdered. [Victor Jara of Chile] is dedicated to those who say music and politics should not be mixed - tell that to the CIA and their thugs who murdered Jara because his repertoire didn't suit their interests. Viva Chile libre! (Notes Dick Gaughan, 'Live In Edinburgh')
[1989:] Salvador Allende, was a popular, democratic socialist, and the mood of the people who supported him was reflected in the flourishing New Chilean Song Movement. The movement had been growing throughout the sixties, and was a modern version of all that Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger had tried to achieve decades earlier. The singers would meet at a pena, an artists' co-op [...]. The best-known Chilean singer was Victor Jara, who had gradually switched his style in the sixties from personal to political songs [...] and he had become a regular performer at Allende's rallies or May Day demonstrations. After the victory of Allende's Popular Unity Party, Jara became actively incolved in campaigns to retain his popularity in the face of violence from the right wing, and increasingly disruptive strike campaigns by managerial classes and others opposed to his policies. [...]
[In the autumn, there was] a military coup led by General Pinochet; Allende was dead, and so too was [...] Victor Jara. He had been arrested, tortured, and held with thousands of others in the Santiago Stadium, and had sung Popular Unity's hymn Venceremos before he died. [It] was soon being claimed that Pinochet had CIA help. (Denselow, Music 117ff)
[1993:] [In September, 1973,] General Pinochet, with the assistance of the CIA and the ITT Corporation, took over the government of Chile, bombing the presidential palace of elected socialist Salvador Allende, and murdering him. Victor was singing for students at the university when the whole area was surrounded. All within were taken prisoner and marched to a large indoor soccer stadium, Estadio Chile. For three days it was a scene of horror. Torture, executions. An officer thought he recognized Victor, pointed at him with a questioning look and motioning as if strumming a guitar. Victor nodded. He was seized, taken to the center of the stadium and told to put his hands on a table. While his friends watched in horror, rifle butts beat his hands to bloody pulp.
"All right, sing for us now, you ---," shouted the officer. Victor staggered to his feet, faced the stands. "Companeros, let's sing for el commandante." Waving his bloody stumps, he led them in the anthem of Salvador Allende's Popular Unity Party. Other prisoners hesitantly joined in.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.
The guards sprayed him and the stands with machine guns. (Seeger, Flowers 102)
[1995:] [Allende is] a description of the 1973 Chilean revolution under which Salvador Allende was killed and the poet Victor Jara suffered an inhuman death by any standards. The song though passive musically, in Moore's delivery held a no hold barred attack on the proceedings at the time. (John O'Regan, Rock 'n' Reel 22, p 35)
[1998:] How sweet to see the Archbishop of Canterbury defending Pinochet [who was arrested for crimes committed as Chilean dictator on a visit to Britain in October 1998], and how nice to discover that Anglican charity overrides the Church's investment policy which prohibits shareholding in armaments factories. The Church has £15.8m invested in GEC which sells battlefield radar, and command and control systems to Chile's armed forces. George Carey's financial advisers have also put £6.9m into BTR, whose Hawker planes hold a place in the general's affections. Two Hawker Hunters bombed Salvador Allende's presidential palace when Pinochet massacred the government. (Demon Ears, Observer, 1 Nov)
[1998:] [Former US Ambassador to Chile, Edward] Korry, who served Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, told how US companies, from cola to copper, using [sic!] the CIA as an international debt collection agency and investment security force. Indeed, the October 1970 plot against Chile's President- elect Salvador Allende, using CIA 'sub- machine guns and ammo', was the direct result of a plea for action a month earlier by Donald Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, in two telephone calls to the company's former lawyer, President Richard Nixon. [...] But this is only half the story, according to Korry. He claims the US conspiracy against Allende's election did not begin with Nixon, but originated - and read no further if you cherish the myth of Camelot - with John Kennedy. In 1963, Allende was heading towards victory in Chile's presidential election. Kennedy decided his political creation, Eduardo Frei, the late father of Chile's current President, Eduardo Frei Ruíz-Tagle, could win the election by buying it. Kennedy left it to his brother, Bobby, the Attorney- General, to put the plan into action.The Kennedys cajoled US multinationals into pouring $2 billion into Chile, a nation of only 8 million people. This was not benign investment, but what Korry calls 'a mutually corrupting' web of business deals, many questionable, for which the US government would arrange guarantees and insurance. In return, the American- based firms kicked back millions of dollars to pay for well over half of Frei's successful election campaign. By the end of this process, Americans had gobbled up more than 85 per cent of Chile's hard- currency earning industries. [...]
Then, in 1970, US investments, both financial and political, faced unexpected jeopardy. A split between Chile's centre and right- wing parties permitted an alliance of communists, socialists and radicals - uniting behind the socialist Allende - to finish the presidential election 1 per cent ahead of his nearest rival. [Henry Kissinger authorised] the Pepsi-instigated coup, scheduled for the following week. [Nixon decided] that, tactically, a coup could not yet succeed. A last- minute cable to the CIA to delay action was too late: the conspirators kidnapped and killed Chile's pro- democracy Armed Forces Chief, René Schneider. Public revulsion at this crime assured Allende's confirmation by Chile's Congress.
[...] Nixon faced intense pressure from his political donors in business who were panicked by Allende's plans to nationalise their operations. In particular, the President was aware that the owner of Chile's phone company, ITT Corporation, was illegally channelling funds into Republican Party coffers. Nixon could not ignore ITT - and ITT wanted blood. [...] Separately, Anaconda Copper and other multinationals, under the aegis of David Rockefeller's Business Group for Latin America, offered $500,000 to buy influence with Chilean congressmen to reject confirmation of Allende's victory. [...] But in case all schemes failed, ITT, claims Korry, paid $500,000 to [an ally of Allende's] on a committee set up to compensate firms whose property had been expropriated. It was not money well spent. In 1971, when Allende learned of the corporate machinations against his government, he refused the compensation. It was this - the Chilean leader's failure to pay, not his perceived allegiance to the hammer and sickle - that sealed his fate. (Gregory Palast, Observer, 8 Nov)
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[1998:] Pinochet is credited with the Miracle of Chile, the successful experiment in free
markets, privatisation, deregulation and union-free economic
expansion whose laissez-faire seeds spread from Santiago to Surrey,
from Valparaiso to Virginia. [...] Chile can claim economic success.
But that is entirely the work of Marxist leader Salvador Allende,
who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after his death. In
1973, the year the general seized power, Chile's unemployment rate
was cut by 4.3 per cent. In 1983, after ten years of free-market
modernisation, unemployment reached 22 per cent. Real wages declined
by 40 per cent under military rule. In 1970, 20 per cent of Chile's
population lived in poverty. By 1990, the year 'President' Pinochet
left office, the number of destitute people had doubled to 40 per
cent. Quite a miracle. [...]
Under the spell [of disciples of
Milton Friedman] the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed
union bargaining, privatised the pension system, abolished all taxes
on wealth and business profits, slashed public employment,
privatised 212 industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.
[...] After nine years of Chicago-style economics, Chile's industry
keeled over and died. [...] Pinochet sold off the state banks at a
40 per cent discount against book value. They fell into the hands of
two conglomerate empires, controlled by speculators [who used them
to buy] up manufacturers, then leveraged these assets with loans
from foreign investors [...]. By 1982, the pyramid financial game
was up. [...] Industry shut down, private pensions became worthless,
and the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too
desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to boot out his beloved
Chicago experimentalists.
Reluctantly, the General
restored the minimum wage and collective bargaining. Having
previously decimated the ranks of state employees, he authorised a
programme to create 500,000 jobs. Chile was pulled from depression
by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero
Margaret Thatcher. (The junta even instituted what is today South
America's only law restricting the flow of foreign capital.) [...]
To save the nation's pension system, Pinochet nationalised banks and
industry on a scale unimagined by Salvador Allende [,] offering
little or no compensation. While most were eventually reprivatised,
the state retained ownership of one industry: copper. [...] Copper
has provided between 30 and 70 per cent of the nation's export
earnings. This is the hard currency that has built today's Chile.
The proceeds of the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973
was Allende's posthumous gift to his nation.
Agribusiness was the second
locomotive of the Allende years. According to Professor Arturo
Vasquez of Georgetown University, Washington DC, Allende's land
reform, the break-up of feudal estates (which Pinochet could not
fully reverse), created a new class of productive tiller-owners who,
along with corporate and co-operative operators, now bring in a
stream of export earnings to rival copper. [...]
Keynes and Marx saved Chile, not
Friedman. But the myth of the free-market miracle persists because
it serves a quasi-religious function. (Gregory Palast, Observer, 22
Nov)
[2004:] The absurdly exciting life of Pablo Neruda [...] makes Byron's look boring by comparison. [...] Born Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, he changed his name in 1920 (at the age of 16), in defiance of his father's disdain for his precocious devotion to writing poetry. [...] The gradual estrangement from his father, a struggling construction worker in the small southern Chilean town of Temuco, [led to Neruda scrounging] in the subculture of anarchists and starving poets to which he instinctively gravitated. [...] What drives the book forward, from Neruda's prodigious if penurious success as a published love-poet at the age of 19, to the series of lonely, consular postings in the Far East in his early Twenties, is an indomitable confidence in his potential significance. [...]
In 1933, [...] he became friends with Federico García Lorca. Lorca's brutal execution by fascists in 1936, when the two men lived in Spain, was as emotionally excruciating for Neruda as it was instrumental to his gradual political migration to the left. Back in Chile in 1937, Neruda was horrified by reports from Europe that thousands of Spanish Republicans fleeing Franco had been crammed into makeshift concentration camps in France. He returned to France, where he co-ordinated the rescue of 2,000 refugees back to Chile in an old fishing boat. By the late 1930s, the legend of the poet-saviour Neruda was in full flower and he was persuaded to stand for senator to represent some of the poorest Chileans from the northern desert provinces.[...] Neruda's robust defence of worker's rights against the repressive measures of President Videla's regime quickly placed him both in physical as well as political danger. By 1948, a price had been placed on his head and he found himself living underground, plotting a perilous journey across the Andes to escape Videla. He remained in exile in Europe until 1952.
In November 1971, Neruda, weakened by prostate cancer, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The last two years of Neruda's life saw the parallel collapse of his body and of his friend Salvador Allende's government. Neruda watched from his deathbed as soldiers combed his garden in search of arms. 'There's only one thing of danger to you here,' Neruda groaned in defiance. 'Poetry.' Whether finally by cancer or heartache, Neruda died on 22 September 1973, a fortnight after Allende was deposed in a bloody coup applauded by Nixon. (Kelly Grovier, review of Adam Feinstein's 'Neruda: A Passion For Life', Observer, 25 Jul)
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the original lyrics
President overthrown in Chile coup
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