CONVICTION IN VICTOR JARA'S MURDER

Thirty five years later, they've finally gotten a conviction for Victor Jara's murder.

Songwriter Victor Jara

When dictator Augusto Pinochet staged a coup in 1973, with the help of the CIA and the Nixon administration, many Chileans that were considered a threat by the new regime -- students, teachers, playwrights, activists, union organizers, so-called "subversivos," and many who weren't political at all, but rounded up by mistake -- were arrested and detained at the country's largest football stadium. The locker rooms became torture chambers, and many were killed and "disappeared" by the military police and the army.

Dictator Augusto Pinochet

Victor Jara was arrested at the university where he worked, and dragged to the stadium. He was kept in a group of "special interest" prisoners. Jara was a popular singer, the Bob Dylan of Chile, it has been said, and he sang openly of justice and freedom. He knew he would never survive, given his special status.

The military tortured Victor Jara for three days. They broke both his hands, mocking him to play guitar now. He did an amazing thing. Even with broken fingers and hands, he defied his captors and sang. Witnesses have said his voice could be heard from deep in the locker rooms that were now torture chambers. They heard him in the crowded stadium, and they joined the singer. Jara was machine-gunned shortly afterward, and dropped into a mass grave, but he remains a hero to Chileans, and people around the world who believe in peace and justice.


Victor Jara sings "Te Recuerdo Amanda" (I Remember You, Amanda)

A rough translation of the lyrics shows you the power of his words:

I remember you, Amanda
the wet street
running to the factory
where Manuel worked.
Your wide smile,
the rain in your hair
nothing else mattered,
you were going to meet him.

Only five minutes
life is eternal
in five minutes
the siren sounds
to go back to work
and as you walk
you light up everything
those five minutes
have made you flower.

he took to the mountains to fight
he who had never hurt anyone
he took to the mountains to fight
and in five minutes
it was all destroyed
the siren sounds
time to go back to work
many will not return
neither Manuel.

I remember you Amanda
the wet street
running to the factory
where Manuel worked.

VISCERAL REALIST

Maybe you know Roberto Bolano, but probably not. Even if you pay attention to such things, an experimental author who writes in Spanish might be easy to miss, even when he is lauded worldwide as a big deal. I mean, it's not like he's Brittney Spears or an American Idol, after all -- you know, really important. He's a writer, for godsakes! And he doesn't even have the courtesy to write in English, so how good could he be?
For a while he's been traded among the cognoscenti as a secret commodity, a contraband item, something to turn someone on to, an antidote to jaded tastes. Now he's finally getting his well-deserved due in the English-speaking world after important critical essays in the New York Review of Books ("The Great Bolano," July 19, 07) and the New York Times ("The Visceral Realist," April 15th, 07).
Bolano died on 2003, at the age of fifty. A Chilean novelist and poet, he traveled Latin America on his own version of "The Motorcycle Diaries," the trip that radicalized Che Guevara, and befriended revolutionary poet, Roque Dalton, in El Salvador. Bolano returned to help the elected socialist Allende in his native Chile, but in 1973, in a US-orchestrated coup, the dictator Pinochet took power, and Bolano was jailed. He was rescued by a couple classmates who had become prison guards, and escaped the country.


A descendant of brilliant fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, but highly unique, Bolano has written several books now in translation, including the novella "Night in Chile," and "Distant Star." His latest novel to be translated into English is "The Savage Detectives." It tells the tale of two desperately poor poet travelers, members of the secret philosophy movement "The Visceral Realists." Philosophical, whimsical yet political, Bolano is a new animal, a rara avis in letters, something special to seek out if you venture beyond the Comfort Zone.
There is talk of another book, the massive "2666" published in 2004 (in Spanish), a novel that is divided in five "parts," four and a half of which were finished before Bolaño's death. Centered around the unsolved (and ongoing) serial killings in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican border, the book features a wide cast of characters in it's 1100 pages, including the secretive, Pynchon-like German writer Archimboldi. That should be interesting.