Former Chilean Army officer arrested in 1973 murder of folk singer Victor Jara
OCT. 13, 2023 / 4:49 PM
By Doug Cunningham
Former Chilean Army officer Pedro Paulo Barrientos Nunez is in ICE custody following his arrest in Florida for the 1973 killing of Chilean folk singer Victor Jara in the aftermath of a bloody military coup. HSI Space Coast special agents and ERO Miami’s Orlando sub-office fugitive operations officers arrested Pedro Paulo Barrientos Nunez during a traffic stop in Deltona. Photo courtesy of ICE
Oct. 13 (UPI) -- A suspect accused of torturing and murdering Chilean folk singer Victor Jara following a 1973 violent right-wing military coup has been arrested in Florida. Chilean President Salvador Allende died during the coup.
Former Chilean Army officer Pedro Pablo Barrientos, 74, was arrested during a traffic stop in Deltona, Fla., by federal immigration and local law enforcement officers.
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"On Sept. 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a violent coup against Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile. In the following weeks, many people were detained and tortured in Chile Stadium, an indoor sports facility that the military commandeered as a de facto detention center. Many disappeared or were executed. Victor Jara, a popular folk musician, was among the most famous victims," the ICE statement said.
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According to the New York Times, soldiers who overthrew the elected government of Chile taunted him before he died and smashed his fingers with rifle butts, mockingly telling him he would never play guitar again.
More:
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2023/10/13/8511697226441/
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Victor Jara was arrested shortly after the Chilean coup of 11 September 1973. He was tortured during interrogations and ultimately shot dead.
How Victor Jara wrote his last song, Chile Stadium, in the midst of torture and mass slaughter
BY PUBLIC READING ROOMS
“The term ‘protest song’ is no longer valid because it is ambiguous and has been misused. I prefer the term ‘revolutionary song.’ ” —Victor Jara
On September 11, 1973, residents of Santiago, Chile awoke to chaos. Fighter jets were bombing the president’s palace, tanks had taken to the streets and ordinary Chileans were being rounded up and tortured in the city’s sports stadiums. One of those detained was folk singer Victor Jara, whose incarceration, mutilation, and brutal murder would come to symbolize the tragic cruelty of the Pinochet regime.
In 1973, Victor Jara was one of Chile’s big music stars. A cross between Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, he was unashamedly left-wing; writing popular protest songs about social inequality and the plight of the working man. So when the right-wing Pinochet regime seized power in a bloody coup, they made sure Jara was one of the first to be detained.
Transported to the Chile Stadium, Jara found himself in a vision of Hell. One of 60 torture centers that sprang up around Santiago in the days following the coup, the Chile Stadium was notorious for its cruelty. Detainees were forced to sit in the bleachers without food or sleep, watching as people were randomly pulled out and executed on the pitch. Occasionally, guards would turn their machine guns on the crowd and unleash a random spray of bullets, sending bodies tumbling down onto the playing field.
A lifelong rebel, Jara responded to his incarceration by composing new songs and singing them to his fellow prisoners to keep their spirits up. Unsurprisingly, he soon came to the attention of the camp commander, who made a seemingly magnanimous gesture: Placing a guitar on a table in the middle of the stadium, he invited Jara to come down and play to the crowd. Naively, Jara agreed.
What happened next would be etched on the minds of those who saw it forever. The moment he sat at the table, Jara was pinned in place by the nearby guards. The commander then cut off his fingers and mutilated his hands to mush. Some witness claim he used an axe, others the butt of his rifle. The outcome was the same. With Jara’s hands a bloody pulp, the commander screamed at him: “Now sing, you motherf—er, now sing!”
In response, Jara pushed himself to his feet. With infinite calm, he reportedly walked to the nearest set of bleachers and said, “All right, comrades, let’s do the senor commandante the favor.” Then he began to sing.
More:
https://prruk.org/how-victor-jara-wrote-his-last-song-chile-stadium-in-the-midst-of-torture-and-mass-slaughter/
Victor Jara with w
ife and daughters.
ETC, ETC, ETC. . .
= new reply since forum marked as read
of the stadium to his wife.
He had to be incredibly courageous. I doubt many people could have managed to live on through the stories of surviving prisoners as Jara did.
What a shame knowing U.S. taxpayers' money was actually spent on supporting and protecting the vicious dictator Pinochet. Richard M. Nixon, his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and the C.I.A. did it, while "making the economy scream" so the Chilean people would want to get rid of their elected President Allende.
The entire story MUST be known, fully illuminated, and repudiated some day before this country's history can be clean, along with so many other atrocities. It takes courage to seek the truth, and we have examples all around of us of how many people think it's worth the effort, regardless of the monsters who steer the ship sometimes.
Thank you, Beakybird. 