RSSVictor Jara is Smiling In Heaven
Just a quick Sunday night note to salute my Chilean peeps, you know who you are, and share their joy at the election of President Michelle Bachelet, who the media likes to remind us is a “left wing single mother,” and perhaps more importantly, the daughter of one of Pinochet’s victims. (Her father, a former military officer, died in prison under the dictatorship.)
I do believe that Pinochet should face justice for his crimes (”Please remember Victor Jara,” as the Clash sang all those years ago, reminding us that the folk singer who had his hands broken by Pinochet’s thugs and was then told to play his guitar in the Santiago Stadium before being blown away by “Washington bullets”). But I also believe that the voters of Chile have once again delivered the ultimate punishment to the decrepit old despot: By once again repudiating the barbarism of Pinochet and affirming that it is the Socialist Party of the late Salvador Allende that represents democratic civilization in Chile.
The ultimate punishment for Pinochet is that the Chilean electorate has cast him and what he stands for in the trash can of history, leaving him to live out his days as a disgraced outcast hounded by prosecutors. (It’s a gentler fate than thousands of his victims had, to be sure.)
But Bachelet has more important matters on her plate than avenging the dead. The whole continent’s politics are being remade by new left-wing models of governance — the media will focus on the bogey men of the nationalist-demagogue Chavez/Evo Morales stripe, but ultimately it’s the more centrist, pragmatic model represented by Bachelet, Argentina’s Nestor Kirschner and Lula in Brazil that is carving out the more viable and durable alternatives for developing countries interacting with the world economy.
And there’s something emotionally satisfying — in the way that Hollwyood movies end — in the notion that when the people of Chile have been given the democratic right to choose their leaders, it is the children of Pinochet’s victims, rather than those of his acolytes, that they turn. As y’all used to say in the old days, Venceremos!
The Latest
If I Was a Blogger...
... on Lebanon/Iran democracy claims
Elliot Abrams isn't telling you the whole truth about Lebanese democracyGuest Columns
The Pathologies of Israel's Guilty Conscience
Guest Column: Eitan Bronstein The proposal to legally bar the commemoration of the Nakba on Israel's Independence Day reflects growing trepidation in Israel about the inevitable encounter with the Palestinian Nakba and the understanding that the Nakba is a foundational part of Israeli identity....Glancing Headers
The Shebab, the Shahids and the Champion's League Final
The Shebab gunman on the left appears to be a Gunner, i.e. an Arsenal fan... In honor of today's Champion's League final, I republish my op ed that ran in the National a year ago. What was most fascinating about the photograph of the Somali gunman who was part of the crowd dragging the body...Annals of Globalization
The Shebab, the Shahids and the Champion's League Final
The Shebab gunman on the left appears to be a Gunner, i.e. an Arsenal fan... In honor of today's Champion's League final, I republish my op ed that ran in the National a year ago. What was most fascinating about the photograph of the Somali gunman who was part of the crowd dragging the body...99c Blogging
Is Israel Planning to Provoke Iran?
My, oh my, where would we be without a free press in Israel? Haaretz's Aluf Benn today not only outlines how Netanyahu is continuing to build momentum -- and public expectation -- for war with Iran, but he also offers some insights into just how the Israelis might go about positioning themselv...Featured Analysis
Why Obama Must Shackle Bibi
Without any sense of irony, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told fellow paranoiac Jeffrey Goldberg that Iran is ruled by "an apocalyptic messianic cult." Yet, as Goldberg makes clear, perhaps inadvertently, Netanyahu himself is guilty of the same: His view of Iran as simply the latest ...Unholy War
Israel's Apartheid Anxiety
Israel fears being targeted by a grassroots boycott movement of the type that was so effective in pressuring South Africa to end apartheid In a remarkable interview last November, the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert cautioned that unless it could achieve a two-state solution quickly, Israel...The Whole World's Africa
Congo's Not Africa's WWI, It's Worse Than That
If there is a European analogy to be applied in the Congo, it would be the brutal Thirty Year War in Germany that ended in 1648Shameless Cronyism
Embedded with the Jihadis
My crazy friend Nir Rosen goes on embed with the Taliban, and finds out just why the U.S. can't win in AfghanistanRebellion Into Money
Why Joe Strummer Was a Socialist
Hint: It had nothing to do with bailing out banksA Skeptical Read
All the Hysteria That's Fit to Print, Take II
Now the New York Times wants you to take seriously the idea that the prime issue for the American voter is the danger of al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons. Oh, grow up!Could Die Laughing
Whatever Became of that Nice Mr. Blair...
The problem with a global conversation between Muslims and Christians refereed by Tony Blair? Two words: Tony Blair.Hear! Hear!
Bush's 'Peace' Effort Imperils Peace
Daniel Levy explains why the farcical negotiations between Olmert and Abbas actually undermine the prospects for Mideast peaceA Wondering Jew
Israel is 60, Zionism is Dead, What Now?
Israel at 60 is an intractable historical fact. It has one of the world's strongest armies, without peer in the Middle East, and its 200 or so nuclear warheads give it the last word in any military showdown with any of its neighbors. Palestinian militants may be able to make life in certain parts...The 51st State
A Teachable Moment in Basra
It should come as no surprise that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's disastrous offensive against the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr in Basra has had the exact opposite effect of that intended -- strengthening rather than weakening Sadr, and making clear that he, and the Iranians, have far greater in...Futures Market
Will Russia Partition Kosovo?
Why my tea-leaf reading suggests that Moscow has a nasty surprise in store for Washington in the BalkansCuisine
Yummy yummy Umami
Why a leftover lamb bone turned a bean stew into an ecstatic eventHousekeeping
'Lost' Entries on Rootless Cosmopolitan
Previous entries that now register as "not available" are ones that got left behind in a server migration. We're working on retrieving themNew York Moments
The Debka Made ‘Em Do ItFrom Tony's Archive
A Playground Lesson for Bush
How a spontaneous alliance of jocks, do-gooders and lesser bullies against the biggest bully at the school changed the balance of power at Milnerton Primary
2 Responses to “Victor Jara is Smiling In Heaven”
Very exciting indeed! And she’s a pediatrician. Think what a better country America could be if our president was a female pediatrician!
Maybe on one of her State visits to Washington, she’ll bump into Henry K and get to ask him how it feels to have empowered the men who tortured her dad to death.
After Pinochet was arrested in London in ‘98, a bunch of Chileans went to the British embassy in Santiago to pick up the garbage. The guards stopped them and asked: “What do you think you’re doing?” And they replied: “You picked up our trash, we’ll pick up yours.”
Check your vacation destinations carefully, Henry K: garbage collectors are waiting for you, too.
Victor Jara is smiling in heaven with the beginnings of a return to democratic rule in Chile, but it’ll take a lot of grassroots organizing and activism to secure the kind of social and economic equality he dedicated his life to. After 30 years his actual killer was disclosed: Edwin Dimiter, aka the ‘Sadistic Prince” who works in the Pensions department of the Bachelet government. It’s grassroots protests against Dimiter that are uncovering this gross injustice (see: http://socialistworld.net/eng/2006/06/06chile.html). There is a wonderful album released this year in tribute to Victor Jara by Francesca Ancarola called “Lonquen”–the name of the village where Jara was born and she notes that even under the current government the class divide in Lonquen. Here’s an excerpt:
“The title song, the only Ancarola composition, opens the album with a counterpoint to Jara’s portrait of Lonquén, where, it seems that, even with the dictatorship’s self-destruction, little has changed in sociological terms. Jara was a poet, troubadour, and prophet of the Chilean masses, and as Ancarola observes, “Víctor’s art emerges inexorably from his humble origin in a country marked by class differences.”
Francesca Ancarola, Lonquén: Tribute to Víctor Jara
Petroglyph (www.petroglyphrecords.com)
Victor Jara’s songs and his struggle continues.
Leave a Reply