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Homage to Chilean Singer, Victor Jara

From Larry Sheehy,
30 October 1998

In light of the recent arrest in England of the murderer General Pinochet, I want to let this List know of a wonderful article about Victor Jara in the recent issue of The Catholic Worker newspaper entitled "Homage to Chilean Singer, Victor Jara" by Suzette Ermler. Whether you are Catholic or not it doesen't matter...this is a great little paper about affirming life. Contact them at: 36 East First Street, New York, NY. 10003, 212/777-9617...no email. Subscriptions are 25 cents a year.

Larry Sheehy
Ukiah, Alta CA

The following is the last paragraph and a quote from the article:

While it is true that Victor Jara was influenced by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, he had hoped that Chile's revolution could be undertaken without the use of arms. Victor wrote a song during a time of unity between leftist Catholics and Marxists in Latin America in the frame of the "Our Father" called "La plegaria a un labrador" ("Prayer to a Farm Worker"). His song and voice, accompanied by the strumming charango, still remain the best witnesses to Victor's spirit:

...Deliver us from the master who keeps
us in misery,
thy kingdom of justice and equality come.
Blow, like the wind blows the wild flower
of the mountain pass...
Thy will be done at last on earth
give us your strength and courage to
struggle.
Stand up, look at your hands,
take your sister and brother's hand so you can
grow.
We'll go together, united by blood,
Now and in the hour of our death.
AMEN.

and this quote from an interview:

I am moved more and more by what I see around me...the poverty of my own country, of Latin America and other countries of the world; I have seen with my own eyes memorials to the Jews in Warsaw, the panic caused by the bomb, the disintegration that war causes to human beings and all that is born of them...But i have also seen what love can do, what strength of a person who is happy can achieve. Because of all this, and because above all I desire peace, I need the wood and strings of my guitar to give vent to sadness or happiness, some verse which opens up the heart like a wound, some line which helps us all to turn from inside ourselves to look out and see the world with new eyes.

-Victor Jara