The Political Impact of Chilean New Song in Exile

The New Song Movement

In the mid-1960s the new music first found a broad audience among politicized and socially aware students in Chile and soon spread to other sectors, including unionists, rural workers and campesinos, and pobladores (shantytown residents) around Santiago. Peñas, intimate venues that featured the new socially conscious music, provided gathering places for the musicians and the like-minded individuals who came to hear them, creating new political and social networks. While New Song was based on traditional Latin American rhythms, it was not simply folk music. The musicians created original music, adapting, reinterpreting, and modernizing traditional forms and rhythms. Some of the best-known songs were Víctor Jara’s “Te Recuerdo Amanda” and “Manifiesto,” Inti-Illimani’s “Venceremos” and “Exiliada del Sur,” Quilapayún’s “La muralla,” and the cantata “Santa María de Iquique” (composed by Luis Advis), among others. Many of the musicians were gifted songwriters; indeed, their wealth of original music is a major contribution of New Song. The capitalist music industry generally ignored the new musicians, promoting instead U.S.-style rock and roll and more commercial folk music. Many young people began to link this cultural domination with oligarchic rule and U.S. imperialism.

There were, of course, strong political influences on New Song. In the 1960s Chile, Latin America, and indeed the world were undergoing rapid change, and the cold war reflected sharp political conflicts. The Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam War, national liberation struggles in the developing world, and new forms of U.S. intervention had a strong impact on young people in Latin America; many became politicized and anti-imperialist. As Eduardo Carrasco of Quilapayún observed (interview, Santiago, August 9, 2011),

The situation in Chile, and in all of Latin America during this time, was difficult. Many countries were in situations of conflict. There were military coups—not yet in Chile, but young people felt deep solidarity. There was a profound political consciousness developing as a result of the cold war and the national crises. There was enormous social injustice, inequality—there still is today, but it was worse then—and the music, like the literature of the era, experienced a political radicalization. We began to sing songs that responded to these situations, and there was an immediate positive response from people. There was an immediate echo among students. . . . Our music did have a political role, not necessarily in transmitting an ideology but rather in the sense of transmitting the spirit of the social movement. New Song was part of the social movement, not apart from it.

The 1960s were a time of burgeoning mass movements in Chile as people mobilized for land reform, university reform, social justice, development, and an end to political exclusion and inequality. In interviews, the New Song musicians pointed to the importance of these powerful social movements and the political situation in Chile on their music. Many musicians spoke of their militancy in Juventudes Comunistas or La Jota (the Young Communists). Others were active in the Socialist Party, the Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria (Popular Unitary Action Movement—MAPU), or the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (the Revolutionary Left Movement—MIR), but La Jota was particularly important. As Horacio Salinas of Inti-Illimani told the scholar Ariel Mamani in 2003, “If you played with a New Song group you immediately arrived at the Party; it was almost obligatory. There was the idea that the best artists were communists” (Mamani, 2013: 13). The literary giant and communist militant Pablo Neruda was especially influential among the New Song musicians; the Partido Comunista (Communist Party—PC) had deep roots in the cultural world, and many well-known artists and intellectuals were affiliated with it.

While La Jota and the PC provided crucial support for the New Song movement, the party did not initiate or direct it. The movement developed organically and independently, and other institutions such as the Universidad Técnica del Estado, the peñas, the tours organized by René Largo Farías and others, and the interest of a few key people in the music industry were also central to the diffusion of the new music. The PC and La Jota contributed important infrastructure and resources for the musicians. The record label DICAP was created jointly by the New Song musicians and young people in La Jota, for example, and through DICAP the more political recordings of the musicians could be produced and distributed, bypassing the commercial music industry to reach new publics. The PC also had important international links (e.g., international youth festivals, relations with the communist parties of many countries) and other resources that helped to diffuse the new music.

A Gramscian Analysis

The musicians of New Song saw their role as social and political as well as artistic; the music gave voice to the rising social demands in Chile. The art and music of the time captured the spirit of expanding counterhegemonic movements, movements that challenged entrenched power relations in Chile. This hegemonic system and its challengers are illuminated by the writings of Antonio Gramsci, who wrote extensively on the interface between politics and culture. He linked, for example, the rise of the opera and the novel “with the appearance and expansion of national-popular democratic forces” in Europe in the eighteenth century (1991: 378). Similarly, the rise of New Song was linked to the surge of popular power and participation in the 1960s.

Gramsci analyzed the importance of cultural power in maintaining exclusionary, elitist capitalist systems. To produce radical structural changes in political-economic systems, he thought, it was not enough to organize workers in the factories or plan to seize the state, as traditional Marxists claimed. Rather, one had to contend with the ideological and political domination that was present in everyday life and transmitted through schools, the mass media, churches, the family, and other means. This culture of domination becomes “common sense” or, in Gramsci’s terms, hegemonic, a crucial part of the system of power: “What is practice for the fundamental class becomes ‘rationality,’” he argued (1971: 303). Through this system the powerful presented their interests as universal and global, as interests that benefited everyone, in order to obtain the voluntary consent of the ruled for a system of power that actually excluded and oppressed them. Gramsci believed it necessary to develop a counterhegemonic perspective, formulated by “organic intellectuals” from or allied with the popular social classes, who would articulate their genuine interests and empower them. Any revolution would be impossible without achieving a fundamental change in the worldview of the population, Gramsci thought. Organic intellectuals were charged with demonstrating that the system did not in fact benefit all and that another system was possible.

The New Song movement was one of the political actors that, albeit unintentionally, played this counterhegemonic role. The musicians were organic intellectuals translating the hopes and aspirations of millions of Chileans in their songs, denouncing social injustice and repression and communicating the possibility of a different future. New Song escaped the control of the commercial music industry, which reinforced the hegemonic system in Chile, and the political vision the songs presented challenged the structure of power relations in Chile and Latin America that resulted in the immiseration of millions. The poetry of New Song cried out for social justice, equality, self-determination, and structural change. The music had a democratizing and enlightening power, “expressing things that were not yet well-defined or that were unknown” at the time (comment by a Chilean friend, Santiago, September 18, 2015). The politically committed artists were a key part of a movement “from below” for social and political change in Chile during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, and the New Song movement was crucial in electing democratic socialist Salvador Allende of the Unidad Popular coalition as president in 1970. The musicians played at many political rallies featuring candidate Allende, and their songs popularized his program and drew many people to hear him speak.

The Coup of 1973 and the Role of the Exiles

After three tumultuous years of the Unidad Popular government, the armed forces of Chile, secretly backed by Washington, violently overthrew Allende and installed a military dictatorship. The bloody coup provoked international condemnation and outrage. Allende’s project of a “Chilean road to socialism” through peaceful constitutional change had sparked deep interest and passionate support worldwide, and Allende was a much-admired political figure. Many New Song musicians went into exile and were prohibited from returning to Chile until the very end of the dictatorship. Even leading members of the PC were allowed to return sooner (Mamani, 2013: 31), indicating the regime’s deep fear of the political power and symbolism of New Song. After the coup, one could be detained and tortured for owning New Song albums. Even the indigenous musical instruments—the flutelike quena, the panpipes called zampoña or sikus, the lutelike charango—were outlawed. Clearly, the Pinochet regime considered the music and the musicians to have potent political power, representing the values of the social and political movements and the Unidad Popular (McSherry, 2015b).

The dictatorship forced some 200,000 Chileans into exile for political reasons, and hundreds of thousands more fled into exile in the ensuing years: during several periods of economic crisis, according to some estimates, the number in exile increased to 1 million (Shayne, 2009: xv, 19). Chileans settled in some 140 countries around the world, from the Soviet- bloc countries to Western Europe, Latin America, Australia, Canada, the United States, and Africa (Altman, Pineiro, and Toro, 2013; Shayne, 2009; Wright and Oñate, 2007). There was a massive exodus of Chilean intellectuals and artists: musicians, playwrights, filmmakers, painters, writers, and academics. The Pinochet regime propagated stories of a supposed “golden exile” in order to divide the society and create resentment, portraying the exiles (virtually all of whom were supporters of the Unidad Popular) as enjoying and benefiting from the policy of forced exile. The suffering, pain, depression, and disorientation of many exiles were not well known to many of those under repression in Chile.

In the international arena Chilean exiles in general made important contributions to creating awareness worldwide of the atrocities committed by dictatorships in Chile and across Latin America in the 1970s (Aguilera, 2014; Altman, Pineiro, and Toro, 2013; Rojas and Santoni, 2013; Santoni, 2014; Shayne, 2009; Wright, 2007). They were crucial sources of information for the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, and governments because they received news from families, from political party networks, and from friends still in the country. In March 1974 the UN Commission on Human Rights sent a cable to Chilean military authorities expressing deep concern for the lives of political prisoners. In 1975 Pinochet was concerned that the United Nations might expel Chile and asked the United States to veto such a resolution if it were passed. That year the UN General Assembly expressed “profound distress” at the institutionalized torture taking place in Chile (Altman, Pineiro, and Toro, 2013: 196). The Chilean exiles worked tirelessly to keep world attention focused on Chile. Indeed, the effective human rights work of the exile communities in multiple foreign countries was a key motivation for the creation of Operation Condor, the secret cross-border system of disappearances, torture, and assassination organized by six military intelligence forces after the 1973 coup, with Washington’s support (López, 2015; McSherry, 2005). Operation Condor specifically targeted exiles, from well-known leaders such as the former minister Orlando Letelier (assassinated in Washington with his coworker Ronni Moffitt) to union leaders, student organizers, and political activists.

Exiling leftist leaders and organizers was a key element of Pinochet’s strategy to cement control over the country, as Wright and Oñate argue, but exile was a double-edged sword in that it “kept the opposition alive while the left was decimated in Chile” (Wright and Oñate, 2007: 31). In exile Chileans were warmly welcomed in many world regions, engendering solidarity movements in capitalist, communist, and social democratic countries (Rojas and Santoni, 2013). Given the well-structured political party system of Chile, corresponding parties abroad—the Christian Democrats, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party—provided immediate contacts and resources. Social Democratic parties also felt a strong affinity with the Chileans in countries such as Sweden and France. The MIR found a welcome in Cuba and in Sweden, among other countries. The Chileans quickly rebuilt party structures (Aguilera, 2014; Santoni, 2014; Wright and Oñate, 2007). As Alan Angell (1996: 1) stated, “Opposition politics were conducted not in Chile, but abroad. . . . The international dimension of Chilean politics, and not least the effect of exile, was of greater importance than in the other contemporary military dictatorships of Latin America.” The Chileans organized solidarity committees, musical groups, and concerts and published magazines, articles, journals, and books. The organizations built by Chileans in exile created an “external front” that was crucial in the “political war on the dictatorship” (Wright, 2007) and that helped shape Chilean domestic politics (Aguilera, 2014; Angell and Carstairs, 1987; Simalchik, 2006; Wright and Oñate, 2007). Beginning immediately after the coup, international conferences of solidarity with the Chilean people were held in Helsinki (in 1973, 1976, and 1979), Lisbon (in 1974), Athens (in 1975 and 1982), Paris (in 1976), Madrid (in 1978), and Rome (in 1980). The International Commission of Enquiry into the Crimes of the Military Junta in Chile (in 1978), exiles, and published reports, held press conferences, and organized delegations to the United Nations and other international bodies. This commission met in Helsinki, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Mexico City, Athens, Berlin, and Algiers over the next few years (Jones, 2014: 185–186). In the 1980s the exiles continued to supply crucial financial and organizational support for people in resistance in Chile (Rojas and Santoni, 2013).

New Song in Exile

The Pinochet regime might have thought that exiling the New Song movement would make it disappear. Instead, the musicians became internationally known, always a central presence at events, conferences, marches, and demonstrations around the world protesting the coup and the Pinochet regime’s repression. The music became globalized, with tremendous political force, intertwined with the activities of Chilean exile communities and foreign supporters. The political power of New Song was multiplied not only because it was inspiring music but also because it was a compelling symbol of the ideals and hopes of Chile’s popular movements, extinguished by the dictatorship, and of the spirit of resistance.

As we have seen, the Chilean diaspora was fundamental in the emergence of global solidarity and human rights movements that condemned the Pinochet regime (López, 2015; Wright, 2007). The New Song musicians were a vital element of this movement in exile. The music was particularly important as a means of social communication and mobilization across language barriers, transmitting to foreign audiences in profound ways the dreams and the tragedies of the Chilean people. As it had in Chile, the New Song movement helped to bring thousands of people together in solidarity with Chile. The music generated consciousness, empathy, and solidarity with the Chilean people and outrage at the repression taking place. Moreover, the musicians, as public figures closely identified with the popular struggles in Chile and the Unidad Popular, had special access to political and cultural leaders worldwide. The musicians also sent significant sums of money from their concerts and recordings back to Chile.

Some of the musicians, such as Quilapayún and Inti-Illimani, had been on tour in Europe on September 11, 1973. Others, such as Patricio Manns and Isabel Parra, had escaped Chile through the good offices of sympathetic embassies in Santiago. Invited to hundreds of events per year, the New Song artists became spokespersons for the people of Chile. Quilapayún, Inti-Illimani, and Karaxú (and later Illapu) and soloists such as Patricio Manns, Mario Salazar (formerly of Amerindios), Gitano Rodríguez, Isabel Parra, and Ángel Parra, to name only a few, eventually settled in Europe. They sang in numerous concerts in Europe and around the world, musical events that were interwoven with emerging efforts of solidarity with Chile. Joan Jara, a British dancer who had been part of the flourishing cultural movement in Chile and the widow of Víctor Jara, also assumed a crucial international role, often traveling with the musicians to talk about Chile. Chile became an international cause célèbre.

Inti-Illimani in Exile

The experience of exile profoundly shaped Chileans, in many cases providing them with a transnational perspective, an appreciation of foreign countries and peoples, and new sources of knowledge and creativity, but the experience of exile was traumatic, disorienting, and painful on many levels as well. Jorge Coulon of Inti-Illimani told the Santiago Times (September 15, 2013),

In reality, the coup was so forceful on an emotional level. . . . In Chile we didn’t think that such a coup could happen. So I’d say that the first five or six months were spent dealing with a personal shock with reality and trying to understand what would become of our lives. But little by little we continued to play, on one hand because it opened up a tremendous solidarity with Chile—so there were lots of concerts and demonstrations—and on the other hand because it helped us avoid feelings of depression that we could have experienced after the coup. In a way, we were sustained because we kept on making music.

Inti-Illimani, based in Italy after the coup, entered an intense period in which it played hundreds of concerts every year for the first years of exile on every continent in the world. Italian society had not been that familiar with Andean music before, and Inti-Illimani became hugely popular. The group was so much in demand that concerts had to be held in plazas and stadiums; theaters could not accommodate all the people who flocked to hear it. Max Berrú’s records show that in 1973 the group performed 254 times, in Latin America (Chile before the coup, Argentina), in Europe (East and West Germany, Italy, Holland, Finland, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia), and in the USSR and Vietnam. In 1974 it played 66 times in dozens of Italian cities alone. Inti-Illimani traveled to some of the same countries in 1974 as in the previous year, as well as new ones: Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Portugal, England, the United States, Mexico, and Bulgaria, for a total of 155 concerts. ¹ The group kept up this hectic pace for years and sent significant funds to Chile via La Jota to aid people under persecution and help them escape or survive.

The Communist Party of Italy (PCI) was Inti-Illimani’s host, according to Horacio Salinas (2014):

It was a powerful party. A former Spanish Republican spoke to us and said we might be exiled for a long time. The PCI offered to help us settle in Italy, bring our families there, and assist in other ways. Italians had never heard Latin American sounds and the indigenous instruments we used. For the group it was a life full of professional accomplishments and awards. There was great pain mixed with the realization that popular music, music of the people, is similar worldwide. . . . It tells us something about the people and their characteristics.

Max Berrú (interview, Santiago, July 11, 2012) had this to say:

As Jota militants we wanted to communicate with our public, and we discussed how to do it. The songs send messages, too. The concerts were political and cultural. They left people reflective. In exile we spoke more at concerts about what was going on in Chile, the most terrible things. The concerts were more political, and people were inspired to participate and become active in their own countries. These concerts were organized by solidarity groups. We always tried to support the local groups and collaborate with the solidarity movement. We wanted people to understand more. . . . It was important, too, for Chilean exiles to attend our concerts. We wanted to provide a little happiness to those who were suffering, to give people hope.

José Seves (interview, Santiago, June 26, 2012) remembered:

In exile there were huge acts of solidarity in Europe. In 1975 we played in Verona and there were 30,000 people. Joan Jara and Quilapayún were part of this concert. Young people [La Brigada Salvador Allende] painted a mural outside the arena. There were so many people in solidarity with Chile in this epoch. We went to Milan the next day, and there were at least 15,000 people. There was a social spirit. In Verona the federation of unions coordinated the concert, in other cities too, to create centers of solidarity with Chile. We tried to save people in concentration camps, people under persecution. . . . We were a cultural delegation of Allende, converted into a symbol, an instrument of resistance and the pro-democracy movement. . . . For the first five years or so there was so much solidarity with Chile, so much support for Chilean democracy. There were enormous events in France, such as the festival for L’Humanité. The PCI organized huge festivals, too. . . . The prestige of leftist parties, especially the PC, was very high then. . . . There was much value attached by intellectuals to Neruda, Violeta [Parra], and other Chilean artists.

In September 1974 there was a massive march in London involving workers from all the major unions and groups such as the Chile Solidarity Campaign Committee, the Communist Party, and other leftist party contingents converging in Hyde Park to protest the Chilean dictatorship. There were workers’ delegations from Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland as well. Several MPs were in attendance, although the government did not send an official representative (Jones, 2014: 65–68). The Morning Star reported: “Car workers and boilermakers, vehicle builders and railwaymen, building workers and construction men, co-operators, miners, Labour Party members and Communists filed by in a seemingly endless stream. Engineers and steelworkers, blast furnacemen, farm workers, journalists and print workers—the march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square was like a roll call of the British labour movement” (Gostwick, 1974). Featured at the rally were Hortensia Bussi de Allende, widow of Salvador Allende, and Inti-Illimani, which sang for the enormous crowd. Pro-Chile British organizers, working with Joan Jara, had also booked Queen Elizabeth Hall for a major benefit concert including Joan Jara, Isabel Parra, and Inti-Illimani the next day.

In October 1974 Joan Jara and members of Inti-Illimani had a brief meeting with Edward Kennedy in his home to discuss the situation in Chile. They thanked Kennedy for his efforts on behalf of the Chilean people, and he promised his continuing support (Max Berrú, interview, Santiago, October 21, 2014; e-mail, October 12, 2015). Kennedy was a strong defender of democracy and human rights in Latin America and made many efforts to oppose the dictatorships. In December 1974 Kennedy’s amendment to place a cap on military aid to the Pinochet regime was passed by Congress. In 1976, a stronger Kennedy-sponsored amendment cut off all military aid to the dictatorship on human rights grounds (Kornbluh, 2003: 231). (Pinochet refused to meet with Kennedy in 1986, calling him “the enemy of Chile” [Harper, 2009].) This 1974 meeting is an example of the political importance of the cultural movement’s artists as representatives of the Chilean people.

Max Berrú (interview, Santiago, October 21, 2014) noted the significance of New Song for burgeoning solidarity movements: “Our concerts were important for world solidarity. . . . We felt useful for the Chilean struggle. Committees of solidarity formed in many countries. Inti-Illimani inspired young people, not only our music but also politically. Many joined parties or became activists.” Local organizers recognized the power of New Song as well. The Australian activist Philip Herington, commenting on the impact of a tour by Inti-Illimani, wrote, “Our task now is to develop in the coming period a political program of solidarity work which can consolidate the impact that the Inti had and to translate it into [concrete] actions that Australians can do. This demands careful work to spread our message among trade unions, the ALP [Australian Labor Party], Church groups etc.” (Jones, 2014: 199). The music created bonds of solidarity that organizers drew upon in their efforts to organize political opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship.

The Power of Music: Quilapayún

Quilapayún was probably the best-known New Song group in Chile before the coup. Its combative and powerful music, black ponchos, and militancy in La Jota made it a striking presence. Members were harassed by right-wing forces during the Allende years: once the car of one of the musicians was spray-painted with the word “Jakarta,” a word designed to raise fears of an anticommunist massacre such as had occurred in 1965 in Indonesia. Members of Quilapayún spoke to the magazine Ramona in August 1973 as they prepared to leave for France on a tour. They had been invited to play in the Olympia Theater in Paris and at the festival for the Communist Party newspaper L’Humanité. Eduardo Carrasco said, “What is important is to bring revolutionary song and a militant attitude united with the popular cause to a stage that is one of the highest expressions of international popular music on a world scale.” Carlos Quezada added, “We go in the name of Chilean youth, of the Chilean people, of Latin American New Song” (quoted in Ramona, 1973: 13).

Quilapayún was caught by surprise by the 1973 coup. In the first days of confusion, rumors, news of terrible violence, and fragmentary communication with Chile, Carrasco (2000 [1988]) explained: “We never lost sight of the fact that a concert could be a factor of agitation in solidarity with Chile. We had to be the testimony of the drama of our people but at the same time messengers of their democratic will. We felt this contradictory synthesis within us, of bitterness and of the will to move forward, a feeling present in almost all our songs of this period.” Quilapayún also gave hundreds of concerts a year in some 60 countries after the coup (Eduardo Carrasco, interview, Santiago, October 7, 2014), communicating through its music its message of solidarity with Chileans under repression and condemnation of the dictatorship. As did Inti-Illimani, the group met with governors and mayors, parliamentarians, and human rights organizations to explain the situation in Chile. Quilapayún appeared in the United States with Jane Fonda and Jon Voight, in Paris with Jean-Louis Barrault and Mikis Theodorakis, and in London with Pete Seeger (International Herald Tribune [Paris], November 1–2, 1980). Carrasco (2000 [1988]) wrote:

After these concerts [in the Olympia and others] there were hundreds more, we didn’t stop for two years: acts of solidarity, homages to Allende, to Neruda, to Víctor Jara, meetings, encounters, congresses. . . . We disembarked from one airplane to take the next, we had no time for anything: in two months in 1974, I don’t remember which, we were on five continents. Thanks to this incessant activity we never managed to feel a true break in our bonds with Chile. We were part of her struggle to reconquer democracy, and we represented a free voice for our enslaved people.

In 1975 Quilapayún traveled to Australia with Joan Jara, where it performed in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Wollongong, Adelaide, and Canberra. In one major concert Joan Jara explained the bloody repression occurring in Chile and urged Australians to organize opposition. “Chile is not alone,” she said. “We are not here tonight to weep. We bring you music prohibited in Chile today but it is the music of living Chile” (Jones, 2014: 193). A Melbourne newspaper (The Age, July 14, 1975) reported on the concert:

The message—solidarity in the struggle against the right-wing military junta in Chile—was obvious. . . . A big group of Chileans in the audience responded deeply and emotionally, rising to their feet at the concert’s close and shouting “Viva Chile!” But, to see an audience of several thousands in our stable society chanting “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” must have been an unusual experience.

As did Inti-Illimani, Quilapayún performed in small venues for workers and unionists as well as in large concerts and held meetings with exiled Chileans and local solidarity activists. All this contributed to a wave of empathy and outrage among masses of people, including many who had not been much aware of Chile or of New Song previously, helping to build many national movements in solidarity with Chile. “The concerts and meetings represented the biggest gatherings in solidarity with Chile that had occurred up to that point in Australia,” Jones (2014: 198) writes. “Both the Sydney and the Melbourne concerts had audiences of 2000 people. The [Quilapayún] tour resulted in a burst of support for the campaigns in all the cities visited and the tour report declared it to be an ‘enormous success politically and artistically.’ It also spurred on the organisers to continue with a musical theme.” Australian unions adopted the cause of Chile, pressuring Pinochet to release political prisoners and not to harass refugees in Australia; they lobbied their own government to reverse its recognition of the military regime (and eventually Australia withdrew its ambassador). LAN-Chile was refused landing rights in Australia, and the Australian Seaman’s Union organized boycotts of goods to and from Chile, among other actions. Unions in Britain also organized boycotts, and their lobbying resulted in an end to subsequent arms sales to the Pinochet regime (López, 2015: 251–252).

Like Inti-Illimani, Quilapayún recorded all of its songs of struggle in the first years after the coup. It released a number of albums in France. Over time, however, the artists began to feel that their songs of triumph from the Unidad Popular period were painfully obsolete. Isabel Parra (2012: 45) wrote, “I felt ashamed to sing ‘Venceremos’ or ‘Pueblo Unido.’ But I learned that these hymns intoned by groups and peoples were demonstrations of solidarity and affection for Chile.” Again, the music created or deepened a powerful bond of unity and shared ideals between foreign populations and Chileans in struggle.

Soloists

Patricio Manns had been close to the MIR, a revolutionary group to the left of the Unidad Popular that had little faith in a peaceful path toward socialism, and he had been a key member of La Peña de los Parra, the epicenter of New Song in the 1960s. He wrote a multitude of beautiful and politically conscious songs beginning in the late 1950s. After the coup Manns saw his name on television: the junta said he should turn himself in. He did not—a good decision, given that many Chileans who did so were never seen again. He finally managed to enter the Venezuelan embassy clandestinely. No country wanted him at first, he said, but eventually he went to Cuba and then on to France, where he founded Karaxú, affiliated with the MIR. He soon began giving concerts in the Scandinavian countries, Spain, England, North Africa, Canada, Australia, the United States, Italy, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. The money raised was sent to Chile, to the Vicaría de la Solidaridad and for resistance to the dictatorship. After a time Manns separated from the MIR and from Karaxú and began to perform as a soloist. “Chilean New Song caused an enormous impact in the European and Latin American cultural worlds,” he said. “We worked for full houses wherever we went. . . . Also I worked in Europe to collect funds and organize information campaigns about Chile, and I never abandoned that strategy” (interview, Concón, December 2014; see also Troncoso, 2014). In 1977 Manns released his poignant song “Cuando me acuerdo de mi país,” a hymn to Chile and the pain of exile. This song, along with others that Manns wrote about exile such as “Vuelvo” (with Horacio Salinas), became important referents for exiled Chileans as well as those living under the dictatorship.

Isabel Parra, the daughter of Violeta (the “mother” of New Song) and the sister of Ángel, was one of the few women in the New Song movement (a situation requiring a separate analysis). With her brother, she had founded La Peña de los Parra in 1965. On the day of the coup she had been scheduled to play with Víctor Jara at the Universidad Técnica del Estado, where Allende was going to appear. As the coup erupted she made her way to the offices of La Jota and eventually to the Venezuelan embassy (Gutiérrez, 2013). She passed through Cuba and Berlin and finally settled in Paris for a long period. She played in concerts in 1974–1975 in Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Rome, Mexico, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York to large crowds, often with Ángel, Quilapayún, or Inti-Illimani, and denounced the human rights violations of the Pinochet regime. Perhaps her best-known song about exile was “Ni toda la tierra entera,” written in 1974, with melancholy lyrics. “I’m famous for being nostalgic, the exiled person with the most nostalgia and the one who created the most songs of exile,” she said in a 1999 interview (Pancani and Canales, 1999: 43; see also Parra, 2012).

Organizers and activists recall the importance of the music at the time. ² Bob Barber, who was involved in work to free Olga Talamante, a U.S. Chicana activist detained and tortured by the junta in Argentina, also supported the groups working on Chile: “The Chile solidarity movement (NICH, Non-Intervention in Chile, and other organizations) to me is inseparable from the New Song music” (Bob Barber, e-mail, February 11, 2016):

Who among us didn’t know about and mourn the horrible fate of Víctor Jara? Groups like Quilapayún and Inti-Illimani were central in keeping the spirit of Chile alive in the US (and all over the world, I’m sure). I did see one of those groups . . . at a live performance at the ILWU [International Longshore and Warehouse Union] Hall in San Francisco, attended by several thousand people. I’ll never forget it.

Nibaldo Galleguillos, a Chilean lawyer forced into exile who settled in Canada, spoke to the unifying power of New Song (e-mail, February 11, 2016):

Politically, the Chilean and Latin American community in Toronto contributed to and benefited from a myriad of musical groups who, in their own ways and with severe limitations, worked hard to keep the spirit of solidarity among political exiles from different parts of the world. A group of Chileans . . . performed alongside Greek exiles at a venue that became the gathering place for political discussions about the Argentine, Brazilian, Chilean, Greek, and Uruguayan dictatorial regimes. . . . Quilapayún’s first performance in Canada was at the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall, a very large venue. Political differences were minimized by an appreciation of the music that these groups played for several years, regardless of political affiliation. . . . These songs kept alive the endless quest to delegitimize in the foreigners’ eyes the Pinochet dictatorship, something I believe was quite successful.

The musicians of New Song energized and invigorated the exile communities and brought together many people not only to share the music but also to discuss and implement concrete actions to protest the dictatorships and restore democracy in Chile and elsewhere.

By Way of Conclusion

In subsequent stages of exile (the theme of future studies), solidarity with Chile waned somewhat as new revolutions (e.g., Central America in the late 1970s) and right-wing reactions captured the attention of global social and political movements. The musicians gradually assimilated themselves to new societies, although many never gave up hope of returning to Chile. Many did just that when the opportunity arose in the late 1980s, after they were removed from Pinochet’s blacklists. In the 1970s, however, the enormous concerts of key artists and musicians were an enduring component of the worldwide political opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship. The musicians expressed the heart and soul of the Chilean popular movements, denounced the dictatorship, and informed masses of people about the human rights violations taking place. New Song helped to generate sympathy and solidarity with the cause of Chilean democracy and kept alive the spirit of popular opposition. Multitudes of people in countries throughout the world were energized and moved to action by huge concerts and demonstrations that linked political work, social unity, working-class and union solidarity, and the moving music of New Song. These movements pressured their governments to act and kept Chile in the spotlight of world attention for many years.

The New Song movement had been able to bring together masses of people in Chile, expressing and inspiring unity with progressive movements for social change. After the coup, the musicians in exile continued to draw huge crowds, and they, along with other Chilean artists, union leaders, political figures, and ordinary Chileans, transmitted the hopes and aspirations of Chile’s popular movements to a global audience. As Max Berrú put it (lecture, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, May 6, 2015), “Chile is the story of a dream and the destruction of that dream.” The musicians were converted into spokespeople and symbols of the struggles and the hopes of Chilean people—and many people in the world—for an end to dictatorship, for equality, and for social justice.