: According to a small blurb in
eat Pool Budget (Sept. 6,

ee junta will double its
Waid Wheat purchasing price
0 farmers from $193.55 to

Woxin, (all U.S. currency ap-
on) per metric ton.
4 Rinston Sliven are that “June
| Wheat have caused a winter
. Cement rortfall” and the announ-
+t incr Should be an incentive

| ing, €ase spring wheat plant-

a
ta what the Wheat Pool Budget

te
i | Fes,

© note are two items.
i the devaluation of the
‘i tbvalued wes” (which has been
oi almost 20 times since
a tice te has made the new
‘ This # tle more than the old.
he further accentuated by
ic Die ous rise in consum-
: Ces, called inflation in
fore Quarters. In effect, there-
i tes litt, hew price for wheat
f ‘Dower “i to change the buying
eeond those who receive it.
i i that » and just as important,
| ta... “Uch of the land natio-
and distributed to the

peasants by the Allende govern-
ment during its three years In
office has since been pooled and
returned to the big latifundists.
It is also difficult to profitably
cultivate wheat on small areas
of land. Again, the big landown-
ers, who have the land, gain, or
rather. stay where they were.

Only the people lose — they
have to buy bread, the price of
which has risen 20 times during
the last year, with, no doubt,
higher prices in. store.

Pinochet's offer to Cuba, USSR

Challenge of fascism to humanity

SANTIAGO — In a futile at-
tempt to eke out a measure of
sympathy from the capitalist
world community, Chilean dic-

tator Pinochet announced two

weeks ago that he was prepared
to consider “freeing almost all
political prisoners” in Chile if
the Soviet Union and Cuba were
prepared to do the same.

Some western journalists, ap-
parently, fell for the bait. Among

them, was Andrew Tarnowski, |

Reuter correspondent in Santi-
ago, who blossomed forth in
bold print to salute Pinochet’s
“humanist” gesture.

The APN Latin American com-
mentator, Boris Korolev, takes a
look at Pinochet’s ploy and Tar-
nowski’s enthusiastic welcome.

First, Korolev notes, ‘are the
words ‘almost all’, The junta
maintains that there are 2,000
political prisoners detained in
the jails and concentration
camps across the country. Tar-
nowski himself refers to the
figure of 8,000, which is also an

underestimate. So the ‘almost
all’ offered by Pinochet is but a
little splash in a big pond.

“Second, are the conditions
laid down by Pinochet to the
Soviet Union and Cuba. Pino-
chet knows better than anyone
else that there are no political
prisoners in the Soviet Union, or
in Cuba.”

Tarnowski should refresh his
mind a little, writes Korolev. “If
Andrew Tarnowski rakes
through his memory, he possibly
will recall two or three of his
relatives or of his acquantences
who have been liquidated by
Hitlerites. I say this because

what he defines. as a ‘challenge .

of Pinochet to the Soviet Union
and Cuba’ is the challenge of
modern fascism to the «entire
world.”

It is a challenge to demo-

-eracy in Europe, America or

anywhere else where a hatred of
fascism exists, writes Korolev.

“The world responded to this

challenge hy a week of solidarity

with the Chilean people in which
hundreds of millions of people
took part. Chilean fascism is a
threat to all of humanity. It
makes little sense for people to
crawl over to the fascist side of
the barricade for the sole reason
that the Soviet Union and Cuba
bitterly oppose fascism”.

The tremendous _ ramifica-
tions of Pinochet’s offer, writes
Korolev, can be best illustrated
if we look back almost 30 years
ago to the Nuremberg trials of
nazi war criminals. “Imagine
Pinochet challenging the allies in
the anti-Hitler coalition at that
time: ‘Release all political pri-
soners (i.e., fascist war crimin-
als), and I shall release almost
all political prisoners in Chile’.

“What would be the reply of
Andrew Tarnowski’s Europe to
this, the Europe which found it
hard at that time to breathe, not
from excessive exhaust fumes,
but from the smoke of the fur-
naces in Auschwitz, Buchenwald
and Maidanek”.

Victor Jara-hts life and death

And so Victor continued singing his

Ne ee ee OO OE ey eens, ete emia a

Osan :
f ‘Singer Jara, the wife of Chilean folk-
th

ery;
; Victor Jara, who was murdered

Pinocher 20'S National Stadium oy

| hy

j aus

| te
Oder 1 97

Sband 8 fascists, spoke about her
Sing 6,,,°° Abby Newton, an editor of

+ inte jen Magazine. Also using a tape
| Abby W with Joan Jara made earlier,

We ten ton wrote this story which
eet from Sing Out:
Chile ;, Jara was born in southern

the ¢ 2© 8rew up helping his father in

to felds and accompanied his mother
Where dings, funerals and harvests,
lemma Sang traditional songs. He
A poe folklore of his country be-
Beat tal, lived it. By 1960, through
betoment and hard work, Victor had
Versi, @ theatre director at the Uni-
8 q dires Chile. He became well known
Were ,-clOr in the 1960's and his plays
Americ €n on tour throughout Latin
Utitain © the United States and Great
8hly respected by the theatre

Stabiic
ang lishment: in Chile, he won prizes

«Praise for his work.

dene his love for his people, his
tation with them A their
ehting for social justice. He began
then Ne € packaged, imported culture
Stabli ading Chile; he was engaged in

Built pune new values accusing those
“Nstic¢g» Maintaining misery and in-

WN Chil @ mass media rejected the
vi letta €an song writers — Victor,
him ni Parra, the Quilapayun, the Inti-
"sig ed others. Nonetheless, their
Work: 88 to penetrate beyond the

n
at Chite er oPle and into other sectors

Jar : N society, This is why Victor
Nilitan, >. S°e8 as such a threat by the

loved 1a in 1973 — his music was

In jg°Veryone.

tongs. an dedicate himself to writing
be Us q Singing for the people and
he Wo: © of Popular Unity. He sang for
Pn strati in universities and at de-
te Peo, ‘Ons. He wrote songs about
thers Ple and for the people. With
Ment Of the new Chilean song move-

stra © began using: traditional folk
Men £

ts: “He wanted to use the

0 Victor left the theatre in.

folklore as a base to develop new musi-
cal ideas and combine past and present.
He wanted people to feel that folklore
was a part of their lives — not an :n-
stitution for museums, but a living
thing that didn’t stop growing.”

The new Chilean song movement be-
came a force which the working people
could identify with — the songs had 10
do with them, their lives and their feel-
ings: “Victor was ‘one of the leaders
and principal creators of the new song
movement which became popular song
in the true sense of the world, It was
taken to the heart of the people be-
cause they recognized it as their own.
Its artists did not aspire to become
idols and were not the creations of
commercial propaganda *. . . without all
of that, their songs reached and pu
ed the youth and workers of ett
became part of their cultural and poli-

i xpression,
Oe ate the three years of popular
ernment in Chile there was a sort
of cultural flowering — or you could
call it an explosion, a real and ely
participation of the people bu x
always been starved of any sort 4 cul-
tural activity. New song groups, dance
groups, theatre. groups began to oe
ish; drab walls in the towns of Cc i e
blossomed with colorful mufals painte

y (Of
Joan Jara, wi :
and Manuela, attendin
premiere of the film
about Victor's life.

th her children Amanda
g the British
“Companiero”

by the people. Victor felt very strongly
that an artist should live the experi-
ences of his fellow workers .. . he said,
‘’m a man happy to exist at this mo-
ment, happy because when one puts
one’s heart, reason, and will to work
at the service of the people one feels
the happiness of that which begins to
be reborn’.”

From the beginning of the Allende
years until the coup, the reactionaries
never let up their attacks. They assas-

-sinated Rene Schneider, chief com-

mander of the Chilean armed forces,

‘because he held to a constitutional

position, protecting the rights of Al-
lende as the legally elected president of
Chile. Victor wrote a new -version to
Malvina Reynolds song “Little Boxes”
at this time referring to the murder.
The hostility he inspired was becom-
ing more and more evident during the
year before the coup: “We were very
conscious of the hatred that the reac-
tionary forces had against Victor. Be-
cause of the personal attacks made in
the papers, because of gestures made

in the street, because of all sorts of
things. The worst thing that could”

happen to an artist or a singer at such

a moment, he said, would be to stop

risking one’s life, to draw back — so
he went on and on, It was that in Chile,
to know that you were risking your

‘life, because you felt what was there in

the darkness.”

songs until the very last moment of
his life. On September 11, 1973, along
with many thousands of workers, stu-
dents and professors, Victor was taken
prisoner by the military junta. After
several days of beatings and random
machine gun firings within the crowded
stadium, Victor was singled out. The
military couldn’t stand his spirit, they
smashed his hands. Victor stood up
among the thousands of people and led
them in singing his last song. He and
hundreds of others were riddled with’
the hateful bullets of the military junta.
“IT have told you Victor’s story only
because it is a symbol of what is hap-
pening in Chile today. Thousands of
other Chileans have suffered his fate,
thousands of other Chilean families
have suffered our loss. Why did they
hate him so much? Was it because he
was the son of a Chilean peasant and
proud. of it? Was it because he faced
their brutality with the moral strength
that the Chilean people are showing
under their repression? Was it because
he expressed through his songs the
will and ideas, the real identity of the
Chilean people?”
: —Joan Jara

Spoken poem with guitar accompaniment
Guitar is in D tuning (lower 6th string one whole

Victor Jara wrote this poem, Estadio
Chile, in the last two days of his life
as a prisoner in the football stadium.
Friends brought it out of the stadium
after his death, and it was smuggled
out of Chile into the United States,
_Where Pete Seeger set it to a musical
background.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1974—Page 7