Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez (28 September 1932 – 16 September 1973) was a Chilean teacher, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and political activist.
He also played a pivotal role among neo-folkloric musicians who established the Nueva canción chilena (New Chilean Song) movement. This led to an uprising of new sounds in popular music during the administration of President Salvador Allende (admin: Nov. 1970–Sep. 1973).
Jara was arrested by the Chilean military shortly after the 11 September 1973 coup led by Augusto Pinochet, which overthrew Allende. He was tortured during interrogations and ultimately shot dead, and his body was thrown out on the street of a shantytown in Santiago.
Jara didn’t sing in English, nor did his songs substantially influence Western music, but the manner of his death, the symbolic silencing of his music, made him an international symbol of resistance: “[a] cross between Bob Dylan and Martin Luther King,” as someone says in the Netflix documentary. Dylan himself headlined a tribute concert in New York a few months after the coup. Since then, Jara has been commemorated in dozens of songs in several languages, most famously The Clash’s Washington Bullets (“Please remember Víctor Jara in the Santiago stadium”) and U2’s One Tree Hill (“You know his blood still cries from the ground”).
The contrast between the themes of his songs, which focused on love, peace, and social justice, and his murder, transformed Jara into a “potent symbol of struggle for human rights and justice” for those killed during the Pinochet regime. His prominent role as an admirer and propagandist for Che Guevara and Allende’s government, in which he served as a cultural ambassador through the late 1960s and until 1973, made him a target of Pinochet.
In June 2016, a Florida jury found former Chilean Army officer Pedro Barrientos liable for Jara’s murder. In July 2018, eight retired Chilean military officers were sentenced to 15 years and a day in prison for Jara’s murder. Barrientos, who had his U.S. citizenship revoked in July 2023, was arrested in Deltona, Florida, in October 2023. Barrientos would be successfully deported back to Chile on 1 December 2023, and was immediately taken into PDI custody.
