The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #125594   Message #3748981
Posted By: keberoxu
06-Nov-15 - 05:38 PM
Thread Name: Viva Victor Jara !
Subject: RE: Viva Victor Jara !
On a blog titled elunicointi.blogspot.com with much information about Chile's Inti-Illimani (albeit polarized to one side of the dispute), there is a lengthy interview with Max Berru, amounting to informal memoirs. It is haunting to read Berru's comments on the loss of Victor Jara with whom Inti-Illimani worked and performed before traveling to Europe. They were in Italy when they were told of Jara's death and how "Joan Turner" -- the maiden name of Joan Jara, Victor's widow -- had identified his remains in the Santiago morgue. Berru says:

"In my subconscious, I never accepted Victor's death. In my dreams, I would be at Jorge Coulon's home in Santiago, where we would all do our work on musical ideas or proposals; and I always dreamed that he [Victor] arrived, as ever, at that place. Then suddenly everything in the dream would start spinning, like a whirlpool, and Victor would vanish. All the years that Inti-Illimani spent in exile, I would have this recurring dream.

"The dream only went away when I arrived in Chile in person [the band was permitted to return in 1988]. Thousands of people met us at the airport.... at the plaza La Canada, on Calle San Pablo, the bus stopped, and thousands of people were there waiting to pay homage to us. We found ourselves face to face with Joan Turner, holding a red carnation in her hands, her own face full of sadness, and at the same time happy to be reunited with her companeros.   Haltingly I said something to her about Victor. She looked at me with astonishment and said: Victor -- they killed him. And from that day, I never dreamed that dream again."