I apologize for the mistake I made when posting quotes from the Max Berru interview. I was incorrect about the occasion in the 1980's when Horacio Salinas, Inti-Illimani's musical director, voiced the desire to dismiss Berru and Marcelo Coulon from the group.

It is true that Salinas did so, but I was mistaken in his reasons for doing so. I stand corrected by the book "La cancion en el sombrero," published in Chile and written by Salinas himself. There is information in this volume of memoirs which I have seen nowhere else.

Salinas explains, on page 150 in a section headed "La piedra en el zapato," that Max Berru literally had a hearing disability. His hearing was impaired in one ear alone. This did not render Berru entirely deaf; however it made a difference in live performances on tour, and in those days, Inti-Illimani maintained a grueling schedule of performances and tours. Berru literally posed a liability to Inti-Illimani because it was possible for him to be unaware of things onstage in the middle of a performance.

Later in "La cancion en el sombrero," Salinas recalls that the group stayed intact until the return from Europe to Chile. It was there, in the late 1990's, that Berru finally faced up to his hearing disability and the problems that it posed to Inti Illimani. He agreed to leave, and Salinas states that the whole group admired Berru's courage in facing the inevitable, and was sad to lose one of their beloved co-founders.