La Poderosa II

jan 8, 1959

my second acrylic painting of fidel!!!! slowly improving

i promise i’ll paint him from a different angle next time… i just love his side profile lol

Chile Víctor Jara - El derecho de vivir en paz

Week #2 2026/06/21

🇨🇱 Chile 🇨🇱 Víctor Jara - El derecho de vivir en paz About this project

World music day is here! I hope I’ll finish this review by its end. (Edit: I did :DDDDD)

This week I’m gonna talk about Victor Jara - his life, art and his tragic fate. Before starting this week, I was dead sure I would review El Indio by Los Jaivas. However, I dived a bit deeper into Chilean music and I found about Victor Jara and his impact on the society.

Los Jaivas is a band I came across 2 months ago and I was absolutely enchanted by their music. “Mira Niñita” and “La Conquistada” stand proudly as some of my favourite songs of all time. They are probably the most prominent band in the Chilean rock scene. They had a huge impact on the genre known as “Rock andino”, which blends progressive rock with traditional music of Andean people. This mix is honestly magical. Los Jaivas not only showed what traditional Chilean music looks like, but also created some prog-rock masterpieces which are absolutely on the level of Pink Floyd or King Crimson. This band is a national pride of Chile and I absolutely get why.

So.. why did I choose Victor instead of Jaivas? Well, mostly due to social reasons. Victor Jara’s life and music are an interesting showcase of Chilean society and politics. He was one of the most influential figures at his times, not only in music, but also in politics. He had become a face of change, equality and revolution due to his sincere lyrics and socialist views. Los Jaivas on the other hand were mostly doing their own thing. They were focused primarily on the music rather than the lyrics. “Tarka y ocarina” from El Indio is a great example - it’s a 13 minute long fully instrumental track (an insanely complex composition  by the way, which just shows how brilliant these people were). Their lyrics are thoughtful and poetic, but mostly abstract. “La Conquistada”, however, is believed to be about the fall of Chile under the military dictatorship. And this is a very important topic that I’m gonna talk about now.

In 1970 Salvador Allende won the elections in Chile. It is worth noting that Victor Jara had a huge impact on Allende’s political campaign. He was an artistic director of the legendary music group Quilapayún. They popularised a song “Venceremos” (“We will prevail”), which had become an anthem of Allende supporters. At that time Victor Jara had been made the cultural ambassador of the country. Allende is considered the first socialist president that was democratically elected. When we talk about communism, we often think of an “unelected leader” and “authoritarian regime”, but it’s not the case here. The people wanted Allende, and he was considered very pro-people. He made a lot of reforms that revolutionized the economy and decreased poverty. What’s important, he nationalised natural goods, such as copper, and therefore prevented US companies from exploiting Chile. Yeah, you can already see where this is going. As we all know, the US hates any socialist government that, in principle, would refuse to be exploited. Not long after Allende was elected, far-right US influences had spread throughout the country. It all culminated in the military coup on the 11th of September 1973 conducted by Augusto Pinochet. It started a US-backed dictatorship and resulted in the death of Salvador Allende, Victor Jara and thousands of other people.

Only a day after the coup, Victor was taken to a concentration camp, which was previously a national stadium, and was tortured in absolutely unimaginable ways. At some point, he started to sing “Venceremos”, the same song that once brought the now deceased Salvador Allende to the presidency. After hell on earth he went through, on the 16th of September, quoting Wikipedia, “he was shot dead, then his body was riddled with machine-gun bullets and dumped in the street”. All of this because he was a supporter of an anti-US government.

This story honestly broke me and I feel the need to raise awareness about it.

Now let’s get to the album - “El derecho de vivir en paz” (“The right to live in peace”), which was released in 1971. It starts with the title track, which is the most popular and the most culturally significant one. During Chilean social outbursts in 2019, this song was an anthem that united the protestors. This song is a commentary on the American intervention and genocide in Vietnam and a support of Ho Chi Minh, the leader of Vietnam. I think the power of this song lies in how specific it is. It talks about a certain situation and takes a side, rather than just speaking general knowledge. That’s my problem with many western anti-war songs - they are too general, safe and open to interpretation. A good example is John Lennon’s “Imagine”, which was, by the way, released the same year as “El derecho…”. It says something about peace, unity, and so on, but it’s about nothing specific, while at the same time certain people were dying in a certain country called Vietnam. Speaking of music itself, “El derecho de vivir en paz” is a song that’s just beautiful beyond words. It’s got a very simple, yet powerful melody, and it builds up - the instruments come in gradually. Victor sings it all in such a way that I feel there is still some hope in this world.

A desire to live in peace is something that will never die. It’s a pretty obvious thing - after all, safety is one of the most basic human needs. In a perfect world we wouldn’t even have to talk about it, but human rights violations happen all the time. Constant wars, genocides, atrocities done to nations considered “uncivilised” by the west, and the world's indifference to their suffering. 

Unfortunately, “El derecho de vivir en paz” hasn’t lost its relevance even a little bit. In Cuba there is an ongoing crisis deliberately caused by the US. The case of Salvador Allende showed us that the US would do any atrocity to overthrow a socialist government, and it’s the same story with Cuba. For a couple of decades, America has been depriving Cubans from their basic needs - such as food, water, gas and electricity - hoping that they will start a movement against their own government. Recently it has gotten worse than ever before. On 20th June 2026 (yesterday, as I’m writing this) the Cuban government, in hope to stop this crisis, has announced a reform that opens the country to the American market. Let’s be honest, Cuba is powerless compared to the US, so it will most likely end up in a tragic way. 

What concerns me the most is that the whole world is completely indifferent. Due to American propaganda, Cuba has a tragically bad reputation. Right-wing people take the side of the US, and left-wingers often simply don’t care, as the Cuban crisis is not a topic that’s talked about in the mainstream. The most important, supposedly leftist, Polish newspaper reacted very positively to that reform, saying that “Cuba is finally opening to a capitalist democracy”. 

Here are some sources about this reform and about the general situation in Cuba:

What about the other songs here? They are great too! Every single one of them is filled with hope and love, which shows both in the lyrics and in compositions. There are, of course, many heartwarming songs with a revolutionary message - a prime example has to be “Brigada Ramona Parra” (“Ramona Parra Brigade”), an upbeat march-like track.

There’s also “A Cuba” (“To Cuba”), a track close to my heart, which shows support for the Cuban revolution. It also mocks USA in a subtle way: “si quieres tomar ron pero sin Coca Cola, a Cuba iré!” / “if you want to drink rum but without Coca Cola, to Cuba I will go!”.

“Ni chicha ni limoná” is a fun and warm song that tells about people with double morality. Its bassline sounds oddly familiar.

“Abre la ventana” is my personal favourite, apart from the title track of course. Its lyrics are, surprisingly enough, not political. They tell about Maria, a girl that has undergone some cruelty. What’s interesting, this song has a strangely dark and psychedelic atmosphere. This song immediately reminds me of the film “La Casa Lobo” - a Chilean animated horror about Maria, a girl who escaped a religious colony. I honestly suspect that there might be a correlation between this film and the song - I feel like the creators of the film must have at least heard it. I even made an edit of “La Casa Lobo” with “Abre la ventana”, here it is :)))

Now, let’s talk about the musical genre of this album. The title track is some great Bob Dylan-like folk-rock. The rest of this album, however, belongs to a pretty interesting genre - Nueva canción chilena. It originated in the 60s and it’s a blend of Latin American rhythms and traditional Chilean music. It was intended to address social issues and was associated with leftist political movements. As you can imagine, Victor was one of the most important musicians within this genre. I noticed that this genre often uses Charango - it’s a traditional Andean guitar-like instrument with 10 strings and a pretty distinct sound. Check out Violeta Parra - she’s an absolute icon of Charango and of this genre as a whole.

I seriously didn’t intend to write such a long review, I spent almost the entire day writing it. However, once I learned about what Victor went through and what is currently happening in Cuba, I just couldn’t focus on anything else. I am deeply disgusted by what the American government has done and is still doing, and I feel that what I know is just the tip of the iceberg. However, there IS some hope left - Victor Jara and his fidelity to his ideals are a prime example of it. I feel that the hope for this world lies in the countries of the Global South. ¡Viva Chile, viva Latinoamérica!

Rest in peace, you legend.

“Victor Jara, tu canción Es fuego de puro amor Es palomo palomar Olivo del olivar Es el canto universal Cadena que hará triunfar El derecho de vivir en paz”

Here are some other artists and albums from Chile:

Los Jaivas (of course)

Quilapayún (Victor Jara’s band!)

Violeta Parra (check out the song Gracias a la vida)

Los Tres

Los Prisioneros

Niña Tormenta (I heard she’s good)

Fidel Castro in Poland, visiting few cities including Cracow and Warsaw, 1972.

My favourite one is him holding flowers, he looks a little bit shy.

In the case of Fidel or Che's prejudice in the 1950s and 1960s, they equate interpersonal and individual homophobic prejudice to state policies of persecution that did not exist in the manner they are represented as*, and use outdated remarks from an internationally prejudiced time period to apply judgements to the entire development of the revolution even up to the present day

And so, when a country like Cuba makes massive strides in queer rights; indeed, when the state becomes a protector of queer people, and Fidel renounces his past remarks, this does not exist to the homonationalists

Where legal progress exists, it is supposedly only a pretense to hide the abuses of the totalitarian dictatorship, because a socialist or anti-imperialist country can never really care about queer people like the pure, progressive Western state. Never mind that US presidents aren't apologising for the brutal state-sanctioned abuse of queer (especially when non-white and/or working class) communities that occurred throughout the 20th century. Lavender Scare, what's that?

Homonationalists are perfectly happy to condone and encourage the mass slaughter of imperialised populations through sanctions and warfare, because those populations have not earnt the right to humanity in the eyes of the homonationalist. Never mind the fact that their existence inherently disqualifies them; that whether homophobic or progressive, there is nothing a socialist or anti-imperialist state can do "right"