Victor Jara, a Crime that Is Still Mourned in Chile

Sometimes, she slightly moves the corners of her lips to draw a smile, while the look remains absent: she is Joan Turner, the widow of Victor Jara.

She is 91 years old now and everyone knows her in Chile as Joan Jara. She is the mother of Amanda, the daughter who inspired Victor Jara to compose one of his most recognized songs, before being cruelly tortured by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Confined to the Chile Stadium after the coup d'état on September 11, 1973, he suffered humiliations for the mere reason of professing ideas from the left. He was a teacher, a playwright and a singer songwriter.

Five days later, he was assassinated in the sports facility that today bears his name.

They burned him with cigarettes, cut off his tongue and broke his fingers.

Then, he was shot 44 times and was thrown into some bushes near the Metropolitan Cemetery.

There were six corpses, one was Victor Jara's.

He used to sing, to write poems, he was a teacher, a mime and a theater director. His sin was to embrace the cause of Popular Unity of President Salvador Allende in Chile.