Victor Jara

Bob Harris tells you most of what you need to know about his tragic murder, and the long-delayed first steps towards bringing his killers to justice.

Too little too late is probably how it's going to turn out.

Less than 24 hours into the coup, Victor Jara was arrested in a mass round-up at the university where he was working. He was taken not to the football stadium, but to a smaller boxing arena, where he was recognized by the guards and kept in a group of prisoners considered of special interest.

Jara had often played concerts in this very arena, leading thousands of people in song.

There, for three days, he was held captive and tortured, while around him fellow prisoners were beaten, deprived of food and sleep, and sometimes simply gunned down in fits of madness. Given the army's interest in him, Jara must have known he would never leave the building alive.

But to the end, Jara defied his captors, who at one point broke his hands, mocking him with orders to play his guitar. And still, Jara tried to rally his fellow captives' spirits -- at least once by singing, in full voice, from deep in the locker rooms turned into torture chambers, loud enough for other prisoners in the crowded arena to hear, still giving them heart with his voice.

On September 15th, he wrote what would become his last words, knowing he was soon to die, and that his loved ones were facing years of danger. Even after Pinochet's men had broken the bones in his hands, Jara still found the strength to write one last poem, hoping that someday he might share even this, telling us that these things do happen, warning us, crying on our shoulders, communicating with people whose faces he would never see. The words are desperate and despairing. But writing them... was a final act of hope. For all of us.

People will be singing Victor Jara's songs long after Henry Kissinger's memory is flushed down the urinal of history.