[and was determined that her children should receive…]

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and was determined that her children should receive an education despite the enormous sacrifices she had to make for them to do so.

His mother was also a tolksinger su Victor grew up to the sounds of Chilean folk music. When the family were forced to move to Santiago while Victor was still a child, a neighbour taught him to play the guitar.

Two years in a seminary convinced Jara that the religious life was not for him and on completion of his military service Victor began to study mime in 1955, moving on to the Theatre School of the University of Chile tv study acting.

It was in his socond year that he met his future wife Juan -an English-urn dancer who had married the Chilean choreographer and Communist Party member Patricio Bunster while in Europe and was now dancing with the National Ballet and teaching dance at the Theatre School.

In 1957 Victor met Violeta Parra, a pioneer in the study of Chilean folk song and folk lore and a group of singers who formed a group called Cuncumen.

Victor became a regular memberof the group which played to working class audiences, demonstrations and rallies.

At the theatre school Jara met i young playwright, Alejandro Sieveking and on graduating, directed one of his plays Parurido a la Felicidad_Something like Happiness). The production was such a success that course in 1960.

It was during this period that Joan's marriage to Patricio broke up and eventually she and Victor Jara began a relationship.

For the next nine years Jara worked a a member of the regular team of directors of ITUCH (Theatre Institute of the University of Chile), producing plays by Brecht, new material from the US and Britain and new work by Chilean dramatists.

In opposition to the penetration of US pop music into Latin America there was a growing interest in Chilean folk songs, particularly among left-wing young people who identified with FRAP and their presidential candidate in the 1964 election - Salvador Allende.

Violeta Parra's chilaren, Angel and Isobel, set up the Pina de los Parra to which people flocked to hear the authentic folk music of Chile. Jara combined his work in the theatre with singing three nights a week at the Pena and his records began to meet with success in the charts.

The election of Christian Democrat Frei as President in 1964 led to growing illusions amongst sections of the. urban and rural poor in the possibility of some reforms being carried out. Jara's writing became less personal and more concerned with the plight of the Chilean masses.

The Pena de los Parra rapidly grew in influence, attracting an international following, and by 1967 Penas were being established everywhere, particularly in centres of higher education.

talinismthe Andes). Jara was to collabvrate with these two groups for the rest of his life. (Quilapayun and Inti-lilimani were in Europe at the time vi the military coup).

The Cuban revolution had raised hopes of radical change amongst the masses of Latin America and in 1967 one of Jara's early political songs was dedicated to E. (Ch)) G. (which was as much as he dared put on the label of Che Guevara's name). The song brought him criticism from the Communist Party which opposed guerrillaism, though Jara's song praised the courage of Guevara rather than guerrilla methods of Students The student revolt of the late 1960s erupted in Chile in 1967. It began, as elsewhere, with demands for university reform but it became quickly politicised as it had in America and Europe. Joan and Victor Jara were both involved in the struggle in their own faculties with Victor and Quilapayun singing to student demonstrations in the face of baton charges, water cannon and tear gas. From now on, hardly a major political event could take place without Victor composing and recording a sung about it. So when police fired on a group of peasant squatters at Puerto Montt, killing seven and wounding 60, Jara wrote Preguntas por Puerto Montt (Questions about Puerto Montt) and sang it at a huge demonstration and rally to protest at the killings.

By the end of the 1960s the New Chilean Song Movement for which Jara collaborated with Ortega to write Venceremos -soon to become the 'hymn' of Popular Unity.

The right wing controlled the media but the masses controlled the streets with huge demonstrations of support for Popular Unity. The largest — on the eve of the election - was 800,000strong (in a country of 11 When Allende took office on 3 November a huge festival was mounted in the city centre on 12 open air stages. On one Victor Jara dedicated his songs to Allende who waved across to him from the balcony of the Presidential Palace.

Jara's songs now began to urge the urban and rural poor to seize the opportunities opened up by the election of the Allende and to strengthen support for Popular Unity which was still a minority in Parliament.

He toured Cuba and Latin America as an "ambassador of Chile"

During the first lorry owners strike of October 1972, Victor and Joan Jara together with other Popular Unity supporters in the arts faculties helped to keep supplies moving.

By the beginning of 1973 the campaign by the media and right wing political parties against Popular Unity became increasingly serious. The victory of Popular Unity in the parliamentary elections of March 1973 convinced the right wing that only a military coup could now orist Allende.

Fascists Cominander in Chief General Frats was by this time a member attempt to avert civil war.

Victor Jara was at the Technical University on 11 September 1973 when Pinochet launched his coup against Allende. On 12 September, having been forced to stay in the Faculty overnight by the curfew, Jara was taken to the Estadio Chile (where he had sung in the Festivals of New Chilean Song). Here he was brutally tortured for several days. Challenged by his torturers to "sing now if you can, you bastard" he sang a verse of Venceremos before being butted to the ground and taken away to be machine gunned to death.

Personal

As a British subject Joan was able to leave Chile, together with her two children.

Her biography is a very moving and inevitably personal account of Victor Jara's life and her life and work with him. Reading her story it is clear that she also made no small contribution herself to the cultural movement that supported Popular Unity.

Victor Jara was not a Communist out of intellectual conviction alone. His upbringing in peasant tamily and then as part of the urban poor of Santiago was the driving force behind his political conviction. He took on board the political bankruptcy of Stalinism. But he nevertheless reflected very powerfully through his songs the struggles of the Chilean people against repression and exploitation, poverty, starvation and suffering. He sang, fought and died trying to turn his revolutionary vision into a reality. For that he is and will continue to be remembered by the working peuple of Chile.

Joan Jara writes in her book:

"I nad left the niche covered with a rought-hewn stone which said simply 'Victor Jara, 14 in AUF WIEDERSEHEN, PET (ITV) is probably the final proof that Britain is finally coming to terms with the Common Market. In the gang of Geordie building workers, refugees from Thatcher's dole-queue Britain, on contract work in Germany, it is the anti-German loud-mouth who is the odd man out.

He is both butt and buffoon. The sympathetic people think his attitude odd and foolish -'someone out of England for the first time who becomes superpatriotic about the country which can't find him a job' , as one of them puts it.

When, at the end of the first episode, he explains his hostility to things German with 'Because they bombed my granny", , it is a joke on him and anyone inclined to think like him.

After his loudly expressed contempt for Germany and Germans has led to a pub fight with his German workmates a threat to strike by the same German workers stops him being sacked as a result.

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet is by Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement who wrote The Likely Lads and Porridge. It is extremely well done. The relationships between the gang of English workers, who live in an army barracksstyle hut on the building site are realistic and true to life, though played for laughs. It looks a winner.

ILABOUR MOVEMENT