Joan Jara, the wife of the Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara, murdered and tortured by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, died today in Santigo, Chile at the age of 96, the family reported. Joan, who since her husband’s mutilated body was found in September 1973, dedicated her life to the search for justice, died just two weeks before the United States extradited to Chile retired Chilean Army lieutenant Pedro Barrientos, convicted in the North American country as the material author of the crime and torture of the singer-songwriter, and of the prison director of Salvador Allende’s government, Littré Quiroga.
“We regret to inform that our dear and beloved Joan Jara, at the age of 96, passed away today, November 12 at 5:30 p.m.,” confirmed, for its part, the Victor Jara Foundationin a short message.
Sources close to the family told EFE that The funeral will be held starting Mondaybut that “the act is still being put together” that has filled all those close to him with sadness at a time when a ray of happiness appeared with the long-awaited extradition of Barrientosfor which Joan worked all her life.
Joan Turner, widow of Chilean singer Víctor Jara, murdered by agents of General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1973, enters the new Víctor Jara Stadium, in Santiago, on September 12, 2003. (Photo by MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP).
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The singer and the dancer
Born in 1927 in London, Joan Alison Turner de Jara, better known as Joan Jara, was first a dancer and then a woman in love with one of the most famous singers in South America.
They were united by a determined political activity against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and in favor of the memory of her husband and all those tortured, murdered and detained during the repression.
According to his official biography, it was a visit to Haymarket Theater from the hand of her mother, at the age of 15, the one who made her fall in love with dancing, where He met the choreographer Kurt Jooss, who discovered his activities.
Two years later he entered the newly opened Sigurd Leeder Dance Schooland three later he joined Jooss Ballets, in Germanywith whom she performed in West Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, England, Scotland and Ireland, and where she met the Chilean choreographer, dancer and actor Patricio Bunster, whom she would marry.
Already in Chile, he entered the Chilean National Ballet by competition, first as a dancer and, later, a choreographer. Additionally, she began teaching at the university, where she would meet another musician and theater director named Víctor Jara.
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Joan Jara participates in a tribute in the general cemetery on the 25th anniversary of the death of Víctor Jara in Santiago, on September 16, 1988. (Photo by GINNETTE RIQUELME / AFP).
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Coup
Divorced and with a daughter, Joan began a relationship with Jara, with whom she had a daughter before the fateful September 11, 1973.the day on which the Chilean Army, under the command of General Augusto Pinochet, took up arms against the democratically elected Government of the socialist Salvador Allende.
Rockrosewho had become famous with his songs with high political and social content, He was arrested that same day at the university and taken with thousands of others to the national stadium where he was tortured for five days before he was abandoned in an area of Santiago, mutilated and shot to death.
The 20 of September, Joan had to carry out the examination of the body and, after the funeral, she had to go into exile in Great Britain with her two daughters, adopting her husband’s surname.
He did not return to Chile until the mid-1980s.date on which he intensified his political activity and created the Spiral Dance Center, key in the training of several generations of dancers and choreographers.
Trial and identification of the guilty
His efforts to clarify the death of Victor Jara and finding the culprits did not begin to bear fruit until 2009, the year in which The material author of the crime was identified.
Four years later, Chilean judge Miguel Vásquez determined that Víctor Jara died on September 16, 1973 due to “at least 44 bullet wounds” fired by, among others, Lieutenant Barrientos. that, according to one of his subordinates, He used to raise his service weapon to affirm: “with this I killed Víctor Jara.”
On June 27, 2016, A federal court in Orlando, United States, determined that the former Chilean military man, who fled to the United States with a tourist visa, and was naturalized after marrying an American woman, was guilty. of torture and extrajudicial murder of Víctor Jara.
He was ordered to pay damages of $28 million to the family, but the Homeland Security Investigations Office in Tampa, on the Space Coast, United States, did not arrest him until last October.
Days ago it was reported that Barrientos will be extradited to Chile on November 28 on American Airlines flight number 957, departing from Miami (USA), something Joan fought for all her life but will not be able to see.
