Cantos Cautivos
Testimonies
Testimonies are sorted by witness.
Renato Alvarado Vidal:
- Music piece by:original by Friedrich von Schiller (lyrics) and Ludwig van Beethoven (music). Free version in Spanish by Amado Regueiro Rodríguez, aka Orbe (lyrics) y Waldo de los Ríos (music), popularised in Chile by Miguel Ríos.
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « Once upon a time, there was a good little wolf. … No. That’s another story. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, May - October 1975
- Tags:
- « During the last third of the 20th century, the concentration camps of the Chilean dictatorship were characterised by a high grade of organisation among prisoners, as well as the overflowing creativity they applied to all areas of human ingenuity. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Hans Leip
- Experience in:Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, May - Octobre 1975
- Tags:
- « During the daily flag-lowering ritual in the camp Melinka, the prisoners first had to get into formation in the courtyard and then walk in line to the location of the mast. »
- [Read full testimony]
Roberto Navarrete:
- Music piece by:text by Saint Thomas Aquinas; music by Lorenzo Perosi
- Experience in:Cárcel de Santiago, November 1973 - April 1974
- Tags:
- « The political prisoners’ cell block in Santiago Prison was established when they transferred many people from the National Stadium in October or November 1973. »
- [Read full testimony]
Rogelio Felipe Castillo Acevedo:
- Music piece by:Hans Leip
- Experience in:Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, November 1974
- Tags:
- « We were forced to belt out these marching songs. »
- [Read full testimony]
Rosalía Martínez:
Prayer So You Don't Forget Me (Oración para que no me olvides)
- Music piece by:Óscar Castro (words) and Ariel Arancibia González (music)
- Experience in:Campamento de Prisioneros Cuatro Álamos, November - December 1974
- Tags:
- « When Katia Chornik contacted me a few years ago asking me to provide my testimony about my musical experience in prison, I thought I didn’t have much to say. »
- [Read full testimony]
Rubén Torres Ávila:
- Music piece by:Liborio Bórquez Guzmán, popularised by Héctor Pavez
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « When I was in the last year of secondary school at the Liceo 8 in Santiago, I suggested to a teacher to do an interview with a prisoner of the youth detention centre Blas Cañas. After the interview, I offered the prison’s governor to take the school’s folk group to present a show to the inmates. »
- [Read full testimony]
Sara De Witt:
- Music piece by:Roberto Ternán
- Experience in:Campamento de Prisioneros, Tres Álamos, September 1976
- Tags:
- « We were in Tres Álamos barracks in September 1976. I don’t recall how many of us women were imprisoned there. I believe there were close to a hundred of us. »
- [Read full testimony]
Scarlett Mathieu:
- Music piece by:Unknown. Popularised by Quilapayún
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « In Cuatro Álamos, I was profoundly marked by the singing of a current detained-disappeared named Juan Chacón. He sang ‘En qué nos parecemos’, a love song from the Spanish Civil War. It remained engraved in me because that comrade disappeared from Cuatro Álamos. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Eduardo Gatti
- Experience in:
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- « ‘Moments’ was a song sung by the female comrades whose partners were imprisoned on the other side of Tres Álamos, or were fugitives or disappeared. We all sang it, but it was like their anthem. »
- [Read full testimony]
Sergio Reyes Soto:
- Music piece by:Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio
- Experience in:Campamento de Prisioneros Isla Dawson, 1973 - 1974
- Tags:
- « This song, like so many others, was not at all “captive”. The revolutionary songs we sang behind bars imbued us with a sense of freedom.
Rolando Alarcón , and laterQuilapayún , introduced “Dicen que la patria es” (or “Canción de soldados”) to Chile. »- [Read full testimony]
Sergio Vesely:
Lament for the Death of Augusto the Dog (Lamento a la muerte del perro Augusto)
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « Augusto the dog (not to be confused with the journalist Augusto Olivares, affectionately nicknamed 'Augusto the Dog', who was murdered in the Presidential Palace on
11 September 1973 ), was the mascot of the political prisoners held at the Ritoque concentration camp, and accompanied his master when the military junta decided to close that prison and transfer the inmates to the neighbouring Puchuncaví concentration camp. »- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « Visitors’ day was an exceptional day that broke the monotonous routine of all the other days of the week. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « In our political discussions, we always spoke disdainfully of the middle class. In the view of the Marxist ideologues in prison, that sector of society supported the dictatorship and it was necessary to reverse that trend. »
- [Read full testimony]
How Can I Describe This to You? (Cómo hacer para darte una idea)
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « This is one of two songs I wrote in prison for my beloved Graciela. In the song I tried to draw her closer to me, describing my everyday world and my experience of life as a captive. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « I don’t want to exaggerate but Camp Melinka became not only a factory that produced handicrafts and a performance hall but also a university. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « 'Ñaca-ñaca' was an interjection we used at Camp Melinka whenever we wanted to signal and poke fun at any dark thought that might cross our minds. That may be why it seemed the ideal name to give to the paper maché puppet that played the role of the mean king in the puppet stories we performed to entertain the children who came to visit their captive fathers. »
- [Read full testimony]
Captain, our Destiny is a Wandering Island (Capitán, el rumbo es una isla errante)
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « This song was dedicated to Óscar Castro, whom I was lucky enough to meet in 1975, in Puchuncaví. With his experience in theatre – Óscar was already a fairly well-known actor before his arrest – he threw himself into the cultural work we had organised, in what was then called “Camp Melinka” where the prisoners presented a show every Friday. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « A few weeks before being transferred to Valparaíso Jail - where I would face a war council on account of alleged violations of the State Interior Security Law and other military regulations that existed during the state of siege - I wrote a song that I called anthem, because I wanted it to be sung as a group at the end of our cultural events on Fridays. »
- [Read full testimony]
Musicalized Dialogue between Two Old Prisoners (Diálogo musicalizado entre dos ancianos presos)
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « At Puchuncaví Detention Camp (Melinka) I shared a cell with an elderly man from Lota, where he had spent his entire life working in the coal mines. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Guillermo Núñez (lyrics) and Sergio Vesely (music)
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « This song is based on a poem Guillermo wrote in the Puchuncaví Prison Camp dedicated to his partner Soledad. Of all the songs I composed as a prisoner, this is the only one where the lyrics are not mine. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « One cold winter night of 1975, the small clinic of Melinka, in the Puchuncaví Detention Camp, became the setting for a touching story. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Félix Luna (lyrics) and Ariel Ramírez (music). Popularised by Mercedes Sosa.
- Experience in:Villa Grimaldi, January 1975
- Tags:
- « It was not easy to endure being locked up in one of Villa Grimaldi’s miserable cells, which resembled vertical coffins. It was even harder in the high temperatures of the summer months of the Andes foothills in Peñalolén. I was inside one of those cells, blindfolded, my feet and hands in chains. »
- [Read full testimony]
A Finger-Picked Cueca from a Solidary Companion (Cueca punteada de un solidario)
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « It is true that the hard experience of torture and prison unified us and at times even generated strong ties of friendship among the prisoners. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « After our transfer from Tres Álamos to Puchuncaví in April 1975, a group of prisoners began toying with the idea of presenting a poetic-theatrical performance about the history of Latin America’s indigenous cultures and their extermination under Iberian domination. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Anexo Cárcel Capuchinos, 1976
- Tags:
- « This song is a tribute to Miguel Enríquez, Secretary-General of the
MIR , who was gunned down by a commando of the dictatorship’s secret police on 5 October 1974. »- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « The night of 24 March 1976, the residents of cell 198 hardly slept. We hadn’t slept on account of a long, heated discussion about the prospects of revolution in Latin America’s Southern Cone. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « Prison forced me to think quite a lot about my political past and my total commitment to an ideological cause, and its consequences. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « This song is dedicated to Graciela Navarro, who managed to make my prisoner's life more beautiful on the days we were allowed to receive visitors. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Eusebio Lillo and Ramón Carnicer
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « The Puchuncaví Prisoners Camp had a daily routine similar to that of military regiments. In a ridiculous ceremony, the flag was raised every morning at dawn and then it was taken down at nightfall. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « The dream of the political prisoner was to regain freedom. All of us would feel joy when one of us was about to be released from prison, although it far from easy to see a comrade depart. Even less so for those who suspected they would never enjoy that privilege. »
- [Read full testimony]
Song of the Seed and the Plant (Canción de la semilla y la planta)
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « The history of the seed and the plant, of which this song forms part, was performed as a play to entertain our audience of children during a family visit to the prison. Imagination had no limits when it came to kindling a small flame of hope in our hearts. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « This song was written and sung in cell number 198 of Valparaíso’s former prison, that is to say, on the top floor of the main building, which was higher than the walls that surrounded it. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « Several of my friends and comrades disappeared after being arrested. The dictatorship denied knowledge of their whereabouts but I knew they were lying. »
- [Read full testimony]
The Man Who Transformed into an Animal (El hombre que se convirtió en animal)
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « I wrote this song shortly after reading Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, one of the books that circulated in Camp Melinka from hand to hand and cabin to cabin. »
- [Read full testimony]
Love Song for a Disappeared Woman (Canción de amor a una desaparecida)
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « Daniela was the political codename of María Cecilia Labrín, a member of the
MIR . Agents of theDINA arrested her at her home on Latadía Street in Santiago in August 1974. She has never been seen again. »- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1976
- Tags:
- « I composed this song for a small children’s party we organised in the visitors’ yard of the Valparaíso Jail. I remember how the children had fun that day and enjoyed the play. That was the first time I put down the guitar so that a prisoner who played the accordion could accompany me. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « This song, written in my cell at the Puchuncaví Prison Camp, speaks to a friend and fellow prisoner; it could be any one of the thousands behind bars. »
- [Read full testimony]
- Music piece by:Sergio Vesely
- Experience in:
- Tags:
- « One of the most amazing experiences I had during my six months in the Puchuncaví Prison Camp was to see the metamorphosis of the barbed wire fence into a huge musical score. »
- [Read full testimony]
Servando Becerra Poblete:
- Music piece by:Tito Fernández
- Experience in:Campamento de Prisioneros Chacabuco, 9 November 1973 - 10 November 1974
- « Daniela was the political codename of María Cecilia Labrín, a member of the
- « This song is a tribute to Miguel Enríquez, Secretary-General of the
- « Augusto the dog (not to be confused with the journalist Augusto Olivares, affectionately nicknamed 'Augusto the Dog', who was murdered in the Presidential Palace on
- « This song, like so many others, was not at all “captive”. The revolutionary songs we sang behind bars imbued us with a sense of freedom.