Alfonsina and the Sea (Alfonsina y el mar)

Music piece by:
Félix Luna (lyrics) and Ariel Ramírez (music). Popularised by Mercedes Sosa.
Testimony by:
Sergio Vesely
Experience in:
Villa Grimaldi, January 1975
« 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. »
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Answer Me

Music piece by:
Fred Rauch (lyrics) and Gerhard Winkler (music). English lyrics by Carl Sigman. Recorded by Frankie Laine.
Testimony by:
Luis Cifuentes Seves
Experience in:
« I sang this song, as a soloist, in the dressing rooms of the National Stadium. »
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Candombe for José (Candombe para José)

Music piece by:
Roberto Ternán
Testimony by:
Sara De Witt
Experience in:
« 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. »
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Candombe for José (Candombe para José)

Music piece by:
Roberto Ternán
Testimony by:
Amelia Negrón
« We were in Pavilion 1. One of us came up with the idea, I can’t remember who. There were so many of us and we spent the day inventing and creating things! »
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Captive Quena (Quena cautiva)

Music piece by:
Claudio Durán Pardo
Testimony by:
Claudio Durán Pardo
Experience in:
Campamento de Prisioneros, Tres Álamos, September - December 1975
« I first laid my hands on a quena when I was nine years old. It was resplendently fragile and lyrical. My passion for this instrument was immediate, or rather, the quena chose me. »
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Casida of the Dark Pigeons (Casida de las palomas oscuras)

Music piece by:
Federico García Lorca (words), Paco Ibáñez (music)
Testimony by:
Luis Alfredo Muñoz González
Experience in:
« According to scientists, memory and music processing are situated in a deep, ancestral part of the brain, where it is zealously guarded. »
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Coplas of El Yopo (Coplas de El Yopo)

Music piece by:
Unknown. Traditional Venezuelan song. Popularised in Chile by Isabel and Ángel Parra
Testimony by:
Carlos Muñoz
Experience in:
« A comrade whose last name was Saavedra (if I recall correctly) sung this song passionately. This song earned him the nickname of ‘El Yopo’ (also ‘Chopo’), as is usual in popular culture. »
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Free (Libre)

Music piece by:
José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero, popularised by Nino Bravo.
Testimony by:
anonymous
Experience in:
« While waiting in the grandstands to be interrogated for the first, second or more times, we would sing 'Free' to those who were being lined up to be released. 'Free' was a catharsis, a mixture of joy for those who were going and hope for those of us left behind. »
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Free (Libre)

Music piece by:
José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero, popularised by Nino Bravo.
Testimony by:
Guillermo Orrego Valdebenito
« This song was performed in the Stadium grandstands by a worker from the Madeco factory: Peineta Vasquez, winner of a Song Festival that was organised at grassroots level, during the times when we were allowed to leave the spaces under the grandstands, inside the stadium,  to sunbathe, together with women from various countries, before they got sent off to the pool area. »
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How We Resemble Each Other (En qué nos parecemos)

Music piece by:
Unknown. Popularised by Quilapayún
Testimony by:
Luis Cifuentes Seves
Experience in:
« During the 1960s, the group Quilapayún popularised this old Spanish song in Chile. Víctor Canto and I performed it as a duet in Santiago’s National Stadium, which had been converted into a concentration, torture and extermination camp. »
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