Cantos Cautivos

How We Resemble Each Other (En qué nos parecemos)

Music piece by:

Unknown. Popularised by Quilapayún

Testimony by:

Scarlett Mathieu

Experience in:

Campamento de Prisioneros Cuatro Álamos, 1974

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. »

[...]

« How each of us, »

King Ñaca Ñaca (El rey Ñaca Ñaca)

Music piece by:

Sergio Vesely

Testimony by:

Sergio Vesely

Experience in:

Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, 1975

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. »

[...]

« master and lord of his private kingdom. »

King Ñaca Ñaca (El rey Ñaca Ñaca)

Music piece by:

Sergio Vesely

Testimony by:

Renato Alvarado Vidal

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. »

[...]

« master and lord of his private kingdom. »

« 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. Unfortunately, the dictatorship and its civil and military henchmen employed the song for their own propaganda. »

Music piece by:

José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero, popularised by Nino Bravo.

Testimony by:

anonymous

Experience in:

Campamento de Prisioneros, Estadio Nacional, September - November 1973

Tags:

[...]

« 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. »

Music piece by:

José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero, popularised by Nino Bravo.

Testimony by:

Guillermo Orrego Valdebenito

Experience in:

Campamento de Prisioneros, Estadio Nacional, 1973

Tags:

[...]

« I’m from Chol Chol, part of the Coihue community. I was arrested along with 12 other people and they took us to the Second Police Station of Temuco. »

Music piece by:

José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero, popularised by Nino Bravo.

Testimony by:

Paicavi Painemal

Experience in:

Comisaría de Carabineros N° 2, Temuco, 22 April 1985

Tags:

[...]

« I was taken prisoner on 23 November 1973, at the University of Concepción. In the Regional Stadium of Concepción, we had to sing the National Anthem every day. »

Music piece by:

José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero, popularised by Nino Bravo.

Testimony by:

Marianella Ubilla

Experience in:

Campamento Prisioneros Estadio Regional, Christmas 1973

Tags:

[...]

Captain, our Destiny is a Wandering Island (Capitán, el rumbo es una isla errante)

Music piece by:

Sergio Vesely

Testimony by:

Sergio Vesely

Experience in:

Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, 1975

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. »

[...]

« and by all the fauna of the sea. »

Anthem of Puchuncaví (Himno de Puchuncaví)

Music piece by:

Sergio Vesely

Testimony by:

Sergio Vesely

Experience in:

Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, 1975

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. »

[...]

« They are like the shine of golden copper »