‘A fascist tried to electrocute us on stage’: the musicians who took on the Chilean junta
By the time Los Pinochet Boys formed in Santiago, Chile, in 1984, its teenage members had already spent a decade living under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. You’d hear of their gigs only through word of mouth, while the few flyers that circulated held just the bare details of the event; their name alone meant they were under constant threat.
“Those were extremely dark times,” says Daniel Puente Encina, the band’s bassist and vocalist. “The fear of being detained or tortured to death was always present.”
He remembers their clandestine gigs as a “symphony of chaos and violence” – the band never finished a complete set as they were always interrupted by the police. “All of our shows ended with one, or more, band members injured and bleeding and the most unfortunate of us going to jail. Many times we were beaten, shot at, and on one occasion a fascist even tried to electrocute us while we were playing by throwing buckets of water on to the stage.”
Being openly against the regime, their music would always be a form of protest. “It was our way of trying to escape the reality of the dictatorship and make our own rules,” says Puente Encina, who eventually left Chile after it became too dangerous for him and Los Pinochet Boys. “The idea of the protest song always has been and will be part of our cultural DNA. Even today, many young people can still identify with our music and lyrics, even though only two of our songs survived on a cassette.”
Indeed, as Chile approaches the 50th anniversary of Pinochet’s violent coup, the tradition of protest music remains – inspiring artists today and acting as an important reminder of what so many fought for during those years.
“What old bands sang in their songs makes sense to me now,” says the guitarist and vocalist of Santiago-based band Hacia La Victoria, who goes by the name of Chocorius. “About the injustices that happened and are happening today, as history seems to repeat itself again.”
Hacia La Victoria formed in the wake of the massive anti-inequality protests that started in 2019, and they are themselves survivors of Chilean state repression – even more than 30 years after the country’s return to democracy. Their eight members were all fully or partially blinded by the police during those demonstrations. Their drummer, Gustavo Gatica, lost his sight completely when he was hit by rubber bullets while taking photos of a protest. He was just 21.
The memory of the dictatorship hung heavy during those months of protests; the rightwing president Sebastián Piñera brought the military back out on to the streets and police used socalled “non-lethal” weapons to disperse the crowds. More than 30 people died and thousands were injured, including almost 450 people who suffered eye injuries.
“In a certain way we are strongly linked to the survivors of the dictatorship – it unites us,” says the band’s vocalist and percussionist, known as Lágrima del Sol. “Music is a fighting tool,” adds Chocorius. “It’s our megaphone, as it has always been throughout time.”
When Pinochet took power in a US-backed coup on 11 September 1973, ousting the socialist president Salvador Allende, what followed was 17 years of violent crackdown of the left and anyone seen to be against the regime. An estimated 40,000 people were tortured, and more than 3,000 killed.
The dictatorship also brought a direct assault on artistic and musical expression – even listening to or creating certain types of music became a political act. “There were dozens of cases of artists being executed, and others of musicians and artists who were simply banned for refusing to engage with the military regime,” says
Puente Encina, adding that many musicians lost work, fell into poverty or suffered mental health difficulties.
The torture and murder of the musician Víctor Jara by the military on 16 September, only a few days after the coup, remains a symbol of the regime at its most heinous. Jara was part of Nueva Canción Chilena (Chilean New Song), a movement pioneered by folk artist Violeta Parra that was targeted due to its association with the left and Allende’s Popular Unity government.
Parra, who died before Allende’s presidency, was inspired by traditional Andean music and used song as a form of cultural commentary, detailing the experiences of Chile’s working class, poor and rural communities. Nueva Canción was always political but after the coup it was the soundtrack of resistance.
“Anybody who was remotely associated with Nueva Canción had to go underground, and the music became immediately not only a marker of one’s political ideology, cultural belief or the struggle against cultural imperialism as it was before, but it became prohibited,” says Prof Robert Neustadt, director of Latin American studies at Northern Arizona University.
While exiled artists such as Inti-illimani and Quilapayún used their music and the tradition of Nueva Canciónto draw the world’s attention to Chile from outside, within Chile musicians navigated the loss of cultural institutions and the censorship against them. “From one moment to the next their work was reduced,” says musicologist Javier Rodriguez Aedo. “They closed universities, they closed cultural centres, many clubs. On one side, many of these musicians didn’t have enough to eat for many years, while others left [Chile] out of fear – scared that something could happen to them and they would be taken prisoner.”
Yet artists continued to create music within the confines of the regime – some as an act of protest, or as a way to record the reality of life under Pinochet and to call for freedom and democracy. Folk group Sol y Lluvia, who formed after the coup, were explicitly anti-dictatorship, while 80s rock band Los Prisioneros wrote about the rising unemployment and inequality under the regime.
Looking back, Chocorius sees how vital these artists were in keeping a record of that time. “Protest music is really important – it means we can’t forget,” he says. As Neustadt also notes, many Chileans “don’t want to forget [the dictatorship] and move on. They want justice – it’s debatable what justice is, but it’s fair to say that justice involves remembering, and music is one of the ways to help remember that movement, that history, and that repression.”
In the decades since Chile’s return to democracy, music is helping to recover historical memory of the dictatorship.Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs), a digital archive by Dr Katia Chornik, holds powerful testimonies detailing the musical experiences of those held in Chile’s torture and detention centres during the regime. Chornik, an impact development manager at Kingston University and research associate at the University of Cambridge, whose book on music, memory and human rights will be released by Oxford University Press next year, has collected 162 testimonies from survivors or relatives recounting music that was created, listened to or heard in detention.
Ángel Parra, son of Violeta, who was detained in the Chacabuco concentration camp, made a clandestine recording while imprisoned. Others were able to listen to music through the radio; one testimony by Eduardo Andrés Arancibia Ortiz, who was held in Carcél de Santiago in 1986, recalls how, “in prison, there was always a radio set to accompany my political ideas infused with poetry and hope”. He remembers coming across Los Prisioneros: “Their music became our trench and musical poetry, like all other forms of struggles against dictatorship.”
Some survivors stated how hearing fellow prisoners singing songs would give them a sense of hope and solidarity. But in its most violent and brutal form, music was also used for torture and indoctrination by the regime.A notorious house on Calle Irán in Santiago, which held political prisoners, was nicknamed La Discothèque by state agents for the music that was blasted to mask the noise of the detainees’ suffering, or the loud music being used as a form of torture itself.
Recording these musical testimonies feels essential in keeping account of the injustices, and to commemorate the victims. “The timing of the anniversary and of my work in general coincides with a big resurgence of Pinochetism,” Chornik says, referring to a poll released this year that found roughly a third of respondents were in favour of the coup.
“So there is a wider public role of music to sensitise people to the human rights violations,” she adds. “Most people would not think these were natural places for making music, or that music existed there – and that captures people’s attention.”
These musical testimonies, and indeed the musical movements that became synonymous with resistance, serve as important records of that time. As Chocorius says, music is “our way of continuing to remember the atrocities that happened here – and that are often hidden. It’s a song of hope and memory.”
There is a wider public role of music to sensitise people to the human rights violations
Katia Chornik