The Right to Live in Peace
March 5, 2021
It is a phrase for effectively challenging the system now managed by people
such as Biden, Modi and Piñera, writes Vijay Prashad.
Victor Jara at the 1969 Helsinki protests against the Vietnam War. (Hannu
Lindroos, Wikimedia Commons)
By Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
On a warm late February day in Santiago, I went to the grave of Victor Jara
to pay homage to the man who was brutally killed on Sept. 16, 1973. A
theater director, songwriter and communist, Jara was arrested after the coup
détat against the socialist government of Salvador Allende. He was tortured
and then murdered.
At the rear of the Cementerio General in Recoleta, Jara was buried with
other victims of the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In
2009, Jaras body was exhumed as part of the investigation into this murder
and he was reburied a short distance away. On the original tomb in simple
paint are the words el derecho de vivir en paz , the right to live in
peace.
These words are from the title song of Jaras 1971 album. The song, which
opens the album, is an homage to the Vietnamese people, who were led by Ho
Chi Minh in their fight against U.S. imperialism.
It is a simple song, which starts with this line of dignity about the right
to live in peace. It then reflects on Ho Chi Minh, the poet, who strikes
from Vietnam for all humankind. Vietnams people declared independence in
1945 when Jara was 13. Before they could advance their socialist agenda, a
war was imposed on them, first by France and then by the United States. The
United States used its entire arsenal short of nuclear weapons against
the Vietnamese people, who fought with great determination to free their
country.
The author at the grave of Victor Jara.
Two things about this war were clear to revolutionaries around the world.
First, that the defeat of the Vietnamese people would result in a great
setback for the national liberation agenda around the world, since it would
give the United States and its allies confidence to smash other liberation
movements. Second, that every sensitive person who was committed to
decolonization and freedom had to create two, three or many Vietnams, as
Che Guevara wrote in his Message to the Tricontinental (1966). Che Guevara
was assassinated in 1967 at the age of 39; Victor Jara was only 40 when he
was murdered.
By 1971, the Vietnamese had gained great confidence, holding the north of
the country despite ruthless aerial bombardment and the use of chemical
weapons. They pushed into the south including with the 1968 Tet Offensive
towards Saigon. Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, steadfast to the end. Jaras
song is a tribute to Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese fighters; it
demonstrated the necessity for an internationalist attitude to freedom. This
song is the fire of pure love, an international song that declares the right
to live in peace.
They Never Disappear
Songs such as this never disappear. Within them lie the principle of hope,
the inspiration for struggle, and the anticipation of a world beyond our
own.
Walking around the Plaza de la Dignidad in Santiago, Chile, one sees images
of Jara and quotes from his songs on the walls. These are painted by various
political groups and muralists who feel a direct connection to their radical
past and who feel that the residue of the dictatorship remains.
Every Friday evening, a large group of people gather there not only to
protest the meanspirited government of Sebastián Piñera that came into power
in 2018, but more broadly to protest the general neoliberal orientation of
governments since 1973.
Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, left, meeting with U.S. President Donald
Trump. (Gobierno de Chile, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Piñera, a conservative who opposed the prosecution of Pinochet, has run an
austerity government that has provoked mass protests, first from school
students and then from the general public. The governments response to this
wave of protests was harsh repression, as well as illegal detentions and
police violence of all kinds (including sexual violence). Protesters and
journalists such as Gustavo Gatica were hit in the eye with rubber bullets,
which reminds me of Mohamed Sobhi el-Shenawy, the eye sniper, who shot
protestors in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt in 2011.
Protest in November 2019 in after the first cases of eye injuries caused by
police. (Marcellablues, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Despite a court ruling in 2018 that sentenced eight retired officers to 15
years imprisonment for Jaras murder, genuine justice for him lives only in
those advancing his call.
In 2019, Jaras song returned as the anthem of this new movement, sung with
great feeling by his peers in Inti-Illimani at the Plaza. At the protest in
Plaza de la Dignidad on a typical Friday evening last month, I watched the
police fire their water cannons and march with the full swagger of impunity
towards protesters who have become familiar with this routine of their
democracy and the repression of state forces. Jorge and Marcello Coulón told
me of the immense emotion they felt as they walked through the enormous
crowd onto the stage to sing Jaras song to Ho Chi Minh.
Since 1980, Chile has functioned with a constitution put in place during the
dictatorship of Pinochet. It made sense, therefore, for the waves of
protests to crash down on the demand for a new constitution. In 2020, 78
percent of the country voted to draft a new constitution; in April 2021,
they will vote in the constituent assembly to frame it.
An Anthem for Our Time
What does it mean that Jaras song returns as an anthem in our time, its
call for the right to live in peace laden with meaning across generations?
This is a song by a Chilean written for the Vietnamese revolution, but with
the sensibility that both Vietnams struggle and the song are international.
Nothing in the struggles in Chile suggests an insular story, since the
pressures borne on the population are not unique to Piñera and his
government, nor to the Chilean oligarchy.
Austerity programs result from a tax strike by the elites, who prefer their
wealth to be hidden in illicit tax havens than be used productively. They
disregard the long-term suffering of workers who struggle to survive as the
pandemic deepens their already perilous existence and provoke the kind of
protest movement that has marks Chiles reality.
The sight of jubilant non-violent crowds singing songs of resistance are as
familiar as the sight of police trucks firing high-pressure water and tear
gas. No wonder that Roger Waters version of El derecho de vivir en paz in
2020 carried the full flavour of this international song being tasted from
the streets of Delhi to New York.
Roger Waters version of El derecho de vivir en paz
On Feb. 28, a million people gathered under red flags at Kolkatas Brigade
Ground as the Indian state of West Bengal began an election campaign. We
demand our rights, said communist leader Mohammed Salim, the right to live
in peace. There are echoes everywhere of the Chilean anthem to Ho Chi Minh.
Not far from where Salim spoke is a U.S. consulate, which sits on Ho Chi
Minh Sarani, the street renamed during the U.S. war on Vietnam as an act of
solidarity.
Todays Lack of Clarity
Today, there is no longer that kind of clarity in the left about the nature
of our fights and the need for international solidarity. U.S. imperialisms
sharp attacks against Cuba and Venezuela continue, whilst U.S. President Joe
Biden in the absurd name of self-defense authorized the bombing of
Syria.
Where there should be a straightforward defense of the peoples right to
chart their own agenda, there is instead a policy of hybrid war that
suffocates and delegitimizes entire populations.
I asked Marcelo Coulón of the legendary band Inti-Illimani, which sang
Jaras song in front of one of the massive manifestations in Santiago, what
it meant to sing Jaras anti-imperialist, internationalist anthems in our
context:
To sing to Ho Chi Minh today is a very special moment for me, because it
makes me go back to the times when we were connected to the world, the
solidarity world, the anti-imperialist struggle. And this shows me the
terrible damage neoliberalism has done, transforming people into deeply
individualist beings in which they dont think beyond their own noses, their
own interests. I think in the social outburst, people sang this song not
only for the right to be able to live in peace, but for the right to live in
comprehensive peace with dignity and solidarity. I dont want to explain why
[Jara wrote about] Ho Chi Minh, but I think everyone should understand this
solidarity gesture
I gave blood for Vietnam, but now nothing happens.
The standoff between the Indian farmers and the government of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi enters its fourth month. The agendas of both Modi and Piñera
are squeezed by their fealty to their corporate allies.
Neither has the temperament nor the ability to retreat from their hard
positions of privatization, cronyism and state repression. The farmers and
agricultural workers are experiencing the same kind of obduracy experienced
by the people of Venezuela and Cuba. Despite the liberal pieties about human
rights, there is a greater commitment to the interests of the few over the
lives of the many. The necessity of two, three or many Venezuelas or two,
three or many farmers uprisings has never been clearer, nor has solidarity
been so essential.
The right to live in peace is not a meaningless phrase; it is effectively a
challenge to the system now managed by people such as Biden, Modi, Piñera,
and others. It is a call for a simple right that provokes war because it
encroaches on the ability of the few to appropriate the greater share of
social wealth.
As they say in Chile, Fuera Piñera, or Quit Piñera, a slogan as much for
him as for the system that he and others like him uphold.
Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian, journalist and commentator, is the
executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the
chief editor of Left Word Books.
This article is from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.