VICTOR HARA – SINGER OF LOVELY CHILE
This Chilean was destined to become not only a famous singer, poet and musician, but also the most significant victim of the regime of Augusto Pinochet. Victor Hara adhered to left-wing political convictions and became a prisoner of a concentration camp organized by the Pinochet junta for supporters of the country’s legitimate president, Salvador Allende. Victor Hara’s popularity during his life was fantastic, and after his death he became a symbol of resistance to the military regime in his homeland. In the New World of that time, his fame, creativity and influence on the masses were comparable only with the popularity of Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Peasant son
Victor Hara Martinez was born September 28, 1932 in the small Chilean town of Chillán Viejo. His parents were Inkilinos – peasants who labored on the fields of large landowners. Father singer Victor Harai’s mother went to work from dawn, but hard work did not bring a decent income to the family anyway. There was enough money only for food and the most necessary clothes. Victor’s father often attached to the bottle, and this is not the best way influenced the atmosphere in the family.
As time went on, and Victor began to more clearly designate the sphere of his interests – music settled in his soul. The village teacher, who rented a room in their house, introduced Victor to the guitar, taught him how to take chords and plunged into song creation. It was this man who became the thread that linked Victor Haru to the richest world of Latin American folk culture.
Smart student
In pursuit of knowledge, Victor Hara was similar to his mother. Despite the peasant life, she was literate and did everything to make her children educated. Contrary to the will of her father, she sent them to school, because singer Victor Harabrekat did not want them to live as laborers. Victor quickly became one of the most capable students, although most of all he liked to participate in the scenes that the students played after classes. But the boy had to say goodbye to this school. A kettle of boiling water fell on his older sister, and she was sent for treatment in Santiago. Mother took the children and went with them to the capital closer to the sick daughter. There she managed to get a job as a cook in a cheap restaurant and put the children to school, although they still helped her earn money. Over time, the family has accumulated enough funds to open a small tavern for workers. A wine shop was located in the neighboring house, where the beginning musician Omar Pulgar often performed. After the village teacher, he became Victor’s second mentor in the world of music.
The path from the accountant to the musician
After school, the guy entered the school to master the profession of an accountant. But this craft quickly bored him, Victor was increasingly drawn to friends who played guitars Victor Harai sang. After the death of his mother from a stroke, he had to leave school to earn a living. He was taken as an apprentice in a furniture workshop, and in 1950, Victor Hara decided to enter the seminary to become a priest. The young man sincerely believed that in this work he would understand himself and will always help people. But after two years he decided not to follow the path of the priest. The reason was banal – Hara did not want to forever abandon relationships with women.
He was drafted into the army, where he served in the infantry school, and after demobilization, Victor got a job in the ambulance service. Then he was taken to the university choir, with whose members he traveled to the north of the country on a creative expedition in search of musical folklore. That’s how his career began.
Victor Hara – man with a guitar
He understood that self-activity was not his way and entered the drama school at the University of Chile in 1956 to become a professional artist. There he was able to show his outstanding creative talents and became a member of a circle of intellectuals and artists, whose curator was the famous poet Pablo Neruda. It was for Hara that he became one of the main ideological inspirers.
As a student, Victor often performed songs on the street to earn extra money. He was sure that any art could not develop, being cut off from the people. Victor Khara With the folk group “Kunkumen” he recorded a collection of folk songs, which brought him his first serious success. Gradually, Victor moved from interpretations of folk works to writing songs. He dedicated them to his idols who fought for freedom — Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, and Ho Chi Minh. These works quickly spread not only in Chile, but also in other Latin American countries. And Victor Hara’s concerts in small music bars brought him fame and status as one of the most popular Chilean singers. Now he has become known as the “man with the guitar”.
In the protest movement
In the 1960s, he worked as chief director of the theater at a state university. Studying the plays of various authors, Victor Hara was looking for creative ways of expressing his love for the poor and peasants.
