Search - Various Artists :: Venceremos: Tribute to Salvador Allende

Learn about the first 9/11 and hear the voice of a democrati

C. Scanlon | among us humans | 04/28/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"On September eleventh of 1973, the Nixon/Kissinger administration backed the right-wing military overthrow of a freely and democratically popularly elected legitimate and legal and peaceful government in Chile This democratically elected government was led by the elected President Salvador Allende.



Nixon's overthrow of President Allende established and consolidated the fascist and brutal decades long dictatorship of the corrupt and bloody General Pinochet (read for instance Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir), who immediately tortured and massacred thousands trapped in the national stadium (see the film Missing), including the popular folk singer Victor Jara, who was tortured, maimed, with hands cut off, with tongue cut out, and eventually murdered for having sung proudly for his people. Torture did not begin with Bush. Hear for instance El Derecho de Vivir en Paz) one of whose songs appears here on this present disk, though sadly not in its original form.



In fact, as described the music gathered on this album and recorded in a studio in Paris are tribute. It is not a live performance, and it is not the original artists. There are some very fine songs and very fine performers, as well as historical performers, but this disk might have been better.



What is most chilling and eloquent are the three discourses delivered by President Allende as his "White House" is attacked by his own military under US control, one briefly before he is slaughtered by his own armed forces. This is like hearing in its entirety and in context that final sermon by the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., not the only-known dream, but the Mountain Top (including the Good Samaritan), as in I've been to the mountain top.



We here the strong and noble voice of President Allende, the wisdom, the intelligence, the ethic and the soul. He hear his firm expression and we know that he never committed suicide under siege as accused by his murderers. He simply refused to accede to their criminal demands and play a puppet part to the dictatorship of Nixon's imperialism.



Now we hear the confused and the deceived saying not only this lie but also that Pinochet is a success story and a model for Iraq. Hear this now. Hear the truth. Become whole. Become free. Be strong. Stand tall.



See also his niece, Isabel Allende's several popular novels, including LA Casa De Los Espiritus, La Suma de los Dias and Paula. See the culture and civilization we destroyed with our rockets and bombs and puppet dictatorships which torture and massacre uncounted thousands of innocent people."