Women who disappeared and were disappeared

under the Pinochet dictatorship

Hi all,

Thank you for joining me for this week’s song, “Hay Una Mujer Desaparecida” (There is a Woman Disappeared), by Holly Near.

If you’d like to hear the song before you read the background, I’ve included two YouTube videos below the article. Comments and questions are welcome. Please be respectful of others’ opinions if they should differ from yours.

For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are given in the glossary below.

The Song

(414 words)

After a series of coup d’etats from the 1930s, in 1973, the democratically-elected leftist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, died in a coup d’etat in Santiago, Chile*. General Pinochet came to power and became the ruler of the country for many years. He wanted to punish anyone who had supported Allende or the left. The military junta (pronounced hoon•tah), a group of military leaders who control a country, began arresting, torturing, and murdering those people. Tens of thousands were tortured. Well over 1,000 were “disappeared”.

Desaparecidos_Chile_1973 (Photo by Marjorie Apel, Wikimedia Commons)

In English, the difference between “disappeared” and “were disappeared” is important. The woman disappeared means that something happened and we can’t find her. Maybe she didn’t want anyone to find her. But, the woman was disappeared means that someone captured the woman and took her away, and no one knows where she is being kept, what condition she is in, or whether or not she is alive. In Spanish, “disappeared” is desaparecida and can have both meanings.

The lyrics list the names of just a few of the hundreds of women who were disappeared under the Pinochet dictatorship. In the first verse: Michelle Peña Herrera, Nalvia Rosa Meña Alvarado, Cecilia Castro Salvadores, Ida Amelia Almarza - There is a woman who has been disappeared in Chile. And the junta knows, and the junta knows where she is, and the junta knows where they are hiding her, she’s dying. The second verse lists Clara Elena Cantero, Elisa del Carmen Escobar, Eliana Maria Espinosa, Rosa Elena Morales.

The disappearances were not limited to Chile. Many countries in Central and South America such as those in the lyrics, Brazil, Uruguay, Guatemala, El Salvador, have had military juntas controlling them at some point, and people were disappeared as a result.

It wasn’t just adults who were taken. Children and teenagers also disappeared. Hay un hombre (there is a man), hay un niño (there is a little boy) Oh, los niños (Oh, the children…)

At the end of the song, the songwriter includes lyrics of hope:

A spirit lives in Chile

New lives, new songs

A spirit grows in Chile

New lives, new songs are rising up

A spirit sings in Chile

New lives, new songs are rising up

A spirit lives in Chile

New lives, new songs

In Chile

Pinochet left office in 1990. In 1998, he was arrested in London and sent back to Chile. Due to bad health, he was released and put under house arrest. He died in 2006.

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VOCABULARY

coup d’etat クーデター

democratically-elected  民主的に選出された 

leftist 左派

punish 処罰

torture 拷問

capture 捕獲、 捕らえる

dictatorship 独裁 

house arrest 自宅軟禁

oppression 圧迫

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Question

So many people have suffered under terrible oppression in many countries. Yet, this song sings of hope. In difficult times, what gives you hope?

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Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert

Holly Near sings with Ronnie Gilbert in a clip from the 1982 documentary, Wasn’t That a Time? They begin singing at 2:28 in the video.

*You can read more about this at https://louisehaynes.substack.com/p/victor-jara-singer-and-fighter-for-the-people.

Sources

Chile. International Commission on Missing Persons Chile. https://www.icmp.int/the-missing/where-are-the-missing/chile/ . Accessed 3 Nov 2023.

Oriana Bernasconi, Jefferson Jaramillo & Marisol López (2022) The number of disappearance: trajectories in the tally of victims of forced disappearance in Latin America, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 5:1, DOI: 10.1080/25729861.2022.2090486  Found at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25729861.2022.2090486 Accessed 3 Nov 2023.