Joan Jara, the wife of the Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, murdered and tortured by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, died today in Santigo de Chile at the age of 96, the family reported.
Joan, who since her husband's mutilated body was found in September 1973, dedicated her life to the search for justice, died just two weeks before the United States extradited to Chile retired Chilean Army lieutenant Pedro Barrientos, convicted in the North American country as the material author of the crime and torture of the singer-songwriter, and of the prison director of Salvador Allende's government, Littré Quiroga.
"We regret to inform that our dear and beloved Joan Jara, at the age of 96, died today, November 12 at 5:30 p.m.," confirmed, for its part, the Víctor Jara Foundation, in a brief message.
Sources close to the family told EFE that the funeral will be held starting Monday, but that "the event is still being put together" that has filled all of his loved ones with sadness at a time when a ray of happiness appeared with the long-awaited extradition of Barrientos, for which Joan worked all her life.
Born in 1927 in London, Joan Alison Turner de Jara, better known as Joan Jara, was first a dancer and then a woman in love with one of the most famous singers in South America.
They were united by determined political activity against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and in favor of the memory of her husband and all those tortured, murdered and detained during the repression.
According to her official biography, it was a visit to the Haymarket Theater with her mother, at the age of 15, that made her fall in love with dancing, where she met the choreographer Kurt Jooss, who discovered her activities.
Two years later he entered the newly opened Sigurd Leeder Dance School, and three years later he joined Ballets Jooss, in Germany, with which he performed in West Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, England, Scotland and Ireland, and in the one who met the Chilean choreographer, dancer and actor Patricio Bunster, whom she would marry.
Already in Chile, she entered the Chilean National Ballet by competition, first as a dancer and, later, a choreographer. Additionally, she began teaching at the university, where she would meet another musician and theater director named Víctor Jara.
Divorced and with a daughter, Joan began a relationship with Jara, with whom she had a daughter before the fateful September 11, 1973, the day in which the Chilean Army, under the command of General Augusto Pinochet, revolted against the Government. democratically elected of the socialist Salvador Allende.
Jara, who had become famous with his songs with high political and social content, was arrested that same day at the university and taken with thousands of other people to the national stadium where he was tortured for five days before he was abandoned in an area of Santiago, mutilated and shot to death.
On September 20, Joan had to carry out an examination of the body and, after the burial, she had to go into exile in Great Britain with her two daughters, adopting her husband's surname.
He did not return to Chile until the mid-1980s, when he intensified his political activity and created the Spiral Dance Center, key in the training of several generations of dancers and choreographers.
His efforts to clarify the death of Víctor Jara and find the culprits did not begin to bear fruit until 2009, the year in which the perpetrator of the crime was identified.
Four years later, Chilean judge Miguel Vásquez determined that Víctor Jara died on September 16, 1973 due to “at least 44 bullet wounds” fired by, among others, Lieutenant Barrientos who, according to one of his subordinates, He used to raise his service weapon to declare: "with this I killed Víctor Jara."
On June 27, 2016, a federal court in Orlando, United States, determined that the former Chilean military man, who fled to the United States with a tourist visa, and was naturalized after marrying an American woman, was guilty of torture and extrajudicial murder of Víctor Jara .
He was ordered to pay damages of $28 million to the family, but the Homeland Security Investigations Office in Tampa, on the Space Coast, United States, did not arrest him until last October.
Days ago it was reported that Barrientos will be extradited to Chile on November 28 on American Airlines flight number 957, departing from Miami (USA), something that Joan fought for all her life but will not be able to see.
