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The
Nueva Trova Cubana had enormous influence on us, on the Canto
Nuevo. So did Pablo Milanés, Vicente Feliú, Silvio
Rodríguez. I think they taught us how to say many things;
they taught us a way of kneading language, a way of using words,
verbs, that Chileans did not teach us. The Quilapayún didn’t
teach us that, the Inti-Illimani didn’t teach us that, Violeta
Parra didn’t teach us that. Well, maybe Violeta. Violeta was
the most poetic element of the New Chilean Song.
CLEMENTE
RIEDEMAN, Poet, Lyricist - Puerto Montt.
[Riedeman is one of Chile's most prominent poets. During the
late 1970s and the 1980s, he worked with the popular singing duo,
Schwenke & Nilo, writing lyrics for many of their songs.]
Nelson
Schwenke, Marcelo Nilo and Clemente Riedeman. Valdivia, June
1987.
Photo Copyright © "El Viaje de Schwenke & Nilo"
by Clemente Riedeman, 1989. |
I had
joined MIR in Valdivia when I was in high school. I was 17. It was
the end of 1970, just after Allende’s election. For that reason
alone I was the object of personal repression after the military
coup, as were all my friends. We all went through the experience
of prison and torture. Some left prison in very bad shape and were
never again what they used to be; others died; others went into
exile. I was one of those who preferred to stay, at the age of 20.
I remember there were people much younger than I in prison, people
who were 14 and 15, children, really.
I was
in prison for six months, from September 1973, a few days after
the coup, until March 1974. I was picked up alone. We spent most
of our time alone to lessen the possibility of being picked up all
together. Periodically we had coordination meetings, which ended
up being survival meetings. They found me at one of those meetings
and took me. I had gone to see my parents, to tell them I was alright
and not to worry. That was a mistake. When you’re young, they
suppose that sooner or later you’ll visit your mother and father.
That’s how it was. There was a huge network of informants.
Maybe it was one of the neighbors.
I hadn’t lived at home for almost a year. I had come to an
understanding with my father, who was right wing. Months before
the coup, when the situation was so tense, so conflictive, so dangerous,
my father asked me to leave the house thinking about the safety
of the family. And I accepted that. I understood perfectly.
My
father and I had the same name, so the day they arrested me they
took him, too. My father fell partly because they had no information
and because he had my name. They released him soon after, but not
before they tortured him. I saw them torture my father, and he saw
them torture me.
We were jailed in Valdivia on Isla Teja, where the university is,
a new prison that Allende had built. It’s as though he designed
it precisely for all his followers. I had been a student on that
very island. I was prisoner with the dean of my department, most
of my professors and most of my student colleagues. It was as though
they had merely moved the department of the university to the jail.
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