Memory, Culture and Reparation: Joan Jara and the historicity of the Víctor Jara Foundation (1973-2003)

• Grant number: 24/13219-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: January 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: Tania da Costa Garcia
• Grantee: Maria Luiza Franca Ramalho
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Fifty Years after the Chilean coup d'état, the country still lives under the legacy of the violence imposed since September 11, 1973. The political and cultural repression led by Augusto Pinochet Ugarte generated global attention due to the systematic violation of human rights perpetrated since the first week of the long civil-military dictatorship (1973-1990). Among the victims of the first days was Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez (1932-1973), a communist multi-artist, who was shot with 44 bullets at the Chile Stadium on September 16, 1973. The british-chilean ballerina Joan Turner Roberts Jara (1927-2023), his widow, went into exile in London in October of the same year, initiating a process of archiving documents related to Chilean cultural resistance. In the 1990s, during the transition to democracy in Chile, Joan Jara created the Fundación Víctor Jara (FVJ) and its Archive (AVJ), whose purposes concern the preservation and propagation of the memory of the Unidad Popular government (1970-1973) and the resistance to the military dictatorship, focusing on Víctor's "legacy". Based on the analysis of documents such as press articles, letters and festival brochures present in the post-1973 collections of the archive, this project aims to investigate the historicity of the Foundation. We will demonstrate how the synchronic relationship between memory management and the development of a cultural policy by Joan can be observed in the constitution of the FVJ project (1973-1993) and in its first decade of work (1993-2003).