Venceremos Victor (for Victor Jara)

Venceremos Victor, We shall overcome
Venceremos Victor, We shall overcome
The never ending spectre, of your stirring New Song
Our source and our protector, that keeps us so strong.

Your mother's warm resilience, was scorched into your soul
With justice in your verses, Chile's story told
To support Allende's office, against the tear-away troops
Against the foreign coffers, funding Pinochet's coup.

Within five days of bloodshed, they'd redefined oppression,
And rounded up his kindred, to teach them all a lesson,
And Victor was among them, the three thousand artisans,
They tortured and they hung them, in the stadium of the partisans.

Defiantly he held his ground, despite the soldier's curses,
Even to the burial mound, Victor penned his final verses,
They say he sang until the end, the anthem of the compeneros
With battered body, shattered hands, he sang out "Venceremos".

Venceremos Victor, We shall overcome
Venceremos Victor, We shall overcome
They dreaded the persistence of your stirring New Song
But the voice of your resistence will last forever long.

BY ERNESTO PRESENTE

From Green Left Weekly, September 10, 2003.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

From GLW issue 553