 | |
| Joan Baez , May 1981 ©Julio Emilio Moliné |
After
that historical tour in which Joan Baez terrified dictators from Argentina, Chile and Brazil
so much that they threatened to kill her and
banned her from singing, among other things, the mythical singer-songwriter and
pacifist will perform in March in the same countries in which her
voice made perpetrators of genocide falter in 1981.
 |
| Joan Baez & Laura Bonaparte, México, May 1981 ©Julio Emilio Moliné |
'Beautiful
Laura Bonaparte was a psychoanalyst from
Argentina. On June 11, 1976 her husband, a biochemist, was dragged out of the
house in front of her eyes and she never saw him again. When she went looking for her daughter, who had also
"disappeared", she was given her daughter's hand in a jar for
identification.' Joan Baez 'And a Voice to Sing With (A Memoir)'
 |
| Joan Baez & Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, May 1981 ©Julio Emilio Moliné |
Thank you Joan Baez, for the brave and
affectionate 1981 tour to bring comfort, joy and hope to the victims of the
Pinochet, Videla, and Joao Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo dictatorships.
Thank
you Joan Baez,
because despite receiving death threats and being banned and persecuted, she
stayed at our side, sang to us, and showed the world the horror of
dictatorships in the wonderful documentary 'Joan Baez in Latin America: There but
for Fortune.'
Thank you Joan Baez for
condemning the crimes committed by both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships,
as well as democracies.
Thank you Joan Baez for defending human rights, for opposing wars, arms
build-up, discrimination, totalitarianism.
Thank you Joan Baez for showing me, when I was 16 years
old, the meaning of non-violence and its difference with passivity.
Thank you Joan Baez because
your fight is not limited to singing and talking to the press, as the
documentary and this interview (among many other facts) demonstrate.
And
thank you Julio Emilio Moliné for sharing some of your memories and photos from
that brave tour of Joan Baez in Latin America… here, fortunately.
 |
| Joan Baez, Lula, Eduardo Suplicy & Julio Emilio Moliné (with mustaches), San Pablo, Brasil, May 1981. Courtesy photo J.E.Moliné |
How did
you become part of the tour of philanthropic activities and concerts Joan Baez did
in 1981 across Latin America to show her support for the victims of
dictatorships there?
One Monday morning at the end of April 1981 I
got a call at work (I had a job at a TV station) from my friend John Chapman, an independent
filmmaker from San Francisco. He told me: 'Hey, would you like to go on a
Latin American tour with Joan Baez for a month? We can film it and make a
documentary.'
Given that I speak Spanish, and I had lived in
Chile for many years and had traveled around Argentina, John thought I would be
a good partner for this adventure. Being a little older than me, he had
worked in Apocalypse Now with Francis Coppola and had fallen in love
with cinema during that experience. I said yes without hesitation, though
I had no holidays and I needed to get an unpaid leave at work.
Another setback was that my wife was
pregnant, and our daughter was expected to be born during the tour, so I had to
ask her whether she thought this was a good idea. She generously said
yes. And our daughter Andrea was born while we were in Buenos Aires interviewing
a journalist from the New York Times.
That Monday when I received John's call, we
met Joan in the evening at a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto. Joan gave me the
go-ahead, and we started the required paperwork.
What was
you impression of Joan Baez?
I remember being a little shocked at the fact
that I was eating Chinese rice with such a famous person. Besides being a
very attractive woman, she was very friendly and warm. She asked us a lot
of questions about Latin America, some very well-informed and others less so,
and she paid for the meal.
She made a very good impression on me,
because of her kindness and good sense of humor.
On what
day did the tour begin?
On May 3, 1981, John and I met with Joan and
Jeannie in México City, where we interviewed the Argentinian doctor (the
dictatorship had caused great suffering to her family), and that evening Joan
gave a concert where we had the chance to try the equipment.
The next day we set off to Argentina, where
we stayed until May 15, when we crossed the Andes in our way to Chile. There we stayed in Santiago until May 19,
when we set off to Brazil. We spent a
few days in São Paulo and Rio, and then headed off to Nicaragua. After
that, Joan and Jeannie went alone to Venezuela.
That tour
was recorded—except for the trip to Venezuela and Nicaragua—in the wonderful
documentary 'Joan Baez in Latin America: There
but for fortune.' Who had the
idea of making it? What was the purpose? How was it funded?
The main driving force of the documentary was John Chapman, who convinced Joan of the
historical value of recording her tour. Much of the funding came
from Diamonds & Rust, Joan's company
in California. My salary was paid by KTEH
TV, the TV station I worked for in San Jose. When I asked for an
unpaid leave to travel around Latin America with Joan and film, Peter Baker, my executive producer, convinced Maynard Orme, the station manager, that this
was an idea they needed to support. It was an act of courage that is
rarely seen nowadays, because I had been working there for less than a year
(and was only 27 years old). KTEH also
lent the filmmaking equipment, and paid the post-production and editing
costs.
Tragically, John died in an accident in 1983, less than a year after finishing the
documentary.
Do you think
Joan Baez
imagined she would receive death
threats, bombs, tear gas and censorship of her concerts in the three countries?
No. She thought it would be difficult
but never to such an extreme. The person who sparked the idea of making
the tour in Joan was the Chilean writer Fernando Alegría, who was a Literature
professor in Stanford. He believed things were waning a bit in the
Southern Cone, and that Joan's visit would inject a lot of energy into Latin
American people, especially those who were protesting against dictatorships.
How did
you manage to shoot under the close watch of the repressive forces of
dictatorships?
It was hard, because fear was everywhere, and
with good reason. Very few people in the USA knew about the dirty war in
Argentina and the death squads in Brazil and the DINA/CNI
in Chile, but we did. This was completely ignored by most people
in the USA. We must remember that in 1980 Reagan was elected president with the
mandate to reverse much of the liberal progress made during the 70's. But I had
lived under Pinochet's dictatorship and I knew they would keep an eye on
us. The most probable scenario was that they would confiscate our
equipment at the airport, and that would have been the end of the documentary.
That's why we decided to travel super light with a couple of Elmo Super 8 cameras, Sony TCD 5 cassette recorders and a big case containing Kodachrome and Ektachrome film rolls. We had a couple of lights and a tripod, and
that was it.
Many of the documentary scenes were shot
indoors: concerts, apartments, friends' houses, etc. That way, we could leave
the guards outside and shoot what we could with the few lights we had. For
outdoor scenes we would usually go without Joan, because she attracted too much
attention.
Who were
the members of the team?
We were only four people traveling: Joan,
Jeannie Murphy (who was like Joan's
producer and manager), John and me.
Curiously, in Chile, the yellow press insinuated that John and I were
Joan and Jeannie's 'friends', but those were only tales invented by people
serving the dictatorship. In each country, there were many people who
helped us and allowed us to do the tour and create the documentary.
Was any of
the countries more dangerous that the others, or was Joan Baez equally
persecuted in all of them?
Argentina was the scariest by far, though I
think the military was actually more interested in making sure nothing happened
to Joan than in hurting her.
It was there that Joan received the most
threats, we were kicked out of a hotel, they threw teargas bombs at a meeting,
and so on. Besides, a Ford Falcon with no plates would follow us
everywhere. There were four strange men in it. Buenos Aires was the
only place where I was really scared. I even got to wonder if I should start
the car in case there was a bomb in it.
In Chile, things were more subtle. Joan
was still unable to sing in paid concerts, but at least she could sing in front
of an audience. If they followed us, I didn't realize it, but I'm sure
they did.
There
was a wave of car bombings in Brazil
those days, and many were attributed to the dictatorship, though the truth came
out later. But we didn't know that at the time, and the dictatorship used
this to prevent the concerts in order to 'protect the public.'
'During her visit (…) they put a bomb and we had to evacuate the house (…) and hurry to take Joan to a distant bar to keep her safe. I called the fire department, who came with a truck from the bomb disposal unit and extracted a box from the balcony in which you could see there were cables and a bomb, which they exploded right there. (…) Joan's presence in Argentina was a great source of support and strength for the human rights cause, it gave us strength to continue struggling.' Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, La Nación, March 1, 2014
 |
| Joan Báez & Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Buenos Aires May 1981 / Photo La Nación |
What human
rights organizations and public figures did she meet with in each country?
Which encounter, or encounters, do you think impacted her most emotionally?
In Argentina and Chile the Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ)
organization was the one that made the most effort to organize encounters between
Joan and the people. In Buenos Aires, they helped Joan contact the Mothers of
the Plaza de Mayo and other activists and victims of the dictatorship.
She should be the one to tell you what
impacted her most, but in my opinion her meetings with the Mothers in Argentina
and Chile were very shocking. Joan herself said that the trouble with the
concerts was nothing compared to the sufferings of the mothers. And those
meetings left her really distressed. Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, in Argentina, also
made a great impact because of his courage and simplicity. There was a
deep mutual respect between him and Joan based on their admiration for Gandhi's
pacifism.
One year
before, Pérez Esquivel—an ex-prisoner of the Argentinian dictatorship—had
received the Nobel Peace Prize. Do you remember what their first encounter was
like?
He waited for us at the airport that evening in
Buenos Aires and helped us get through Customs without problems. The
bureaucrats of the day were very interested in why we had so many film
rolls. We tried to explain that we were making a home movie for Joan but we were having trouble making them
believe us.
Adolfo intervened, and through light but
direct pressure he assured them that everything we were carrying was the usual
equipment for an artist like Joan. It was late in the evening so we went straight
to the hotel to sleep.
The next day there was a press conference in
the SERPAJ, with Adolfo, Joan, and a fair
amount of journalists. I don't remember seeing TV cameras. This
scene is included in the documentary.
Do you
remember the first encounter between Joan and the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo?
Yes, we visited them at a big office near the
Buenos Aires city center. There were about thirty or forty people there,
many of whom were mothers, and they sat against the walls of large rooms, with their
hands almost crossed in their laps. Some of them had a white
headscarf.
After a brief moment of tension, Joan took
out her guitar and sang a couple of songs. Then she sat next to the
mothers. One of them started to talk about her tragedy while Joan
listened. They hugged, and the mother cried.
At the end, Joan sang another song.
When we left, Joan was very sad.
Was Joan
able to march with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo?
No, she wasn't. That morning the SERPAJ
leaders met and agreed that it would be counterproductive to have Joan march
that afternoon. Adolfo didn't agree, and he said so.
Joan wasn't very happy with their decision
either, but she respected their will because those who lived there would be the
ones who would have to suffer the consequences.
Those were very fragile days in Argentina,
and the SERPAJ leaders believed the dictatorship would use Joan's appearance
next to the mothers as a sign of foreign intervention against the interests of
the Argentinian people.
That afternoon Joan kept going round the
square in a taxi. We came out, I took some pictures, and John filmed.
That's why there's no scene of Joan marching with the mothers in the
documentary.
Was she
able to sing in front of an audience in Buenos Aires?
No, she wasn't. If I remember
correctly, she sang in an apartment full of people who had been victims of the
dictatorship, at the SERPAJ, and I can't remember any other place, and never in
a place that was open to the public.
On May 8 we went to a Charly García and Gilberto
Gil concert.
Joan hoped to be able to go on stage and give
the audience a surprise singing one or two songs, but when we got there, her
hopes were frustrated. Charly García greeted Joan telling the audience that she
was there, people applauded and Joan waved, but she said nothing. Later
we found out that there had been veiled threats of serious consequences if Joan
sang.
When the concert finished, we went to pick up
our car and found all four tires had been slashed. That was the way the
Ford Falcon guys could make sure we would not get lost in the concert crowd.
When we got to the hotel that evening Joan
was really depressed.
Was it
because of the slashed tires or because she had not been able to sing?
The tires were the least of it. She felt
sad and frustrated because she was being banned from doing what she had come to
do, which was to sing.
Did Joan
complain about what the dictatorship was doing to her?
I never heard Joan complain. That's not
her style.
What is
her style?
Stoic. She never complains about her
personal sorrows because she understands there are others who have much greater
sorrows.
In what
language did she communicate?
Always in English. She understands
Spanish very well but feels much more comfortable communicating in English.
Were you
her translator?
I was the documentary co-director, sound
engineer, photographer, and interpreter. I was also cameraman a few
times.
After that
you went to Chile. How did Pinochet treat Joan?
Well, we never met Pinochet in person or
anything like that. In general, they treated us more politely than in
Argentina, but Joan was still unable to give paid concerts. Ricardo
García, who was a celebrity there, told us in an interview that there was no
formal prohibition against Joan, but there was 'self-censorship'—everyone was
scared to organize something because of what might happen.
We were obviously under watch but in a much
more subtle way than in Argentina.
When we left Chile on our way to Brazil, a
pair of film rolls were stolen from one of my cases. When we told our
friends in Chile they started a legal action (with no success) and went on with
that matter.
Six months after that, a package with no
sender information arrived at my office containing the two film rolls that had
been stolen. We were never able to solve the mystery.
A couple of years later, in 1983, I wanted to
go back to Chile to visit my parents. We would go in July. A month
before our visit, my father called to say we should not go because they were
getting phone calls during the night saying: 'Julio will die in July.' We
canceled the trip. In 1985 we managed to go there but we were really
scared.
Horrifying.
Were you able to include the film rolls in the documentary or had you already
edited it?
If I remember correctly, there was still
time, but there was nothing there that was worth the trouble. There was a
lot of great material that was not included.
What human
rights organizations and activists could Joan meet with in Chile?
Mainly with the SERPAJ and Chilean
artists. She also met with some dictatorship victims in the Vicaría de la
Solidaridad in Santiago.
Do you
remember that encounter with the victims?
It was really moving, with the mothers crying
in the Vicaría's central yard.
Joan sang No nos moverán ('We Shall Not Be Moved'), and the mothers joined her. One
of them took Joan's arm and sang proudly with her. They gave her a
Chilote-style, woolen vest, which Joan wore a lot during the rest of the
journey.
I have a picture of John Chapman filming Joan
in that yard singing with the mothers, and you can see a big sign behind her
dedicated to Oscar Romero, which says: 'Nadie muere para siempre' (No one dies
forever).
In Chile
she managed to give an almost clandestine concert. Do you remember how it was
organized? How did Joan and the audience feel?
In Chile Joan sang in several places: at a
party near Santiago city center, at a Catholic religious service at a church in
the Pedro de Valdivia square, at a church
auditorium in Ñuñoa, at the University of Chile campus in Macul, and at a
couple of meetings in the homes of SERPAJ artists and friends.
The only 'concert' was the one at the church
auditorium, where there were three police buses outside. I don't remember
if they got off the buses, but it called our attention because the concert had
been organized that same day. How did the police know there would be a
concert that evening?
Some Chilean musicians sang that evening
too. The auditorium was packed, and so was the street. They
installed speakers so that people outside could listen.
I remember there were many
celebrities—artists, singers, actors, and so on—who were against the Pinochet
regime. When Joan sang No nos moverán ('We shall not be moved') the
audience started to sing 'El pueblo unido jamás será vencido' ('The people
united will never be defeated'), which was one of the slogans of Unidad Popular
during Allende's government. At that moment, I was really scared thinking
about the police outside. If they had thrown a teargas bomb inside, it
would have been very dangerous because the auditorium was packed and the doors
were closed.
There is
an—unfortunately pirate—CD of the concert, and that's why I know the song was 'Here's to you', and at the end Joan says in Spanish 'Yes, it's
true.' It's a hair-raising moment, both because of emotion and fear. Do you
remember how Joan felt after the concert? Happy? Scared because of the police?
What I remember is that Joan was very happy
for having been able to sing. Until then she had suffered a lot of
frustration, and the audience responded in such a vigorous and vital way that
it raised her spirits.
I don't remember her being frightened of the
Chilean police. They wore uniforms and behaved with discipline.
Things were worse in Buenos Aires, where they wore civilian clothes, and
threats kept coming without anyone knowing where they came from.
'The audience fully occupied the 1,200 seats and every corridor and corner of
the Tuca. (…) The audience stood up and
applauded extensively when Joan Baez finally appeared on stage (…) to announce
she had been banned from singing (…). She ended up singing two
songs—unaccompanied, with no microphone or speaker, from a window of the Tuca.' Sérgio Vaz, São
Paulo, Jornal da Tarde, May 23, 1981
 |
| Joan Baez & Zé Ramalho, Sao Paulo May 1981. Photo ZR |
From Chile
you went to Brazil, how was she received there?
The Brazilian people received her very
warmly, and although she wasn't able to sing there either, every time she
appeared in public people applauded.
Joan met with many representatives of the
Workers' Party. Eduardo Suplicy, who
I think was a congressman, took us to many places, even a meeting with Lula on the outskirts of São Paulo at
the automobile workers union.
Suplicy tried to get a permit for Joan to
give a concert. I remember we even went to a local police station so that
Suplicy could do the paperwork, but with no success.
We went to a Ze Ramalho concert, and he
received her very kindly at his dressing room (among marijuana smoke clouds),
but they asked her not to sing because they were scared of what might happen
with the authorities.
Why?
I
believe it was auto-censorship, but there might have been threats, I can't be
sure. Then Joan went on stage and danced while Ze was singing. The audience
gave her an ovation.
Joan's record label treated us very well, but
they were also really frustrated because they were missing a great chance to advertise
her albums in Brazil.
She was also interviewed for Globo TV, where they didn't let us
film. I remember they didn't even want John and me to enter the
building. We never had the chance to see that interview because they
didn't send it as they had promised to do.
From
there, did you go to Venezuela or Nicaragua?
We went to Nicaragua, where they treated us
in an utterly different way. The Sandinista government received her as a
guest of honor, and organized concerts and interviews for Joan.
I remember that one evening we went to the
home of poet Ernesto Cardenal to eat delicious Nicaraguan food, and there were
other artists and poets. Ernesto was also a pacifist, and he talked a lot
with Joan. Then Joan sang some songs to end the evening. In the end we decided
not to include our visit to Nicaragua in the documentary, because the situation
was very different there from what we had experienced in the Southern Cone.
Which were
the songs she sang most?
Joan would adjust her set list according to
the audience. In Argentina, for example, she sang Don't
Cry for me Argentina a lot, and in Chile, Violeta Parra's Gracias a la Vida. In Brazil, she
loved a song called Calice, and I
think she learned it right there and included it in her repertoire. In Nicaragua
she learned a song written by a Sandinista who had been imprisoned and tortured
by Somoza's National Guard—I think it was called Mi Venganza Personal (My Personal Revenge). This also became
part of her repertoire, because it was a song about learning to forgive old
enemies.
Of all the songs Joan sang, my favorite was No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley. She
also sang Imagine (John Lennon), There But For
Fortune (Phil Ochs), We Shall Not Be Moved, Blowin' in the Wind, Amazing Grace, Diamonds &
Rust,
and others I can't remember.
Would you
like to tell an anecdote about Joan from each country?
In Argentina, we were turned out of a hotel
under the argument that it was full, which was completely untrue, because it
was almost empty. I remember the poor hotel manager telling Joan that he
was sorry but blah blah blah, and Joan almost laughing in his face. It
was evident that the hotel had been pressured to have us turned out.
I don't remember which hotel accepted Joan
after that.
As
an anecdote from Chile, I'll give you what my friend Antonio De La Fuente wrote in his blog Camino de Santiago:
'On
January 6 in LA, CA, my friend JM will be exhibiting two photo series from
analogue times. The invitation illustrates a photo of JB in Brazil from 1981.
The image
is actually very relevant because in those analogue times, before going to
Brazil, JB was in Chile during the heyday of Pinochet's regime, and 33 years
after that visit she's
planning to go back. There are three things I could tell about that time, but I'll leave it at two.
At the final press conference, when JB was about to set off to Brazil, there were
more men in gray than journalists. The men in gray were taking pictures of the
journalists, and the journalists were taking pictures of the men in gray. Black
and white, of course.
There was
another time when JB was singing for a small group of people and, accidentally,
a cultural journalist spilled a glass of wine over JB's immaculate pants, and
this immediately cast a gloom over the star, who reappeared a few minutes later
wearing another immaculate pair of pants.' Antonio De La Fuente
In Brazil, two policemen in gray came to
Joan's room at the São Paulo hotel to tell her the concert which was scheduled
to take place at a church had been suspended.
It was almost time for the concert already,
so we went to the auditorium anyway. It was full of people, and Joan sat among
the audience and they all sang a couple of songs a cappella.
The poor policemen who came to the door
seemed somewhat embarrassed and even a little impressed at Joan, but they still
had to 'carry out their duty.'
In Nicaragua, the Home Secretary, commander
Tomás Borge, was fascinated with Joan, so one evening after a concert in
Managua, he took us all in convoy to have dinner at a restaurant. It was
almost midnight, so we were the only ones there.
Given that Borge didn't speak English, I had
to translate what he said. It wasn't long until I started to feel
uncomfortable, because it was evident that the Sandinista leader had romantic
ideas about Joan. He wanted to take her to 'see the volcano at
night.' Joan couldn't stop laughing because she found this all very
amusing.
Instead of the volcano, Joan convinced the
secretary to take us to a prison on the outskirts of Managua, where Somoza's
ex-National Guards had been jailed.
We arrived there in convoy around two in the
morning, and the prison chief took us all to see the prisoners, who were
sleeping.
The lights turned on, and it must have been
quite a surprise for them to see such a retinue of visitors. Joan started
to talk to some of the prisoners while I translated. One of them, a man
of about thirty years old, told her that they had locked him without any
charges, and they hadn't even told him why he had been imprisoned. Joan asked
me to tell Tomás Borge about this. Borge called the prison warden and
asked him about this man's case. It wasn't clear what he was being
accused of. Borge told the warden to let him free. The guards went
to this man's cell, grabbed his things and took him out as if they were going
to let him free. That seemed to be their intention but we never found out
if they actually freed him that night.
I imagine
Joan, you, and all the team must have felt really scared. Although Joan had
spent 1972 Christmas enduring the Hanoi bombings, dictatorships were as deadly
as a B-52. If you ever saw her scared, when did you see her most scared?
And how did Joan behave when in fear?
I never saw any sign of fear in her. I
saw her worried, frustrated, and sometimes impatient, but always in control of
herself. And we were practically all day together.
In general, I saw her suffer with people's
stories, and also very worried about others, because of what might happen to
them. I think Joan was very conscious of the fact that her fame protected
her, but that those she met would not necessarily have that same protection
once she was gone. Remember that the military didn't want anything to happen to
her in their country because that would have been an international
scandal. Now, there is a chance that she might have felt fear and I
didn't realize it. John Lennon had been murdered less than six months
before in New York, which had cast a fateful shadow over a famous person's
presence in a public street.
I personally felt really scared in Buenos
Aires, on May 8. After repairing the car's tires, I left everyone at a restaurant
and went to call my wife, because my daughter had just been born. When I
came out, I realized I was being followed. I got in the car and got
paralyzed when I saw a couple of guys looking at me from the sidewalk. I
thought 'What if they've put a bomb in the car?' Nothing happened. But I
felt extremely scared. The funny part is that when I headed towards the
restaurant, I couldn't find it, so I parked and started walking. The two
guys were following me and I was very tired because of all the activities of
the day and the birth of my daughter. Suddenly, I turned around and asked them point-blank:
'Where's Joan?' They pretended not to know, but when I insisted, they
pointed to a shop across the street.
You don't
have to answer but, if I may ask, have you ever seen her cry?
No. I saw her impatient and in a bad mood a
couple of times but generally she was solid as a rock.
What about
singing? At that time she was said to be singing all the time.
I can't remember. I remember she draw
(fairly well) on a notebook.
In Nicaragua, one afternoon Joan and I were
alone in the living room at the house we were staying in. While I was checking
the equipment she was playing around with her guitar. Suddenly, she asked
me if I wanted to listen to any particular song. I said No Woman No
Cry. And she began to play
it. That's when I took some of my favorite pictures of Joan. It was
a beautiful moment.
What a
beautiful portrait. Was she always that simple? Was her fame
intimidating?
Joan always tried to be kind to people.
Once she saw me impatient and told me 'courage
is grace under pressure', quoting
Ernest Hemingway.
Her attitude was very consistent with her
ideas of pacifism and respect for human rights, in the sense that there is no
use in preaching those ideas if, at the same time, you treat others miserably.
She clearly used her fame to get what she wanted, which to a great extent was
to help the victims of human rights violations.
I think she felt very comfortable with her
fame. Remember that she had been famous since she was twenty years old,
so people's attention didn't affect her much. She was very careful to
always behave as if many people were looking at her. I very rarely saw
her lower her guard.
Something that really impressed me was the way
that Joan's fame affected people. Everyone tried to get close to her, and
even I was treated differently when I was seen with her. It was very
weird.
What did
you do with the documentary when you got back?
We began to organize all the material we had
collected. We transferred all rolls into video and started editing.
At the beginning of August we had a version that was little more than ninety
minutes long.
Around September 1981 we went with Joan and Jeannie to Washington DC because she
wanted to meet some politicians to let them know what she had learned in Latin
America. She also gave a concert, which we shot and which is the
beginning of the documentary. She had interviews with Ted Kennedy,
representative Harkin, and many others who appear in the documentary. With this
new material we created a one-hour version that we finished in March
1982. We transferred it to 16 mm and had a premiere in San Francisco,
another one in Los Angeles, and another one in Santa Barbara. Then it was shown in national television in
May that year.
What was
the audience's reaction?
It was very positive in all three
cities. The last premiere was in Santa Barbara, and I was standing behind
Joan watching the documentary. When it finished, she told me she was
proud of the work we had all done.
What was
the fate of the documentary? Cinema festivals? Television in other countries?
The documentary received some awards in festivals
(San Francisco State Broadcast Media Award; Mill
Valley Film Festival, and others I can't remember). I don't know if
it was shown in other countries.
Were the
victims of the dictatorships who appear in the documentary able to see it?
We sent a copy to the SERPAJ in Argentina and
another one to Chile. I don't know if they could show it to the public;
most of it was in English, so that may have prevented it from getting to a
wider audience.
There
wasn't any money for subtitles?
That's right. Nowadays it's much easier
and cheaper to get subtitles, but back then, it wasn't.
Besides we had accomplished the main
objective, which was to spread the news about the Southern Cone in the USA
during the Reagan era.
Do you
think Joan was able to recover the money she invested in the documentary?
The Southern Cone tour was a commercial
failure because she couldn't give any concert in which tickets could be
sold. Our expenses (mine and John's) were minimal, because in several
countries we stayed at friends' homes to avoid paying for a hotel. The
documentary was shown at a national level in the USA, but it was in public TV,
which generally pays very little for its documentaries.
After
spending a whole month with her, what did Joan Baez mean in your life?
Joan was a great source of inspiration, but I
was so young that perhaps I couldn't realize at that time how special it was to
be with her and experience what we did.
Now, when I look back, I feel lucky for
having lived such a historical experience.
What's the
best thing you can say about her that almost no one knows?
Her life as a public figure has been examined
to such an extent that I really doubt I can offer anything new.
What most impressed me about Joan was her
great intelligence, her loyalty to her principles, and her sense of
humor. She's really funny in private and likes playing jokes.
She also has the ability to see very quickly
the true character of the people she meets.
Did you
keep seeing Joan after the tour?
Yes, we met several times during the edition
of the documentary, and together with John, we shot several other interviews
with her at her home.
We lost touch in 1983 after John Chapman's death.
You're
currently doing an exhibition of Joan's photos from this historical tour.
Yes, the exhibition is called RECOLLECTIONS and it's at a gallery in La Cañada Flintridge (a Los Angeles suburb).
The pictures can be seen at:
