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| 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.
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.
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.
(...)
Excerpt from the book INTERVIEWS by Viviana Marcela Iriart.
NTERVIEWS, with graphic design by Jairo Carthy,
