'Joan Baez received death threats, and was banned, persecuted' : Julio Emilio Moliné, co-director of the documentary 'Joan Baez in Latin America: There but for fortune (1981)' / book INTERVIEWS by Viviana Marcela Iriart (2025)

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 giving victims a face and a voice, and restoring their humanity.

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.

Thank you Joan Baez for your voice, which soothes all pain.

Thank you  Joan Baez for showing the way and being a banner but also doubt.

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, 

is available on  AMAZON in paperback and ebook versions.

A DOOR OPEN TO THE SEA , play by Viviana Marcela Iriart: excerpt

 

The stage is barely lit. “Porque vas a venir” (Because you’re coming), a song by Carmen Guzmán and Mandy, sung by Susana Rinaldi, is played until the characters speak. 

Dunia enters from the right side. She is excited and nervous. She sits down, stands up, walks from side to side. She is thrilled. She can barely hold her laughter. 

Sandra appears on the left side. She is nervous and excited, but she moves slowly, in a controlled way. She stops at the large window, which is softly lit with a warm glow. She looks inside but sees no one: Dunia has left the stage at that point. She moves towards the proscenium. Dunia enters and does not see her. She goes to the proscenium. 

Until indicated, Sandra and Dunia behave as if they were in a dream. They never touch or look at each other. When they speak, it seems like they are talking to themselves. 

SUSANA RINALDI

“Because you’re coming my old house

unveils new flowers throughout the railing.

Because you're arriving, after so long,

I cannot tell if I'm crying or laughing.

 

I know you're coming, though you didn't say it,

but you'll arrive one morning.

There's a song in my voice, I'm not so sad,

and a ray of sunlight is coming through my window.

 

Because you're arriving, after a long journey,

there's a different hue, a different landscape.

Everything shines a different light and has changed its way,

because you're arriving after all.

 

Because you’re coming, from so far away,

I've looked at myself in the mirror once again.

And how will they see me, I asked myself,

the eyes of this day I was waiting for.

Because you're arriving I wait for you,

because you love me and I love you.

Because you're arriving I wait for you,

because you want it

and I want it too.”

SANDRA (As if she were alone, without noticing Dunia)
And then I thought, will she have changed much? Have I changed so much?

DUNIA (With the same attitude as Sandra)
I was waiting impatiently. I looked at myself in the mirrors and wondered what look you’d give to these wrinkles that have surrounded my eyes without yours. Would you recognize me with these gray hairs I didn't tell you about?

SANDRA
The street in front of your house seemed to be the same. The orange tree in the corner where the greengrocer's was, the paving stones at Don Giuseppe’s store - still broken -, the magnolia tree that would never bloom. But above all, the smell of the orange tree announcing your house was nearby. It all looked the same.

DUNIA

Your voice on the phone, cheerful and teasing, here and not there once again, the same old voice, and I swear I could have eaten up the receiver to eat your voice so that you’d never be gone again.

SANDRA (She turns her back on her)

I admit it - I was scared. The doorbell was there, tiny and glossy. It looks like a nipple, I thought, a nipple inviting the erotic—but no, this little nipple-doorbell was inviting me to the past and I was saying: should I touch it, should I not? I would stretch a finger and stroke it slowly, without pressing, in case I could excite it and make it ring. My finger was bringing you back to my memory.

DUNIA (She turns her back on her)
I looked at you through the peephole, which of us did I see? Years flashed by in the glass eye and did not let me see you.

SANDRA (She comes forward slowly with her back to Dunia)
My finger was still on the doorbell. A door was coughing weakly and I listened to it. The little moaning nipple would not need to be touched. I crossed the doorstep and rested my chest, my whole body, on the door.

DUNIA (She comes forward slowly with her back to Sandra)
I saw you and I pressed my body on the exact same place as you had placed yours. A door divided us and bound us. I was drowning and I thought: there’s no shore near here or any lifeguard in this place.

SANDRA
Your breathing in my ear was suffocating me, it didn't let me think. I was going crazy, I was fainting.

DUNIA
The air from your mouth made me warm, and I was getting filled with sweet old memories. The air from your mouth was burning me, immolating me.

SANDRA (Stands very close to Dunia’s back, without touching it)
Your fingers scratching the wood, scratching and moaning like a stray cat about to give birth to dead memories.

DUNIA
I felt you were sliding down the door to the floor and I reached out to stop you from hitting it.

SANDRA
Your back was sticking into mine, piercing me. I felt pain, I felt pleasure.

DUNIA

You were crying—and you never cried—in a way that was new to me.

SANDRA
You were crying and in your tears was the same old pain I always remembered.

DUNIA
I heard you say: you’re back at last.

SANDRA
And I heard you answer: at last I’ve returned.

(...)

A DOOR OPEN TO THE SEA by Viviana Marcela Iriart

Dr. Susana D. Castillo, University of San Diego, United States:

“…...the play explores the uprooting of its two characters on different levels. On one level, the play deals with the anxious reunion of two women separated for ten years…

Aptly, the initial encounter is choreographed as a slow dance in which the two women try to find each other—as if in a mist—while simultaneously suppressing the outward expression of their conflicting emotions… Thus, they will move—with caution and restraint—from reminiscence to laughter, from song to nostalgia, from distance…to the tango!...

(...) It is worth adding that Viviana Marcela Iriart—novelist and journalist—sought refuge in the Venezuelan Embassy at the age of 21, a period that marked the beginning of her exile, which would take her to various parts of the world before she settled in Venezuela…”

Available for sale on Amazon

 

Viviana Marcela Iriart (1958) is an Argentine-Venezuelan writer, playwright, and interviewer.

She has published "La Casa Lila" ( novel), "Interviews" (interviews with cultural figures, in English), and "¡Bravo, Carlos Giménez!" (biography). She compiled the free-to-read book "María Teresa Castillo-Carlos Giménez-Festival Internacional de Teatro de Caracas 1973-1992", a collaborative work with José Pulido, Rolando Peña, Karla Gómez, Carmen Carmona, and Roland Streuli.

"A DOOR OPEN TO THE SEA", as well as her forthcoming novel "Lejos de Casa", is based on her experiences with the Argentine dictatorsh

A DOOR OPEN TO THE SEA, play by Viviana Marcela Iriart, available for sale on Amazon

 

 

Play. Argentina, early 1990s. Sandra and Dunia, childhood friends who were detained and disappeared by the dictatorship in a concentration camp for being pacifists, reunite after Sandra's years in exile.

The emotional reunion gives way to the shocking realization of how the dictatorship managed to separate them and create two communities: one for those who stayed and one for those condemned to exile.

Suddenly, an abyss opens before their eyes, leaving them on opposite shores.

Can they build a bridge to unite them?

 

Dr. Susana D. Castillo, University of San Diego, United States:

“…...the play explores the uprooting of its two characters on different levels. On one level, the play deals with the anxious reunion of two women separated for ten years…

Aptly, the initial encounter is choreographed as a slow dance in which the two women try to find each other—as if in a mist—while simultaneously suppressing the outward expression of their conflicting emotions… Thus, they will move—with caution and restraint—from reminiscence to laughter, from song to nostalgia, from distance…to the tango!...

(...) It is worth adding that Viviana Marcela Iriart—novelist and journalist—sought refuge in the Venezuelan Embassy at the age of 21, a period that marked the beginning of her exile, which would take her to various parts of the world before she settled in Venezuela…”

Available for sale on Amazon

 

Viviana Marcela Iriart (1958) is an Argentine-Venezuelan writer, playwright, and interviewer.

She has published "La Casa Lila" ( novel), "Interviews" (interviews with cultural figures, in English), and "¡Bravo, Carlos Giménez!" (biography). She compiled the free-to-read book "María Teresa Castillo-Carlos Giménez-Festival Internacional de Teatro de Caracas 1973-1992", a collaborative work with José Pulido, Rolando Peña, Karla Gómez, Carmen Carmona, and Roland Streuli.

"A DOOR OPEN TO THE SEA", as well as her forthcoming novel "Lejos de Casa", is based on her experiences with the Argentine dictatorship and exile.

Book "I HAVE DREAMED OF YOU SO MUCH FREEDOM" by Beatriz Iriart, poems dedicated to the victims of the Shoá (bilingual edition English- Spanish), on Amazon

 

WANTING

        To the survivors of the Holocaust

I have dreamed of you so much
in these days
of stew and bread.
I have dreamed of you so much
with the frost and the famine
with the chains lacerating the ankles
with the terror
installed in the hut.
I have dreamed of you so much
FREEDOM.


“Dear Beatriz, your texts are very touching and truly poetic about a subject which is not easy to write about. And it is not only a Jewish pain but also a human tragedy.” Eliahu Toker, argentine poet, Buenos Aires, 2001.

"Your poetic work, your examination of these ghostly mistakes of humanity, commits us to be alert to the personal and collective processes through which we wander clumsily”. Dr. Susana D. Castillo, american professor and researcher, San Diego State University, California, 2009.

Beatriz Iriart is an Argentine poet. She is a member of the Society of Latin American Writers of California and International Chapter on the Internet (SELC and CII) in the United States.
In 2015 Venezuelan composer Diana Arismendi wrote her work “In memoriam”, to commemorate the Holocaust, and the second movement was inspired in I was in Auschwitz… The concert was organized by Espacio Anna Frank from Caracas with the participation of Venezuela’s Symphony Orchestra directed by master Alfredo Rugeles.
From 2015 to 2025, her poems dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust have been read on radio programs, at commemorative events, and published in magazines in Europe and America.
In 2023 in Spain, the Amlega Association read their poem “Numbers” during the Pink Holocaust events at various universities across the country.

I have dreamed of you so much FREEDOM de Beatriz Iriart, cover by Claudia Patricia Lopez Osornio and graphic design  by Jairo Carthy,  in  AMAZON:

                                         I have dreamed of you so much FREEDOM 

Book "SI...IF" by Claudia Patricia López Osornio, contemporary latin american art, graphic design by Jairo Carthy, for sale on Amazon

 

 

Venezuelan theater director and art collector Rodolfo Molina says in the prologue to this book: “There is an undercurrent of liquid sensations in the distance that overwhelms the vision… In those blurred images, there is also everything you want to see.”

And Argentine poet and art collector Beatriz Iriart opines: “…works in which we perceive glimpses and shadows of a recent past and a dreamlike present. We are grateful for her legacy, which allows us to jump two Hopscotch lines and reach Heaven.”

Claudia Patricia Lopez Osornio studied set design at the La Plata Theater School and painting with artists Mirta Rosetti and Cristina Manganiello. She has held solo and group exhibitions in Argentina, Canada, and Venezuela, where she also taught puppet lighting workshops in Caracas and other parts of the country, invited by the prestigious puppeteer Eduardo Di Mauro.

Claudia Patricia Lopez Osornio is a member of Friends of Macla (Museum of Contemporary Latin American Art of La Plata), where the book will soon be christened and available for sale.

The design for "SI...IF" is by artist and graphic designer Jairo Carthy and is a further work of art that visually enriches the artist's work. It is the union of two great talents that results in a collector's book. 

For sale on Amazon.

JOSÉ PULIDO in the book INTERVIEWS (2025) by Viviana Marcela Iriart “I'm like a castaway clinging to his tongue”

 

José Pulido. Photo: Vasco Szinetar

José Pulido was part of one of the most beautiful and beloved traditions in Caracas: Sunday, buying the papers, having breakfast at the bakery, going up the Ávila, enjoying the blue butterflies and the singing of Quebrada Quintero, spreading the papers among the stones and then… José Pulido and his interview completed the happiness of the day. It did not matter who he interviewed, because the real pleasure was reading him. And my friends would go: what does Pulido say? Have you read what Pulido said? Pulido is so wonderful! Pulido was the main character. Then came the person being interviewed. Because reading José Pulido is good for you. It gives you joy. It makes you think. Because José Pulido writes with humor, tenderness, compassion, intelligence, love. José Pulido the poet, the writer, the journalist. The interviewer who created a new style. The kind, simple and tender man who creates bridges for people to meet, to cross, to discover the other side of their side.

 

José Pulido, who does not deserve to be exiled like he is today, walking around Genoa while he goes around Caracas.

 

And José Pulido is also Carlos Giménez, who he and I love so much, and that beautiful article he wrote: Carlitos sin olvido (Carlitos without oblivion). And he is that marvelous interview he just made to another wonderful and beloved figure from Caracas: Rolando Peña.  An interview that is like a story written with four hands.  An interview that is like a love letter.

 

And José Pulido is this poem of his, which I find while I'm writing this and then I'm out of words.

 

 

THE OLD SONG

 

Before antiquity arrived

the birds that died

turned into carnelian and tourmaline

John claimed in the Book of Revelation that the face of god was made of jasper and carnelian

birds probably made one of their best graveyards in that face

 

All mountains have been built out of birds' ancestors

 

From a yellow, blue and green bird

who dies when put in a cage and sings in beautiful fury

the mountain of Caracas was born creating ripples of water and branches

 

the Ávila of stones and roots, spit with Pleiades

is our most concrete mountain

 

I wish I could sweep its pathways with a broom of dreams

clean them up of all miseries

 

It is so big it could only fit into the universe once

when the heavens dilated

so that mangos could bloom

 

hummingbirds in the Ávila seem as if they were invented by Borges:

they fly backwards because they care more about the beginning than the end

 

the Ávila is huge but it is not so hard to carry in a bag

it is completely portable when carried as a feeling

especially if you have looked at its mermaid-like curves,

its crests resembling a resting animal

Or if you have ever heard the waters talk in Quebrada Quintero

about how to go down to the Caribbean Sea without having to ask for

directions in the valley

 

In the afternoon the mountain opens its eye made of sun

An eye that falls asleep on the voracious head of dry trees

at night it crouches with its breath of burning plants

ready to jump again on the fearful valley with its rabbit heart

this is the mountain that feeds on looks

that on the beach side is the Ávila of Reverón

deranged by light

and on the Caracas side is the Ávila of Cabré

borrowing the iridescence of the sparkling hummingbird

and all Pleiades sneeze with love when molasses grass stirs,

the delicious herb

and at the top and the bottom it is the Ávila of everyone and no one

a mountain that is like the Virgin of Coromoto and the Virgin of the Valley

like La Chinita and the Divina Pastora

because you do not have to know its pathways

to believe it represents our customs

 

The mountain was a bedroom for clouds a million years ago

and it still is.

The mountain was there making guacharacas

before anyone even thought of building the wall

that we would call town;

this ancient air is what comforts me.

The Ávila is a bird with apple mint in its wings,

it is the pain of fires kept within a case made of roots.

The Ávila is like saying amen when you pray for Caracas.

 

 

 

José Pulido, Salamanca, España.

 

 Carlos Giménez, Barbarito Diez, María Teresa Castillo,
Pablo Milanés,Miguel Henrique Otero, José Pulido...
"Macondo", María Teresas`s house

José, how has coronavirus treated you? What did you do during the quarantine?

 

I don't think coronavirus has treated anyone well. Fortunately I haven't got it because I'm always shut in writing and I only go out to walk up to the nearest mountain. I visit populated areas when I have to read poetry somewhere.

 

What was the first thing you did when the quarantine was lifted?

 

For me, it hasn't been lifted. I go out to walk but I wear a mask. Here you are fined if you don't wear it in the street. I haven't had any plans for when we get to the end of this. Beer tastes as good at home as it does in the bar.

 

Are you writing anything? What?

 

Poetry. I do some interviews for amusement. Poetry is my constant passion.

 

What are your plans for the mid-term?

 

Not dying yet to see what things have changed.

 

(...)

Excerpt from the book INTERVIEWS by Viviana Marcela Iriart, graphic design by Jairo Carthy, sold on Amazon

On sale on AMAZON