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.
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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.
