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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.
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| 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)'
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.
(...)
Excerpt from the book INTERVIEWS by Viviana Marcela Iriart
