During an inspiring weekend (9^th 10^th 11^th August) West Wales will reverberate to the unlikely sounds of Latin American music with a distinctly political twist as the El Sueño Existe festival - ‘The Dream Lives on’ - is celebrated among the green hillsides of Machynlleth, West Wales (SY20 8ER).

The festival, inspired by the music and political vision of legendary Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara, has become something of a fixture in the calendar of folk music and progressive ideas. This year’s festival will feature a wealth of musical acts headlined by the Frida Violeta Band  – an all-women band from Cambridge blending any number of musical heritages. They’ll be returning after their barnstorming set during last year’s ‘Chile 50 years on’ mini-festival. Alongside them will be Tinku Puros Bolivian dance troop, Welsh singer songwriter Martyn Jospeh, Grupo Limache, an 8 piece Chilean folk / social comment band on tour, Zona Marginal, a Colombian rap band, plus an array of local and international troubadours who make it over the Welsh hills to Machynlleth.

Each edition of the festival focuses on specific issues, and this year’s themes are Bolivia and the Amazon, and the global struggles for climate justice. A number of Bolivians living in the UK will be contributing, including the wonderful ‘Wiphalas Across the World’ and poet and film maker Giovanna Miralles.

Speakers confirmed to take part in a wide range of workshops throughout the weekend include Dr Francisco Dominguez, Sian Phillips (sister of murdered Amazon activist and journalist Dom Phillips), Anthony Slaughter, leader of the Green Party of Wales, Paul Allen from the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, Carlos Zamora, a classical composer of an orchestral symphony weaving together Victor Jara’s music. There are many more, including Henry Stobart, an expert in Bolivian indigenous music, and Jeanette Rojas who will be playing as part of Bolivian trio Sagrada Familia and leading a session on indigenous instruments and styles. Dr Andrew Redden will be exploring Incan creation myths and cosmovisions; Sarah Shenkar from Survival International will be talking on Amazon cultures especially those in least contact with Brazilian society; Sen Munoz will be bringing his expertise from War on Want campaigning; and Claudia Turbot Delof will be representing ‘Wiphalas across the World’ solidarity movement.

As ever we are delighted to have great media support from our friends at Alborada films, and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, though Jeremy won’t be able to make it this year. New for this year will be a ‘festival within the festival’ organised by Latin America Bureau (LAB), highlighting their longstanding work in publishing and campaigning.  

      El Salvadorean asylum seekers getting a great festival experience at festival 2022

The ongoing demand for a just transition to net zero will be our overarching environmental/political theme. There will be input from XR Machynlleth and other climate justice campaigners, together with reports from across Latin America from the frontlines of the climate struggle we all share. 

El  Sueño Existe attracts a vibrant mix of  Chileans who found a haven in Britain in the 1970s, veterans of solidarity campaigns here, and the younger generations who have inherited the wealth of both Latin American and British & Welsh cultural traditions. The touchstone is Victor Jara himself, a Communist and passionate supporter of Allende’s government, who was among the thousands of Pinochet’s victims, tortured and savagely murdered at the age of 39, for being a voice of the people. Unlike his tormentors, his legacy has become recognised as being artistically unique – an eloquent testimony of the flagrant injustices in Chilean society, and a call to arms to remedy them. As with every festival there will be a strong Chilean input, with news from the EcoMemoria project, planting trees to create a new woodland as a memorial to those who disappeared and have no grave. There will also be tributes to Victor’s widow Joan Jara who died in 2023, and Alfredo Kordal, a great Chilean exile poet.

Visitors to the festival can expect the unexpected, whether it is a lyrical poetry performance from Latin American women’s writers’ group ‘Las Juanas’, a Liberation Theology participatory mass led by radical retired priest Roger Redding, or an indigenous instrumental procession, a full-on dance concert to show off those salsa moves, or some fine examples of Bolivian film making, together with food stalls, camping etc. – we aim to nourish the soul as well as the body! A number of town venues will be used for workshops and smaller concerts, all within a 10 mins stroll of the main site, Y Plas. All venues are wheelchair accessible.

Perhaps the last word should go to one of the Chileans, Idulia, exiled here since 1975, who has attended several El Sueño Existe festivals : ‘The festival is the one place in Britain where I really feel I belong.’ If you only have spare cash for one festival this summer, make sure it is this one!

Weekend tickets £60/£80/£100 solidarity price + camping, campervans + programme updates, information on volunteering (8 – 12 hrs volunteering for a free weekend ticket) local accommodation etc. all via the festival website. Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.l.com.

50 years ago, in 1972, the great Chilean singer song-writer Victor Jara released one of his final albums, ‘La Población’ . It consists of 9 songs which tell the stories of previously homelesss people, living in a shanty town in Santiago. It became an iconic musical testimony of their struggles to occupy scrubland and build a home – a community – and also featured the recorded voices of these people. And the community is still there today.

In some ways it also is a musical document of the victories and hopes of the popular movements who had elected Salvador Allende in 1970, on a platform of radical social and economic change. After the 1973 military coup, which resulted in the death of Allende and Victor Jara, as well as many thousands of others, all of Victor Jara’s music was banned in Chile. Today his voice rings out louder than ever. They can kill the singer – but not the songs.

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On September 18^th this year, the Victor Jara festival “El Sueño Existe” – the Dream Lives On – will be presenting an evening zoom celebration of the album ‘La Población’, looking at the context, methodology, and the times in which it was created, hearing from the community, and presenting new versions of the songs Victor Jara wrote, performed by a wide variety of singers, musicians and choirs – both in the UK and from Chile. It’ll be an inspiring and uplifting evening – and replaces the cancelled 2021 festival.

The ‘Toma’ – Seizing the Land

The community featured in the album, Herminda de la Victoria, was the result  of a ‘toma’ (or land seizure). By the 1960s large numbers of people were arriving in the city from the countryside, but there was little available housing for them. For years these internal migrants,  in Santiago as elsewhere in Latin America cities, had occupied land and housed themselves as best they could, but the pobladores at Herminda were very organised. Local leaders ensured they were well motivated and could access external support. And as one of the pobladores recounts on one of the album's tracks, when their original site was discovered, they were able switch to an alternative at the last minute.

The Pobladores erected tents and shacks during the night. As with any toma at that time, the police would attempt to evict them, and around 400 police attacked using tear gas, forcing the pobladores into a small part of the land, and cordoning them off. The pobladores managed to hold on, surrounded, with the police initially refusing to let any supplies in. Local radical politicians (including Salvador Allende) supported the toma and the ongoing, eventually successful negotiations.

Why ‘Herminda de la Victoria’ ? Herminda Alvarez Chavez was a baby who died soon after the toma. Some say she was shot or tear-gassed, but most likely she died of illness when there was little medical treatment available. Naming the new community in memory of the baby and the victory of the people helped to unify the group at a difficult time. Her death would not be in vain, their suffering and organisation allowing them to eventually create a home of their own. One of the songs on the album is a lullaby for the dead child, ‘who died before she had a chance to struggle’.

A modern mural within Herminda

After weeks of negotiations, the government agreed to provide land, in another location. The new site lacked water, electricity, sewerage and paved roads. A key feature of the ‘Poblador’ movement : “Build everything ourselves”, comes through in Victor Jara's celebratory song ‘Man the Creator’, in which he sings “With my pure ability, I worked for them as a carpenter, as a plasterer and a bricklayer, as a gas fitter and a lathe-turner.”

Before and especially after Allende’s election as President in 1970, direct action of all kinds flourished in Chile, including many more land seizures that resulted in self-build housing. Herminda was followed by an increasing number of tomas, probably hundreds by 1973.

Uniquely the toma at Herminda was celebrated in song. By 1971 Victor Jara had produced 6 albums, including several songs about the lives of urban and rural workers. In Joan Jara's account, this whole album would be a new departure, providing a voice for the voiceless and marginalised. She describes it as happening by chance when a Poblador said to Victor : “If you're looking for something to sing about, why don't you come to our community, Herminda?” Later Victor Jara wrote: “I had to spend a lot of time researching the struggles of the pobladores, …...with a tape recorder in my hands. How much music there is in these stories, how many books could be written about them!”

Barely a year after its launch, this music, and much more, would be banned in Chile. As someone who was in Santiago at the time of the coup put it : “On the day before the coup, everything was possible. From the day after the coup, nothing was possible”. 

The Población of Herminda de La Victoria survived the terrifying years of the  dictatorship, despite regular military attacks, disappearances, murders of leaders, and the shooting of demonstrators with live bullets, including after a demonstration against Pinochet when he visited the locality in 1988. In Herminda today this history is told through the many murals around the community, educating the new generations about the struggles to create, build and defend the community.

Victor Jara singing for the children of Herminda, in 1972

‘La Población’ will be recounted and celebrated in song and murals, with contemporary and archive film, during the 18^th September zoom event. There will be Spanish interpretation available throughout for Latin American friends.

The “El Sueño Existe” festival normally happens every summer in Machynlleth, Wales, and draws a fantastic crowd of Latin American exiles, academics, dancers, journalists, singers, activists, musicians – and festival goers – to celebrate Chilean ‘New Song’, and to bring together modern politics and cultures, struggles in Latin America and closer to home, through every conceivable art form – all in a glorious coming together in beautiful West Wales. All information (including 2022 weekend dates), videos of past festivals etc. are on the festival website.

You can watch a short film about the songs, the album and the festival here:

You can listen to the whole original album of La Población (55 mins) on Youtube here:

¡Victor Jara – Presente!  

Tim Hollins pays homage to Ernesto Cardenal (1925 - 2020), Nicaraguan poet, priest, politician, and revolutionary

Perhaps only in Nicaragua would those 4 terms sit easily to describe one extraordinary figure from the Sandinista Revolution – Ernesto Cardenal, who has died aged 95.

Best known as Minister for Culture (1979 – 87) in the first Revolutionary Government of the Sandinistas, after the overthrow of the 40 year long dictatorship, Cardenal was a key cultural figure before and throughout the turbulent years of the Revolution, when liberation theology, in direct opposition to the mainstream Catholic hierarchy (and of course the Vatican) was an important strand.

Cardenal promoted liberation theology and embraced Marxism – "Christ led me to Marx," he said in a 1984 interview. His poetry was eclectic, and touched on topics ranging from science to scripture, from imperialism to Marilyn Monroe, and he wrote a homage to the long suffering indigenous communities enslaved by the conquistadores.

from Zero Hour

by Ernesto Cardenal

translated by Donald D. Walsh

(It is the 1930s)

Tropical nights in Central America,
With moonlit lagoons and volcanoes
And lights from presidential palaces,
Barracks and sad curfew warnings.

"Often while smoking a cigarette
I've decided that a man should die,"
Says Ubico, smoking a cigarette . . .
In his pink-wedding-cake palace
Ubico has a head cold. Outside, the people
Were dispersed with phosphorous bombs.

San Salvador laden with night and espionage,
With whispers in homes and boarding houses
And screams in police stations.
Carías' palace stoned by the people.
A window of his office has been smashed,
And the police have fired upon the people.
And Managua the target of machine guns
From the chocolate-box palace
And steel helmets patrolling the streets.

Watchman! What hour of the night is it?

Like many Nicaraguans his relationship to ‘Sandinismo’ was complex and developed over time – from the euphoria of the defeat of the dictatorship in 1979, and his appointment to the Government, to distance and separation after the electoral defeat of the Revolution (1990), under extreme pressure from the US-inspired and funded Contra war. Cardenal broke with the FSLN and its leader Daniel Ortega in 1994, citing increasing authoritarianism. He had also been suspended by the Catholic Church from saying Mass or giving the sacraments, but was reinstated by Pope Francis 2 years ago.

A further extract from Zero Hour that encapsulates some of that early idealism of the war that had to be fought against barbarity:

And though they had a military hierarchy they were all equal
With no distinction of rank when they shared their food
And their clothes
They all received the same rations
And the leaders had no lieutenants
It was more like a commune than an army
And it was not military discipline that united them, but love
Though there was never such unity in an army.