Murdered Chilean folk singer laid to rest after 36 years

The Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara, who became a symbol of opposition to the regime of Augusto Pinochet, was finally laid to rest in an emotional funeral in Santiago–36 years after he was tortured and murdered by the military government. Thousands of Chileans turned out to pay their respects to Jara, who rose from humble rural roots to become a renowned singer and theater director in the early 1970s, when Chile witnessed a flourishing of radical ideas and the popular arts under Salvador Allende. Yesterday's funeral cortege was led by the singer's British widow, Joan. It was the second time she had buried her husband. In September 1973, a week after Pinochet led a coup against Allende, she took his lifeless body, riddled with machine-gun bullets, to Santiago's general cemetery and arranged a hasty, clandestine burial before fleeing into exile. The opportunity for a dignified funeral for Jara arose in June, when his corpse was exhumed in a bid to find out more about who killed him and how.