La Nueva Canción

The nueva canción (new song) is, without a doubt, the most important musical movement of the second half of the 20th century in Latin America. It is also known as canción de protesta (protest song) or canción comprometida (politically engaged song) because it accompanied the rise of social protests of the 1960s. For this movement, the songwriter is a compiler, a chronicler, a poet, and an activist of the struggle against injustice. The themes of the songs are about the lives and struggles of the laboring classes, class differences, and exploitation, but they are also about liberation and revolution.

This new wave of songwriters was massive and had its stars in every Latin American country. Some of the best-known artists and groups are Violeta Parra (1917–1967), Victor Jara (1932–1973), Inti-Illimani, Quilapayun, and Illapu in Chile; Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908–1992) and Mercedes Sosa in Argentina; Daniel Viglietti and Alfredo Zitarrosa in Uruguay; Alí Primera (1941–1985) and Soledad Bravo in Venezuela; Pablo Milanés and Silvio Rodríguez in Cuba; Carlos Mejía Godoy in Nicaragua; Oscar Chávez, Gabino Palomares, and Amparo Ochoa in Mexico.

Although Atahualpa Yupanqui and Violeta Parra, two of the giants of the nueva canción, had already some notoriety in the 1950s, the nueva canción did not emerge until the 1960s. The term was meant to distinguish this movement from the token nationalist folklore, which chanted the wonders of the motherland but hid the daily reality of misery and exploitation of the majority of the population. The nueva canción was also an alternative to the U.S.-dominated transnational commercial pop music that promoted the American way of life.

The nueva canción sought to reclaim popular culture, understood as the culture of peasants, workers, and marginalized poor people. This recovery drew on an immersion in the daily life of the poor. Violeta Parra and Atahualpa Yupanqui began this recovery by compiling songs and stories while living among peasants. Victor Jarra did the same thing and later worked with squatters in land occupations in urban shanty-towns. He chronicled their struggle through songs such as “La Toma” and “Herminda la victoria.”

Most of the nueva canción singers participated directly in left-wing political parties and collaborated in the struggles of popular classes. Many were members of communist parties or other revolutionary organizations. Alí Primera joined the guerrillas for several years in the late 1950s, and Carlos Mejía Godoy, after years of [Page 824]describing the hard lives of poor Nicaraguans, joined the Sandinistas in the 1970s and chronicled the revolution that brought down the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.

The songs of the nueva canción drew also enormously from the regional and international political conjuncture. Songs such as Atahualpa Yupanqui's “Preguntitas sobre Dios” and Violeta Parra's “Porque los pobres no tienen” denounce the role of religion in the alienation and exploitation of the poor. Daniel Viglietti's “A desalambrar” is a hymn for peasant land occupations of large private land properties, which dominate the rural landscape of Latin America. Numerous songs also decry U.S. imperialism, talk about Latin American unity, celebrate the heroism of Vietnam's struggle, or pay homage to Salvador Allende and the Sandinista revolution.

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