Abstract
Two protest songs created within the first month of the 2019 Chilean uprising were intended as explicit statements against violence and in favor of peace, but they voiced different understandings of violence and proposed different ways out of the conflict. The artists behind each song argued that their recordings were nonpartisan, cutting across traditional left-right divides. The songs’ use and reception, however, shows that for Chilean audiences these songs conveyed a clear political cleavage through their lyrics, music, and audiovisual content. More broadly, consideration of music in the Chilean uprising foregrounds the ways in which the uses of music have changed since the classic era of protest song of the 1960s and 1970s.
Dos canciones de protesta creadas en el primer mes del levantamiento chileno de 2019 pretendían ser declaraciones explícitas contra la violencia y a favor de la paz, pero expresaban distintas interpretaciones de la violencia y propusieron diferentes formas de salir del conflicto. Los artistas detrás de cada canción argumentaron que sus grabaciones no eran partidistas, cortando así a través de las tradicionales divisiones de izquierda y derecha. El uso y recepción de las canciones, sin embargo, muestra que, para el público chileno, dichas piezas transmitían una clara división política a través de sus letras, música y contenido audiovisual. En términos más generales, considerar el aspecto musical en el levantamiento chileno pone en relieve las formas en que los usos de la música han cambiado desde la era clásica de la canción de protesta de las décadas del sesenta y setenta.
Chile has a rich and renowned history of music and musicians in the service of social movements (García, 2013; Mularski, 2014). The uprising that began in October 2019 was no exception. Within days a handful of classic Chilean protest songs resurfaced and were regularly sung at massive demonstrations. 1 Within weeks, dozens of new tracks were created in response to the uprising by artists young and old, professional and amateur, and in myriad musical styles, from reggaetón to classical. 2 They addressed a wide range of issues, from social inequality to greed and corruption, but overwhelmingly they participated in debates about violence.
As several studies have argued, the issue of violence occupied a central role in the discourses about the uprising (Navarro and Tromben, 2019; Somma et al., 2020; González and Le Foulon Morán, 2020). Primarily, discussions about violence within the uprising were aligned with Graham and Gurr’s (1969: xvii) classic definition of violence in the context of social and political protests: “behavior designed to inflict physical injury on people or damage to property.” Arguments that focused on violence as physical injury foregrounded the repressive measures enacted by police, special forces, and the military, such as shooting with pellets, tear-gassing, and beating, which resulted in hundreds of complaints of human rights violations. Ones that focused on damage to property highlighted the burning of metro stations, looting, and destruction of stores. Considerable effort was spent debating the legitimacy of each and the relationship between the two.
One of the most resonant slogans of the October uprising was “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years.” Concisely, it argues that the discontent was a reaction not to a proposed metro fare increase but to decades of economic and social policies. This engages a different definition of violence, one that has been called “systemic” (Žižek, 2008) or “structural” (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, 2004). Unlike the forms of violence described by Graham and Gurr, “structural violence is generally invisible because it is part of the routing grounds of everyday life and transformed into expressions of moral worth” (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, 2004: 4). This article studies the ways in which songs engage these multiple definitions of violence in the October uprising.
The uses of songs in social movements are well documented by cultural sociology and political science. Eyerman and Jamison (1998), following Raymond Williams, propose that songs contribute to the affective dimension of social movements. As songs become soundtracks to movements, they provide a sense of shared purpose and history. Sometimes songs encapsulate a social movement’s goals so well that they become anthems for the cause. In some cases, these anthems are written specifically for a social movement (Matusitz, 2010); in others, an old song may be repurposed for new contexts (Spener, 2016). Music is also a privileged space for forging community-based political action (Mattern, 1998).
The specific relation between music and violence is more controversial. As O’Connell (2010: 12) observes, “music occupies a paradoxical position, used both to escalate conflict and to promote conflict resolution.” Recent scholarship on music and violence has underscored this tension, addressing both the roles of music in processes of reconciliation and memorialization and the ways in which music has served as an inciter of violence or as violence itself (Johnson and Cloonan, 2009; O’Connell and Castelo-Branco, 2010; Fast and Pegley, 2012; Ritter and Daughtry, 2012).
This article approaches the study of the 2019 social uprising through the lens of two songs created within the first month of the uprising. 3 Both were intended as explicit statements against violence and in favor of peace; their goal was to promote conflict resolution. However, the two songs voice different understandings of violence and propose different ways out of the conflict. Following O’Connell (2010: 10), my analysis stands on the notion that “music provides a unique text for interrogating the multivalent character of conflict and for suggesting a possible resolution to conflict.” The contrasting ways in which these two songs understand the same conflict is the main reason for their selection as case studies.
The first case study is a cover version of Víctor Jara’s song “El derecho de vivir en paz,” updated with new lyrics. Prior to the cover’s release, Jara’s original recording had become an unofficial anthem of the uprising, one played during the nightly curfew and chanted by protesters in the streets. The cover version, recorded during the state of emergency by a collective of popular Chilean artists, updated Jara’s anti–Vietnam War message to address the demands of the uprising. I argue that the ways in which “El derecho” was updated by contemporary artists illuminate the historical ties of the October uprising and the changes in protest and political activism in the twenty-first century.
The second case study is a newly composed song called “¿Qué nos pasa Chile? (Himno por la paz).” This song is exceptional among the dozens created in the wake of the uprising in that its message is aligned not with protesters’ concerns but with the ways in which the government and the Chilean elite conceptualized the problem of violence. While this song did not have the media impact of the cover of “El derecho de vivir en paz,” it merits consideration given the dearth of studies that focus on songs produced by conservatives, the right, or economic elites. As Rosenthal and Flacks (2011) acknowledge in their comprehensive survey of music and musicians in the service of social movements, scholars have overwhelmingly focused on musics aligned with progressive left-wing agendas. 4
Despite their different takes on the violence debate, the cover of "El derecho" and "¿Qué nos pasa Chile?" have several important things in common. Neither originated within a political party or social movement organization or was endorsed by one. In this sense, these songs illustrate the disconnect between recent Chilean social movements and partisan organizations (Disi, 2018) and the political system and society in general (Bargsted and Maldonado, 2018). A defining characteristic of the October uprising is that it was not led by social movement organizations or political parties (Somma et al., 2020). The same weaker links of social media that brought protesters together served the musicians who collaborated to create these songs.
Neither song presents an extremist political position, such as a revolutionary stance, advocacy of counterviolence, or even a call for the president’s resignation. 5 In fact, despite their differences, both could be reasonably described as moderate, centrist, pro-democracy statements. Both songs appear in favor of peaceful social mobilization, the demands of protesters, and the November 15, 2019, peace agreement, which included a call for a referendum on the question of a new constitution and the mechanism for its drafting.
With regard to their musical characteristics, both songs feature multiple vocalists who sing in alternation in the style of benefit recordings like “We Are the World.” Both songs were released through streaming services, one as a music video on YouTube and the other as audio on Spotify. Although both were created with the goal of serving as anthems, neither did. They were experienced as streamed media; their lyrics were not memorized by protesters and chanted in the streets as Jara’s original and other classic protest songs were. This final aspect is shared by all songs composed in response to the uprising, suggesting a characteristic of the uses of music in social movements quite distinct from the traditional ones described for previous decades.
Suffice it to say here that the symbolic meaning and success of these protest songs lies not only in their lyrics as approaches to protest songs from sociology and political science often suggest. In this I agree with Moore (2013: 389) that “any analysis of performed words must take account of their performance in order properly to address their effect.” As these two case studies show, aesthetic aspects, from singing styles to instrumentation to the images in video clips, are as important as lyrics in the political reception and success of contemporary protest songs.
“El derecho de vivir en paz”: The Right to Update a Classic
Within days of President Piñera’s declaration of a state of emergency, a group of well-known Chilean musicians began discussing over WhatsApp the idea of recording a song as a rebuke of the administration’s repressive measures and as a call for consensus. The group considered several tunes before settling on recording a cover version of Víctor Jara’s “El derecho de vivir en paz.” This choice was hardly surprising, given that Jara’s original recording had quickly achieved anthemic status among supporters of the uprising.
The surge of Jara’s original version had been spearheaded by a social media call to play the recording during the military-enforced curfew that since October 19 had put Santiago under evening lockdown. 6 As an expression of rejection of the state of emergency, protesters’ choice of “El derecho de vivir en paz” was compelling. First and foremost, the song relied on the voice and memory of Víctor Jara, a political artist who not only advocated for similar causes but also was tortured and killed by the same institution that was back in control of the city every evening. Second, the song itself—a protest song against the United States’ involvement in Vietnam—features a memorable refrain that worked as a direct response to President Piñera’s declaration that the uprising constituted a war situation: “We are at war against a powerful, implacable enemy that respects nothing and no one.” 7 In the wake of the president’s warfare rhetoric, protesters responded with an antiwar song.
The social media call went viral, and Jara’s “El derecho de vivir en paz” quickly assumed a central presence in the curfew soundscape, alongside the cacophony of pot banging and wailing sirens. Beyond the nightly ritual of playing Jara’s recording during the curfew, the song was recreated by protesters. Thousands of people performed it in front of the National Library; solo saxophonists turned its catchy melody into powerful statements of protest. One defied the curfew by walking a Valparaíso street playing “El derecho de vivir en paz” by himself. One played it in Santiago to encourage a group of protesters engaged in a violent encounter with police, and yet another confronted a special forces truck with only his sax, loaded with Jara’s tune.
Given the power and status of Jara’s “El derecho de vivir en paz” among protesters, in hindsight it seems almost inevitable that this would be the song chosen by Musicxs de Chile (as the group of professional musicians called itself) for their own musical statement. However, they were faced with the challenge of turning a song and an artist closely associated with the Chilean Communist Party into a vehicle for consensus across the political spectrum. Regarding Jara, they addressed the issue of his Communist credentials when they released the song: "Víctor Jara is a symbol for all. Many have tried to limit him in political terms, party terms. But the truth is that his message goes beyond this" (24 horas, 2019).
Regarding the song itself, Musicxs de Chile struggled with the historical and partisan specificity of its lyrics. “El derecho” is an antiwar song about a conflict fought half a century before by two foreign countries, and it identifies in unambiguous terms the identity of the oppressed and the injustices they suffer. Unlike many antiwar songs, which rely on metaphors or allusions, Jara’s identifies the war’s location (Indochine), celebrates the Communist leader of the Workers’ Party of Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh), names one of the worst crimes committed in the conflict (genocide), and denounces a weapon used by the attackers (napalm).
Jara’s song is specific not only historically and geographically but also in its political stance. Following Mattern’s (1988: 25–26) tripartite model for the uses of music in politics, “El derecho de vivir en paz” fits into a category he labels “confrontational.” In these, “musicians decry the injustices and oppression endured by certain individuals and groups and extol the virtues of favored alternatives. . . . Musicians typically couch their music in confrontational terms that draw sharp distinctions between the perceived forces of right and wrong.”
In its confrontational stance, “El derecho de vivir en paz” is different from most American anti–Vietnam War songs, which sing against violent confrontation or the United States’ involvement but fall short of choosing a side. Pete Seeger’s “Teacher Uncle Ho,” for example, argues against the war (“We needn’t go to shooting again”) while keeping Ho Chi Minh’s views and strategies at arm’s length (“He and me might disagree”). Jara’s is unusual in that it sings against the war and in favor of Communist North Vietnam. Ingeniously, Jara’s recording celebrates the Workers’ Party of Vietnam with the sounds of rock music, a style created by the invaders. It blasts the attackers in their own language. 8 Jara’s endorsement of North Vietnam may be explained by his own allegiance to the Chilean Communist Party. Jara was one the Party’s most prominent cultural ambassadors, and in the early 1970s he was a regular presence in its youth wing.
For these reasons, Musicxs de Chile felt that Jara’s original lyrics were not conducive to the goal of transforming contemporary Chilean society. As one member of the group said on October 27, when the cover version was released, "As artists we condemn the government’s actions: the militarization of the streets, the killing and torture of our people. We present this song as a sincere attempt to generate profound and structural changes in our society" (Rojas Yeza, 2019). Therefore, the group decided to update Jara’s lyrics. As one of the artists explained, "We think that [Jara’s] lyrics belong to a different era . . . and that perhaps we could update it to reflect Chile’s current moment" (González, 2019).
Adapting lyrics for new contexts is a regular practice for protest songs (Kutschke, 2016; Spener, 2016). It “mobilizes tradition” by capitalizing on people’s associations and familiarity with a song while simultaneously resignifying it (Eyerman and Jamison, 1998). As another member of Musicxs de Chile posited, the intention with the update was "to keep the spirit, the voice of Víctor Jara, but with a message that spoke of education, of basic rights" (24 horas, 2019). The group reached out to the Fundación Víctor Jara to request approval for the new lyrics, and Jara’s widow herself authorized it. The new lyrics effectively remove the historical and partisan specificity of the original. Gone are the references to the struggles of early 1970s Vietnam—distant in time and space—and the endorsement of the Communist Party. The song is brought home, with multiple references to “our country” and, most important, to the present, addressing the contemporary concerns of the uprising.
The new version opens with a denunciation of state violence—the “cannon” in the first stanza—against its people, who are living in fear. But the second stanza shifts focus to identify sources of structural violence, such as a constitution drafted during the Pinochet dictatorship and decades of social and educational inequality. Multiple aspects of the song work together to stress the idea that the uprising was a response to decades of structural violence. First, there is the choice of Víctor Jara’s song, which connects present-day human rights abuses to similar crimes that occurred in the aftermath of the 1973 coup. The cover’s musical setting underscores the connection to Jara’s time by including solos on both quena and electric guitar. 9
Second, the cover version opens with the solo voice of Roberto Márquez (b. 1951), vocalist and musical director of the Nueva Canción Chilena band Illapu. Márquez is the only Nueva Canción artist featured in the cover version and the only one of that generation. His presence creates a direct connection to the resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship. His band, Illapu, remained in Chile after the coup, and it was a rare case of a band that achieved mainstream popularity in the late 1970s while actively supporting antidictatorship causes (Jordán, 2018). Márquez’s presence is also significant because for decades he had been invested in keeping Jara’s legacy alive. In concerts he performs his songs regularly, often introducing them with a call to bring to justice the ones responsible for Jara’s torture and killing. In particular, Márquez had been singing “El derecho de vivir en paz” in various contexts for decades, most recently with Banda Conmoción in a single released just a month prior to the uprising. His presence, therefore, embodied the argument that the military-enforced curfew of October 2019 was a reminder and a continuation of the dictatorship’s repressive strategies.
Third, the cover makes a connection to a more recent social upheaval, the 2011 student movement (Donoso and von Bülow, 2017). In a spoken portion in the middle of the cover version, singer-songwriter Manuel García directly addresses President Piñera when he says, "Students won’t let you sleep, if you don’t let them dream." This recalls a widely covered speech by García himself during a performance at the Festival de Viña del Mar just months after the 2011 student movement. At the time Piñera was also president; thus the 2019 address works as a reminder of the long history of social mobilization in the country.
Despite this one address to the president, the cover version is less confrontational and oppositional than Jara’s original. Its goal is to build consensus and community across the political spectrum. This aim is expressed in the new lyrics (“In consciousness and unity/with all humanity”) and in the musical arrangement, through the inclusion of artists from a wide range of generations and musical styles. There are artists born in the 1950s and 1960s such as Joe Vasconcellos and Ángel Parra Orrego and up-and-coming stars born in the late 1990s such as Cami and Princesa Alba, 10 and their respective genres include trova, cumbia, funk, hip-hop, pop, reggaetón, rock, and trap. The vocal and instrumental arrangement succeeds at conveying the artistic personae of this wide range of musicians. Their signature vocal traits are clearly audible and identifiable, from Roberto Márquez’s weathered Nueva Canción voice to Gianluca’s auto-tuned vocals.
In their strategy, Musicxs de Chile seem to acknowledge Mattern’s concern with the limitations of an oppositional stance: “An oppositional stance may be counterproductive when it alienates potential allies and further fractures communities. . . . An oppositional stance may be doomed to failure when, for example, the choice is posed in either-or terms that mean winning outright over more powerful rivals” (Mattern, 1998: 26). The song suggests that to dismantle structural violence, draft a new constitution, and eliminate inequality, opposition is likely counterproductive; consensus across party lines is required.
Despite its claims to inclusivity across party lines, not everyone felt called upon. In late November, Myriam Hernández, a Chilean pop singer who was most popular in the late 1980s and 1990s, voiced her disappointment that she had not been invited to participate in the cover’s recording (del Real, 2019). Musicxs de Chile did not explain their selection criteria, but it is likely that Hernández was not invited because she was seen as a right-wing singer. She first found fame on TV during the late years of the dictatorship, and in 1999 she endorsed a right-wing candidate for president (Party, 2008).
Another test of the collective’s desire to reach across the political spectrum happened later in November 2019, when the cover version was used without authorization in a political campaign ad in support of a candidate of Bolivia’s interim government, the one in power since the removal of Evo Morales (Contreras, 2019). Musicxs de Chile were quick to respond on social media and in the press against the use of their recording. They called the Bolivian government’s use of their cover version inappropriate because "its intent is demagogic and far removed from the values espoused by Víctor Jara’s life and works" (Twitter, 2019). The Fundación Víctor Jara followed suit: "We condemn the use of Víctor Jara’s work for demagogic ends and with the purpose of deceiving Bolivian public opinion" (Facebook, 2019). This situation illustrates the ways in which music “can be appropriated by mutually contesting power blocs, and simultaneously so, as the actual site of conflict” (Johnson and Cloonan, 2009: 4). Despite artists’ claims, there is an “easy continuum between [music’s] negative and positive poles.”
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this debacle is that both Musicxs de Chile and the foundation were upset over the use of Jara’s music as partisan propaganda. As is well known, Jara put himself and his music at the service of electoral campaigns and specific political initiatives. He participated actively in Allende’s 1970 electoral campaign, and during the Popular Unity government he released several canciones contingentes (songs specifically composed to promote government programs) (e.g., “Qué lindo es ser voluntario,” “El desabastecimiento,” “Marcha de los trabajadores de la construcción,” and “Oiga, pues m’hijita”). Thus the problem with the Bolivian use of “El derecho” seems to be not its partisanship but the political position it represents.
The statements released by Musicxs de Chile and Fundación Víctor Jara seem to spring from an understanding that Jara’s “spirit” and “values” are embedded in the cover version. However, they fail to acknowledge the extent to which the updated cover transformed not only Jara’s message but his political language. To state the obvious, it is difficult to imagine that Bolivia’s interim government would have chosen for its campaign Jara’s original version or, for that matter, any Jara song. The fact that the interim government found the cover version useful demonstrates the update’s effectiveness in terms of removing the original’s pro-Communist references and constructing an ecumenical political agenda.
“¿Que nos pasa Chile?” A View from the Top
Among the dozens of new songs created in the aftermath of the uprising, only one takes what could be described as a critical position toward it. Released as a music video on YouTube in mid-November 2019, “¿Qué nos pasa Chile? (Himno por la paz)” is the lone case of a song and video clip produced by the Chilean upper class in response to the uprising. Its circulation was considerably more limited than that of Musicxs de Chile’s cover; on YouTube it had roughly 5 percent as many views as the latter. And despite being created with the specific goal of sounding anthemic, it did not become a hymn for Chileans during those first few months. Still, it is worth studying because it illuminates Chilean elites’ understanding of the sources of the crisis and the role of violence in it and their proposed solutions. The song’s reception is also telling with regard to the ways in which the elites and their aesthetic preferences are viewed by the rest of the country.
“¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” features six singers in their twenties (three women, three men), none famous. 11 Following the model of charity-oriented projects like “We Are the World,” each vocalist takes four measures in the verses, and they sing together in the chorus. While star-studded recordings like "We Are the World" emphasize the signature vocal characteristics of each artist, in “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” the vocal styles of the singers are fairly homogeneous. All follow the virtuosic style of TV vocal competitions such as The Voice, highlighting the use of melismas, belting, and other showstopping features. These vocal qualities suggest the influence of North American singing styles.
The song’s style, in terms of composition and arrangement, is most reminiscent of contemporary Christian music. It features a basic chord progression that can be easily accompanied with guitar. Harmonically it is simpler than most contemporary pop songs in that it features no extended chords or harmonic ambiguity. The melody is also simple, with a straightforward modulation up a whole step when the male voices enter in the second verse. It is a mid-tempo ballad with synthesizers and keyboards as its main instruments. The song aims to uplift through swells in volume and intensity, most noticeably in the chorus and outro. All these features are reminiscent of contemporary Christian songs such as the ones recorded by Marcos Witt or Marcela Gándara.
Homogeneity also extends to the singers’ ethnicity and visual markers of social class. All are light-skinned. No one has visible tattoos, piercings, or other body modifications. All have perfect smiles. All the men have short hair; all the women have long flowing locks. They are dressed casually, as for a homemade video, with single-colored clothes. No one wears a street-oriented cap, a hoodie, or sweatpants. In a Chilean context, they all unmistakably register as members of the upper class.
In general terms, the song’s lyrics seem to be in support of the uprising. There are several references to the movement’s requests and keywords: “fight for my rights," “recover dignity," “the power that unites us will prevail as always,” “today I raise my voice,” “to pray for my future, my children, my home.” And the music video reinforces this endorsement of the uprising, showing footage of a massive peaceful march and of young kids banging pots, albeit only on the street of a wealthy Santiago neighborhood.
As the song progresses, however, it becomes clear that its focus is different from that of most songs released in response to the October uprising. Instead of endorsing the movement’s goals, it is most concerned with rejecting violence and the reinstatement of respect and peace. Protest is welcome as long as it is peaceful: “I want to . . . fight for my rights but with tranquility” (my emphasis). Violence thwarts these singers’ expression ("Those that terrorize/don’t let me express myself"). This rejection of violence is clearest and loudest in the chorus: “Down with violence, long live unity!” In unambiguous terms, the song presents a hierarchy of values. Above all is respect, and the utmost priority is not social justice, reparation, or equality but peace.
Nothing in the lyrics of “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” suggests that the violence that is being decried includes the actions of state agents, such as police, against people. The song’s concern seems to be the damage to and destruction of property, such as the burning of metro stations and the looting of supermarkets, and the people who commit these acts against property, who are presented as terrorists. If there were any doubt left in the lyrics about who the “violent” people are, the music video dispels it. As they sing “those that terrorize,” images appear of hooded individuals outside a subway station that has been set on fire. No footage of police violence is included in the video.
The decision to ignore police abuses in a song against violence stands out in particular because it goes against Chilean public opinion. At the time of the song’s release hundreds of cases of police abuse had been documented, and a 2019 poll showed that the majority of Chileans condemned the actions of the police (Aguilera, 2020). 12 The group that did back up the actions of the police was the right: the same poll showed that over 70 percent of people who identified as right-wing considered the actions of the armed forces justified because they responded to a need to restore order, stop crime, or act in self-defense (Aguilera, 2020). Thus “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” registers as right-wing discourse, irrespective of the actual political position of its creators.
The choice not to address police abuses in an anthem against violence might also respond to a class position. Police violence is less of a concern for the elite because, as has been widely noted, Chilean inequality extends to police treatment. The victims of police violence overwhelmingly belong to the lower classes, while the elites receive more lenient treatment. Hence, the wealthy can reasonably trust that the police will treat them fairly. While the song does not condemn police violence, it does evoke its effects. Twice in each chorus, it calls for protesters to “stop bleeding.” In the context of police’s widespread disregard for protocols in the use of tear gas and shotguns, which led to more than 400 people’s having eye damage, this is a striking request in that it suggests that the victims had a choice with regard to their body’s response to injury.
Their privilege also affords them the option of trusting the political system. Things change, and they change for the better (“I am confident that things will change,” “I know that the sun will rise in my window”). Hence, they can respond to the crisis with a positive outlook (“Soon a new day will come for everyone”). This encouraging future, the song proposes, will be reached not through disruption but through peaceful consensus. In the music video, this idea is portrayed with footage of the signing of the peace accord on November 15, 2019.
More broadly, the song expresses the elite’s befuddlement with protesters’ need to rely on violence. The repeated question that lends the song its title (“¿Qué nos pasa Chile?”) registers surprise and incredulity about the resort to violence. To the elite, violent protest, even disruption, appears gratuitous. For a group benefited by the economic policies of the past 30 years, the expectation is that when they talk, others listen. “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” also speaks to the elite’s inability to comprehend the sources of protesters’ dissatisfaction. If the country is doing so well, where does all this resentment come from? In this sense, the song’s message is similar to the one expressed by First Lady Cecilia Morel, who in a leaked audio described the uprising as “a foreign, alien invasion” (BBC News Mundo, 2019). To the elite, the structural violence “that destroys socially marginalized humans with even greater frequency are usually invisible or misrecognized” (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, 2004: 2).
Another way in which “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” illustrates how Chilean elites see the uprising is that the song presents it as if it were a natural disaster, like a flood or an earthquake. The crisis appears unrelated to structural economic policies put in place by fellow Chileans. In other words, no one is held responsible. What will get the country through the crisis, the song sings, is “the power that unites us.” All that is required is to join together. This response to the crisis is reminiscent of a pastoral approach such as the one inculcated in Chilean Catholic schools and of the responses of privileged Chileans to earthquakes (volunteer work and charitable endeavors like telethons). This again is visible in the song’s music video, which includes footage from the 2010 earthquake and tsunami and the Chile ayuda a Chile telethon that followed the catastrophe. 13
The posting of “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” on YouTube was not accompanied by a press release or interviews in the media, and therefore access to the artists’ intentions required direct contact with them. In late January 2020, Antonella Sigala, one of the six singers on the track, agreed to give me an interview. 14 Through her input I was able to get a better understanding of the motivations and thinking behind the production of the song. The project was organized by Andrés Ginestar, a college student and music entrepreneur, who was commissioned to create it. Antonella mentioned that she does not know who was behind the funding for the recording. In terms of its creative aspect, “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” was a family affair. The song was composed by Ginestar’s mother, and Andrés and his sister Daniela are featured as singers on it. The remaining four singers were invited to participate not because of shared political views or participation in social movements but because they had all participated successfully in high-school song competitions. Singers were paid for their participation and were told that the song would be released anonymously. Given these conditions, the invited singers approached the recording as a paid gig, akin to recording a jingle for a commercial.
During the recording sessions the Ginestars were explicit in their goal for the song. “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” was not to be a political statement. Its purpose was to convey an apolitical message against violence. To this end, the Ginestars wanted the music video to do without references to political slogans or social causes. Antonella experienced this directive firsthand. She had shown up at the recording session wearing a green bandana—a symbol of the fight for the legalization of abortion—but the Ginestars persuaded her to remove it for the taping, arguing that without it the song would reach a wider audience.
Antonella told me that the question in the song’s title was a source of extensive discussion during the recording sessions. Some of the invited singers understood the phrase “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” to be a question about the sources of the discontent, and they considered it naive and insensitive. The Ginestars explained that for them the line had a different meaning. It was intended as an inquiry regarding the resort to violence, something along the lines of “What’s wrong with us, Chileans, that we are resorting to such violence?” They hoped to engage violent protesters and ask them why peace was not their mode of action.
Certainly, the creators’ intentions did not register with audiences. When “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” was posted on YouTube, the response was overwhelmingly negative. For every time the video was marked “I like this,” it was labeled “I dislike this” roughly 25 times. 15 Written comments were almost all critical or derisive. The singers’ homogeneous looks were mocked as endogamous, a sign of Chilean elites’ inbreeding. Singers were described as supporters of José Antonio Kast, the controversial leader of the far-right party Acción Republicana, or as clueless regarding most Chileans’ living conditions. A surprisingly large number of comments focused on the quality of the song, criticizing the chord structure, the singers’ voices, or the arrangement.
Despite their goal of presenting an apolitical statement, YouTube viewers took “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” as unmistakably political, even partisan. Interestingly, this reception was less a response to the song’s semantic content than to its sound and visuals. Even before the song proper begins, the music video encourages a partisan reading. The first thing we see is a large Chilean flag, waving in front of a light-blue sky, an image soon followed by a majestic view of the snow-capped Andes. Along with these images we hear a synthesizer holding a bright D major chord over which a deep male voiceover announces, “Chile, land of love, hope, and unity." In these first few seconds, the flag, the landscapes, and the announcer’s voice all place us in the realm of political campaign advertising. More specifically, for a Chilean audience it registers as a TV ad for a conservative right-wing campaign. The homogeneous appearance of the six singers, all seeming to be members of the Chilean elite, only reinforces this interpretation.
Also, for a song intended as apolitical, “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” is strikingly aligned with the Chilean government’s position toward the uprising during its first month. As Navarro and Tromben (2019: 308) show, between October 18 and November 17, 2019, President Piñera gave 16 official speeches. Through discourse analysis, the authors conclude that the central themes in this period were violence, vandalism, and the actions of the armed forces, particularly as these related to the state of emergency. In those presidential speeches, they argue, violence is associated with “delinquency, vandalism, and destruction as opposed to the action of the security forces of the state.” This focus on the destruction of property and looting and disregard for violence against people is analogous to that outlined above for “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?”
Just as “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” conveyed concern about “those that terrorize,” President Piñera expressed preoccupation with “small groups of delinquents” that threatened the nation’s stability (Navarro and Tromben, 2019). Citing Wodak (2015), Navarro and Tromben argue that Piñera’s discourse is consistent with that observed across recent right-wing governments. As Wodak (2015: 66)) argues, right-wing governments often deploy a rhetoric in which “threat scenarios are constructed—the homeland or ‘We’ are threatened by ‘Them’ (strangers inside the society or from outside; migrants, Turks, Jews, Roma, bankers, Muslims, etc.).” These threats are then used as justification for repressive measures.
The messages of the song and the government got even closer in late December 2019, when the administration announced a new communications campaign that aimed to restore peace. The week-long campaign’s goal was "to encourage people to calm down, so that we can continue working together to build a fairer Chile for all" (Miranda, 2019). According to the government’s guidelines, the two messages the ads were to convey were “Peace for Chile” and “Together We Can Make Chile Better.”
Final Remarks
The cover of “El derecho de vivir en paz” and “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” are both protest songs in that they identify someone or something to oppose. What differentiates them is what each opposes. The cover of “El derecho” confronts President Piñera and his decision to respond to the uprising with a state of emergency and a curfew. “¿Qué nos pasa Chile?” protests against hooded people whom it identifies as terrorists. These two objects reflect two definitions of violence. As Sitzer and Heitmayer (2016: 436) observe in their overview of violence and destruction in the context of social protest, definitions of violence have tactical and strategic roles. "If one party to a conflict succeeds in defining as violence something previously characterized more innocuously, it can present a situation as scandalous, discredit its opponents, and legitimize counterviolence.” Therefore it is significant that one song is concerned with violence against people, the other with the destruction of public and private property.
The artists behind the songs argued that their recordings were nonpartisan—that their messages were transversales cutting across traditional left-right divides. The uses and reception of the songs, however, show that for Chilean audiences they conveyed a clear political cleavage. They reflect traditional left-right allegiances through their own audiovisual materials. Their semantic content, such as lyrics, and their musical features, such as melody, harmony, instrumentation, and sound, endow them with indelible political genealogies. The visuals of their respective videos, from the singers’ appearances to image choice, also convey political cleavage. Extrinsic factors such as distribution channels, performance contexts, and endorsements did not play a significant role in their political connotations. Weighted against these factors, the artists’ own statements of transversalidad had little impact on their politicized reception.
More broadly, consideration of music in the Chilean uprising foregrounds the ways in which the uses of music have changed since the classic era of protest song of the 1960s and 1970s. Today newly composed songs are rarely adopted by protesters for sing-alongs at marches. When sing-alongs do happen in street demonstrations, protesters rely on established classics. New songs are digitally reproduced, not chanted by protesters. Also, newly composed songs are introduced not by the artists in live performances but through streaming media such as YouTube. All this has important implications for protest song reception. Songs do not circulate in a simplified format of lyrics and melody. Rather, the song’s message is rarely separated from its audiovisual presentation. As these case studies show, these aesthetic features are key to their reception by both supporters and opponents.
Footnotes
Notes
Daniel Party is an associate professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he holds joint appointments in the College and the School of the Arts. This work was funded by ANID Fondecyt Regular folio 1220146 and by ANID–Millennium Science Initiative Program–NCS2022_016.