Barlovento

Music piece by:
Eduardo Serrano
Testimony by:
Luis Cifuentes Seves
Experience in:
Campamento de Prisioneros Chacabuco, January – February 1974

This is one of the songs the band Los de Chacabuco arranged and performed at the weekly show authorised by the military.

The shows were held in a large compound (which could hold over 1,000 people) that was prepared by the prisoners themselves. A stage had been built at a height enabling a good view of the artists.

The song “Barlovento”, as was the case with all the group’s arrangements, was rehearsed in an improvised venue (an old miners’ house) that the musicians had adapted for that purpose in the Civic District, on a street near the camp entrance.

The lyrics include the word conuquero, referring to a person who works on a conuco, a small plot of land used for subsistence agriculture.


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Published on: 11 November 2015

Clandestine recording made by political prisoners in Chacabuco in 1974.

Barlovento, Barlovento
fiery land of the drum
land of fulías and refined black women
who take their tight waist
to the festivity
to the sound of the curbeta
and the tackity-tacky of the mina.

How tastily the body moves
the Barlovento woman as she walks
How tastily the tackity-tacky-tacky 
of the mina.

Let the conuqueros come
for the dance of San Juan
let the conuqueros come
for the dance of St John.

The mina is tuned up
to play the tackity-tacky-titá
ticky-ticky-tacky-titá
ticky-tacky-tá.








Related testimonies:

  • Blue Eyes (Ojos azules)  Luis Cifuentes Seves, Campamento de Prisioneros Chacabuco, January – February 1974

    This is the last track on the cassette recorded by the band Los de Chacabuco in the concentration camp; it was digitised in 2015.

  • The Crux of the Matter (La madre del cordero)  Servando Becerra Poblete, Campamento de Prisioneros Chacabuco, 9 November 1973 - 10 November 1974

    I recited this poem in the National Stadium. I continued to do so in the Chacabuco prison camp, earning the nickname of “Venancio” from my fellow prisoners.

  • The Crux of the Matter (La madre del cordero)  Servando Becerra Poblete, Campamento de Prisioneros, Estadio Nacional, 9 November 1973 - 10 November 1974

    I recited this poem in the National Stadium. I continued to do so in the Chacabuco prison camp, earning the nickname of “Venancio” from my fellow prisoners.

  • How We Resemble Each Other (En qué nos parecemos)  Luis Cifuentes Seves, Campamento de Prisioneros, Estadio Nacional, September - November 1973

    During the 1960s, the group Quilapayún popularised this old Spanish song in Chile. Víctor Canto and I performed it as a duet in Santiago’s National Stadium, which had been converted into a concentration, torture and extermination camp.

  • Chacabuco’s Soul (Alma de Chacabuco)  Luis Cifuentes Seves, Campamento de Prisioneros Chacabuco, November - December 1973

    This is the original version of a composition by Ángel Parra at Chacabuco, as secretly recorded at the prison camp during his farewell concert. The composer’s voice can be heard.

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