Shadows (Sombras)

Music piece by:
Rosario Sansores and Carlos Brito Benavides. Popularised in Chile by Lucho Barrios
Testimony by:
Juan Carlos de Luján Peralta Aranguiz
Experience in:
Cárcel de Menores Blas Cañas / Centro de Reinserción Abierto Manuel Rodríguez, September 1974

I arrived in this place as a war prisoner when I was 16 years old.

I was arrested on 17 September 1974 at the police station of Los Domínicos. On the 19th at two o’clock in the morning, I was taken to the Penitentiary of Santiago and in the afternoon, at about six pm, to the Blas Cañas Juvenile Prison.

In Blas Cañas, many of my mornings began listening to the song 'Shadows'. I didn’t know the song at the time. It wasn’t to my taste.

One of my cellmates always sang it. Sometimes, when I felt very lonely, I would ask him to sing it.

After three months, I regained freedom and went back for the last days of secondary school. I never knew what happened to my cellmates.

Many years later, now an adult and with a family, I walked alone through the short street of Blas Cañas.

I stopped, looked at the black gate and remembered the song once more, also my comrades and my mother who located me here, after 14 days of looking for me at other detention centres.

Then, I carried on walking with a few small and fleeting tears in my eyes.


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Published on: 30 September 2019

When you will be gone
the shadows will envelop me
when you will be gone
I will be alone with my pain.

I will evoke this idyll
during my blue hours
when you will be gone
the shadows will envelop me.

And in the darkness
of the small bedroom
where during a warm afternoon
I stroked all of you.

My arms will look for you
my mouth will kiss you
and I will inhale from the air
that smell of roses.

When you will be gone
the shadows will envelop me.

Related testimonies:

  • Ode to Joy (Himno a la alegría)  Amelia Negrón, Campamento de Prisioneros, Tres Álamos, 31 December 1975

    Preparations for that Wednesday night became more intense. It would be a different night. We women prisoners had secretly organised ourselves, but more importantly, we had also coordinated with the male prisoners.

  • Ode to Joy (Himno a la alegría)  Renato Alvarado Vidal, Campamento de Prisioneros Cuatro Álamos, 1975

    Once upon a time, there was a good little wolf. … No. That’s another story.

  • 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.

  • Casida of the Dark Pigeons (Casida de las palomas oscuras)  Luis Alfredo Muñoz González, Campamento de Prisioneros Cuatro Álamos, February - March 1975

    According to scientists, memory and music processing are situated in a deep, ancestral part of the brain, where it is zealously guarded.

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