Love Song for a Disappeared Woman (Canción de amor a una desaparecida)

Music piece by:
Sergio Vesely
Testimony by:
Sergio Vesely
Experience in:
Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, 1975

Daniela was the political codename of María Cecilia Labrín, a member of the MIR(Revolutionary Left Movement) Left-wing political organisation founded in 1965 at the Univ. of Concepción.. Agents of the DINA(National Intelligence Directorate) Secret police of Pinochet’s dictatorship between 1974 and 1977. arrested her at her home on Latadía Street in Santiago in August 1974. She has never been seen again.

In my cell, I wrote this song dedicated to the memory of Daniela, I mean, of Cecilia...

Victims remembered in this testimony:

Tags:

Published on: 22 June 2015

Daniela in pain
bell without a toll
a lamp in its sleep
regret of the waves.
Bearer of algae
from a hidden sea,
messenger immersed
in a wounded body.

In her eyes dwelt
an emerald green
and a blue butterfly
dwelt on her lips.
From her womb flies out
misted-over love,
returns to the scents
a condemned wind.

Watch over her journey,
you bedecked sun.
Keep her from the cold,
you slumberous moon.
Land of shadow,
water of life,
build for her a shelter
beyond forgetting.


Related testimonies:

  • The Black King (El rey negro)  Sergio Vesely, Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, 1975

    One cold winter night of 1975, the small clinic of Melinka, in the Puchuncaví Detention Camp, became the setting for a touching story.

  • National Anthem of Chile  Boris Chornik Aberbuch, Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, March 1975

    The Puchuncaví detention camp’s daily routine included mandatory participation in the ceremonies of raising and taking down the Chilean flag on the flagpole at the entrance to the camp.

  • 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.

  • Dreams of my Imprisonment (Sueños de mi encierro)  Mario Patricio Cordero Cedraschi, Cárcel de Valparaíso, Winter of 1975

    I’d spent two years in prison and there was no end in sight for my time in jail. I observed during visiting hours that many prisoners had children, a wife, family.

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