Cantos Cautivos
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:
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.
Tags:
Published on: 30 September 2019
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:
- Run Run Went up North (Run Run se fue pa'l norte) Ernesto Parra Navarrete, Campamento de Prisioneros, Estadio Nacional, 9 November 1973
Run Run... On the big pitch, mild summer weather was in the air.
- Zamba so as Not to Die (Zamba para no morir) Ana María Jiménez, Villa Grimaldi, April 1975
I want to recall a night at Villa Grimaldi.
- 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.
- Partisan Anthem (Himno guerrillero) Julio Laks Feller, Recinto DINA, José Domingo Cañas Nº 1367, September 1974
In late September 1974, the Soviet partisan’s song was intoned softly but with an awe-inspiring force in the José Domingo Cañas torture centre.
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