Facundo Cabral, Argentinian singer-songwriter, aged 74, was killed in Guatemala City early Saturday morning, July 9, by gunmen. He was on his way to the airport after giving several concerts. It is still unclear whether he was the specific target of the attack or not. What is clear is that his life, and now even his death, tells a story, or maybe more appropriately, sings a song that is shared throughout Latin America.

The reaction of many Latin Americans was expressed by the Secretary General of the OEA (Organization of American States), José Miguel Inzulza, when he stated: “The assassination of Facundo Cabral, a great artist in our América, who was committed to the most noble causes of his people, can only be understood as the result of the irrational criminality that, unfortunately is engulfing our lovely Guatemala and other nations in our hemisphere…If the theory that the assassins’ bullets were not meant for him is true, this only increases our indignation, because it demonstrates that no one today is safe from the murderous actions of gunmen, not even someone whose only weapons are music and the truth.”

The elements of Cabral’s story, or song rather, are exceedingly common in Latin America: growing up poor with his mother and six siblings, abandoned by their father; running away from home at age 9 to look for work in the big city; ending up in petty crime and eventually in jail; finally learning to read at age 14 with the help of a priest, and earning a living playing music in the streets.

Loss and exile, two other recurring themes in the stories, songs, and lives of this continent , also mark Cabral’s life: his wife and one-year old son were killed in an airplane crash, and he spent 7 years in exile in Mexico during the dictatorship in Argentina, 1976 to 1983, because he was considered a radical protest singer.

Cabral’s music was closely connected to his experience of God. “On 24 of February, 1954, a homeless man recited the Sermon on the Mount to me, and I discovered that I was being born. I ran to write cradle song, Vuele Bajo, and that started everything,” he explained.

Vuele Bajo (excerpts)

Don’t grow up my child,
Don’t ever grow up,
The grownups of the world
Will do you much harm.

Men become ambitious,
More each day,
And lose their way
For wanting to fly. 

Fly low,
Because below
Is the truth,
This is something
That men don’t learn.

Because they are running,
They can’t think;
They don’t know themselves
Where they are going.

Continue being a child,
Sleep in peace
Without wars
Nor machines that calculate.

God would like people
To return to be children one day
In order to understand

That is it a mistake
To think to find
In a chequebook,
happiness

Cabral was a key figure in La Nueva Canción movement that emerged in the 1970s during the period of social change and violent repression that  rocked the continent. This new music integrated traditional instruments and musical genres, with lyrics that spoke to people’s experiences, in the same way that the liberation theology and popular education movements were changing institutional religion and education to express people’s needs, and hopes rather than to control and silence them.

The song that vaulted Cabral to fame in 1970s was: “No soy de aquí ni soy de allá” –“ I am not from here, nor am I from there/ I don’t have an age nor an origin/ to be happy is the colour of my identity.”

In 1996, he was named “World Messenger of Peace” by UNESCO.

Cabral was a constant traveller.  On his birthday in 2007, he wrote: “I was mute until I was 9 years old, illiterate until I was 14, tragically widowed at 40, and met my father at 46.  I, the most pagan preacher, turn 70 years old and review my life in the room of a hotel chosen as my final destination.”

The tragedy of Facundo Cabral’s murder in Guatemala yesterday, is another in the thousands of violent deaths that are a recurring element in this continent’s on-going plot. Yet, Cabral’s life also personifies several other recurring elements in the stories, songs, and lives of Latin America:  the strength to overcome great obstacles and the artistic gift to be able to share joy, faith and hope.

In Cabral’s words: “When a person works, God respects him/her; When a person sings, God loves him/her.”

For more about Cabral’s life and death, or to listen to some songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hq7CkVL4jo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD3G6eM3tPI&feature=related

http://www.latercera.com/noticia/entretencion/2011/07/661-378624-9-familiares-de-facundo-cabral-viajan-a-guatemala-a-retirar-cuerpo-del-artista.shtm

http://www.facundocabral.org/

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