Joan Jara

Jara was born in England in 1927.[2] She met Víctor at the University of Chile in 1961:[3] he studied theatre and she gave dance classes in the theatre school.[1] At this time, Jara also danced in the national ballet.[1] When she was recovering from an illness once, Víctor brought her flowers that Jara surmises he stole from the park due to his budget.[1] Jara had a daughter less than a year old at this time from a previous husband, from whom she was separated.[1] The daughter and Víctor were close.[1]

Her husband was assassinated in the 1973 coup.[3] He left the morning of the coup to defend the university and was corralled with others into the stadium, which became "a makeshift concentration camp".[3] Jara sought assistance from the British embassy, which was closed.[3] Jara identified his body in the Santiago morgue within a pile of corpses, where his wrists and neck were broken, his abdomen gory, and his body shot with 44 bullets.[3] Before he died, he arranged for a message to be smuggled out of the stadium to his wife, telling her where he had last parked their car and saying that he loved her.[3] He became one of the best-known victims of the coup.[3]

She left Chile in 1973, changed her surname to Jara, and dedicated herself to perpetuating the memory of her husband, his works, and his values.[2] She returned to Chile in 1984 to revive his memory.[2] In an interview, Jara said the Chilean military would not tell her the names of the officers at the stadium where Víctor died.[1] As court cases proceeded, the military underlings outed their officers.[1] Her lawyer added that the Chilean military has a "pact of silence" against providing information to the families of the disappeared, and that the low-level soldiers' testimony was pivotal to their officer identification efforts.[1]

In 2013, Jara filed a civil lawsuit against a former military officer she charges as responsible for her husband's death, Pedro Barrientos, who has lived in Florida for about 20 years and became an American citizen[1] through marriage.[3] The lawsuit was filed under the Torture Victim Protection Act and the Alien Tort Statute, a federal law that lets American courts try foreign human rights disputes.[3][1] Barrientos and six others were charged in Jara's murder in December 2012 based on a conscript's corroborated testimony.[3]