Roger Waters has shared his rendition of Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara’s protest song “The Right to Live in Peace,” the 1971 folk song that became the anthem of the 2019 Chilean protests.
“This is for the people of Santiago & Quito & Jaffa & Rio & La Paz & New York & Baghdad & Budapest and everywhere else the man means us harm,” Waters said of his re-recording, which features updated lyrics addressing the recent surge of autocrats around the globe.
“From my cell in New York City/ I can hear the casarolazos/I can smell you Pinero/All fucking rats smell the same,” Waters snarls on his version. “You can shoot out the eyes of the children/You were always that fucking insane/But you’ll never snuff out the flame.”
Jara, an activist and poet, was tortured and killed after the dictator Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile in 1973. “So beware Bolsonaro, Giuido and Modi and Trump,” Waters warns on his “The Right to Live in Peace.”
Waters recently used social media to send well wishes to John Prine, who is hospitalized after testing positive for the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic also forced Waters to postpone his planned This Is Not a Drill Tour until 2021.