When the socialist politician Salvador Allende dramatically won Chile’s presidential election in 1970, a powerful cultural movement accompanied him to power as folk singers emerged at the forefront proving that music could help forge the birth of a new society. “Venceremos” charts the development of such a cultural phenomenon from the years before Allende’s victorious campaign to the brutal U.S.-backed military coup on September 11, 1973, which ousted his presidency and imposed the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. The bloody repression that followed would claim the life of Víctor Jara, a key singer-songwriter, but could never put to rest the lasting power of his songs nor the movement he personified.

Gabriel San Román is a multimedia journalist. He is a former coproducer for KPFK Pacifica Radio and a writer for the Orange County Weekly. His work has appeared in numerous outlets, including Common Dreams, Truthout, and Z Magazine. He lives in Anaheim, California. T. M. Scruggs has taught at the Universidad Centroamericana, Florida International University–Miami, and was the sole ethnomusicologist at the University of Iowa. His research focuses on the use of music to construct social identity and effect change, primarily in the Americas. He lives in Berkeley, California.