por Víctor Franco Alonso
Facundo Cabral
Poetry has been left without soul, the song is filled with dismay, the man’s freedom is totally restricted.
On July 9, at 5.20 in the morning, South America started to mourn in unison the murder of the genius and troubadour, Facundo Cabral, in Guatemala City. In fact, tears haven’t stopped and won’t stop anytime soon. The singer-songwriter died due to multiple gunshots fired by a band of strangers when he was on his way to the city airport in a vehicle steered by Nicaraguan businessman Henry Fariña.
The news of his death woke his followers up, like a dagger stuck in the heart and within few minutes all the international media echoed the event. It has been debated whether the crime entails political aspects or links to drugtrafficking. In statements to the newspaper El País, the Nobel Prize Laureate in 1992, Rigoberta Menchú, claims that it is the case.
No soy de aquí, no soy de allá, Cabral used to sing in one of his most well-known performances. He was from nowhere and loved to seize the days as if they were the last ones. “Blessed who doesn’t change the dream of his life for the daily bread”, he highlighted in an interview with the Argentine newspaper El Litoral.
He was born on May 22, 1937, and according to his own words, his mother gave birth in the streets of La Plata, province of Buenos Aires. Cabral had a very complicated childhood, and in one occasion when he escaped home, he arrived in Buenos Aires. There, he evaded the police fence that surrounded President Juan Domingo Perón, in order to ask him for a job for his family. He got it. During his teenage years, he fought thousands of battles, quitting his studies at an early age and being involved in quarrels that would deprive him from his freedom for about a year. Nevertheless, in his nomadic life he found light when he placed his fingers on a guitar.
It all began there.
He had enough stories in his back and in his head to share with someone whom only by barely touching the breeze of his songs would be captivated.
The honesty of his words could be sensed, the words of someone who lived with the basics and who turned the street into his school. A fervent believer, he didn’t trust governments or ideologies, but liberty and equality of men, who he believed was good by nature. He never silent his feelings and vindications, which forced him to exile during four years. UNESCO declared him World Peace Messenger. He shared stage with artists such as Alberto Cortez, Julio Iglesias, Pedro Vargas or Neil Diamond.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t a person who would easily settle and wanted to give even more to his public. “I turn the face to the enemy, the back to a good comment, because whoever takes compliments starts to be dominated”, Cabral asserted to El Litoral in one of his famous phrases.
Curiously, in his last concert he said goodbye to his followers, in order to rest in his homeland from the cancer that struck him; he wouldn’t go back on stage. This time he retires definitely from the world that gave him so much and that took away from him so much as well. In any case, he does leave a legacy of indelible and incomparable lyrics and emptiness. May he rest in peace, the genius, Facundo Cabral.
