Full moon/ Santiago streets

Music

00:00

MARK CORCORAN: On the streets of

00:16

Rojas walks to cueca venue

Santiago walks a man on a mission.

00:17

Music

00:22

MARK CORCORAN:  His quest, to reignite the passion of Chileans through music.

00:29

His name is Mario Rojas and the sound is cueca.

00:37

Cueca performance

Music

00:40

MARK CORCORAN:  A distinct music and dance at the very heart of Chilean identity, now beamed to the world through his satellite TV show.

00:52

Music

01:02

Rojas. Super: Mario Rojas
Music producer

MARIO ROJAS: It’s a program directed to Chileans who live outside Chile, abroad, yes anywhere in the world, yes.

01:15

Cameraman films cueca performance

Music

01:21

MARK CORCORAN: Modern cueca evolved out of the bars and bordellos of the early 19th century.

01:28

Rojas watches performance

Music

01:33

MARIO ROJAS: The working class in that moment, still are sort of thing, would come

01:41

Rojas

after work and there was wine, there was food and women as well, you know. 

01:45

Cueca performance

And so in that popular environment is where the cueca developed.

01:51

Music

01:58

MARK CORCORAN: With its distinctive six/eight rhythm, cueca is about seduction, passion, spontaneity.

02:06

MARIO ROJAS: Well they say that this is the rooster, you know, going around the hen, usually that is the most common metaphor really about the representation of cueca.

02:16

Music

02:29

Rojas

MARIO ROJAS:  You are there because you like the music, and you like to dance.

02:35

Photos. Rojas’ father in cueca band

MARK CORCORAN: The cueca movement flourished until the mid 20th century. As a boy, Mario Rojas quite literally sat at the feet of the great masters.

MARIO ROJAS: My family

02:40

Rojas. Super: Mario Rojas
Music producer

loved cueca, my father was a musician and when I was a little kid, the most important cueca singers and composers were at my place at one stage.

02:52

Photos. Rojas’ father in cueca band

So, I don’t know it comes in my blood, I don’t know.

03:06

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MARK CORCORAN: But as the old musicians faded away, so did cueca.

03:12

Photos. Young Rojas

As a young man, Mario Rojas left Chile chasing romance across the world to Australia.

03:17

Santiago streets. Night.

He returned home in the late ‘80s, to a music scene dominated by rock and roll. Mario Rojas was determined to make cueca cool again.

MARIO ROJAS: I’m not saying that

03:25

Rojas

I’m responsible for this, but I’ve been an important agent in creating or studying this movement and trying to create it to give this music a type of glamour.

03:38

Corcoran and Rojas in restaurant

MARK CORCORAN: Perhaps his greatest triumph was in overcoming cueca’s tainted past.

03:52

Rojas

MARIO ROJAS: What happened is that there was a big prejudice  against cueca among the young people 10 years ago, because the people associated cueca with Pinochet mainly.

03:58

Archival. Pinochet coup

MARK CORCORAN: In 1973 General Augusto Pinochet deposed Chile’s socialist government in a bloody coup.

04:09

Archival. Cueca dancing for Pinochet

In a bid to create national unity cueca was appropriated as a symbol of the state -- the dancers uniformly dressed in national costume, their routine as precise as parade ground soldiers.

04:27

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MARIO ROJAS: Well, they appropriated cueca because they needed some kind of-- to reinforce the identity of Chile, you know, and in all and they needed also to have some more patriotic symbols, elements, you know. That to me brings back the ideals of Pinochet’s regime,

04:47

Rojas

the idea that you have to, because you’re Chilean, you know, you have to love cueca, like the national anthem, like the flag and all that rubbish. I mean I really hate that.

05:14

Women dressed in black gathered for coffee

MARK CORCORAN: But cueca also became a potent symbol of protest against the regime. Every week for thirty years a group of women has gathered to dance the cueca, but they dance alone.

05:28

Pan along women wearing photos of missing relatives

Music

05:51

CU Women’s faces

MARK CORCORAN: They’re the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the so called disappeared.

06:01

Women sing and dance

The thousands taken away by the dictatorship and never seen again.

VICTORIA DIAZ: My father disappeared 12 May 1976.

06:15

Victoria

He was a social and political leader. He was detained and from that moment we never saw him again.

06:28

Victoria plays guitar

MARK CORCORAN: Victoria Diaz is the group’s guitarist.

06:41

Photo. Victoria as child with family

Her father Victor was a senior member of the Communist party.

06:53

Women sing/Victoria plays guitar

VICTORIA DIAZ: When I dance I think of him. It’s as if I’m dancing with him, but it’s sad because he’s not here.

07:01

Women dance

MARK CORCORAN: They defied the dictatorship dancing in streets, at concerts, outside Government buildings. Their emotionally charged protests struck a chord across the nation. The Generals didn’t dare arrest them.

07:14

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VICTORIA DIAZ: Pinochet wanted to own everything but he couldn’t.

07:32

Victoria

He doesn’t own cueca. It doesn’t belong to him, because cueca is a dance that lives in people’s soul.  He couldn’t appropriate it, he tried but he couldn’t.

07:42

Allende memorial/Funeral

Music

08:00

Victoria walks in cemetery

MARK CORCORAN: Victoria Diaz often comes here to reflect on her father.

08:22

Memorial in cemetery

The memorial lists the thousands officially executed and the others, men women and children who simply disappeared, reduced to painful memories and a name etched in stone.

08:30

Victoria lays flowers at g rave

Now, after 31 long years, investigators have just told her what happened to her father.

08:49

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VICTORIA DIAZ: What they did with him was something terrible.  He was tortured for eight months, and finally he died. They killed him.

08:59

Fade up from black: Photo. Victoria’s father

MARK CORCORAN: His body was thrown into the sea.

MARK CORCORAN: So you will continue to dance?

VICTORIA DIAZ: Yes, because the problem doesn’t begin and end with my father.

09:16

Victoria

Because we don’t want it to happened ever again never ever what happened in our country. And if we were able to help people in a tiny little way to denounce with our solo cueca what happened here, and people kept that in their hearts and minds, then that’s important.

09:31

Military parade

MARK CORCORAN: The dictatorship ended in 1990.

10:02

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General Pinochet died last December and Socialists once again govern Chile but some traditions die hard. The Army still proudly marches to an old Prussian beat.

10:13

Army band goosestep

Military Music

10:28

Outdoor cueca performance

Music

10:38

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MARK CORCORAN:  And this heritage includes the Cueca still performed after the parade - as dictated by General Pinochet.

10:43

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MARK CORCORAN: The General also sent Cueca into the schools and community centres.

MARIO ROJAS: So they created a whole network of Cueca dancers

10:56

Rojas

which is still until now it is very much run by ex soldiers or ex policemen well there’s a whole network along the country.

11:06

Rojas at cueca performance

Music

11:19

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MARK CORCORAN: This form of Cueca is still taught in schools today. In halls across the country, children in national costume strut their stuff in a fiercely-contested championship.

11:36

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MARIO ROJAS: I would describe this type of Cueca very much as a kind of sport,

11:54

Rojas

more than a simple dance, because when the dancers move, when they dance, they have to respond to a series of rules, you know.

12:00

Dance competition

Music

12:14

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MARK CORCORAN: Mario Rojas says these kids are oblivious to the political origins of their contest. Ironically, this style of Cueca is now hugely popular with the one million Chileans living abroad, many of whom fled the dictatorship.

12:37

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MARIO ROJAS: I’m invited to many of these contests, in fact I was the

12:48

Rojas. Super: Mario Rojas
Music producer

president of the jury of the first world championship which took place in Canada about three years ago, where the champions, the world champions came from Australia. They were from Canberra.

12:53

Cueca dancers in shed

Music

13:09

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MARK CORCORAN: But there’s nothing like the zeal of a convert. As hundreds who’ve rediscovered the delights of the original Cueca dance the night away.

13:14

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There are no urban cowboys in national costume.  Here, in a shed, two hours drive from Santiago, those with the hats are “the real deal,” though some may have spent a little too much time in the saddle.

13:29

Rojas backstage

MARK CORCORAN: Backstage Mario Rojas is feted by the other musicians as the man who breathed life back into Cueca.

13:48

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MC: Ladies and gentlemen.  I’ll say it again. It’s a privilege to introduce the gentleman of folksong, here he is Mario Rojas!  Put your hands together!

13:56

Rojas takes stage

MARK CORCORAN: It’s been an extraordinary journey for Mario Rojas and Cueca.

14:06

Rojas plays and sings

Music

14:10

People dance cueca

MARIO ROJAS: I suppose it takes us back to the origins of Cueca which was an expression of freedom. Cueca was a dance was born with the independence of Chile.

14:23

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MARK CORCORAN: And for Chileans on a night out this is as good as it gets.

14:43

Credits:

Reporter: Mark Corcoran

Camera: David Martin

Sound: David Verrecchia

Editor: John McElhinney

Producer:  Vivien Altman

14:52