The appropriation of Nino Bravo’s song “Libre” during the Pinochet regime: reconstructing the birth of a myth

This article studies the reception of Nino Bravo's song “Libre” (1972) in Chile during the first years of Pinochet's dictatorship. Its main goal is to demonstrate how the military regime appropriated this ballad, replacing its original political meaning with an interpretation akin to the authoritarian ideology. Thus, we will see how “Libre” –a song which was conceived as a critique of the Franco dictatorship– came to be an anthem of the Chilean dictatorship, examining the specific connotations that were imposed on this track during this new regime of meaning. Hence our interest in tracing what the authoritarian government heard in this ballad: a tribute to the act of liberation undertaken by the Armed Forces and the expression of the spirit of an ideal “youthful archetype”. The hypothesis that “Libre” underwent a process of resignification during the Chilean dictatorship takes into account the insistent reproduction of this track in a variety of scenarios set up by the military authorities between 1973 and 1975. The delimitation of this background will allow us to propose that “Libre” took the form of a “myth” (Barthes 2008) elaborated by the dictatorship to naturalize certain concepts or political narratives.