Advertisement

Dictator tortured victims with Julio Iglesias music

Alex Dunham
Alex Dunham - [email protected]
Dictator tortured victims with Julio Iglesias music
Tortured talent? Julio Iglesias "feels" the music more than anyone else in the business. Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP

Songs by the Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias were used "to inflict psychological and physical damage" on prisoners detained during the military dictatorship of Chile's Augusto Pinochet.

Advertisement

Dr Katia Chornik, a researcher at Manchester University, has looked into how the military dictator employed songs by Spain's most internationally celebrated singer as part of a "torture soundtrack".

Other songs by former Beatle George Harrison, Italian pop artist Gigi l'Amoroso and the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange were played over and over again at high volume in the countless torture houses and concentration camps of Chile's dictatorship years.

"Pinochet's system used music to indoctrinate detainees, as a form of punishment and a soundtrack to torture," Chornick told the Daily Telegraph.

"Played at intensely high volumes for days on end, the otherwise popular songs were used to inflict psychological and physical damage."

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also