Violeta Del Carmen Parra Sandoval, Chilean poet and singer,
was born in San Carlos from a peasant's family. She had
eight
brothers - many of them also became poets and
singes,
as well as her children and grandchildren. When her
motherClarisa Sandoval Navarrete became a widow, she
married again with Violeta's father, Nicanor Parra, an ordinary
man,
who worked as a elementary teacher and became famous for
promoting Chilean folklore. The poet Violeta Parra had
a
very difficult life; her family was poor and it led her
to
start working in an early age. Since she was a girl she
showed a strong personality; taught by her father,
Violeta
and her brothers learned to sing in order to earn some
money
and survive from their talents. When her father died,
the
family's financial situation got worse and Violeta nad
her
brothers started touring through the countryside to
perform
and earn some money from their shows. When she was
fifteen
years old, she made a duo with her sister Hilda and they
both went to Santiago, Chile's capital. A few years
later
she met Luis Cereceda and married him. They had two
daughters, Isabel e Angel. However, her music was the
reason to her divorce from Luis. In 1953, Violeta made
her
debut in the Chilean radio, singing Chilean folklore
songs.
After she recorded her first album, she took part in
many
political and social movements on behalf of the
marginalized
people. Her voice became, then, the "voice of the poor
and
the opressed". She travelled through the world
denouncing
the opression. She got the nickname "the Bee Queen of
Chilean New Song". Besides being an excellent singer,
she
was also a painter, a sculptor and an artisan, using her
art
to express her wishes for a better world. She was
married
three times; later, because of a terrible state of
solitude
and depression, she committed suicide in 1967, a few
days
after composing one of the most beautiful and famous of
her
songs: "Gracias a la Vida".