MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  “Yankee go home,” that’s the refrain. The crowd sings it in unison in this old black and white video. “Yankee go home. Yankee go home.” The man leading them stands at the mic. He has a thick beard. He plays the Venezuelan quarto. His gaze is defiant… His name is Alí Primera. 

He is El Cantor del Pueblo — The People’s Singer

The Venezuelan ambassador of the nueva canción or protest song movement, which spilled across Latin America in the 1960s and ‘70s, and includes others like Mercedes Sosa or Victor Jara.

Alí Primera sings in solidarity. He sings for rights and for justice. He sings in defense of the people… The humble and the working class. He sings against poverty. He sings for change. For social justice. He sings for El Salvador in the 1980s. He sings for Nicaragua. He sings for revolution and for peace. 

He sings to demand an end to US imperialism. An end to US intervention and aggression throughout Latin America.

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Alí Primera was born on Oct. 31, 1941, in Coro, Venezuela. Born into poverty. From a young age, he worked odd jobs to help his family. 

He moved to Caracas in 1960 and began singing and writing songs while studying chemistry at the Central University of Venezuela. Songs like this, played here by the Venezuela band Los Guaraguao. 

[MUSIC — LOS GUARAGUAO]

Alí Primera wrote this song in 1967. He first performed it at a Festival of Protest Songs that same year. It’s called, “It’s Not Enough Just to Pray.” It’s a brutal critique of inequality and the US war in Vietnam. 

“And they pray in good faith / And they pray from the heart / But the pilot also prays / When he / boards the plane / To go and bomb/The children of Vietnam,” he sings.

Songs like this would lift Alí Primera to recognition. 

He’d live in Europe in the early 1970s, and study in Romania with the help of a scholarship.

Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, he would record album after album — 13 total. His words and his songs always stand with the working class and the poor. They demand respect. They demand dignity. They demand change. 

“The freedom I want is the freedom to never again see another friend having to beg for a place to live,” he said. “The freedom that I want for my people not to have to suffer every time it rains because their homes are shacks and they are forced to live on the edge of a ravine because the land is owned by the great owners of this country… The owners of this country who have taken it from the people.” 

Alí Primera sings of resistance to inequality and injustice. He sings of resistance to the United States. 

Like in his song “Yankee Go Home.” The Yankee he refers to isn’t the baseball team, but the government of the United States or the military. 

“The Yankee fears that you / Latin American workers will rise up,” he sings. “I don’t know why you don’t / The Yankee fears the revolution / The Yankee fears the cry: ‘Yankee, go home! / Yankee, go home!’”

He had good reason to be wary of the United States. 

See…. Although the media portrays Venezuela in the second half of the 20th century as a time of democratic stability and prosperity, in reality, there was brutal repression by the government. And it was backed by the United States. Human rights violations. Disappearances. Killings. Torture…

Including against Alí Primera himself.

He spoke about this in an interview with Venezuelan students. 

“I was tortured,” he says, “and in the cell someone had a Portuguese accent. That person had been brought from the repressive police in Brazil. And there was a North American there also, advising torture.”

Primera would explain in the same interview that Venezuelan governments in the late 1960s and ‘70s allowed the CIA to operate in the country. The administrations were allied with the United States. Many Venezuelan military officers were trained at the US School of the Americas.

“And now the important thing to remember,” says Alí Primera, “is that the torture I received was minor” in comparison to that which took the lives of prominent Venezuelan activists, organizers, and revolutionaries.

Primera says many groups of people were disappeared at the hands of the Venezuelan government, and this would inspire him to continue to fight and to sing in their memory. 

Alí Primera sang of Simón Bolívar — The liberator of Venezuela and South America. 

Like this song… “Canción Bolivariana.”

“Ah! If you could see the fate / of the peoples your sword liberated / Their greatest freedom/is to die of hunger, trampled under the northern boot / about which you warned us,” he sings. “The United States seems destined / by Providence to plague America / with misery in the name of liberty / Today we turn to your visionary idea / To the anti-imperialist thought of your brow,” Alí Primera sings…. 

Alí Primera sang for Venezuela. He sang for Venezuelans and Latin Americans standing up against injustice and US imperialism.

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Alí Primera was killed at the age of 43 in a car accident in Caracas, Venezuela, on Feb. 16, 1985. But his songs and his lyrics are as present and sharp as ever, today, as people in Venezuela and elsewhere around the world stand up against the Jan. 3 US invasion of Venezuela.

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Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox. 

I wanted to do something substantially different today that still gave a sense of hope and resistance both against this most recent US invasion of Venezuela and to the ongoing hand that the United States has played in Latin America for centuries.

If you liked today’s episode, please, please, please, check out the new season of Under the Shadow. That’s my podcast about US intervention in Latin America. Season 2 is all about Trump’s onslaught in the region. We dropped a new episode about the US invasion of Venezuela on Monday. I know you will appreciate it. And please help us spread the word. I’ll add a link in the show notes. You can find Under the Shadow wherever you get your podcasts.

All of the sound used in today’s episodes are from old YouTube videos. I’ll add links in the show notes.

As always, if you enjoy this podcast and you appreciate my reporting, I hope you’ll consider following me on Patreon and becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get updates every time I’ve posted something new online. And if you like what’s there, I have a ton of exclusive content only available to my paid supporters. Every supporter really makes a difference. I’ll add a link in the show notes.

This is Episode 84 of Stories of Resistance. If you don’t already subscribe to the show you can follow the links in the show notes. Stories of Resistance is produced by The Real News. Each week I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. 

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As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.