Mercedes Sosa - More Than A Song. Anette Christensen
Buenos Aires, October 4, 2009
FOLLOWING THE President’s official announcement marking the start of three national days of mourning, the flags are flown at half-mast all over Argentina. Across the country concerts and shows scheduled during this period are cancelled, and condolences from heads of state—in Latin America and the rest of the world—pour in.
“La Negra” (The Black One), as she was fondly called owing to her jet black hair and her Northern Argentine, Andean ancestry, lies peacefully in her casket in the most formal room of the Congress, the “Salón de los Pasos Perdidos,” an honor reserved for only the most prominent of national icons. On Avenida Callao, the street leading to the Congress, admirers line up to pay their respects.1
In the Pasos Perdidos, lavish wreaths adorn the impressive marble hall. Gigantic chandeliers and massive candles light up the dimness of the high-ceilinged room with the uncovered casket positioned right in the center. Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, accompanies Sosa’s family as they pay homage to the singer. The family, including Mercedes’ son, Fabián Matus, and her two grandchildren, Agustín and Araceli, stand closely with their arms around each other as though in a half-embrace while Cristina caresses Mercedes Sosa’s lifeless hand. Christina’s husband, the former President Néstor Kirchner, stands rather guardedly by her side with a cautious look.
Ordinary people are there too. Respectfully, a growing flock of mourners pass by the open casket where she is seen resting in her embroidered blue dress. Her long, black hair, which at the age of seventy-four, doesn’t have a single strand of gray in it, frames her calm, high-cheekbone face. Her hands are carefully folded on her stomach around a bouquet of white roses. Singer Argentino Luna plays her songs as weeping fans sing along and take turns to leave flowers by her coffin.
October 5, 2009
FABIÁN AND Mercedes’ closest relatives follow the brown wooden casket as it is carried out to the hearse parked outside the Congress. All along Avenida Rivadavia, crowds of mourners, of all ages, gather to watch the hearse take her on her last journey, from the Congress to the crematorium. They stand united in a moment of Argentine history that dissolves social and political boundaries.
The procession of hearses drives past slowly and a number of mourners carry banners that say adorable things about her. An old revolutionary in his sixties is holding up a banner that reads, “Thank you for your life and your struggle.” A number of people can be seen clapping and waving the Argentine flag with graceful enthusiasm. The young make happy noises, chanting, “Olé Olé Olé Olé, Negra Negra,” in repeated fashion as though it were the national soccer team returning after winning a championship. At virtually every corner, groups of people bearing different instruments start to sing. Beautiful music echoes through the streets of Buenos Aires—music that has provided hope and comfort for decades, challenging tyranny and fostering democracy.
It is a day of sorrow that reaches deep into the Argentine soul. The national folk heroine, the mother of the nation, is dead. But what she gave through her life and her songs will never die. They live on.
The procession slowly leaves the Congress. The first hearses carry all the flower decorations. The last carries the casket.
Time before Exile
San Miguel, Tucumán, July 9, 1935
AT SANTILLÁN HOSPITAL, in northwest Argentina, twenty-four-year-old Ema del Carmen Girón has just given birth. It is seven o’clock in the morning. Her newborn daughter is safely asleep in her arms. The baby announced her entrance into the world with a hefty squall that could be heard all over the maternity ward. What no one knows is that one of history’s best voices has just made its first sound. Ema is grateful for this new and precious life she is holding in her arms, and, for a while, she forgets all the financial challenges that will come with raising a child. Ema has a job as a laundress, and her husband, Ernesto Quiterio Sosa, works in the sugar industry harvesting sugarcane and shoveling coal into the oven at the Tucumán Mill.
Through the half-open window, Ema can hear cannon salutes in the distance. She counts them—twenty-one. July 9 is Argentine Independence Day. Ema’s instinct is that it is not a coincidence that her daughter is born on this day. She confides in the midwife, who has just come back to the room, “This girl is going to be someone with great influence one day. Her birth is being welcomed by twenty-one salutes.”2 She keeps this conviction in her heart from this moment on.
EMA AND her husband, Ernesto, usually agree on everything, but when they have to give their newborn daughter a name, they run into some trouble. Ema wants to call her Marta, while Ernesto opts for Mercedes, after his mother, and Haydeé, after a well-liked cousin. Ultimately she gets the name Haydeé Mercedes Sosa, but for the rest of her life her mother will stubbornly call her Marta.3
Mercedes grows up in Tucumán, which is also called the Garden of the Republic. A semi-tropical and agricultural region with countless fields of sugarcane, flowers, and fruit trees, the smallest province in Argentina. It is in this oasis in the northwest corner of Argentina that Mercedes grows up with her older sister, Clara Rosa—also called Cocha—and her two brothers, Fernando and Orlando. The family resides in a poor, working-class area. The pink paint on the outer walls of their small, one-story house at Calle San Roque 344 is becoming black from the soot and smoke of the nearby factories, and in some places the paint is chipping off. The only light that gets into the house comes through two small windows with iron bars that face a narrow street where the children used to play, inventing their own games because they never had toys. Fortunately, they live close to the local park, which also has its ties to the date of Argentine independence, being named Parque de 9 Julio. It becomes a second home to them.
Growing up, Mercedes enjoys playing in the park with her siblings and the other children in their modest neighbourhood.4 She is always cheerful and connects with others easily. But sometimes she prefers to be on her own and withdraws to her favorite tree. She likes to sit leaning against the bark while watching the insects buzzing around her. She is a robust child in many ways, but she also has a sensitive, reflective side that makes her wonder why some people are rich while others are poor. Very early in her life, she has a developed feeling for right and wrong. It is a sensibility caused directly by seeing her parents work so hard to keep hunger from their doorstep. Even doing their utmost, they often can’t afford to buy food for their children. To distract their children from their hunger, they take them to the park to play every evening at dinnertime.3 To Mercedes, Saturdays are the best days because that’s when her father gets paid and the family can enjoy a meal of spaghetti with butter, the only hot meal they get all week. Often the hunger keeps her awake for hours at night.4
Still, later in life, Mercedes would come to say she had a happy childhood. “I do not wish to wail like someone who has lived in hunger, poverty, and cold. I lived my childhood in a poor house, which was however warmed up by the necessary feelings. My siblings and I always had the essentials, because we never lacked love. In this respect we were millionaires. Our parents not only sacrificed their lives, but they have been wise. They never put a burden on us for their sacrifices. They gave us everything they could, without revealing to us what they had to do to achieve this.”5
Mercedes never truly grows out of the mindset of poverty she grew up with, and it shapes her social consciousness and gives her sympathy for the poor, which, along with the love of her parents, shapes her ideology and provides