The Right to Live in Peace

A translation of El Derecho de Vivir en Paz, by martyred Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, murdered by the US-backed coup regime of Pinochet. 

For the right to live their lives
The people of Vietnam
Have faced the soldiers’ guns
The chemicals and the bombs,
Have planted themselves to the land
For the day of their release
and the right to live their lives in peace

On the shores of Vietnam
Where the nights are lit by the flash
Iron eagles with napalm breath
that turns the land to ash
The stars themselves fall like bombs-
But the struggle has never ceased
For the right to live in our lives in peace

We fill our song with love, 
And set it out on the breeze
To bring the white doves home
to the arms to the olive trees
That blossom in Palestine
The world rises from our knees-
For the right to live our lives in peace