Hello, thanks for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service, with me Gideon Long.

It's 50 years since General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup against the left-wing government of Salvador Aende in Chile.

Hundreds of people were killed in the coup, among them the folk singer Victor Hara.

I spoke to his widow Joan Hara in 2013.

It's the morning of September 11, 1973. The Chilean military is on the march, determined to overthrow Aende's socialist government.

In a suburb of Santiago, Victor Hara, the hugely popular folk singer, theatre director and supporter of Aende, is at home listening to the radio with Hara as the coup unfolds.

His British wife Joan had taken her two children, Manuela and Amanda, to school. Out in the streets, she sensed something was wrong.

I was near home so I came back, found Victor listening to the radio also. It was a crisis situation.

And I got back in time for Victor and I to hear one by one the radios who were on the air,

replaced by military music, by military announcements, instructions.

That morning, Victor was due to go to the university where he worked.

Victor was in two mines, should I go, should I not go. But in the end he said, no, I have to go because the students and teachers are all gathering in the university.

I have to go. So we said goodbye in a very casual way. He put the last drop of petrol we had in our little car and he went off that morning.

But as the day wore on, Chile's crisis deepened. The Air Force bombed the presidential palace. By the afternoon, President Aende was dead.

The generals were now in charge. Victor rang Joan and said he wouldn't be home that evening. No one was allowed out after dark.

He said, as soon as the curfew is lifted tomorrow morning, I'll come home and that he loved us. But please, would I take care and stay in the house, take care of our daughters, not go out in the street? That's the last time I spoke to him.

So you knew he wouldn't be home that night, but you were expecting him back on the 12th.

I was expecting him back on the morning of the 12th. There began the waiting, the waiting started.

Joan found out that the military had raided Victor's university and taken people prisoner to a stadium, now a detention centre.

Victor was a well-known leftist. He would have been a prime target for the military.

Did I hope that Victor had managed to get out in the night? Maybe I did. Maybe somebody had helped him get out. At that moment, I still had that hope.

But as the days passed, that hope started to fade.

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