Chilean Artist Eulogized 40 Years Later
Violeta Parra is the expression of the incessant search for national identity that goes beyond frontiers and emerges from the deepest roots of Chile, declared PCCH (Chilean Communist party) leader Juan Andres Lagos on Monday.

"Her main legacy is rebelliousness, irreverence, rule breaking, challenging conservative art, and her emancipated attitude as woman, her strength, her melancholy, her way of expressing feelings without limits," he declared.

During the tribute paid to Parra on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the death of this emblematic Chilean artist, born Oct 4, 1917 in San Carlos, Lagos told how she spent a large part of her life traveling rural areas to record and compose folk music.

During her 60 years she painted, sculpted, worked with ceramics and performed other creative activities and, upon her return to Chile in 1965, founded a popular cultural center in the capital.