Collective Memories of Alí Primera in the Late Punto Fijo Period (1985–1989)

Abstract

Immediately after Alí Primera’s death, newspapers carried articles in which his life and his Canción Necesaria were commemorated and memorialised, and their importance discussed and reconstructed. On 17 February 1985, one day after the collision in which Alí was killed, the national newspaper Últimas Noticias reported that Alí’s death ‘produced great pain amongst political, artistic and popular circles where the singer was loved and admired’ (cited in Castillo and Marroquí 2005: 230). Photographs published in Últimas Noticias on that day show crowds of mourners in Caracas, many of whom are seen to be bearing flowers and carrying Venezuelan flags and images of Simón Bolívar. On 18 February, Alí’s body was transported to the Paraguaná Peninsula for burial in the cemetery of the barrio where Alí spent much of his childhood. According to Rafael Salazar (undated, p. 15), then director of the Federación Venezolana de la Cultura Popular (Venezuelan Federation of Popular Culture), more than one hundred thousand people from Paraguaná and across the country followed the funeral procession. Several photographs of Alí’s funeral were published in the local Médano and El Falconiano newspapers on 19 February 1985. In these photographs, crowds of mourners carry flags, guitars decorated with flowers, images of Alí, and large banners on which lyrics from his songs are painted. Under the headline ‘The People Weep for the Death of Alí’, El Falconiano refers to the funeral as ‘an impressive demonstration of popular affection and warmth’, reporting that the ‘anguished crowds’ that accompanied the body sang Alí’s songs, which ‘left a deep mark on all the dispossessed sectors not only of our country but of all Latin America’ (cited in Castillo and Marroquí 2005: 229). In Médano, Luis Yamarte wrote: