I caught this performance at New York's "Dizzy's Coca Cola" a posh club connected with Lincoln Center that overlooks Columbus Circle.

Although Claudia Acuña is a full fledged jazz singer, her repertoire still reflects her Chilean origins, and she presented several jazz settings of songs from its folk heritage.

"El Cigaritto" is by the iconic songwriter Victor Hara, whose work is almost synonymous with the protest songs of the  Nuevo Cancion movement that arose in Chile in the 1970's. He was publicly tortured and executed by the Pinochet regime, and must remain one of Chile's great political martyrs. But we must not let his terrible end overshadow the fact that he was also a great songwriter. "El Cigaritto" does not make any overt political statement. It is instead a gentle song with a lovely melody and a poetic lyric sung from the vantage point of a field worker on a tobacco plantation.

Claudia and her band have created a setting that not only preserves the spirit of the song, but enhances the melody with nuanced chord progressions and a different meter. It's a sensitive, loving interpretation. She has stated that Jara's work is very close to her heart, and she recorded three of his songs on her first CD.

You can go here to compare this rendition with Jara's.

President Richard Nixon solicited the help of Brazil's notorious leader Emilio Medici in early talks of overthrowing Chile's President Salvador Allende, according to a secret memo from 1971 released to the public for the first time on Sunday. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote up the meeting, and was asked to act as a back channel between Medici and Nixon.

Two years later Allende was killed in a US-backed coup which put Gen. Augusto Pinochet into power. Pinochet's name would later become synonymous with brutal human rights abuses and "disappearances" in the thousands.

The actions of Brazil's leadership, who were no strangers to torture and assassination, are detailed by the victims themselves in the astonishing contemporaneous documentary Brazil: A Report on Torture [watch here]. The young students and professionals who appear in the film were living in Chile as political refugees when Pinochet came into power, throwing them again into a world of detention and pain. In this interview, filmmakers Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Saul Landau (Fidel) talk about their time in Chile interviewing the Brazilian victims, as well as US involvement in South American politics. Wexler and Landau were in Chile working on a documentary about Allende when they met the victims.

Link TV also broadcasts the documentary The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Check here for airdates and a clip from the film.

Writer and adventurer Jon Bowermaster explores the world's oceans from the seat of a sea kayak. Used as both transportation and as floating ambassadors, sea kayaks allow Jon and his team of the world's best photographers, filmmakers, scientists and navigators - to reach corners of the world rarely seen. Tonight's new episode takes us to South America's Altiplano, the mountainous desert region crossing the borders of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, looking for water in the driest place on earth.

Watch Oceans 8 - Into the Altiplano Online Now

Visit Link's ISSUE: Oceans Page