Victor Jara

Echoes of Silence - 'artists with broken finger nails' - works to build peace with justice, through active beauty. Beauty offers a glimpse of wholeness and the vision of a healed world: beauty moves people to firm actions for peace-filled justice - crucially, as the very earth melts beneath us, environmental justice.

Once a silent monk, Echoes coordinator Paul Baker Hernandez was thrown out of his Trappist monastery for secretly making a guitar from a toilet seat and other recycled oddments. 40 years on, the reincarnated toilet has led him to invade queen's castles over nuclear weapons (heading up a posse of bishops), sing protest songs to popes, join Jackson Browne and Martin Sheen on Central American picket lines, and help fight off death squads attacking Salvadoran exiles in Los Angeles.

He now lives in Nicaragua where he has founded Echoes of Silence (artists with broken nails) to work in fair trade, community and eco-projects - and to make up irreverent songs about cellphones, dictators, and even Starbucks.

music: Manifiesto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en8yqVxuT-U

http://echoesofsilence-ecosdelsilencio.pbworks.com/w/page/11456220/Echoes-of-Silence%3A-Workers%2C-Not-%27Stars%27