Abstract
La memoria, la pertenencia y la continuidad a partir de que la historia, los sucesos impensables y tal vez innombrables se queden en algún lado, se recuenten, una y otra vez. Dejando que el cuentista continúe tejiendo y recuperando momentos. La memoria nos contextualiza y nos ubica en un espacio histórico y geográfico con referencias al pasado y a la vez nos planta en un presente partícipe, activo de absoluta pertenencia. Le da relevancia a mis acciones presentes. Tal vez por eso los inmigrantes volvemos a repetir nuestras milenarias costumbres con más apego, lo cotidiano se transforma en una historia que hay que contar. 
 
 Memory, belonging and continuity beginning with history, unthinkable events somehow unnamed that will remain somewhere, that will get retold, once and once again. Letting the storyteller continue unravelling and recuperating moments. Memory giving us context and place, a geographic and historical site with references to the past and, at the same time, placing us in an active present time, making my actions relevant to this here, and now, in a space of absolute belonging. Perhaps this is why we, migrants repeating our millenary customs with some sense of attachment, continue to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and so then a story must be told. This article explores the distinctive roles that memory play in the context of migration. Memory dynamic is constructed in dialogue with others, and resides in artistic expression, or what Paul Willis calls cultural penetrations. Memory contextualizes our actions and functions as emotional sustenance. For those living outside their culture of origin, by choice or forced, there is a constant tension in our daily negotiations with the surrogate country: a tension between conflicting desires and responsibilities that memory helps to alleviate. Memory and the reinvention of one's histories mediate between current geographic locations and imaginary homes by providing a sense of place and belonging. Looking at the role that memory plays for Latin American migrants in Australia, I reflect on my own experiences utilizing a bilingual mode of expression that includes personal accounts, excerpts from artists’ testimonials, and photographic documentation.
Highlights
The Victim Speaks: Labelled as ‘the femme from the South of this Border’ The Woman Latin other The Mother Single Lover The lover: plural and fluid Sometimes more the mother than the woman Sometimes more the lover than the mother Never-the-Less nor the-More Always Mother Always Woman Always Other
Valuable cultural memories are embedded in the cultural work produced in the Australian Latin American community
Performances, art works, and cultural spectacles and spaces, are symbols of identity directly connected to the perception and appreciation by mainstream Australians of Latinos and their cultural productions
Summary
Where does the story begin? The longing for the most familiar takes me back every time to a repetition, a reenactment of some sort. When Lino arrived in Australia in 1982, his intention was to live off his work as a potter and contribute to his new culture by facilitating an appreciation of ceramics as an art form—in his own words, ‘subir el nivel de la cerámica como forma de expresión artística’ (to elevate ceramics as another form of artistic expression) (phone conversation 6 April 2009). Memory is dynamic; it carries and plays distinctive social and cultural functions and makes past histories relevant and contemporary, while offering another dimension of understanding to the act of ethnic performativity, in relation to art practices. Whether one is a migrant, traveller or exile by choice or force, many possible ‘structural determinations’ are at work in these relationships Observing and challenging those determinations is one way of understanding the importance of self-representation for Latin American artists in Sydney. Creative work allows us to process emotions in creative modes that, in turn, reassert cultural visibility
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