Chilean Exiles Research Articles

Chilean Muralism in Exile: On Solidarity and Transnational Memory

Fifty years after the coup d`état in Chile, cities such as Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Leeds, Milan, Belgrade, Los Angeles, and Chicago, still display traces of Chilean exile on the walls of cultural centres, universities, theatres and other buildings. These are the remains of hundreds of murals, painted by brigades created by Chileans in exile to encourage their host countries to show solidarity with their resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship. The complex experience of Chilean exile and its long-lasting and intergenerational repercussions have only slowly been integrated into research and memory practices. This article examines three case studies of Chilean murals in exile as atypical forms of testimonial sources, with the aim of gaining insights into the multi-layered network of actors behind them, in particular into the testimonies of Chilean exiles and actors of international solidarity. It also explores the memorial dimensions of postephemeral murals and how these can function as carriers of a collective, transnational memory of Chilean exile.

Solidarity, Worldmaking and Inter-Connected Geographies of Authoritarianism: Trade Unions and the Multiple Trajectories of Chile Solidarity

This paper intervenes in debates around the relationship between solidarity and worldmaking in the context of decolonisation and the Cold War. While work on worldmaking has drawn attention to key aspects of solidarity formation in this context (e.g. Getachew, 2019; Kelley, 2019), to date it has offered a limited engagement with the role of labour in the articulation of such solidarities. Here, we demonstrate how such a focus on worldmaking can help to highlight the multiple political trajectories that have been shaped through articulations between Chile solidarity and labour internationalism. Drawing on recent work on the Chilean Left, which stresses such multiple trajectories (eg Schlotterbeck, 2017), we provide three engagements with the opposition to authoritarian politics in different geographical contexts, foregrounding the role of exiled trade unionists involved in the Committee of the Exterior of the Central Única de Trabajadores de Chile (CEXCUT). These cases are the contestation of links between the Pinochet regime and Eric Gairy’s dictatorship in Grenada by Caribbean left activists in the Oilfield Workers Trade Union in Trinidad and Caribbean Labour Solidarity (CLS) in Britain; the role of Luis Figueroa of the CEXCUT and other Chilean exiles in shaping links between opposition to Pinochet and struggles for democratisation in the immediate post-junta period in Greece; and the role of maritime workers in British port cities such as Liverpool in contesting trade with Chile. We argue that through examining the relations between different trajectories of solidarity and interconnected geographies of authoritarianism, an engagement with worldmaking practices can help move beyond narrowly statist and methodologically nationalist frameworks.

¿Why Leeds?

The following piece was written by Elisa Martinez Relano in 2023. Inspired by a student-led project exploring past and present solidarities with Latin America, Elisa, now completing an MA in the History of Art and Social History at the University of Leeds, wrote the following text. Her reflection on archival research around Chilean exile in the 1970s takes place in 2023, fifty years after the infamous coup, and is guided by a simple question: how and why would Leeds engage in solidarity activism with a place as seemingly distant as Chile?

“Equality, freedom, solidarity – the issues on which I was raised”

As part of this special issue, we received this reflective piece from Viena Chilena 73 | 23, a project initiated to record and articulate the history and memory of Chilean exile in Austria and Austrian-Chilean solidarity during the 50 years since the 1973 military coup in Chile. This contribution pieces together elements of the project website, extracts of their archival work and reflections from the project collective.

The transformation of UK Chilean diaspora space: new Chilean migrants and encounters across time

AbstractThe Chilean diaspora space in the United Kingdom has been transformed over its 50‐year existence. From its origins as a diaspora born of political conflict and the arrival of Chilean exiles during the dictatorship, it has evolved into an altogether more diverse arena. New migrants with different interests and agendas have unsettled the delicate balance of exile life, and the impact of the clash of different histories in this diaspora space remains unknown. Although the experience of Chilean exiles has been actively studied, new empirical data introduces the existence of a much broader diaspora than that portrayed in the literature. The UK space of the Chilean diaspora has been radically altered through the diverse interests that the new cohorts bring and the organizations that reflect these new forms of interaction, as well as the divisive issues of past and present conflict that highlight the unresolved nature of the long‐term experience of exile.

Chilean experiences of exile in the “socialist brotherhood” negotiating solidarity, belonging and change in the German Democratic Republic

Based on the empirical material collected in lifetime-narrative interviews, the article illuminates the multiple experiences of Chilean exiles between solidarity, belonging, Othering and foreignness in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The focus of the biographical case reconstruction based on Rosenthal is the individual negotiation of Othering practices and narratives, which the interview partners rejected, reinterpreted or strategically used for themselves. The results are biographical snapshots which show that not only encounter with (everyday) racism, but also experienced help and solidarity actions could cause discomfort among the Chilean political exiles, since they reflected the hegemonic conditions underlying their stay in the GDR. The interviewees experienced how state-institutionalised solidarity was linked to the political conditions of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and had its limits where individuals deviated from the behaviour expected of them. Throughout their lives, the interviewees are torn between Chile and the GDR (and later Germany): Confronted with feelings and constructions of foreignness and belonging(s) in relation to both countries they find different and changing ways of dealing with them over the course of their lives. What they have in common is the impossibility of deciding on a single national identity.

Reimagining space, history and memory in East Germany through sonic fragments of Chilean exile

This article addresses ongoing discussions regarding the material and cultural legacies of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It draws on texts produced by two individuals that were members of the Chilean artistic community that lived in exile in the GDR during the Chilean military dictatorship (1973–90). I argue that descriptions of musical activity and sonic memories within these texts offer a powerful counterpoint to some of the more prevailing assumptions that tend to position East German cultural history either as relic of material nostalgia or simply subsumed under capitalism after the period of German reunification. By positioning the ephemeral and unruly sonic traces of the Chilean exile community against mainstream narratives of GDR history, this article offers the possibility of examining and animating spaces subject to invisibility and disappearance in contemporary German memory.

El exilio chileno durante la dictadura de Pinochet a través del cine documental

La dictadura de Pinochet provocó el exilio de miles de chilenos. Entre ellos se encontraban casi todos los cineastas del país: Patricio Guzmán, Miguel Littín, Raúl Ruiz, Carmen Castillo y un largo etcétera. Muchos retrataron cinematográficamente el trauma de los que tuvieron que huir de la dictadura. El exilio se convirtió entonces en uno de los temas más recurrentes para aquellos que querían denunciar con la cámara las atrocidades del régimen de Pinochet. Años más tarde, la recuperación de la democracia en Chile llevó a muchos exiliados a decidir entre seguir en el extranjero o regresar a su país. Ante esta disyuntiva, muchos cineastas siguieron contando historias sobre el exilio, también sobre el retorno. Además, las nuevas generaciones de cineastas chilenos, muchos hijos de exiliados, indagaron en sus historias personales para explicar sentimientos como el desarraigo. A través del análisis de la filmografía existente entre 1973 y 2014, y siguiendo con el estudio de La dictadura de Pinochet a través del cine documental, esta investigación pretende arrojar luz sobre los relatos cinematográficos relativos al exilio provocado por el régimen pinochetista y cómo evolucionan narrativamente a lo largo de los años en función del contexto histórico en que se enmarcan.

Semillas de la rebelión: Revolutionary postmemory, hip-hop, and Chilean exile

This article uses interviews and cultural analysis to examine how hip-hop is a site for the reproduction of the second-generation Chilean exile hip-hop group Rebel Diaz's revolutionary postmemory of Allende-era politics in Chile. Revolutionary postmemory posits that Rebel Diaz, and second-generation Chilean exiles more generally, inherit not only the trauma and pain of the Pinochet regime but also the radical politics and hope of the Allende era.

Exile Materialities and Their Brushstrokes of Colour

Urban odonyms and public art that refer to the Chilean dictatorship (1973–1990) are artifacts within the cultural landscapes of Toronto, Laval, and Montreal. As commemorative material devices, I suggest odonyms and public art offer a symbolic way to cope with the experience of exile. Furthermore, these artifacts create social relations between Chilean exiles and Canadian urban spaces that contribute to forming a foreign community and define their present and future. Using a series of photographs, I chronicle the memorialization in Canada of a traumatic period in recent Chilean history.

Cartography of the Chilean exile in Baden-Württemberg: the story of the solidarity network

ABSTRACT The horror of the military coup in Chile motivated a massive international solidarity network. One of them was composed of self-organized citizens, NGOs, and Chilean exiles in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This movement was a response to affected individuals facing the lack of immediate measures and policies of the FRG’s government towards exile and human rights violation victims in Chile. This article offers a cartography that traces key locations of such solidarity network: places where solidarity events took place, where the subjects involved reside, and their transits; with a special but not exclusive focus on the state of Baden-Württemberg, in the federal south. Considering the historical moment when this took place – Cold War scenario: Germany divided between the two ruling blocks – the cartography shows how this movement was a way of subverting that geopolitical order. This work, therefore, is a new contribution to the studies of solidarity and, at the same time, it links those studies with the field of STS, by presenting a cartography as a visual dispositif that documents the imbrications of solidarity, affections, politics, culture, Germans, and Chileans on a given territory.

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America

Memorializing forced migration and beyond. Commemorating Salvador Allende in Barcelona as memory-work in the context of civic memory and the politics of belonging

ABSTRACT This paper argues that streets and squares performing commemorative events in relation to their assigned names could be seen as sites of memory. It focuses on how in these urban landmarks memories and legacies of exile could be addressed using public places as memory-work in the context of civic memory. To support these conclusions, I will analyse Barcelona’s square named after Salvador Allende to argue that the square and its yearly commemorative events operate as memory-work in relation to Chilean exiles (1973–1990), functioning for mourning practices of long-term unresolved traumatic memory of political persecution. The square though operates also as a memory-work for other interrupted political projects, their cultural traumas and political exiles, in this case, of the Spanish Second Republic (1939–1975). This transfer of narratives of commemoration transforms the square into a site of memory with several layers of societal values, and thanks to them both integration processes and a sense of belonging could operate among all communities involved, exiles, migrants and locals. This encounter of layers of political memory transforms the square in a site of memory (a heritage place of exile) for democracy and human rights, and fosters belonging to a polity that transcends local and national boundaries.

Chilean Exiles in Sweden: Is Alejandro Leiva Wenger a Case of in between Literature?

El articulo se focaliza en la literatura del exilio chileno en Suecia. Enparticular, se centra en el cuento “Cancion para mi padre” de Alejandro Leiva Wengercontenido en la coleccion Till var ara (2001). A traves del analisis de extractos textualestomados del cuento, el estudio se centra en la condicion del exilio concebido como una“invencion de un espacio transnacional” a medio camino entre las identidades chilena y lasueca, contribuyendo a la tematizacion de una “identidad multiple”, que se basa en culturasdistintas. A partir del concepto de posmemoria (2012) de Marianne Hirsch, nuestro objetivoes mostrar que la historia de Leiva Wenger es un ejemplo de “historia enredada” (Werner,Zimmermann, 2002), en la que el plano personal del protagonista se entrelaza con —y estacondicionado por— un plano publico, relacionado con la situacion politica de Chile en elmomento del golpe de Pinochet.

Journeys to Health: The Case of Chilean Exiles in the UK

Abstract Taking the idea of refugee ‘journeys to health’ (Newbold and McKeary, 2018) as a point of departure this paper examines the case of Chilean exiles in the UK. Reflecting on interviews conducted with Chilean exiles the analysis highlights how the health-related challenges that many people have experienced change over time. For some the passing of time has enabled people to make sense of what happened to them following the military coup in Chile in 1979 and this has helped them to ‘move on’. For others, on-going challenges remain, for example a number of people still experienced PTSD. The paper also reflects on the difficulties encountered by refugees when dealing with formal health providers. While all of the respondents had full entitlements to NHS services the paper reflects on the informal barriers that continue to shape refugees’ engagement with health care providers and limit their ability to address health concerns.

Exílio chileno de Mário Pedrosa

Com base em uma ampla pesquisa de fontes primárias em arquivos de instituições no Brasil e no Chile, este artigo apresenta um panorama sobre o exílio chileno de Mário Pedrosa, durante o Governo Salvador Allende (1970-1973). Busca-se analisar as principais iniciativas culturais fomentadas pela Unidade Popular, uma coligação de partidos de esquerda, com objetivo de compreender a conjuntura na qual o autor brasileiro foi convocado. Pedrosa fez parte de um contingente de intelectuais latino-americanos exilados que colaborou ativamente na área acadêmica e, de forma ainda mais direta, na política cultural chilena, ao ser convidado para conceber o Museu da Solidariedade. Seguramente, essa instituição, formada exclusivamente por obras doadas, foi o empreendimento mais importante do governo popular, no entanto essa entidade inseriu-se em um programa cultural e político mais amplo, sendo necessário compreender o contexto geral no qual Pedrosa filiou-se. Apesar de ter se envolvido diretamente na criação do Museu, foi nas cooperativas de artesanato que Pedrosa enxergou o maior potencial comunitário da arte, cujo caráter revolucionário o crítico exaltou no artigo "Arte Culta e Arte Popular", escrito em 1975.

Militancia femenina contra la dictadura de Pinochet: Legitimación memorística de La mujer metralleta

This essay analyzes the representation of female activism in La mujer metralleta, a documentary by Chilean Francisco López Balló that reconstructs the biography of Marcela Rodríguez Valdivieso, a guerrilla who has succumbed to the oblivion in Chile. It is necessary to highlight her anti-dictatorial fight in order to recover her name and that of so many other militants. My study aims to eliminate the prevailing silence around the exiles who also contributed to the redemocratization processes in Chile and participated in the resistance against Pinochet. Despite their constant political activism, women have been excluded from official historiography. This essay claims a place in the world to one of the many activists who experienced the process of Chilean exile and whose biography contributes to a better understanding of female activism. This documentary offers a new approach to the past is constructed that questions the relations between the State and the revolutionary position of women, despite the fact that women have historically played a marginal role in war conflicts. My paper points out the relevance of this guerrilla, how this documentary contributes to reconstructing history and how exile affects the transmission of memories.

Memories of Exile and Temporary Return: Chilean Exiles Remember Chile

Memories of Exile and Temporary Return: Chilean Exiles Remember Chile

Exiliadas chilenas:una aproximación de género en las memorias del exilio

El exilio chileno provocado tras el golpe de estado que significó el fin de la Unidad Popular, empujó al exterior a cerca de 200.000 personas entre 1973 y 1977 y en total a 400.000 personas, si se considera el final de la sanción en 1988. Un tercio de esa diáspora lo constituyeron mujeres, quienes salieron de Chile rumbo a los países más emblemáticos como Argentina, Canadá, México, Suecia, Noruega, Francia o España después de un periodo de persecución, represión, tortura y en muchos casos, prisión. En el siguiente artículo se analiza cómo esas mujeres vivieron el exilio solas o junto a sus familias, bajo seis ejes temáticos: la salida de Chile, la llegada al país de acogida, la familia y las relaciones afectivas, trabajo y estudio, militancias y activismo politico y la posibilidad del retorno.

El exilio como fenómeno transnacional. Marcas del exilio chileno en intelectuales del Reino Unido. Latin American Bureau (1977-2019)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo aportar a una línea de investigación en torno al exilio en tanto fenómeno transnacional. A partir del análisis del exilio chileno en tierras británicas como consecuencia del golpe militar que derrocó a Salvador Allende (1970-1973), indagaremos en las marcas que este exilio dejó entre quienes se comprometieron en actividades de solidaridad con el pueblo chileno. De manera particular, nos enfocaremos en un emprendimiento editorial nacido en 1977 en Londres, el Latin American Bureau, porque creemos que materializa las transferencias culturales y simbólicas, entre las comunidades exiliadas y las de acogida. Proponemos una mirada que contemple las múltiples aristas en torno al exilio y, en este caso concreto, el impacto que una comunidad forzada a dejar su patria generó en el espacio de recepción