Flight from Chile: Voices of Exile

by Thomas Wright, Rody Oñate

Mass arrests, torture, and executions followed General Pinochet's coup on September 11, 1973. Almost immediately people began fleeing Chile, and over the next fifteen years some 200,000 Chileans sought exile in nearly 140 countries. Out of their anguish and anger comes the first oral history, or testimonies, of their fractured lives. Many who fled had been tortured, and they clung to the principle that the dictatorship was an evil that had to be destroyed. But their zeal and solidarity with other refugees often failed to sustain families, and the majority of marriages collapsed and children often lost interest in their native land and culture. After civilian rule emerged in 1989, many returning exiles felt estranged from a homeland forever changed. "A compelling and moving account."�Marjorie Agos�n, author of Tapestries of Hope, Threads of The Arpillera Movement in Chile, 1974-1994

259 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1998

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Reviews

[Brendan Campisi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful collection of testimonies of the experience of the Chilean coup and its consequences: repression, exile, external and internal resistance, and the contradictions of the restoration of democracy after 1989. Reminded me in many ways of 'Blood of Spain,' which similarly conveys a historical event in kaleidoscopic form through the experiences of (mostly) mid-level participants. Perhaps the most surprising theme is the way the effects of exile were gendered, with men who had played public roles as political militants and leaders often struggling to adjust while women, partly out of necessity and partly in response to greater opportunities in European countries or Canada, entered more fully into public life. The concluding section on the difficult conditions endured by returned exiles in the radically changed Chile of the 1990s, where they found general indifference, is especially tragic.