The Chilean Community in Australia
Diaspora, Memory, and Social Responsibility
Article by Dr Jytte Holmqvist - HBU-UCLan School of Media, Communication & Creative Industries
Dr Jytte Holmqvist
Lecturer at HBU-UCLan School of Media, Communication & Creative Industries.
She holds a PhD in Screen and Media Culture and Literature in Spanish from University of Melbourne and is editor of the interdisciplinary volume The Patient-Doctor Dynamics: Current Trends in the Global Healthcare Sector (Brill 2018).
She is interested in existentialist concerns, psychology and philosophy, mental health, resilience and human connections in the face of adversity.
2023 marks the 50-year anniversary of the 1973 coup d’état in Chile. In conjunction with this event, we publish an article on the Chilean diaspora in Melbourne where five members of that community tell their personal stories against the larger socio-political narrative of Chile now and then. Their individual journeys are told from a largely affective perspective. As they share their past experiences, they reflect on the reasons they moved to faraway Australia in what became a leap of faith. Embarking on a new chapter and navigating cross-cultural complexities, they have learnt to live with a divided heart. All of these individuals play important roles in their community and have made Melbourne their new home. They have managed to find a way to connect the collectivist with the largely individualist – and as they embrace new opportunities in Australia they remain emotionally attached to Chile as their rich country of origin.
Abstract
Stoic resilience and strength in the face of hardship - Cradle Mountain June 2023. Photo by Dr Jytte Holmqvist .
This article focusses on Chilean emigrants in Melbourne and examines the role of memory in their adapting to Australian society and maintaining a relationship with their home country. From 1973 well into the 1980s, thousands of Chileans who fled the Pinochet dictatorship arrived in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, or Brisbane. After the end of the regime, the political émigrés were joined by fellow citizens who settled in Australia for a multitude of reasons. In negotiating conflictive social and cultural dynamics, grappling with identity questions, and pursuing career opportunities, Chilean Australians are a socially, politically, and ethnically diverse group. Despite individual differences, the members of the community display a social commitment that is grounded in common experiences and memories. Our analysis argues that the Chilean community dedicated to protecting and advancing human rights issues and protesting discrimination in cultural and political formats has become one of the most progressive forces in Australian society.
Introduction
This paper examines the contribution and role of the Chilean community in promoting a diverse and inclusive Australian society. Many arrived as political refugees in the 1970s and were forced to deal with traumatic memories and experiences after having fled a repressive regime. Over the years this legacy promoted the building of a close-knit group that comprises of confident, alert and engaged citizens. Chilean immigrants in Melbourne are, motivated by their own background and formation and maintaining ties to Latin America, committed to collaborative, inclusive projects and activities in Australia’s social, cultural and educational sectors.
We ask the following affective questions: How do you leave a country behind and build another life in a new nation without losing touch with your roots, respecting, and celebrating your motherland and what it represents despite it having politically rejected you or pushed you away? What feelings do you experience in a country with a landmass ten times that of your homeland, which is socio-politically, linguistically, and culturally starkly different from yours? And how in a panorama of divergent customs and values, having to deal with painful memories and loss, does a community of active and outspoken individuals emerge who take care not only of their own concerns but become an integral part of the society in which they live? From 1973 well into the 1980s, thousands of Chileans arrived in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, or Brisbane as refugees, persecuted by the Pinochet regime that lasted until 1989. Since then, this group has been joined by many other fellow citizens who left for a variety of reasons that made them decide on and settle in Australia. In each case, the decision to embark on the long journey into the partly unknown, from a collectivist social structure to a largely individualist Anglophone nation produced ruptures, feelings of rootlessness, loss, and nostalgia. Grappling with challenges in this new environment and moored to Chilean and Latin American cultures, the immigrants nevertheless came to find circles of support, developed a sense of belonging, and realised chances of self-actualisation. In the negotiation of different, often conflictive dynamics, they embraced a new present in Australia.
We highlight memory and remembrance as crucial elements of social and cultural adaptation, involvement in and attachment to Australian society, as well as in the Chilean community’s ongoing relationship with the country of origin. Memories – personal and collective histories and experiences – can unlock potentials of growth and change. Paul Ricoeur links nostalgia to regret but also finds these sentiments embedded in a sense of anticipation for what is to come. In Memory, History, Forgetting (2000) he speaks of Ulysses and attaches a nostalgic notion to the place of departure and the new destination; with the traveller belonging equally much to both.[1] Ricoeur calls nostalgia “regret over what is no longer, which one would like to retain, relive.”[2] He argues that “it is on the level of collective memory, even more perhaps than on that of individual memory, that the overlapping of the work of mourning and the work of recollection acquires its full meaning.”[3] Saúl Sosnowski, in turn, finds that when exiles or émigrés accept that returning to one’s home is not possible, memory is useful “when encapsulated as a constructive building block.”[4] As he says, “memories we bring to a non-ancestral territory enter into a different kind of dialogue with those who inhabit a place we also wish to call our own.”[5]
Transitions and changes are inherent in processes of emigration and trigger new ways of interaction between past and present, activate energies for new encounters and open ways of forming new affective relations. Brian Massumi finds the uncertainty felt in transitional phases empowering because they promote the ability to establish new connections.[6] These encounters are captured by the notion of affect as a “passing of a threshold, seen from the point of view of the change in capacity.”[7] Massumi notes further: “[W]ith intensified affect comes a stronger sense of embeddedness in a larger field of life – a heightened sense of belonging, with other people and to other places.”[8] And according to Margaret Wetherell, affect “leads to a focus on embodiment, to attempts to understand how people are moved, and what attracts them, to an emphasis on repetitions, pains and pleasures, feelings and memories.”[9] In following the trajectory of an affective analysis, we enquire about the ‘events’ that come to structure political allegiances and social networks, give sense to everyday life and motivate artistic expression.
Notions of diaspora inform a discussion of the Chilean-Australian community in the forcefield of memory, belonging and identity across cultures and locations. Diaspora cultures are connected to their former homelands by ambivalent feelings and loyalties but so are their links to their place of settlement.[10] As relatively recent scholarship has it, “[t]he relation of diaspora and memory is not so much affirmative as problematic and ambivalent: memory is at once the condition and the necessary limit of diasporic identities.”[11] Anh Hua reminds us that memory gives shape to diaspora identities. Always in flux and under pressure, their members deal with power struggles and “disjunctures produced by diverse intersectional experiences of gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, age.”[12] Meanwhile, societies benefit greatly from the presence of diaspora communities owing to their multi-sited experiences, interests, and interactions.[13] As we will explore, the members of the Chilean-Australian community are of ethnically and socially diverse backgrounds and have an extensive transnational network and a social awareness that is grounded in multi-sited experiences and memories.
Guided by these theoretical deliberations, the following analysis starts with a framework section that maps out the Chilean community from initial arrival in Australia to the present, considering processes of conflict, adaptation, and emancipation in a locally and globally fluctuating social and political environment. Based on interviews and conversations with five individuals who have settled in Melbourne and who represent subsequent generations in the history of Chilean emigration from 1973 to the present, we identify the community in cultural and political activities that communicate its stance on contentious social issues in both Chile and Australia.
Arrival in Australia
While in the late 1960s, white, educated middle-class Chilean citizens relocated to Australia primarily for economic reasons, migration from Chile to Australia increased in numbers and profoundly changed the community’s demographics after 1973. The military coup d'état under General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September of that year left the incumbent president, Salvador Allende, dead and replaced Chile’s rightfully elected socialist government with a military junta. This was a watershed event in both the history of Chile and the Cold War. The new regime lost no time in ”cleansing” the country of left-wing influences and ideas. Allende’s supporters were persecuted and killed. Of the approximately two million Chileans who sought refuge worldwide, more than six thousand arrived in Australia during these years.[14]
Australia’s progressive government came to the rescue in this humanitarian crisis. The newly elected Labour party under Gough Whitlam (1972-1975), in the aim of tackling longstanding ethnic and racial inequalities in Australia that most significantly included dropping the White Australia policy in 1973 and introducing the Racial Discrimination Act, also managed to implement a non-discriminatory immigration policy. This led to an influx of refugees from Asia and Latin American countries, who fled violent conflicts and social upheaval. The émigrés were able to tap into newly established social schemes and programs. In Melbourne and other big cities, welfare offices offered multi-language resources and guidance on how to access social support schemes. Immigrant services also offered support for the children, providing tutors, learning spaces and educational materials. There was even a budget to set up multicultural radio stations and telephone translation services.
For this first generation of Chileans, whose move was often forced and who had to completely rebuild their life in Australia, the yearnings for their lost country were always intermingled with disturbing recollections and personal experiences of violence, and the mourning about family members who had disappeared or been murdered.[15] Conflicted affiliations, feelings of doubt and homelessness, what has been called a “fluid pertinence,”[16] and nostalgia plagued some of the Chilean immigrants then and still do to this day.
Struggling with memories and doubts, Chilean emigrants faced difficulties in everyday life that inhibited adapting to their new environment. Whereas children went to school, built, and expanded their social network and learnt English easily, parents often did not acquire fluent English language skills and worked in low-paid jobs. Coming from a country in which resources were scarce, they arrived in the Western World, with an urban population that was predominantly white and of Anglo-Australian descent and where their position was at the lower end of the social strata. The newcomers were up against a settler mentality and feelings of racial and cultural superiority where misconceptions and stereotypes towards Latin Americans “often obscure[d] the complex reality of the region from which this migrant group originates.”[17] Elizabeth Kath argues that “[t]he prevailing perception … has been that Latin America is too remote, disconnected, and politically irrelevant to warrant serious scholarly or public attention.”[18] And according to Chilean scholar Irene Strodthoff, “the axis of the Australian society still revolves around a predominantly white articulation.”[19]
Though public anxieties kept existing over multi-culturalism and minority groups,[20] over the decades Australia’s increasingly culturally and ethnically diverse and liberal environment and its thriving economy have attracted a number of Latin Americans, including Chileans, to settle in the biggest metropoles: Sydney and Melbourne. Expanding global markets, advanced communication technology and favourable political conditions in the Latin American region have fostered cultural and business relations between Chile and Australia already since the 1990s. Mutually beneficial trade negotiations and cultural events around music, food and the arts have encouraged a more nuanced picture about the formerly “exotic other.” According to Ralph Newmark, culture has always been a vehicle for establishing long-lasting and successful relations between Australia and Latin America. Newmark sees the formation of the Australia Latin America Foundation (ALAF) in 1992 as instrumental for fostering positive negotiations between Australia and the five main Latin American trade regions.[21] The Australia Latin America Business Council (ALABC) established in 1989, the Council on Australia Latin America Relations (COALAR), and, importantly, the youth-driven, non-profit networking organisation the Australian Latin American Young Professionals Inc. (ALAYP) ̶ are vital institutions that contribute to fostering political, commercial and cultural relations between Latin America and Australia.
The following part explores the Chilean community in Melbourne with regard to people, connections, events, and places. Based on the opinions, memories, and assessments of five interviewees, we will reveal a panorama of the Chilean-Australian community in line with social and political changes that have occurred in both countries over the past 40-50 years.
Chileans in Melbourne
As explored in the previous section, not only did Australia provide a comparatively safe haven for Latin American migrants in the 1970s, exerting an attraction as a receiving society with policies that have paved the way for a gradually less restrictive and more lenient and open-minded approach to foreign settlers at both state and national level. Melbourne, more specifically, has, over time, provided conditions favourable for effective inclusion of Chileans, in particular, into the community. Australian statistics reflect important Chilean diaspora trends, with the Victorian Community Profiles: 2016 Census (Victorian State Government) stating that Chile-born migrants to Victoria made up 37.4% and 10.3% of the total state population in the time periods 1971-1980 and 2011-2016, respectively.[22]
Melbourne, a hub for sports, music, and the arts, is a city whose citizens are known to be liberal, with an awareness of human rights issues in their local spheres, and keen to defend gender equality, indigenous and LGBTIQ+ rights. [23] These are key issues on the public radar and have become part of local political agendas. Over the years, this had led to structurally and legally impactful changes that have benefitted Australia-born citizens, and invite tourists, students, and migrants alike. For the Chileans in Melbourne, this is an environment where they can embrace their fluid identity and meet other South and Central Americans. In sharing, discussing but also contesting as they do a largely common history, a set of values, ethics and beliefs, Chileans have become an important part of Melbourne’s communities. The following stories of five Chilean immigrants encapsulate the broader brush stroke narratives of Latin American resettlement in Melbourne. With the decision to relocate, they respond to trends affecting both Chile and Melbourne and Australia at large, amidst global economic changes and dynamics.
Pilar with photo of Fernando Alfredo Navarro Allendes
Pilar Aguilera was only five years old when her parents settled in Melbourne. Her family was one of many political refugees who arrived from Chile, Argentina, or Vietnam in the early 1970s and who could benefit from the immigration policies set up under the Whitlam government. The family first lived in the Maribyrnong Midway Hostel (now the Maribyrnong Detention Centre) and were subsequently placed in a housing estate in Ascot Vale. Her father was a factory worker.[24] Grown up linked to the Spanish language, Chilean culture, and politics, Aguilera is politically active since her youth. Chairperson for the radio channel 3CR, coordinator of a monthly poetry reading group, co-editor of English-Spanish language poetry collections, and organizer of protest meetings; she is a vital voice in the Melbourne-based Chilean community and represents the group in local and national media. Through her wide-ranging activities, she has contributed to carving a public space for the Chilean community in Melbourne. Acutely aware of and informed about current concerns and the lingering impacts of political injustices then and now, she importantly reminds us – in an urgent and evocative statement that reflects her own commitment to socio-political issues as well as the need for us not to forget, and for history not to repeat itself – that 2023, marks the 50th anniversary of the coup that took place in Chile that overthrew democratically elected president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. “It is a significant day of mourning for our community and this year we will be marking the event in Melbourne at an event co-organized by the AMWU Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, who have a long history with international solidarity. The event will commemorate the date that changed Chile and meant the mass exile of 1000s of Chileans as well as a long history of resistance, struggle, and solidarity. It will also commemorate those who lost their lives in the struggle for a better world. It will also reflect on recent events in Chile and look to the future. This event aims to educate and unite the Chilean community, bringing together the different generations, those who arrived in Australia as refugees and exiles in the 1970s and 1980s escaping the dictatorship and those who have arrived in more recent years.” [25]
This is a year of grief, of heightened personal and collective memories, but also one of a coming together in a constructive dialogue. The Chilean community in Melbourne is represented by Aguilera, actively engaged as its public face. She is an outspoken activist who is also involved in projects aimed at increasing the visibility of the needs of socially marginalised groups and promoting Aboriginal rights and gender equality – all of which are contentious issues in Australia.
Alongside Aguilera, whose background and experiences has transformed into social awareness and wide-ranging political commitment, other first-generation Chilean migrants feel a strong sense of responsibility to strengthen Melbourne’s social and cultural fabric. Gus Vargas considers himself an Australian and Latin American in equal measure. He is an entrepreneur whose engagement has come to both culinary and musical expression. In the past, the evocative sounds of his bands Apurima, Rumberos, Walisuma de los Andes, and Chicanos enriched the local music scene by connecting Chile to Australia. Vargas became one of the Chilean musicians whose “experiences imbued local Latin American music-making with both social and political consciousness.”[26] He is one of Melbourne’s best known cultural-culinary ambassadors. Owner of the bar “Neruda’s Brunswick,” bespoke neighbourhood café and social meeting point for tourists, Australians, Chileans, and other Latinos alike, his home-cooked empanadas and arepas are in high demand at many community fiestas as well. His activities have helped establish a public profile of the Latin community in Melbourne where socially and culturally inclusive events like the annual Hispanic Latin American or Johnston Street Festival draws crowds from near and afar.[27]
At a time when “contemporary national narratives have been permeated by the reproduction of practices of exclusion and inclusion as well as notions of whiteness and masculinity as categories of power,”[28] Chilean Australians question the status quo. Carol Hullin, Chilean of Aymara heritage, challenges the long-enforced discourse that has members of indigenous groups relegated to a space “where collective rights have become unthinkable within the limits imposed by the liberal discourse of individual rights.”[29] Hullin’s persona reflects the dire need to examine the Australian-Chilean diaspora in its ethnic diversity. Proud of her indigenous ancestry and vocal in her convictions, she calls herself “Chilean in all my dimensions, with an Australian brain, highly educated, with global paradigms.” Hullin is a member of a marginalised group, and a feminist with a combative spirit who harbours the dream of becoming the first indigenous president of Chile by 2030. She is a powerful spokesperson for the Chilean community. [30] Employed at Swinburne University,[31] she occupies a unique space as female academic of indigenous heritage. Her research concerns the role of health and education in rural settings and has featured repeatedly in international media. In today’s Australia, a society that is becoming increasingly attuned to its indigenous heritage, native Australian and otherwise, “the identification of Indigenous connections … is of great importance.”[32] Hullin brings her background, personal experiences and professional expertise to Australian indigenous populations. With her work she forges dialogues between Latin America and Australia; demands that address the needs of indigenous populations worldwide.
Carol Hullin
Chile having undergone a number of neoliberal reforms over recent decades, to the extent that it is often regarded as a neoliberal success story,[33] the rapid modernisation of this nation has not necessarily come with an easing of gender biases and a more equal integration of women into the job market. As things are slowly changing and “emancipatory movements and a more pluralist civil society have pushed for policies that address gender and social inequalities and strengthen women’s citizenship,”[34] female Chileans settling in Melbourne and Australia have largely been able to leave a long predominantly macho work culture behind and they now enjoy greater work opportunities. In terms of gay rights as this relates to the Latin American region, “there has been remarkable progress as well as stagnation on the legal status of LGBT individuals.”[35] In Chile, same-sex civil unions were recognised by law under Michelle Bachelet in 2014 but the battle for a legalisation of gay marriage has been arduous and strenuous, with former President Piñera long unfavourably disposed. A same-sex marriage law was finally passed in parliament on 7 December 2021, four months before Gabriel Boric took over the Presidency:
The country’s new law undoes existing legal discrimination against same-sex couples in parentage, joint adoption, and assisted reproductive technology, among others. It also scraps the requirement that married transgender people divorce if they want to have their gender legally recognized.[36]
In Australia, gay rights have slowly gained momentum over recent years, culminating in the passing of the same-sex marriage law in 2017. Even if this is late compared to New Zealand, the UK, the Netherlands and most Scandinavian countries, Australia is known for its inclusive environment. In Melbourne specifically, social acceptance for and sensibility towards its LGBTIQ+ population, their needs and rights, is high. This has allowed for an active and vibrant gay and queer community to develop over the years. Queer Chilean artist, journalist, Assistant Editor, and human rights activist Anai Wiche testifies to the many complexities surrounding members of the gay community equally in her motherland as in her country of arrival. She moved to Melbourne in 2007 and has with time enjoyed a sense of a new belonging. She says of Chile that “it used to be the place where I was oppressed and not comfortable, a place I didn’t like and wanted to run away from” and adds: “I have reconciled a lot with the place since I came to live here. Chile socially liberalised their thoughts a lot in the last ten years, regarding queerness, artists, in general their relationship to what is different.”
Gradually since the 1990s and under the influence of former President Bachelet, when more progressive legislations meant a lessened involvement of the Catholic Church in state affairs, Chile has tried to latch on to more liberal trends witnessed also in other Latin American nations, like Argentina, Colombia, and Uruguay.
In addition to liberal policies allowing migrants and Australian citizens to embrace their sexual orientation and gender identity, several educational agreements have been put in place for Chileans to pursue their studies in Australia. Melbourne and Sydney have welcomed a large number of Latin American and Asian students over recent years. Australian universities cater for students from Latin America, and Chile has become an attractive country due to its political and economic stability and relative affluence, sought after for student exchanges and collaborative research programs. La Trobe University has one of the oldest Latin American programs and in 1993 Melbourne University established its School of Languages and Linguistics, with Spanish and Latin American Studies as one of the main disciplines. Since then, other universities have followed suit. A study by Austrade informs that the Latin American market share of total onshore commencements increased steadily between 2015 and 2017 [37] and according to SBS News, “Australia is recruiting more students from Latin America than ever before” (many of them to study English).[38] That was pre COVID-19 lockdown, when the young Carolina Briceño Figueroa arrived in Melbourne. The student is in the process of making the city her home while remaining true to what she considers “Chilean.” She explains:
Agustin Vargas and Carolina Briceño Figueroa
Todos tenemos un pedacito de Chile dentro y bueno el relacionarse con más personas es clave y aprender cosas nuevas, culturas nuevas; eso también ayuda mucho y es muy interesante. … Me gusta mucho ayudar a las personas ya que siento que es devolver un poco la mano que me han brindado. He tenido la suerte de recibir mucha ayuda de latinos, australianos y personas de otros países.[39]
Briceño Figueroa, still in her formative years, is a recent member of the local Chilean community. Her social commitment and willingness to give other newcomers a hand, is an example of a form of intercultural solidarity and an attitude that the local Australian society benefits from.
These five character profiles recount personal journeys of members of different generations who have aspirations and experiences that intersect and become elements in a greater narrative of Chilean migration to Melbourne and Australia. The 1970s and 1980s departure in search of political refuge has since shifted to lifestyle-related push and pull factors; with Chileans moving for better work opportunities, for research and education, as well as the possibility to embrace their identity. In this course, they participate in developing inclusive social, cultural, and educational spaces.
Conclusion
This analysis of the Chilean-Australian community has traced memories, alliances, motivations, and activities of their members caught up in as well as pushing for changes and progress. Chilean women who have shown to be strong advocators for social justice and human rights, such as Pilar Aguilera, Carol Hullin, Carolina Briceño Figueroa, and Anai Wiche, all do important groundwork in Melbourne. They deserve to be acknowledged and recognised for their invaluable and constructive efforts in bridging cultural differences and raising awareness about a number of significant social issues and concerns.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Pilar Aguilera, Carolina Briceño Figueroa, Dr Carol Hullin, Gus Vargas, and Anai “Chilli” Wiche for their participation in interviews and conversations and for honestly and generously answering the interview questions. Special gratitude is also extended to Dr Claudia Sandberg of the University of Melbourne, Francisca Javiera Díaz de Valdés, Dr Antonio Castillo Rojas, Manuela Cavuoto, Assoc. Prof. Mara Favoretto, Ana L. Gálvez, Emanuel Rodríguez and Dr Irene Strodthoff whose views have informed and enriched this article. The Trade and Cultural Section of the Consulate General of the Argentine Republic in Sydney also provided prompt assistance at the outset of our research process.
Notes
[1] Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 149.
[2] Ibid., 602.
[3] Ibid., 79.
[4] Saúl Sosnowski, “Balancing Memories, Pondering Legacies,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 23, no. 3 (2017): 353.
[5] Ibid., 352.
[6] Brian Massumi, Politics of Affect (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2015), 4.
[7] Ibid., 4.
[8] Ibid., 6.
[9] Margaret Wetherell, Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding (e-book version). (Los Angeles: Sage Books, 2012), Ch. 1, 4th paragraph.
[10] Vijay Agnew, “Introduction,” in Diaspora, Memory and Identity: A Search for Home, ed. V. Agnew, 3-18. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 4.
[11] Marie-Aude Baronian, Stephan Besser, and Yolande Jansen, “Introduction: Diaspora and Memory,” in Diaspora and Memory: Figures of Displacement in Contemporary Literature, Arts and Politics, eds. Marie-Aude Baronian, Stephan Besser, and Yolande Jansen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 12.
[12] Anh Hua, “Diaspora and Cultural Memory,” in Diaspora, Memory and Identity: A Search for Home, ed. Vijay Agnew (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 193.
[13] Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity. Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 223.
[14] Barry York, “Australia and Refugees, 1901–2002: An Annotated Chronology Based on Official Sources, ”Social Policy Group, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Review 1990 (Canberra, 1990): 15, file:///F:/CHILE%20TOUCHED%20UP/Australia_and_Refugees_1901_2002_An_Anno.pdf (accessed September, 2020).
[15] Claudianna Blanco, “'Disappeared' during Pinochet: Son vindicated by landmark ruling 40 years after father's death,” SBS Spanish, 22 April 2020, https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/disappeared-during-pinochet-son-vindicated-by-landmark-ruling-40-years-after-father-s-death.
[16] Note that the following online interview focusing on first-generation Argentinian migrants could equally apply to Chilean migrants: “¿Cuánto sufrieron nuestros abuelos inmigrantes?” Entrevista a María Bjerg, historiadora. La Nación, 27 February 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-6_B9HhA9c.
[17] Raul Sanchez-Urribarri (et al.), “A Tale of Two Waves: Latin American Migration to Australia,” in Australia-Latin American Relations: New Links in a Changing Global Landscape, ed. Elizabeth Kath (US: Palgrave Macmillan), 15.
[18] Elizabeth Kath, “Australia and Latin America in a Global Era,” in Australia-Latin American Relations: New Links in a Changing Global Landscape, ed. Elizabeth Kath (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1.
[19] Irene Strodthoff, Chile and Australia: Contemporary Transpacific Connections from the South (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 24.
[20] See on this subject James Forrest and Kevin Dunn, “Attitudes to Multicultural Values in Diverse Spaces in Australia's Immigrant Cities, Sydney and Melbourne,” Space and Polity, 14, no. 1 (2010): 81-102.
[21] Ralph Newmark, “Culture as a Key to Connections: Using Culture to Promote Australiaʹs Strategic Relationship with Latin America,” in Australia and Latin America: Challenges and Opportunities in the New Millennium, eds. Barry Carr and John Minns (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014), 246.
[22] “Table 4: Year of Arrival of Chile-born and Total Overseas-born, Victoria: 2016.” Chile-born. Victorian Community Profiles: 2016 Census. Victoria State Government, https://www.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-08/Chile-Community-Profile-2016-Census.pdf (accessed September 2020).
[23] See, for example, Mary Helen Spooner, The General’s Slow Retreat. Chile After Pinochet (Berkely and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011); Sarah Walsh, “One of the Most Uniform Races of the Entire World: Creole Eugenics and the Myth of Chilean Racial Homogeneity,” Journal of the History of Biology 48, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 613-639; Fernando Blanco, “Sexualidades en transición: Homografías post Pinochet,” INTI Revista de literatura hispánica, Chile en su literatura (1973-2008): no. 69/70 (primavera-otoño 2009): 153-170; and Javier Corrales, “The Politics of LGBTI Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean: Research Agendas,” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, no. 100: Special Issue: New Directions in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (December 2015): 53-62, www.erlacs.org.
[24] Interview with Pilar Aguilera in January 2020.
[25] Email from Pilar Aguilera, 28 June 2023.
[26] Dan Bendrups, “Latin Down Under: Latin American Migrant Musicians in Australia and New Zealand,” Popular Music 30, no. 2 Special Issue on Crossing Borders: Music of Latin America (May 2011): 195.
[27] Newmark and Bendrups, specifically, write on culturally inclusive trends and events in Melbourne relating to the Latin community.
[28] Strodthoff, 2.
[29] Patricia Richards, “The Politics of Gender, Human Rights, and Being Indigenous in Chile,” Gender and Society 19, no. 2, Gender-Sexuality-State-Nation: Transnational Feminist Analysis (April 2005): 204.
[30] “Tengo pendiente una carrera presidencial, porque tengo que ser la primera presidenta nativa. Quiero empoderar a las mujeres y las niñas, innovar en las reglas del juego.” “Carol Hullín, la mujer que quiere ser presidenta en 2030,” Capital 27 (March 2019), https://www.capital.cl/carol-hullin-la-mujer-que-quiere-ser-presidenta-en-2030/
[31] Hullin holds a PhD in Health Informatics, a Master of Law LLM UC Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and has completed a postdoctoral degree in artificial intelligence.
[32] Newmark, 43.
[33] Jasmine Gideon, “Accessing Economic and Social Rights under Neoliberalism: Gender and Rights in Chile,” Third World Quarterly 27, no. 7 (2006): 1271.
[34] Virginia Guzman, Ulke Seibert, and Silke Staab, “Democracy in the country but not in the home? Religion, politics and women's rights in Chile,” Third World Quarterly 31, no. 6 (2010): 971.
[35] Javier Corrales, “The Politics of LGBTI Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean: Research Agendas,” 54.
[36] Cristian González Cabrera, “Chile overwhelmingly passes marriage equality,” Human Rights Watch, 7 December 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/12/07/chile-overwhelmingly-passes-marriage-equality
See also: “Chile legalizes same-sex marriage in historic vote”, NBC News, 8 December 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/chile-legalizes-sex-marriage-historic-vote-rcna7930 and “Chile lawmakers set to approve same-sex marriage bill”, France 24 (AFP), 30 November 2021, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211130-chile-lawmakers-set-to-approve-same-sex-marriage-bill
[37] “Latin America sees surge in international education,” Austrade 29 March 2018, https://www.lideaustralia.com/latin-america-sees-surge-in-international-education/ (accessed June 2020).
[38] Australia is recruiting more students from Latin America than ever before. SBS News 22 October, 2019, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australia-is-recruiting-more-students-from-latin-america-than-ever-before/ij4ezn4fw (accessed June 2020).
[39] While the other respondents conversed with us in English, Carolina Briceño Figueroa spoke in her native Spanish, and we chose to keep the original statement that reflect her sentiments perfectly. In English, this reads: “We all carry a bit of Chile within us and to get in touch with other people is key, as well as learning new things, new cultures. This also helps and is very interesting. … I like assisting others which means that I give back a little bit when people stretch out their hand to help me. I have been lucky to receive a lot of help from Latinos, Australians, and people from other countries.”