Chileans in Exile: Private Struggles, Public Lives PDF
Preview Chileans in Exile: Private Struggles, Public Lives
CHILEANS IN EXILE EDINBURGH STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY General Editors: Frank Bechhofer, Patricia Jeffrey, Tom McGiew The Edinburgh Studies in Sociology series publishes sociological works from the Department of Sociology at the University of Edin burgh. The majority of the books in the series will be founded on original research or on research and scholarship pursued over a period of time. There will also be collections of research papers on particular topics of social interest and textbooks deriving from courses taught in the Department. Many of the books will appeal to a non-specialist audience as well as to the academic reader. Titles already published Kathryn C. Backett: MOTHERS AND FATHERS: A Study of the Development and Negotiation of Parental Behaviour Frank Bechhofer and Brian Elliott (editors): THE PETITE BOURGEOISIE: Comparative Studies of the Uneasy Stratum Tom Burns: THE BBC: Public Institution and Private World Harvie Ferguson: STUDIES IN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Diana Kay: CHILEANS IN EXILE: Private Struggles, Public Lives John Orr: TRAGIC DRAMA AND MODERN SOCIETY John Orr: TRAGIC REALISM AND MODERN SOCIETY: Stu dies in the Sociology of the Modern Novel Series Staadln8 Order If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (If you live outside the UK we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Standing Order Service, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG212XS, England. CHILEANS IN EXILE Private Struggles, Public Lives Diana Kay Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Glasgow M MACMILLAN © Diana Kay 1987 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kay, Diana Chileans in exile: private struggles, public lives.-(Edinburgh studies in sociology) 1. Chileans--Foreign countries I. Title II. Series 305.8'6883 F3060 ISBN 978-0-333-39193-8 ISBN 978-1-349-18636-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18636-5 Contents Acknowledgements vi Preface viii 1 HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY 1 2 ACCOUNTS AND ACCOUNTING 26 3 RUPTURE OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE DOMAINS 40 4 RECONSTRUCTING PUBLIC LIFE IN EXILE 72 5 PRIVATE TROUBLES AND PUBLIC ISSUES 106 6 'FAMILY FIRST, POLITICS SECOND' 136 7 REVOLUTION IN THE REVOLUTION? 175 8 CONCLUSIONS 194 Appendix 202 Notes 205 Bibliography 220 Index 224 Acknowledgements This study is the end-product of an intellectual and personal journey which began when I first set foot in Chile in 1971. My first debt is to my teachers and friends in the university there for developing my interest in Latin America and for sharing the Popular Unity experi ence so willingly with me. Sadly this group has disbanded since the coup and their project of placing the sociological enterprise at the service of the revolutionary process has been suppressed. My special thanks go to the Chilean exiles who appear pseudony mously in these pages. They gave generously of their time and hospi tality, were open to sharing intimate details of their personal lives and transformed the fieldwork into an enriching period of my own life. I trust that they will find their voices faithfully interpreted and that this study will contribute to the writing of the history of the Chilean exile. Many more Chileans, whilst not part of the sample, contributed with practical help and advice and without their support I might well have faltered. I owe a specially warm note of appreciation to Marta for her encouragement when seeking publication and to Ruben for his enthusiasm and insights. This study, which was funded by the then SSRC, could not have taken shape without the support of Rosemary Johnson and Patricia Jeffery, my supervisors at Edinburgh University. Their criticisms were always stretching yet never demoralising. By openly enjoying the supervision sessions themselves, they gave me the confidence necessary for this study to flourish. I particularly appreciate Rose mary's support during a difficult time in her own personal life. Many others contributed with comments, bibliography and encour agement: Frank Bechhofer, Lyn Jamieson and Donald Mackenzie from Edinburgh University, Bert Moorehouse and Barbara Little wood from Glasgow University, Margaret Stacey, my external exam iner, Diane Dixon and Gordon Hutchinson from the Joint Working Group for Refugees from Latin America, and Pauline Martin from the World University Service. Caroline Bamford and Margaret Casey vi Acknowledgements vii provided friendship during the long lonely hours of writing up. And finally thanks to Crist6bal Kay, who first introduced me to Chile, and whose companionship I have enjoyed ever since. Preface When I told people I was writing a book about Chilean exiles in Scotland invariably their response would be: 'what, are there any?' or 'all half a dozen of them?' They would quietly dismiss the topic in their own minds as being too unique and restricted a piece of experience to be of much general interest. However this initial reaction was nearly always revised upon reading, for the focus of this study appeals beyond an exclusively Latin American audience to all those interested in the wider question of gender relations and their potential for transformation during a period of rapid social change. This is not a conventional history of exile but a history written from a number of contrasting points of view. It is one which speaks to those who remained on the political sidelines as well as to the political activist, to workers as well as intellectuals, to women as well as men. Based on in-depth interviews, this study is a qualitative and interpretive account of how a group of actors set about reconstructing their lives in exile after the military coup in Chile of September 1973. The focus of much literature on refugees and exiles is on the process of their assimilation into the host society. Analysts have attempted to identify variables working for or against integration and to measure how far the newcomer has succeeded or failed in this endeavour. This ethnocentric focus ignores the question of whether this set of relevances accords with the actor's definition of the situation or not. For many Chilean exiles the problem of exile is not one of how to assimilate but rather how to get by in this society whilst maintaining their political commitments and cultural identity as Latin Americans intact. At the most a very selective kind of integration is desired. Where an actor's perspective has been adopted, certain categories of actor have been singled out for preferential attention whilst others have been largely overlooked. In particular, few studies of exile have incorporated a gender dimension into their analysis. If women's viewpoints in general have been neglected, certain groups of women viii Preface ix -such as women in the home included here-have fared worst of all. This privileging of the male voice is often related to an exclusive focus on the public sphere. Studies of exile have documented the travails of exiled political parties and examined the exiles' relation ship to the host economy. This study, by contrast, brings women clearly into view by extending the analysis to include the private sphere of marriage and the family. The Chilean men and women in this study have experienced a bewildering number of dramatic changes in both the public and private spheres. Within little more than ten years they have lived through a period of socialist experimentation and a period of military rule within their own country, and a period of exile abroad. It is well known that people who are on the move socially or geographically are also on the move in their consciousness. Personal experience of changing structures often leads to the questioning of taken-for granted ideas as arrangements which were once seen as immutable now come to be seen in a relative light. In the process, areas of life once regarded as 'private' or 'non-political' may become politicised. In the Chilean case these dramatic shifts in the public and private spheres brought men and women into new and more problematic relationships and exposed contradictions within marriages between the men's revolutionary politics and women's position in the family. An underlying theme of this study is to highlight the limitation of a model of politics which prioritises production and paid work as the source of consciousness and marginalises a politics of the private sphere. Women's home-centred focus has sometimes been viewed as detracting from the political struggle. This study, by contrast, shows the costs for women of a model of politics which defines the political as largely coincident with the public sphere and implicitly assumes that the political actor is male.
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