Twelve Chilean families who were fleeing the regime of General Augusto Pinochet were accepted into Ireland in 1974. Most returned to their native country following Pinochet’s departure in 1990, but a few stayed on. CATHERINE REILLY reports.
It happened more than 30 years ago, but it is not the type of experience that slips easily from the memory. Irishwoman Val Roche was in her car, on her way to visit some newly arrived Chilean refugees in Shannon, when a figure in the distance signalled for her to pull over. She rolled down her window and the man – a Garda officer from the Special Branch – gave her a plain instruction. “Turn back.”
Despite support from numerous Irish people, many of the Chileans who gained refuge here in the 1970s were treated with varying degrees of suspicion, despite the horrific circumstances from which they had fled. In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet seized control of Chile following a military coup in which the country’s elected Socialist President, Salvador Allende, was ousted. As well as closing down the Chilean parliament and banning all trade union activity, Pinochet ordered the murder of thousands of Allende’s supporters. Many of the tortures and killings were carried out in the National Football Stadium in Santiago. As a result, thousands of Chileans fled the country. Those not located were simply known as ‘the disappeared’.
Irish Government papers released in 2005 under the 30-year rule reveal that the Department of Justice in Ireland, and its then Minister Patrick Cooney, held major reservations about accepting any Chilean refugees at the time. The left-wing tendencies of the Chileans were viewed with extreme suspicion by the department, and Minister Cooney even feared that they would form links with the IRA.
Cooney wrote in a letter to the Minister for Foreign Affairs in February 1974: “Our society is less cosmopolitan than that of West European countries generally... the absorption of even a limited number of foreigners of this kind could prove extremely difficult.”
He added: “The indications seem to be that they (or, at all events, many of them) are refugees because they are Marxists and probably communists and it is to be assumed that a significant proportion of their number are ‘activists’.
“It would be reasonable to assume that if they have been political militants they will not change their outlook on arrival in this country and that they are liable sooner or later to engage in political agitation here. There would be no effective sanction against such a person – deportation would not be possible. ”
However, the Department of Foreign Affairs pushed for their entry into the country, and in 1974, 12 Chilean families were given sanctuary in Ireland. They were mainly dispersed between Shannon, Waterford, Galway and Dublin.
Val Roche was a member of the Chilean Solidarity Group and the Student Christian Movement at Trinity College Dublin at the time. As well as recollecting the incident with the Special Branch garda, Roche remembers some other odd constrictions imposed on the Chileans.
“All of them were made to pledge and promise to have no contact with [Irish] political parties, ” remembers Roche. “They had an extremely difficult time in Ireland, the most difficult time.”
Furthermore, vital language and support structures were not in place for them, says Roche. She also clearly recalls that the communication supporters of the Chileans received at the time from State officials was one of ‘stay quiet about the situation in Chile or no more refugees will be admitted’. “The two were always linked, ” she says.
“They were real working class guys, real ordinary people… trade unionists, rank and file members of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party,” recalls Andy Pollak, a former Irish Times journalist and also a member of the Chile Solidarity Group at that time. “And here they were in this strange country which had no experience of receiving refugees.”
Pollak says he was “not conscious” of any harassment of the Chileans by State officials, but concedes that the Ireland of the time was “a bit ignorant” of their plight. “People didn’t know about the far side of the world. There was, I would say, understandable ignorance, ” he says.
A few of the Chileans got scholarships to universities in Ireland but, by and large, life was “rough” for them, remembers Pollak. The school-going Chileans were sometimes subject to playground taunts such as ‘Chile Willies’ and the like.
Pollak “didn’t push it” when it came to finding out the brutality they had faced in Chile, but when his Chilean friends did open up “it was terrifying stuff”, he recalls.
Madge Carberry, another Irish supporter of the Chileans, says her most vivid memory of them is the sadness they felt at having to leave their homes so suddenly. “The Irish went overseas by choice but they [the Chileans] were forced to leave, and there was real sadness there. I also remember their music… music was central to their existence, ” says Carberry. She noticed a fear in the Chileans, a feeling that they were always nervous about whom exactly they were speaking to.
Most of the refugees returned to Chile after Pinochet departed in 1990, according to their supporters, while others had already left for countries with Chilean populations. According to a paper by Claire Healy published last year by the Society for Irish Latin American Studies, “very few of the 120 or so Chilean refugees who arrived in Ireland in the early 1970s remain in the country. They experienced serious difficulties in finding employment in Ireland due to a lack of targeted language or training programmes to facilitate their integration into the labour market. In the late 1980s, the Chilean government announced an amnesty for Chileans abroad who had been exiled by the coup, and many of the refugees returned.”
Healy also stated: “Little is known about the daily lives and achievements of the group during their residence in Ireland. Some are known to have continued third-level studies at Trinity College in Dublin. One Chilean refugee, Maite Deiber, whose husband had been arrested and 'disappeared' during the unrest in Chile, went on to become conductor of the Trinity College Singers in Dublin in 1978.”
Today, is it speculated that a small proportion of the Chilean refugees remain. Enrique and Nancy Diaz, who were based in Shannon, were perhaps the most well known of the refugees – Enrique in particular was a vocal presence on Latin American issues. They were still living in Shannon up to two years ago but the latest news, stated by two people acquainted with them, is that they have returned to their native land. Their home phone number in Shannon is now out of service. “They were always terribly homesick,” one supporter commented.
* * *
IN THE burgeoning town of Leixlip, Co Kildare, not far from the railway station, Mauricio Aravena lives in a new estate with his wife Natalia and three children, Claudia (9), Ricardo (20) and Aryery (21). Mauricio is from Chile; his wife from Nicaragua. The household is bilingual, with Spanish and English drifting through the rooms (mainly Spanish, if truth be told). The youngest, Claudia, is also learning Irish at school.
Mauricio’s neighbours in the estate include Eastern Europeans and Africans – people who came to Ireland to earn better money and make a more stable life for themselves. They probably look at Mauricio Aravena and deliver a similar judgement. But his story is different. Friends sometimes tell the thoughtful and jovial Chilean – known by his nickname ‘Memo’ –that he should write a book about his extraordinary journey to Ireland. A family man and chef at a well-known Dublin hotel, Mauricio doesn’t know where he’d find the time.
“Bloody hell, it was cold – and raining. Oh God,” says Mauricio, his hand clasping his face, “I couldn’t believe the way it was so cold.” It was May 1974, and Mauricio was 12 years old. He had just disembarked a KLM flight from Holland at Dublin Airport, alongside his parents Eduardo and Ruth, and siblings Eduardo, Patty, Alvaro and Claudia. Their journey had begun in Chile, their native land, the country they loved. They stood on the rain-swept airport tarmac with no suitcases. It was dark. Eduardo senior had no more than $50 in his pocket.
General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial coup in Chile in 1973 changed everything for the Aravena family – and for thousands more who never lived to tell their story. At least 1,000 people were executed during the first six months of Pinochet’s reign, which lasted until 1990. Mauricio’s father Eduardo was a member of the Communist Party, so for him Pinochet in power meant only one thing – stay and you die. The regime had brutal consequences in store for those who espoused the communist, socialist model.
“We just left suddenly like everyone else, like everyone who was involved in [leftist] politics at the time… My father didn’t want to leave Chile. He didn’t do nothing [wrong] – he was just a member of the Communist Party,” recalls Mauricio.
Eduardo senior went into hiding for three or four months before eventually fleeing Chile with his family. The army regularly came to the family home in Lanares, 305km south of Santiago, demanding to know where Eduardo Aravena was.
“They were looking for him. They used to come to the house – the army – every day, looking for him, looking for anything. They knew he was a member of the Communist Party. They couldn’t find anything so they started pressurising my brother – the eldest one – and my mother. My eldest brother suffered a lot. He was 15 and the army used to come to the house and put the gun to his head, asking about my father. It was tough, it was tough.”
The Aravenas were among the 12 Chilean refugee families accepted into Ireland by the Government – despite its reluctance – in 1974. Mauricio’s first few weeks in Ireland were a touch bizarre. “They put us in this big house [in Lucan],” he remembers, “where there were refugees from Northern Ireland as well.”
With no English, and no knowledge of Ireland, the family were ‘culture shocked’. Soon afterwards, along with other Chilean families, they were moved to Shannon in Co Clare.
Seventies Ireland – especially the West of Ireland – was a vastly different place to today; the country was poor and newcomers were rare. “People would see you and think ‘Jesus, where do you come from?’ because, you know, we were a little bit darker and they didn’t know where Chile was,” says Mauricio.
As the teenage Chileans settled in, some attracted attention in the discos – their more fluid way of dancing and exotic accents evoking a certain jealously, perhaps, in their Irish male counterparts. All in all, though, Mauricio recalls gaining a level of acceptance through common interests such as football, although he concurs with Andy Pollak’s recollection of the ‘Chile Willy’ playground taunt aimed at some of the younger Chileans. “That’s true,” he says, the ridiculousness of the taunt eliciting a brief chuckle.
Undoubtedly, the toughest battles were for his parents’ generation. “For them it was the hardest,” he says. “It was Ireland in the 1970s – there were no jobs.” His father did a course with Anco (now Fas), but the national unemployment situation meant that he, like so many of the Irish, emigrated to England for a time in order to find work.
“My mum, she suffered a lot,” adds Mauricio. “We were five kids and we didn’t even have a washing machine, for example. She has to wash all the clothes in the bath by hand. I used to look at her, and think ‘Jesus, you know, we are in Europe…’ It would take two days to wash the clothes and you’d put it out to dry and it would always be raining. She really, really suffered, the same as my father. But she was a fighter – they both were.”
The family later moved to Dublin, first living in a two-room ‘house’ in East Wall and then a two-bedroom house on Home Farm Road in Drumcondra. Mauricio repeated his Leaving Cert at O’Connell School, hoping to gain a place at university, but didn’t achieve the required points tally. He subsequently undertook a welding course, and later trained as a chef.
Mauricio’s parents didn’t stick around in Ireland for long, emigrating to Nicaragua, and by the mid-1990s they had returned to Chile, where they now live on an idyllic farm retreat, north of Santiago. “They are very happy to be back,” says Mauricio, “and I’m glad they went back.”
Ireland’s unemployment predicament also impacted on Mauricio, who emigrated to London in search of work in the 1980s, and then on to Nicaragua, where he met his wife Natalia.
The economic situation in Nicaragua was “pretty bad” so Mauricio – who is a naturalised Irish citizen – decided to bring his family to Ireland. He returned here in 1999. “I am more close to Ireland than to England,” he explains. “At least here I have friends – I have a good friend, an Irish guy, we went to school together.”
The changed, multicultural population in Ireland impresses him, and despite the rain, Mauricio refers to parts of Ireland as “beautiful”. Mauricio’s aim, however, is to return to Chile. “All of my roots and dreams are in Nicaragua or Chile,” he explains.
His teenage years in Chile were “stolen” from him, but he knows it could have been much worse. Despite the trauma of their separation from Chile, the Aravenas are alive and well: three of Mauricio’s siblings still live in Ireland, one in Costa Rica, while his parents are happily living back in their homeland.
Sometimes, says Mauricio, he sits down and cannot believe he is still in Europe. A miniature Chilean football kit hangs from his car’s side mirror; Chilean magnets adorn the family’s fridge. Home is where the heart is.
“I will go back and see if I can be a Chilean once again,” he says. “When I go to Chile [on holidays] I don’t feel Chilean. They know right away that you are an exile because the accent is different: ‘Ah you live in Europe, you have money, you speak English, wow’. If you speak English in Latin America they think you are up in the sky.
“Maybe in five years I will go back. My heart is in Chile – always, since ’74.”
Despite support from numerous Irish people, many of the Chileans who gained refuge here in the 1970s were treated with varying degrees of suspicion, despite the horrific circumstances from which they had fled. In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet seized control of Chile following a military coup in which the country’s elected Socialist President, Salvador Allende, was ousted. As well as closing down the Chilean parliament and banning all trade union activity, Pinochet ordered the murder of thousands of Allende’s supporters. Many of the tortures and killings were carried out in the National Football Stadium in Santiago. As a result, thousands of Chileans fled the country. Those not located were simply known as ‘the disappeared’.
Irish Government papers released in 2005 under the 30-year rule reveal that the Department of Justice in Ireland, and its then Minister Patrick Cooney, held major reservations about accepting any Chilean refugees at the time. The left-wing tendencies of the Chileans were viewed with extreme suspicion by the department, and Minister Cooney even feared that they would form links with the IRA.
Cooney wrote in a letter to the Minister for Foreign Affairs in February 1974: “Our society is less cosmopolitan than that of West European countries generally... the absorption of even a limited number of foreigners of this kind could prove extremely difficult.”
He added: “The indications seem to be that they (or, at all events, many of them) are refugees because they are Marxists and probably communists and it is to be assumed that a significant proportion of their number are ‘activists’.
“It would be reasonable to assume that if they have been political militants they will not change their outlook on arrival in this country and that they are liable sooner or later to engage in political agitation here. There would be no effective sanction against such a person – deportation would not be possible. ”
However, the Department of Foreign Affairs pushed for their entry into the country, and in 1974, 12 Chilean families were given sanctuary in Ireland. They were mainly dispersed between Shannon, Waterford, Galway and Dublin.
Val Roche was a member of the Chilean Solidarity Group and the Student Christian Movement at Trinity College Dublin at the time. As well as recollecting the incident with the Special Branch garda, Roche remembers some other odd constrictions imposed on the Chileans.
“All of them were made to pledge and promise to have no contact with [Irish] political parties, ” remembers Roche. “They had an extremely difficult time in Ireland, the most difficult time.”
Furthermore, vital language and support structures were not in place for them, says Roche. She also clearly recalls that the communication supporters of the Chileans received at the time from State officials was one of ‘stay quiet about the situation in Chile or no more refugees will be admitted’. “The two were always linked, ” she says.
“They were real working class guys, real ordinary people… trade unionists, rank and file members of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party,” recalls Andy Pollak, a former Irish Times journalist and also a member of the Chile Solidarity Group at that time. “And here they were in this strange country which had no experience of receiving refugees.”
Pollak says he was “not conscious” of any harassment of the Chileans by State officials, but concedes that the Ireland of the time was “a bit ignorant” of their plight. “People didn’t know about the far side of the world. There was, I would say, understandable ignorance, ” he says.
A few of the Chileans got scholarships to universities in Ireland but, by and large, life was “rough” for them, remembers Pollak. The school-going Chileans were sometimes subject to playground taunts such as ‘Chile Willies’ and the like.
Pollak “didn’t push it” when it came to finding out the brutality they had faced in Chile, but when his Chilean friends did open up “it was terrifying stuff”, he recalls.
Madge Carberry, another Irish supporter of the Chileans, says her most vivid memory of them is the sadness they felt at having to leave their homes so suddenly. “The Irish went overseas by choice but they [the Chileans] were forced to leave, and there was real sadness there. I also remember their music… music was central to their existence, ” says Carberry. She noticed a fear in the Chileans, a feeling that they were always nervous about whom exactly they were speaking to.
Most of the refugees returned to Chile after Pinochet departed in 1990, according to their supporters, while others had already left for countries with Chilean populations. According to a paper by Claire Healy published last year by the Society for Irish Latin American Studies, “very few of the 120 or so Chilean refugees who arrived in Ireland in the early 1970s remain in the country. They experienced serious difficulties in finding employment in Ireland due to a lack of targeted language or training programmes to facilitate their integration into the labour market. In the late 1980s, the Chilean government announced an amnesty for Chileans abroad who had been exiled by the coup, and many of the refugees returned.”
Healy also stated: “Little is known about the daily lives and achievements of the group during their residence in Ireland. Some are known to have continued third-level studies at Trinity College in Dublin. One Chilean refugee, Maite Deiber, whose husband had been arrested and 'disappeared' during the unrest in Chile, went on to become conductor of the Trinity College Singers in Dublin in 1978.”
Today, is it speculated that a small proportion of the Chilean refugees remain. Enrique and Nancy Diaz, who were based in Shannon, were perhaps the most well known of the refugees – Enrique in particular was a vocal presence on Latin American issues. They were still living in Shannon up to two years ago but the latest news, stated by two people acquainted with them, is that they have returned to their native land. Their home phone number in Shannon is now out of service. “They were always terribly homesick,” one supporter commented.
* * *
IN THE burgeoning town of Leixlip, Co Kildare, not far from the railway station, Mauricio Aravena lives in a new estate with his wife Natalia and three children, Claudia (9), Ricardo (20) and Aryery (21). Mauricio is from Chile; his wife from Nicaragua. The household is bilingual, with Spanish and English drifting through the rooms (mainly Spanish, if truth be told). The youngest, Claudia, is also learning Irish at school.
Mauricio’s neighbours in the estate include Eastern Europeans and Africans – people who came to Ireland to earn better money and make a more stable life for themselves. They probably look at Mauricio Aravena and deliver a similar judgement. But his story is different. Friends sometimes tell the thoughtful and jovial Chilean – known by his nickname ‘Memo’ –that he should write a book about his extraordinary journey to Ireland. A family man and chef at a well-known Dublin hotel, Mauricio doesn’t know where he’d find the time.
“Bloody hell, it was cold – and raining. Oh God,” says Mauricio, his hand clasping his face, “I couldn’t believe the way it was so cold.” It was May 1974, and Mauricio was 12 years old. He had just disembarked a KLM flight from Holland at Dublin Airport, alongside his parents Eduardo and Ruth, and siblings Eduardo, Patty, Alvaro and Claudia. Their journey had begun in Chile, their native land, the country they loved. They stood on the rain-swept airport tarmac with no suitcases. It was dark. Eduardo senior had no more than $50 in his pocket.
General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial coup in Chile in 1973 changed everything for the Aravena family – and for thousands more who never lived to tell their story. At least 1,000 people were executed during the first six months of Pinochet’s reign, which lasted until 1990. Mauricio’s father Eduardo was a member of the Communist Party, so for him Pinochet in power meant only one thing – stay and you die. The regime had brutal consequences in store for those who espoused the communist, socialist model.
“We just left suddenly like everyone else, like everyone who was involved in [leftist] politics at the time… My father didn’t want to leave Chile. He didn’t do nothing [wrong] – he was just a member of the Communist Party,” recalls Mauricio.
Eduardo senior went into hiding for three or four months before eventually fleeing Chile with his family. The army regularly came to the family home in Lanares, 305km south of Santiago, demanding to know where Eduardo Aravena was.
“They were looking for him. They used to come to the house – the army – every day, looking for him, looking for anything. They knew he was a member of the Communist Party. They couldn’t find anything so they started pressurising my brother – the eldest one – and my mother. My eldest brother suffered a lot. He was 15 and the army used to come to the house and put the gun to his head, asking about my father. It was tough, it was tough.”
The Aravenas were among the 12 Chilean refugee families accepted into Ireland by the Government – despite its reluctance – in 1974. Mauricio’s first few weeks in Ireland were a touch bizarre. “They put us in this big house [in Lucan],” he remembers, “where there were refugees from Northern Ireland as well.”
With no English, and no knowledge of Ireland, the family were ‘culture shocked’. Soon afterwards, along with other Chilean families, they were moved to Shannon in Co Clare.
Seventies Ireland – especially the West of Ireland – was a vastly different place to today; the country was poor and newcomers were rare. “People would see you and think ‘Jesus, where do you come from?’ because, you know, we were a little bit darker and they didn’t know where Chile was,” says Mauricio.
As the teenage Chileans settled in, some attracted attention in the discos – their more fluid way of dancing and exotic accents evoking a certain jealously, perhaps, in their Irish male counterparts. All in all, though, Mauricio recalls gaining a level of acceptance through common interests such as football, although he concurs with Andy Pollak’s recollection of the ‘Chile Willy’ playground taunt aimed at some of the younger Chileans. “That’s true,” he says, the ridiculousness of the taunt eliciting a brief chuckle.
Undoubtedly, the toughest battles were for his parents’ generation. “For them it was the hardest,” he says. “It was Ireland in the 1970s – there were no jobs.” His father did a course with Anco (now Fas), but the national unemployment situation meant that he, like so many of the Irish, emigrated to England for a time in order to find work.
“My mum, she suffered a lot,” adds Mauricio. “We were five kids and we didn’t even have a washing machine, for example. She has to wash all the clothes in the bath by hand. I used to look at her, and think ‘Jesus, you know, we are in Europe…’ It would take two days to wash the clothes and you’d put it out to dry and it would always be raining. She really, really suffered, the same as my father. But she was a fighter – they both were.”
The family later moved to Dublin, first living in a two-room ‘house’ in East Wall and then a two-bedroom house on Home Farm Road in Drumcondra. Mauricio repeated his Leaving Cert at O’Connell School, hoping to gain a place at university, but didn’t achieve the required points tally. He subsequently undertook a welding course, and later trained as a chef.
Mauricio’s parents didn’t stick around in Ireland for long, emigrating to Nicaragua, and by the mid-1990s they had returned to Chile, where they now live on an idyllic farm retreat, north of Santiago. “They are very happy to be back,” says Mauricio, “and I’m glad they went back.”
Ireland’s unemployment predicament also impacted on Mauricio, who emigrated to London in search of work in the 1980s, and then on to Nicaragua, where he met his wife Natalia.
The economic situation in Nicaragua was “pretty bad” so Mauricio – who is a naturalised Irish citizen – decided to bring his family to Ireland. He returned here in 1999. “I am more close to Ireland than to England,” he explains. “At least here I have friends – I have a good friend, an Irish guy, we went to school together.”
The changed, multicultural population in Ireland impresses him, and despite the rain, Mauricio refers to parts of Ireland as “beautiful”. Mauricio’s aim, however, is to return to Chile. “All of my roots and dreams are in Nicaragua or Chile,” he explains.
His teenage years in Chile were “stolen” from him, but he knows it could have been much worse. Despite the trauma of their separation from Chile, the Aravenas are alive and well: three of Mauricio’s siblings still live in Ireland, one in Costa Rica, while his parents are happily living back in their homeland.
Sometimes, says Mauricio, he sits down and cannot believe he is still in Europe. A miniature Chilean football kit hangs from his car’s side mirror; Chilean magnets adorn the family’s fridge. Home is where the heart is.
“I will go back and see if I can be a Chilean once again,” he says. “When I go to Chile [on holidays] I don’t feel Chilean. They know right away that you are an exile because the accent is different: ‘Ah you live in Europe, you have money, you speak English, wow’. If you speak English in Latin America they think you are up in the sky.
“Maybe in five years I will go back. My heart is in Chile – always, since ’74.”
