Remembering the Chilean solidarity campaign in Australia: Convivial and conflicting memories of activism

Abstract

In this article, I analyse the memories of the Solidarity Campaign among Chilean exiles in Australia from a dialogical perspective. I argue that dialogic remembering involves taking a position and answering to other voices that populate a mnemonic field, and that the positions in this dialogue are shaped by sociohistorical contexts. I explore this by drawing on data from my research about the memory of the Chilean dictatorship among Chilean exiles in Australia, where I conducted and analysed 46 in-depth interviews with first- and second-generation exiles who arrived in Australia as part of two different waves of migration (1973–1978 and 1983–1990). The findings suggest two major tendencies in the memories of the Solidarity Campaign that reflect different facets of polyphony and dialogue: the memories of conviviality and the memories of political divisions and conflicts, which shape the memories of the Campaign as an ambivalent topic and challenge monological notions of identity and solidarity.

On 11 September 1973, the left-wing government led by the socialist president Salvador Allende, the candidate of the Unidad Popular [Popular Unity], was overthrown by a civil-military coup d’état. On that day, the air forces bombed the governmental palace, La Moneda, and Allende died. The military junta designated Augusto Pinochet as the new president, thus inaugurating almost 17 years of an authoritarian right-wing dictatorship that was characterised by structural transformations and systematic human rights violations. On the one hand, the structural changes paved the way for the neoliberal economy that still shapes everyday life in the post-dictatorship years (Araujo, 2019). On the other, human rights violations included the execution (Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación, 1991), torture and imprisonment (Comisión Nacional Sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, 2004) of political dissidents and members of left-wing parties, which produced a generalised climate of fear and threat (Lira and Castillo, 1991). Moreover, many workers were exonerated and banned from factories due to their political orientation. In this context of violence and vital uncertainty, thousands of Chileans were forced to migrate overseas and became political exiles.

This article focuses on the case of the Chilean exiles in Australia. More than 20,000 Chileans migrated to Australia between 1973 and 1990 (Kuhnel et al., 2019), in a process that was facilitated by the organisation of Australian workers’ unions (Jones, 2014) and by the centre-left Labour governments (Mártin-Montenegro, 2004). More specifically, exiles arrived in Australia in two different ‘waves’. The first one took place between 1973 and 1978, when more than 8000 Chileans arrived in Australia following the coup in Chile. From 1978 to 1983, only 2200 Chileans were admitted to Australia during the centre-right government of Malcolm Fraser. With the return of the Labour Party in 1983, the second wave of exiles arrived, and more than 10,000 Chileans entered Australia between 1983 and 1990. The distinction between the two waves is a relevant antecedent for the findings of this article, as interviewees of my study distinguished between the waves due to their political differences, a phenomenon that has also been noted by historians and documented in some testimonies of exiles (Jones, 2014; Mártin-Montenegro, 1994; Ramirez and Austin, 2008).

Despite these differences, exiles successfully coordinated with unions, political parties and other grassroots activists to denounce the dictatorship (Jones, 2014) as part of the international Chilean Solidarity Campaign. The Campaign was characterised by coordinated actions in different countries to create international pressure to condemn the dictatorship (Jones, 2014; Livingstone, 2020; Mártin-Montenegro, 1994). Some of these included demonstrations and rallies to denounce human rights violations, social activities to raise funds for political organisations in Chile, political lobbying and boycotting Chilean products. The Solidarity Campaign had a significant impact on the foreign policies of countries and on the creation of international mechanisms to monitor human rights (Livingstone, 2020). In Australia, the Campaign was articulated by multiple local solidarity committees in different cities, which, most of the time, included the participation of Chileans, Australian workers and politicians and people from other nationalities that were interested in collaborating. These years of cooperation in the Campaign, as well as the different waves of Chilean migration throughout the dictatorial years, shape the memories of activism that I examine.

Memory studies about Chilean exiles

Chilean sociologist Cristián Doña-Reveco (2020; see also Schrama, 2019) argues that Chile has yet to come to terms with its history of exile during the dictatorship, as exiles have been excluded from Chilean social memory and the post-dictatorial narrative of reconciliation (Loveman and Lira, 2007). This is noticeable in, for example, how exile was not considered in the Valech and Rettig reports ¹ (Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación, 1991; Comisión Nacional Sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, 2004) or in the hostility of Chilean left-wingers towards exiles, perceived as comrades who fled (Rebolledo and Acuña, 2001).

During the dictatorship, thousands of Chileans went into exile. Some estimate between 400,000 and 600,000 (Cornejo, 2008), whereas others write about 800,000 to 1,000,000 people (Shayne, 2009; Wright and Montupil, 1995). Chileans migrated to multiple countries, which configured their experiences of exile differently (Rojas Mira and Santoni, 2013). Research highlights the emotional difficulties of exiles (Munoz, 1980), especially regarding the uncertainty of their return to Chile (Hirsch, 2012; Shayne, 2009) and having to make the difficult decision to remain overseas. In this context, exiles and their families had to reshape their lives and identities (Cornejo, 2008; Kay, 1987) and mobilise different political strategies with diverse people in their host countries (Simalchik, 2006). In addition, challenges to traditional gender roles became more salient, which led to changes in the ways of doing political work (Hirsch, 2012). Women assumed more leadership roles in activism, and their contributions were vital in articulating political resistance (Shayne, 2009). Furthermore, research shows that the sons and daughters of exiles, the second generation, challenged the first generation’s conventional conceptions of activism, which led to novel approaches (Paul, 2023; Ramírez, 2012) and formed different experiences and memories of activism (Serpente, 2015). Finally, many exiles returned to Chile after the end of the dictatorship. However, Chile had been idealised in exile, and the country that the returnees encountered was immensely different, which was a shocking and difficult experience (Calandra, 2013; Doña-Reveco, 2020; Hirsch, 2012; Rebolledo and Acuña, 2001).

In memory studies, the case of Chilean exiles in Australia has been underexplored. There has been research on Latin American communities in Australia, touching upon settlement experiences (Abascal, 2021; Rodriguez Castro and Muraca, 2022), south-south connections (Peñaloza and Walsh, 2019), among other topics. Research about the Chilean case has focused on creating collections of personal narratives (Embassy of Chile (Australia), 2005; Parada, 2013) and historical investigations about the Solidarity Campaign (Jones, 2014; Mártin-Montenegro, 1994) that highlight exiles’ political strategies, such as using music as a tool to reach to the broader Australian and Latin American communities (Ross, 2019). There is also work on left-wing exiles’ public commemoration of the coup in 2003 (Nguyen, 2005), which shows how trauma, nostalgia and pride shape left-wingers’ commemoration practices. Even though there is research on the memories of activism among Chilean exiles in Australia, the meanings, emotions and other subjective dimensions that shape the memories of activism have not been explored in depth in the Australian context, as well as how the commonalities and differences among exiles shape their memories of activism.

A dialogical approach to memory

This article seeks to contribute to the existing literature by analysing the memories of activism of Chilean exiles using theories of dialogue and dialogicality. Such an approach is useful to examine the subjective dimensions of memory and the diversity within social groups, as it understands mnemonic practices as acts of positioning in response to other people’s voices (Haye, 2012). The dialogical approach I take in this article is based on the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Valentin Vološinov, who largely discussed the inseparability of language or discourse and sociocultural contexts (Bakhtin, 1986; Vološinov, 1973). They present a concept of culture that challenges uniform or ‘monological’ notions (Haye and González, 2021), or what Astrid Erll (2011) conceptualises as ‘container-culture’. As Erll (2011) argues, there has been a tendency in memory studies to conceive groups and communities as presenting a singular or well-defined mnemonic culture, and this is probably due to debatable interpretations of Halbwachs’ work (c.f. Gensburger, 2016; Villarroel and Riveros, 2025). In this sense, it could be easy to view Chilean exiles, who were all grouped together as left-wing activists that resisted and protested Pinochet’s dictatorship, as a politically and ideologically coherent social group. However, a dialogical approach invites us to think of the diversity and plurality within instead of defining groups as representing a singular and coherent set of traditions and values. Bakhtin’s (1984) concept of polyphony is key in this regard, as it emphasises how plural and multiple voices dialogue with each other without producing a coherent or contained whole.

Even though, as far as we know, Halbwachs did not read Bakhtin’s and Vološinov’s works, I consider that their ideas dialogue well with each other (c.f. Villarroel and Riveros, 2025). Halbwachs’ (1992) concept of collective memory posits that we selectively reconstruct the past with the aid of social frameworks or currents of social thought. Moreover, Halbwachs argued that discourse plays a central role in remembering, as to discourse about the past ‘means to connect within a single system of ideas our opinions as well as those of our circle’ (Halbwachs, 1992: 53). As Halbwachs (1992) observed, we are never alone when we remember as the members of the social groups in which we participate shape our ways of thinking about the past. A dialogical approach would add to this idea that remembering involves responding to the people from our social groups. Furthermore, such responses are not necessarily in agreement, as we can dissent and position ourselves differently, re-accentuating (Bakhtin, 1986) or changing the ideological orientations of other people’s voices when answering to them. Taking a position means that remembering is not merely intellectual or cognitive but is shaped by emotions that configure the significance of the past in the present (Campbell, 2006).

Halbwachs (1992) argued that it is not possible to remember without discoursing about the past, although he did not elaborate a concept of discourse in his works (Villarroel, 2026). Thus, Bakhtin’s and Vološinov’s concepts become relevant to think about the relationship between memory and discourse. Discourse includes both verbal and extraverbal components, articulating linguistic, embodied, social, cultural and historical dimensions of experience (Bakhtin, 1986; Vološinov, 1973). Vološinov (1973) argues that signs and words emerge from, and orient, the practices of social communication and the ways of life of social groups. However, words are not univocal, as multiple social groups use the same words with different ideological interests. This means that words are not transparent and rigid, for they are configured by values, voices and histories of social interactions that shape their multiaccentuality (Vološinov, 1973), that is, their capacity to have multiple meanings. Bakhtin (1986) poses a similar argument, arguing that our speech is populated by the words of people from social groups. Due to processes of assimilating and responding to others, our words have ‘varying degrees of otherness’ or varying degrees of ‘our-own-ness’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 89). However, internalising other people’s words does not mean that their otherness is erased but that our relationship with their words changes. These ideas are relevant to rethinking memory as they allow us to conceptualise remembering as positioning in an evolving social and historical field (Badilla Rajevic, 2017; Haye, 2012) populated by the voices, ideas and opinions of other people that configure but not determine the act of remembrance. Furthermore, a dialogical concept of discourse allows us to understand that memory is more than the mere repetition of social frameworks (Rigney, 2018a), as answering to other people’s voices opens the possibility of novelty, creativity and dissent in response to currents of social thought.

We can operationalise this dialogical approach by considering how remembering in concrete instances, whether it is in an interview or when writing a testimony, articulates different layers of dialogue. The first layer consists of the immediate situation (for instance, the interview itself): of answering a question or a prompt from a researcher or immediate listener. The second layer involves engaging in a dialogue with the voices of other people that populate and shape the meaning of the different events or processes being remembered. The third layer involves engaging in a reflective dialogue with one’s own memories and previous positions (c.f. Robbe et al., 2025), developing a different position in the present with respect to the past, and more layers can be considered (c.f. Haye et al., 2018). Hence, remembering is not a static representation of the past but a dynamic process of positioning (Cornejo et al., 2018) and engaging, on multiple levels, with the words of other people and with our previous selves.

Methodology

The data I draw on is based on my doctoral research with Chilean exiles in Australia (Villarroel Guerra, 2024), where I conducted interviews with participants from Canberra, Sydney and broader New South Wales, Melbourne and Brisbane. The research followed a qualitative design and included fieldwork between 2020 and 2022, the year after the Chilean social uprising of 2019 and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The social uprising of 2019, or Estallido Social, refers to a series of demonstrations and protests throughout Chile during October 2019 and months after. The protests addressed issues of inequality and demanded better pensions, free health and education, justice for Indigenous people, among other issues. These protests were brutally repressed by the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera, leaving hundreds severely wounded, mutilated and even dead (United Nations Human Rights (OHCHR), 2019). Given these events, there were demonstrations in many different countries in solidarity with the people protesting in Chile, including Australia. As I was participating in these demonstrations, I had the chance to meet some exiles, their children and grandchildren, and I invited them to an interview as part of my doctoral research. In addition, I recruited participants with the help of academics and other members of the Chilean community.

Initially, the criteria to recruit participants considered generations, understood as exiles (first generation) and their children (second generation), and gender. However, throughout the process of collecting data, the notion of ‘waves’ of exile became increasingly relevant, which is why it was included as an emergent sampling criterion in the study. Even though the intergenerational dimension was relevant in the design, in this article I focus on the differences between waves of exiles. I conducted 46 interviews in total, with 28 participants from the first generation and 18 from the second. In terms of gender, 24 participants identified as male and 22 as female. Regarding the year of migration, of the 28 first-generation participants, 13 arrived during the first wave (1973–1978) and 15 during the second (1983–1990). Of the 18 children, 10 had parents that migrated during the first wave, and 8 had parents that migrated during the second.

I invited each participant to an individual interview to talk about their memories of the dictatorship ² . To trace Chilean exiles’ diverse positions, I drew inspiration from Marcela Cornejo’s approach to life stories (Cornejo et al., 2008; Cornejo et al., 2018). This flexible and open-ended mode of interviewing allows participants to control the pace and rhythm of their narrative, shaping their story in their own words and with little direction from the interviewer. I listened, followed the participants’ speech, and asked questions to understand details and explore the spatial, temporal, interpersonal and emotional dimensions of their experiences. The analysis considered verbal and extraverbal dimensions of discourse (Vološinov, 1976); the former including words and explicitly articulated utterances, the latter including different dimensions that provide the ground for interpreting discourse (Briggs, 1986). More specifically, I attended to two extraverbal components: contextualisation and stylistics. According to Charles Briggs (1986), contexts are made in the ongoing interaction and are not static features ‘outside’ of discourse. I operationalised contextualisation practices as the multiple ways in which participants situated themselves and presented the voices of other people through narrative and storytelling devices. One relevant device throughout the analysis was the use of referred discourse (Vološinov, 1973), which allowed participants to position themselves and respond to other people’s perspectives by quoting or paraphrasing their words. I operationalised the second dimension, stylistics, attending to tone, gestures and bodily movements, which were interpreted as participants’ evaluative and emotional reactions when discoursing about the past. Considering verbal and extraverbal discourse, the analysis allows exploring the participants’ positions and interpreting the overall meaning of their utterances. The interviews were transcribed, individually coded and analysed to identify emerging patterns of commonality and difference among interviewees (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Polyphonic memories of the Chilean Solidarity Campaign

Participants raised many topics during the interviews, and a common theme was the Solidarity Campaign, which included formal political organisation and community relationships that helped newly arrived Chileans feel safe and face the challenges associated with migration. As mentioned above, organisation and collaboration with Australian unions were key in developing numerous Chilean solidarity committees across the country (Jones, 2014). Different interviewees fondly remembered the solidarity and friendliness that other Chilean exiles showed towards them when they arrived, and at the same time, they remembered the conflicts and divisiveness within the Chilean community.

Memories of conviviality in Australia

I use the term conviviality in the sense of convivencia, which emphasises the affective dimensions of a joint or shared life with others, accepting and living with diversity (Duru, 2016). Conviviality is not something given in any social group, but it is produced through everyday practice (Payson, 2018). Therefore, the memories of conviviality of exiles do not highlight specific events but refer to practices that produce conviviality and a sense of belonging (Duru, 2016). In the context of leaving Chile under traumatic and difficult circumstances, these practices had a deep emotional significance for the newly arrived. For example, interviewees from different cities recounted stories of generosity with other exiles helping them with everyday issues in Australia:

We went to the hostel ³ , and people came and brought things for us (. . .) they knew the food was bad, because, I mean, it was not of our taste (. . .) They started to bring oil, sugar (. . .) They brought us a portable stove, ‘if you want to cook something’. The people in Adelaide behaved really really really well (F, G1, 70+, FW3⁴).

The interviewee reflected on the relevance of this welcoming for her and her family. The use of referred discourse in the words ‘if you want to cook something’ reflects how the voices of other community members shape this memory, and the positive evaluation of this is reinforced in the repetition that Chileans in Adelaide behaved ‘really well’. Another participant who arrived in the late 1980s reflected on a similar topic:

At that time, the Chilean Association was organised here (. . .), and they, for example, immediately invited us to their things (. . .), so it was good; the transition was not like we were desolated. In fact, one of them told us, ‘Come to my house’ because everyone had donated plates, knives, spoons. We went to get what we needed (F, G1, 50+, SW4).

In this case, the quote reflects how the Chilean Association, one of the Chilean solidarity committees in Sydney, were welcoming and attentive when receiving the newly arrived exiles, which helped with the transition to Australia. Like in the previous excerpt, this participant also refers to the discourse of others that helped her and her family, particularly in the phrase ‘come to my house’, which reflects the generosity of others that opened their doors to the newly arrived. The quote also emphasises positive emotions, with expressions like ‘it was good’ and ‘not being desolated’.

As mentioned, the Solidarity Campaign involved organising activities and rallies to raise awareness of the dictatorship. In organising these events, Chilean exiles met regularly, developing bonds and comradeship. In this context, the memories of children that accompanied their parents to meetings and demonstrations illuminate a different dimension of the memories of conviviality. Rather than focusing on the political, children that participated in events remembered these occasions as times in which they shared and had fun with other Chilean children, developing a sense of community:

Sometimes, on Friday nights, I just went with my dad or mum. They went to the meetings, and I played with all the other kids outside (laughter), on the street, wherever. We got together and, for me, the weekend was the best time of the week. I loved being with the Chileans (F, G2, 40+, FW2 daughter).

For this participant and many other children, political meetings were instances to play and socialise with children who understood them as they were going through similar life situations. This is not to say that there was not tension or conflict in the memories of the children of exiles but that a salient pattern was how they emphasised the meetings and demonstrations as joyful instances. This is notable in the following excerpt: ‘The childhood that we had was beautiful. It was very uniting to have that Chilean community because I really (pauses), I really did not feel understood in my school’ (F, G2, 40 +, FW2 daughter). This is similar to the words of another participant, who stated that participating in events and protests was a way to share with others who ‘had similar situations like us, they were exiled, they were in Australia (. . .) also fighting for things that happened in their countries’ (F, G2, 30 +, SW12 daughter). Notably, from the perspective of being children accompanying their parents, they also expressed happiness in not feeling desolated, which resembles the memories of conviviality from the perspective of adults. These accounts suggest that positive emotions shape these memories and that feeling ‘understood’ and part of a community are relevant dimensions when remembering the Solidarity Campaign.

Memories of conviviality emphasise the unity among exiles. Even though interviewees not always cite or directly refer to other people, polyphony is present in these memories in the voices of other members of the community that were welcoming and understanding, shaping relationships of friendliness and comradeship in the struggle against the dictatorship. However, conviviality is not the only dimension of polyphony in the memories of the Solidarity Campaign: there were also tensions, conflict and exclusion among exiles.

Ambivalent memories of divisions in the community

Joyful stories tend to emphasise unity over differences in the Chilean and broader Latin American community. For example, following the historical account of Mártin-Montenegro (1994), Chileans with different political beliefs acted as a united block. He emphasises: ‘The relations of all the parties, including the MIR ⁵ , continued to be friendly on the personal level, and the conflicts were generally solved internally’ (Mártin-Montenegro, 1994: 55). Nevertheless, changes in the political approach to resistance in the 1980s, namely, the legitimation of armed resistance against the dictatorship, caused divisions among Chileans overseas, resulting in disagreements and tensions. It is necessary to situate these tensions in the broader political and historical context of resistance during the dictatorship.

The politics of resistance in the 1980s were different to the politics of political organisation from the 1970s. The 1980s saw, in Chile, a wave of protests and social movements that challenged the dictatorship with the language of human rights (Kelly, 2018). In addition, the 1980s were characterised by expressions of ‘popular political violence’ (Salazar, 2006) in which impoverished sectors of Chilean society started to aggressively confront the police and military on the streets. This phase of resistance saw the emergence of factions that sought to destabilise the dictatorial regime via armed struggle, sabotages, among other organised actions. The most exemplar operation was Pinochet’s assassination attempt in 1986, carried by the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez, which was an armed faction of the Chilean Communist Party. This historical context is relevant to understand the differences between waves of exiles considering that, given the Australian political cycle between Labour and Liberal parties, there was a gap between the first wave of exiles (1973–1978) and the second (1983–1990). The second wave arrived in Australia with the experience of protest and popular rebellion, which generated notable differences with the political repertoires of the first wave of exiles. It is interesting that historian Mártin-Montenegro (1994: 57) explains that these changes in political strategies led to divisions that ‘started to erode the friendly relations that had been achieved in the past’ and that ‘divergent positions were made public, a phenomenon that had not occurred previously’. However, how is it that political differences translate to the erosion of conviviality? How do we explain that different ideas on political organisation led to divisions within the community? Data from my research suggests that the disagreements were not only due to abstract political differences but were characterised by emotional dimensions associated with misrecognition (Thompson and Yar, 2011).

When interviewees remembered instances of conflict and divisions, they positioned and answered to the voices of other exiles. In these memories, polyphony was configured not by voices of support and solidarity but by contrary positions that clashed in disagreement and conflict. For example, some participants that arrived during the first wave referred negatively to the ones that arrived during the second wave:

The clubs practically ended, the Chilean clubs, because (. . .) sadly, people [referring to the second wave] with other mentality arrived, uhm? They thought what we were doing was wrong, that we were stealing the money, this (laughs) and that (M, G1, 70+, FW6).

Notably, in this excerpt, the arrival of people with a ‘different mentality’ is defined by ‘sadness’ in response to the accusations and rebukes made by second-wave exiles. Exploring this topic further, the same interviewee remarked that the newly arrived did not believe in the same political strategies as his and, in his view, were not involved in actual political participation, which can be interpreted as a disapproval to the politics of popular rebellion of the 1980s. Another participant also referred to this issue:

Suddenly, in the 1980s, the second wave of Chileans arrived, and they came with different attitudes than the ones we knew (. . .) They came here lecturing, as we say. That ‘this is what should be done’, and ‘why had not we done this other thing’, and stuff like that; so, we had problems with them (. . .) the people that arrived sort of did not respect the things that had been done here (M, G1, 70+, FW7).

This excerpt shows that there were different ideas of political organisation among the waves of exiles. It also highlights the key issue of disrespect, which touches upon the emotional dimension of these memories and becomes a common topic in the memories of exiles. The same participant added: ‘I remember that we called the second wave . . . we called them the wave of the commanders’ (M, G1, 70+, FW7). The ‘commanders’ is an ironic nickname that can be interpreted as a way of delegitimising the voice of exiles that arrived as part of the second wave. Furthermore, it is notable how the memories of conflict reflect a different use of referred discourse when compared to the memories of conviviality. If convivial memories emphasise the collaboration and kindness of other Chilean voices, the memories of conflict position the voices of others to disagree and delegitimise them.

On the other hand, interviewees that arrived during the second wave viewed the Chilean community as already divided. One interviewee emphasised how party affiliations were prevalent among Chilean exiles in Australia: ‘They were divided. Into people that were from the Communist Party, Socialist Party, I don’t know, Christian Democrats’ (F, G1, 60+, SW1). Furthermore, she suggested that the divisions reached levels that seemed absurd:

Here we should have all worked together, and we could do very little, sadly, because the people that arrived after 1973 came with a rigid way of thinking, it was a thing like ‘ah, no no no! If I am a socialist, I cannot talk with you because you are a communist’. We even had different branches of the Socialist Party, and they did not talk to each other here in Australia! (F, G1, 60+, SW1).

It is notable how, almost as a direct response to interviewees from the first wave, this participant argues that the divisions were already present, and thus, were not produced with the arrival of the second wave. This participant also characterised the conflict as ‘sad’ and used referred discourse to present the voice of other exiles that arrived in the 1970s as the ones that reinforced divisions in the community. She also remembered being excluded from meetings due to her party affiliation, which was ‘a very tough, very, very tough experience’ (F, G1, 60+, SW1). Another participant from the second wave remembered a similar moment of exclusion and recounted the shock he felt when an exile from the first wave, referring to him, said: ‘We do not want politicians that come to destroy the Chilean Club, like that guy [como ese huevón]’ (M, G1, 60+, SW9). These different interviews question the sense of unity within the Chilean community and present a polyphony of different, clashing perspectives of those who disagreed with and sought to delegitimise each other, which is remembered with sadness and frustration.

Political differences between waves of exiles

As mentioned above, there were salient political differences within the Chilean community, especially between the first and second waves of exiles. For example, some second-wave interviewees that were militants of the Communist Party in the 1980s supported the politics of civic insurrection, legitimising social agitation and violence to destabilise Pinochet’s regime. However, they quickly found that ‘older’ exiles had different ideas about political organisation, even though they were from the same political party:

The work was different; it was calmer; the people from the [Communist] Party here were older, post 73, 76, 78, not the party that came with new ideas, as I told you, of the national uprising, the protest. When we arrived talking like that with my sister, of protests and Molotov cocktails and everything, (gasps) it was a disaster, and the [local] people from the party said, ‘no, do not talk about that here because these people are too old’ (F, G1, 50+, SW4).

Another interviewee, who also arrived as part of the second wave, reflected on the same dynamic: ‘Maybe it is a completely different generation than the one that arrived [before]. We came with the idea of the popular rebellion, that we had to strike a blow that would affect change in Chile’ (M, G1, 60+, SW9). These accounts suggest that political differences influenced the relationships between exiles, with a participant suggesting that it could be a generational issue rather than a political one. Even though, technically, the differences between both waves are not generational, the experience of political resistance during the 1980s defined a way of conceiving politics that clashed with the views of the first wave. Additionally, the second wave’s experiences challenged the legitimacy of the first wave, which is illustrated by the words of another interviewee:

Those were the discussions that we had with the people from the left, ‘we lived, you left at the beginning of the dictatorship’, so they didn’t suffer the dictatorship, we did suffer the fear and everything [no se mamaron la dictadura, nosotros sí nos mamamos el miedo y todo]” (F, G1, 60+, SW8).

These excerpts illustrate that the conflicts between exiles shape the memory of the Solidarity Campaign as a dialogue between different positions that challenged each other’s political legitimacy. It is notable how referred discourse is employed in these memories to distinguish oneself from, mock or direct accusations at others. In addition, interviewees’ reflections remind us that political positions and expectations are not defined exclusively by abstract ideologies but by concrete historical experiences of political organisation. According to Milena Belloni (2019), tensions can emerge when migrants leave the same country at different times, which may produce conflicts and ambivalence about home politics. In this sense, the exiles from the first wave left Chile in different circumstances compared to the exiles from the second wave. First-wave exiles had experienced Allende’s government and the Popular Unity as a defining political experience, which was a project of disputing political power through formal political organisation with the horizon of building a socialist country without disrupting Chile’s democratic tradition. Even though this project was violently ended by the coup in 1973, it remained as their key political reference and defined their strategy to organise the Solidarity Campaign in Australia. In contrast, the experience of second-wave exiles was defined by a sense of urgency that they had to take Pinochet out of power. As political parties were forbidden, their tools included clandestine organisation, violent forms of struggle and social agitation. However, as Salazar (2006) argues, the political actions and movements from the 1980s did not translate into a formal sociopolitical project, which may also explain the disagreement between the waves of exiles. However, it is relevant to note that the positions between exiles are not necessarily incompatible, which is why it is relevant to consider the emotional dynamics of misrecognition in the memories of the Solidarity Campaign when understanding the divisions and the erosion of conviviality.

Disrespect and misrecognition

The differences and conflicts among exiles led to struggles for legitimacy and recognition, which were reflected in the issue of disrespect. Participants from the first wave, quoted in previous sections, expressed that the second wave did not respect what they had had done in Australia. Another participant from the second wave reflected on this issue: ‘It was difficult for me to respect the Chileans who arrived here first, but it seems that they did not have the same respect [for us either]’ (M, G1, 60+, SW3). When I asked him more about this, he stated: ‘It is not reciprocal; I mean (. . .) the older people lived other situations, in another context, and I respect them, but what if they do not respect you? Quickly the shit hits the fan [ligerito queda la cagada] (laughs)’ (M, G1, 60+, SW3).

In the context of disagreements over different concepts and contexts of political activism, disrespect becomes a controversial topic among exiles, which also reflects a dialogical dynamic. Axel Honneth (1996: 131) argues that respect involves a positive self-image and a sense of dignity, which respond to the ‘patterns of approval and recognition’ of others; hence, as it touches upon the sense of self, being disrespected is hurtful and involves misrecognition. Nancy Fraser (2000: 109) argues that to be misrecognised means to ‘suffer a distortion in one’s relation to one’s self’ and to be ‘denied the status of a full partner in interaction’ (Fraser, 2000: 113). Even though most literature about recognition deals with dominant and subordinate groups in society (Fraser, 2000; Honneth, 1996), in the context of this research, interviewees could be seen as part of one group: Chilean exiles in Australia. However, group distinctions emerge in response to their concepts of activism, and these distinctions eventually led to the erosion of conviviality through misrecognition and exclusion. Even though exiles were aligned with the left and wanted Pinochet out of power, and both waves contributed to that, their differences produced conflict and tensions that hindered the possibilities of collaboration. In this context, Simon Thompson’s and Majid Yar’s (2011) argument about misrecognition, which happens when a group’s contribution is not valued by other groups sharing the same values, is useful as it illuminates the affective dimensions of the political conflict. I suggest that the lack of unity among Chilean exiles are mainly produced by dynamics of misrecognition and exclusion, which eroded the conviviality of a diverse community that could not recognise each other’s contributions in the struggle to end the dictatorship. The emphasis of diverse interviewees about feeling disrespected and the different attempts to delegitimise the other wave suggests that the conflict was less about political differences than about recognition. At the same time, these emotional dynamics highlight how dialogical and affective dimensions are central in the configuration of memories of activism.

Discussion: dialogicality and memories of activism

In this article, I proposed a dialogical approach to the memories of the Solidarity Campaign of Chilean exiles in Australia. Reworking Halbwachs’s (1992) ideas of social frameworks with dialogical concepts (Villarroel and Riveros, 2025) illuminates how currents of social thought are not univocal or homogeneous but diverse and polyphonic. The findings make salient that Chilean exiles are not defined by a single set of values but by different ways of understanding and making political activism. The memories of exiles remind us that it is not possible to assume the identity of groups based on abstract ideological categories of ‘left’ or ‘right’. Instead of reflecting a monological (Haye and González, 2021) or a contained mnemonic culture (Erll, 2011), the findings demonstrate that exiles, as a social group, are defined by intersecting trajectories that respond to diverse historical and political realities. This diversity is more notable in the clashing perspectives of the first and second waves, which respond to different moments of sociopolitical organisation and resistance to Pinochet’s regime (Salazar, 2006).

In addition, the findings reveal how dialogue and polyphony acquire different emotional tones when Chilean exiles remember the Solidarity Campaign, from conviviality and solidarity to misrecognition and exclusion, which shapes the overall ambivalence of the memories of the Campaign. Notably, both the memories of conviviality (Duru, 2016) and misrecognition (Thompson and Yar, 2011) make salient the everyday practices and interactions among exiles. That is, just as conviviality was produced by everyday gestures and practices, so was misrecognition. This finding resonates with recent developments in memory studies that have called to research the ‘slow’ unfolding of processes rather than focusing on well-delimited events (Wüstenberg, 2023), which is compatible with the dialogical approach presented in this article. Even though we might try to find the cause of disagreements between exiles in particular historical moments or shifts in the Solidarity Campaign, what exiles remembered were not specific turning points but the interactions and conversations they had in meetings and other instances of everyday life. A dialogical approach to memory reminds us that the meaning of the past is shaped in processes and everyday interactions, emphasising the relevance of relationships in shaping memory (Gensburger, 2016).

The approach taken in this article understands that remembering involves participating in a broader dialogue with other people’s voices that shape the content and the form of memory (Haye, 2012). Methodologically, it is possible to trace this dialogue by analysing discourse, understanding that the words we use and how we articulate our speech reflect our emotional and ideological positioning in response to other people’s perspectives. The findings in this article reflect some of these dynamics in the discourse of exiles. For example, there were numerous instances in which they employed referred discourse to respond to the voices of other exiles and position their own perspective. In the polyphonic memories of conviviality (Duru, 2016; Payson, 2018), the words of others were welcoming and supportive, and the responses to those voices were shaped by gratitude. Exiles acknowledged how the welcoming gestures of other Chileans, Latin Americans and Australians helped them make a life in a foreign country under traumatic circumstances. By being understood and developing conviviality, Chilean exiles were able to transition towards their new lives. In contrast, when interviewees remembered the divisions, conflicts and disrespect, the discourse of other people was characterised by exclusion and misrecognition (Thompson and Yar, 2011). In these cases, interviewees responded to the words of others by mocking and calling them nicknames, and in other instances, they reflected on their feelings of pain and sadness with regard to others’ words, all the while trying to understand why they had these conflicting perspectives. As such, dialogue can be traced in different layers considering both what and how exiles remember. First, exiles articulated their responses to other people’s voices in their immediate interaction with me, in response to my invitation to tell me their histories of the dictatorship. Second, in answering to me, exiles articulated another layer in which they addressed their words to other exiles to whom they responded to, presenting other people’s perspectives through referred discourse and taking positions shaped by emotional stances. Third, some interviewees reflected and responded to their own previous positions when trying to understand their disagreements with other exiles, framing their discussions in response to generational differences or their different lived experiences. The analysis in this article suggests that remembering, understood as a dialogical and discursive practice, is a complex act of positioning in the present that articulates different layers of dialogue through the choice of specific words, tones, gestures, among other stylistic devices. Hence, a dialogical approach offers conceptual and methodological tools to research the multiple layers of complexity that shape the fabric of memory.

In addition, the memories of activism of Chilean exiles reminds us that dialogue may not always foster collaboration but illuminates both pro-social and antisocial (Reading, 2020) tendencies within activist groups. Considering the memory-activism nexus conceptualised by Ann Rigney (2018b), this article focused on the memories of activism, that is, on how Chilean exiles remember the Solidarity Campaign in Australia. Even though memories of activism tend to be shaped by melancholic memories of defeat (Traverso, 2016), researchers have argued for the need to highlight ‘positive’ emotions in memory studies (Andersen and Ortner, 2019; Rigney, 2018b; Wolf, 2019). This is more salient in the interrelations of memory and activism that often involve the transmission of hope (Rigney, 2018b), joy (Fevry, 2019; Soares, 2021), as well as pride and satisfaction when overcoming difficulties through solidarity and collaboration (Daphi, 2017). Part of the interviews resonate with this dimension, as Chilean exiles remembered the conviviality and friendly relationships that they developed throughout the Solidarity Campaign. As mentioned earlier, these are memories of everyday life that illuminate the practical and emotional needs that exiles had, emphasising conviviality and the emotional significance of mutual aid. In addition, this dimension is relevant because it demonstrates how activism is not a disembodied or mechanic activity of ‘getting things done’. The stories of how Chilean exiles helped each other to find a place and belong in Australia have political meaning because they humanise activists, positioning them as people with needs rather than abstract figures changing society. It is in this sense that Anna Reading’s (2020) argument—that activism is not only defined by collaboration and joy—is relevant too because there are tensions, conflict and ambivalence among activists. Omitting the conflictive or antisocial (Reading, 2020) dimensions may idealise activism, obscuring the plurality and diversity of positions within social movements. As already mentioned, the findings reveal both the unity and conviviality and the conflicts and divisions among exiles, which invites us to consider the ambivalence present in social groups. Therefore, we can conceptualise that there are centripetal and centrifugal forces that shape the memories of activism. Centripetal tendencies are remembered as instances of conviviality and solidarity that reinforce a common identity and a sense of ‘us’ (Ntontis and Rocha, 2020; Thalos, 2012), whereas centrifugal tendencies are remembered as conflicts and tensions, reflecting the disagreements and clashes between exiles. Importantly, both tendencies coexist and shape the meaning of the memories of activism, and a dialogical approach allows us to trace these tendencies in the emotional dimensions that shape the positions of exiles when they remember the Solidarity Campaign.

As closing remarks, theories of dialogue and dialogicality invite us to consider the diversity within social groups and within ourselves (Dessingué, 2016), as we internalise the voices of other people and respond to them when articulating our thoughts and memories in discourse. I have suggested that this perspective might provide conceptual and methodological tools to study the complex articulations involved in mnemonic practices. In addition, the findings presented in this article invite us to rethink the value of diversity in activism and the relevance of staying with and telling complex stories. The problem of overemphasising the convivial tales that reinforce unity and cohesion is that they tend to ignore the multiple political projects and motivations that coexist within social groups, as well as the conflicts and disagreements. Unity and cohesion are not harmful but staying with this side only implies that difference and conflict are seen as detrimental to activism. In the end, this means that other ways of doing politics are misrecognised and excluded, which was the central conflict between the first and second waves of exiles. In the current sociopolitical juncture with the rise of far-right and exclusionary discourses, attending and listening to complex memories of activism invite us to imagine other ways of organising collective struggles that are inclusive of diversity.