Dying in the New Country

Before the great Cold War diaspora wrenched millions of Latin Americans from their homelands and thrust them to the fortunes and misfortunes of foreign lands, most of us from the region had assumed that the land of our birth would naturally also be the land of our death. Cemetery plots confirmed the passing of the generations, but they also confirmed our expectations that one day we too would join our ancestors in that same sacred family space. Visits to these plots formed part of family life: to mark birthdays, Mother s and Father s Days, and other special anniversaries. Sadness mingled with a deep sense of belonging on those occasions, as young children, parents and grandparents pilgrimaged as one in this time-honoured ritual of remembrance and solidarity with our dead. Family plots were an extension of our family homes, they completed the circle of life and death

Memory and a Hard Place: Revisiting Central Havana

Raul and Manolo are two Cuban men in their late sixties. Manolo left soon after Castros triumph to become a television celebrity in Miami. He returned in 1991 to make a clandestine film about the city which once was his. Raul never left his decaying city. He applauded the revolution, but little by little his enthusiasm soured. The paper examines the relationship of the two men to what was once the ultra modern Central Havana of the mid-1950s. Manolos froze on the day he left: his filmed city is silent, immobile, full of ghosts, almost empty, ugly, ruined. Manolos Central Havana processes and changes, it is noisy, busy, - but also it is ugly and ruined. Both lament the city as it once was. Only Raul sees hope of reconciliatio

Knowing the Place for the First Time: A Cuban Exile's Story

Playa Abierta is a modern beach-side resort, one hundred kilometres west of Havana. Developed as a private resort in the 1950s, it was seized by the new revolutionary Cuban government in 1959 after its owner fled precipitately to Miami. This autobiographically centred and personally narrated paper reviews the history of Playa Abierta 1956 2006 through the eyes of a Cuban New Zealander `Marta whose uncle first developed the estate. In 1956 her holidays spent at Playa Abierta as a little girl were her most treasured Cuban moments. `At this altar, she says, `my uncle was the high priest. In 1996 - after a 36-year absence from her native land - she returned for a visit, the only member of her extended family to have done so. Boldly and unannounced she walked through her uncles house by then converted into a military recreational camp. On a subsequent visit, she met with members of her uncles domestic staff whose relationship to that same loved beach was by then of many decades. Whose Playa Abierta was she re-visiting now? Who were the true claimants to that family sacred site? Today as she reflects on the private and public meaning of Playa Abierta, her exultation has given way to more complex feelings. The wonder at re-discovering the beachs beauty was overladen with the guilt of returning to Cuba while still under Castros communist rule. Her sense of belonging was later undermined by a sad realisation that those who had stayed behind were also Playa Abiertas claimants. Above all, she is torn between family loyalties and the promise of a Revolution betrayed

Narrow but endlessly deep

On 11 September 1973, the Chilean Chief of the Armed Forces Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende and installed a military dictatorship. Yet this is a book not of parties or ideologies but public history. It focuses on the memorials and memorialisers at seven sites of torture, extermination, and disappearance in Santiago, engaging with worldwide debates about why and how deeds of violence inflicted by the state on its own citizens should be remembered, and by whom. The sites investigated — including the infamous National Stadium — are among the most iconic of more than 1,000 such sites throughout the country. The study grants a glimpse of the depth of feeling that survivors and the families of the detained-disappeared and the politically executed bring to each of the sites. The book traces their struggle to memorialise each one, and so unfolds their idealism and hope, courage and frustration, their hatred, excitement, resentment, sadness, fear, division and disillusionment. ‘This is a beautifully written book, a sensitive treatment of the issues and lives of those who have faced a great deal of loss, most often as unsung heroes, in what are now recognized as Chilean sites of memory. The book is a testament to people who have not been asked to speak, until Peter Read and Marivic Wyndham ask them to tell their stories. They do not shy away from hard tensions about memorialization, the difficulties of challenging a powerful state and the long and arduous struggles to ensure less powerful voices are heard.

The day Londres 38 opened its doors: a milestone in chilean reconciliation

Occasionally a week, an afternoon, a single moment may crystallise a traumatic event which has carried explosive potential for decades. At such still points shifting polarities may stabilise, if briefly. Old foes may unite, old friendships fracture. By the end of such a day, though, it will be apparent that something momentous has occurred from which there can be no retreat. This paper considers such an event, which should remain here occurred in Santiago de Chile, on December 10, 2007. That day, the infamous torture and extermination centre known as Londres 38 was for the first time opened to the public. But by the end of that day, much more had been exposed than the echoing and empty rooms

Sin Descansar, En Mi Memoria

This is a revised and extended Spanish version of Narrow But Endlessly Deep. A year has passed since the English version of our book Narrow but Endlessly Deep. The Struggle for Memorialisation in Chile since the Transition to Democracy was published. Since then, developments in certain sites have advanced well beyond the original story and much new information has emerged from various important sources. Equally importantly, our interpretations of certain events and personalities have changed in the light of the new revelations. This is why we have substantially re-written each chapter and given a new title to this book. Having to address Spanish-speaking readers has also necessitated a critical re-evaluation of the material which in some cases, though it may be ‘new’ and ‘interesting’ to English-speaking readers, constitutes basic knowledge for those born and bred in Hispanic cultures. As a result of these considerable changes and transformations, and the additions of new material not included in the English version, this Spanish–language text far exceeds a mere translation, and thus circulates as a distinct work of new historical critique and knowledge in its own right

Remembering the Soviets

At the base of the South Tower of St Johns Cathedral, Brisbane, are installed two splendid stained glass windows, memorials to the Australian-American alliance during the Second World War. They depict an American bald-eagle and an Australian wedge-tailed eagle flying towards `a greater union. The plaque reads: These magnificent Australian-American War Memorial Windows are testimony to the admiration and gratitude Australians feel for our American friends and the fellowship and mutual esteem that exists between us. The windows are one of dozens of monuments throughout Australia to the alliance forged between the commonwealth and the United States during the Second World War. Since the Soviet Union did at least as much to prevent the invasion of Cuba by the United States as the United States did for Australia, we could expect there to be in Cuba at least as many memorials to the thirty year presence of the Soviets. In this paper we ask: how does the Cuban State memorialise the complex and difficult Russian presence