Flight From Chile · Voices of Exile

Mass arrests, torture, and executions followed General Pinochet's coup on September 11, 1973. Almost immediately people began fleeing Chile, and over the next fifteen years some 200,000 Chileans sought exile in nearly 140 countries. Out of their anguish and anger comes the first oral history, or testimonies, of their fractured lives. Many who fled had been tortured, and they clung to the principle that the dictatorship was an evil that had to be destroyed. But their zeal and solidarity with other refugees often failed to sustain families, and the majority of marriages collapsed and children often lost interest in their native land and culture. After civilian rule emerged in 1989, many returning exiles felt estranged from a homeland forever changed.

"A compelling and moving account."--Marjorie Agosin, author of "Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: The Arpillera Movement in Chile, 1974-1994"