Resistance, Rights & Refuge

Companion Pets in Displacement: Exile and Beyond

Helia López Zarzosa 

In a year when we are commemorating the brutality unleashed by National Security State terrorism fifty years ago on the 11th September 1973, it may seem banal to bring companion pets to a conversation related to such a significant political event. However, a wide range of disciplines have informed us about the specificities of the human-animal relationship throughout history.[1] They have shown that this interaction has been part of social life including fictive kin, social control, subsistence, conquest, war and environmental disasters. Paradoxically, and despite nonhuman animals being part of the process of forced displacement, refugee and forced migration studies have largely bypassed them. Considering that this field of study covers ‘the study of those who have been identified by the international community as asylum seekers, refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), development induced displaced persons, or trafficked persons...’’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et. al., 2016, p. 5), the focus is on the ‘human’. The lack of consideration of the effects of forced migration on nonhuman animals is the result of an anthropocentric view (Beirne and Kelty-Huber, 2015, p. 97). Similarly, political studies anthropocentrism tends to ignore this relationship altogether. Unlike in fiction, (Subercaseaux, 2014) it appears to be an invalid topic and, regrettably, so it is for sociology (Carter and Charles, 2016).

One aspect that caught my attention during my doctoral fieldwork in Chile (2011), was that many of my respondents had cats, (loud) dogs and even in one case, a talkative parrot, Lolo. Interviews were often interrupted when interviewees tried to control their pet’s ‘participation’. Those respondents considered their pets as family members. After all, pets as companions contribute to human well-being and stability in the home environment particularly in times of crisis, as they ‘survive together as comrades’ (Renck Jalongo 2023, p. 1073). For this reason, this article allows me to highlight the human-animal interaction in displacement. It does so both to consider the perspective of animals themselves but also to suggest that the lens they offer sheds new light on the rupture and dislocation of human exile.

My displaced voice in this article has been informed by my exilic journey of displacement, my recent academic interest in human-animal interactions, Chilean history, my doctoral work, and by my lived experiences as a pet-owner. It must be read against the backdrop of my exile in Britain (December 1976-February 1992), return during the early years of post-dictatorial Chile (March 1992-November 1995) and my regreso as a failed returnee  to neoliberal Britain in December 1995. [2]  In this journey, I am also accompanied by other voices which appear in italics.

Forced Displacement and Animals

A brief pioneer article by Beirne and Kelty-Huber (2015) and later that of historian Thomas White (2019), are encouraging a nascent scholarship. Beirne and Kelty-Huber cover the enormous animal suffering during displacement as well as their human escaping owners. Thomas White discusses the multifaceted role of animals in the Baquba refugee camp during the British Mandate in Iraq in the early twentieth century. Among these refugee camp’s animals were livestock and working animals particularly ‘soldier’ horses.

Recent forced displacement crises in the Global South, such as those in Syria and Venezuela, where people escape on foot with few belongings and some of them with their pets on leads, in carriers or alongside children in their pushchairs, have been captured by the mainstream media and on social media. The scale of such displacements where the human-animal relationship was overtly evidenced in the Syrian case and considered as an unwritten story (Carpi, 2021).

Although Carpi’s article was revelatory, it was only after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the ensuing refugee crisis and pet influx in Europe that companion animals in forced displacement became a subject matter with ‘implications for the international refugee regime’ (Sandvik 2023, p. 293). In her desk study on Ukrainian war displacement, Sandvik brings ‘pets’ into the discussion. She discusses Ukrainian ‘pet exceptionalism’ within the context of humanitarianism in the UK and Norway. Her valuable contribution aims to provide insight for the management and policy-making around future forced ‘pet influxes’ and biosecurity risks. However, because companion animals have also been part of the ‘refugee cycle’ in the Global South, my interest here is to bring my voice into the discussion.

Dictatorship and Animals  

After the coup d’état on 11th September 1973, Chileans were escaping ‘an invented war’ (Ensalaco, 2000). In a Cold War scenario, this declaration of ‘war’ against ‘Marxists-Leninists’, aimed at the annihilation of what the dictatorship considered ‘subhuman enemies’[3] of the nation and the State. Supporters of the Popular Unity socialist political project were either imprisoned, executed, disappeared, tortured, made unemployed or exiled. In General Leigh’s words this constituted the ‘excision of the Marxist cancer’ (Huneeus 2007, p. 185) and, at one point, they called us ‘humanoids’ (as apes), to differentiate themselves as superior to us, ‘animals’. This practice of othering by imposing animalistic descriptors was popular during European imperial times (Johnson, 2009) and was a practice Chilean conservative elites praised and adopted in their own classist, racist and antisemitic narratives (Portales, 2018). The dictatorship’s radical use of violence in the seizure and consolidation of power entailed gross abuses of human rights that also employed animals as weapons of torture in horrific ways. This included the introduction of live mice and spiders into prisoners’ vaginas (Corral, 2012, p. 375) and the abominable training of dogs for sexual torture. Training of dogs in the police and military is not new and ‘dominance theory’ rules (Charles et al., 2021; Wlodarczyk, 2018). However, it was during the second phase of the dictatorship’s refoundation of Chile (1974-1978) and with the creation of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA)[4] and its Feminine School, that dog training for instilling terror and sexual torture took place. The torture centre ‘La Venda Sexy’ (The Sexy Blindfold) was known for this practice using a dog with a ‘political’ name (Guzmán, 2014). The extent of such brutality provides insights into fundamental ethical and societal changes as well as showcasing the ‘subhuman’ status of the dictatorship’s ‘enemies’ and animals as weapons of the National Security Doctrine State.

In and Out of Exile with Companion Pets

Although my political exile started as inxilio or internal exile (1998), my exile in Britain was a relief from fear and persecution. Yet, my gendered experiences played a key role (ibid). I have had two different experiences of family. First, as a single mother with a young child (Elvira) who begged for a pet. Motherhood in exile in a council flat was a lonely experience. With hindsight, a pet could have been a companion and nonhuman capital for integration in pet-loving Britain, as research suggests that they increase social interaction (Endenburg and Baarda, 1995; Wood, Giles-Corti and Bulsara, 2005).

I went to Chile in April 1982 with my four-year-old daughter Elvira. My purpose was to prepare for my return. Living in exile as a single mother and ‘overqualified for most of the jobs I could apply for I had no future in Britain…my fate was to return’ (1998, p. 193) even in a period of harsh repression. Nevertheless, even under the dictatorship, Chile became the convenient space to solve some of the social problems encountered in exile (ibid). My plan was to return within six months. During that exploratory trip, my former mother-in-law welcomed us with four kittens. Elvira yearned to bring them back to London because they are my friends. I realised then that pets in single parenthood with small children could help and may have positive effects on children’s well-being.[5] Our return to Britain made us feel even more lonely. Elvira became confused and missed the kittens. Soon after leaving Chile, CNI[6] agents in plain clothes searched my mothers’ house in order to arrest me. My return project collapsed (ibid). Readers may ask how I was able to go to Chile during the dictatorship? One of my significant findings (2011) was that the dictatorship’s gender ideology – i.e. motherhood, family, ideal femininity and patria – erased the ‘enemy’ label and suspicion. Entering Pinochet’s Chile as a young mother with a small daughter holding a little Chilean flag, I could slip through the dictatorship’s porous gendered boundaries.

After six years of single motherhood I remarried in 1983. I became a member of a nuclear family with a new daughter and more than three rescue pets. The first was a male cat who had been abandoned by neighbours after divorce. Snauz, as he was called, was a great comfort to our baby daughter Beatriz who had respiratory problems. The second was a very young, emaciated stray female cat who we got three years later. Beatriz named her Muchita. This was not accidental. We were living in multicultural Britain when mother-tongue teaching was encouraged. To instil some cultural identity, I always spoke in Chilean Spanish at home. After all, women are assigned the social role of national cultural transmitters (Tolz and Booth, 2005). My daughters and ‘gringo’ husband Mark, adopted my Chilean Spanish hence, the name Muchita meant mujercita (little woman). But after a couple of months, she disappeared. It was the midst of winter and we were concerned. She came back after a couple of weeks having become pregnant. Time passed. Soon after arriving from our activities at Niño Luchín Saturday School[7] we realised that she was about to give birth. She had a very difficult labour and with the assistance of my daughters she managed to deliver a litter of five kittens. Sadly, four weeks later, Muchita died. Although the girls wanted to have all the kittens, we kept two and ended up with three cats: Snauz, and the mujercitas Foofoo and Yuppa.[8] The fate of these pets was dependent on my displaced life. ‘Return’ was in the exilic ideological air I breathed; it was exile’s foundational decision (2011). With the restoration of democracy in 1990, return was imminent for all of us.

One of the most contentious issues of exile has been the ambiguous relationship of children to ‘home’. Exiled parents instilled a confusing and contradictory vision of Pinochet’s Chile. On one hand, a paradisiacal idea of Chile; on the other, the terrifying experiences of life under the dictatorship (Vásquez and Araujo, 1990, p. 49). Most children did not decide to return but followed their parents. ‘Moving’ to Chile after fifteen years of exile with my entire family, including our pets, was a big upheaval. In the process I was oblivious of my daughter’s apprehensions. Beatriz was seven years old. Her only concern was her cats. She vividly reflected her sentiments in an illustrative drawing we found only a year ago. In it, she wishes them a ‘Happy Journey’ in their Cat Air airline (tail of plane) where the pilot was also a cat.

Pets and Return  

Our pets survived the two months stay at a cattery in Britain and a long transatlantic flight. They then had to endure another long trip by train to Concepción. After their ordeal of uprooting, they were terrified but behaved ‘extremely well’ during the overnight journey. Nobody realised that there were three cats under our seats. Once at our place, they sensed that they had arrived in an exotic country. Species such as lizards and fireflies entertained them. However, being much older, Snauz suffered a lot. He wanted to mark his ‘territory’ but it was not his. Un-neutered ‘macho’ Chilean cats made his life unbearable. They created a hostile environment for him and he came off the worst during territorial fights. He was an exile. After a while, he became very ill. Sadly, we had to euthanise him and he ended up being buried in a foreign land. We grieved him. Return during democracy was already a problematic experience for various reasons. Snauz’ loss was added to the list.

Soon after, I got a rescue dog. It was market day and Mark and I went to buy vegetables. The market was located next to a barracks. The vegetable stallholder woman had two cute puppy ears coming out of her ample bosom. I asked her about the ‘ears’. Her response reflected Chile’s marked preference for male dogs, the milicos (soldiers) were giving away lots of dogs and as nobody wanted this one because is a ‘macha’[9], I kept her but if you want her, I’ll give her to you. I’ve got too many dogs already. Sentimentality kicked in. I was already drawn to that sweet little canine face. To convince me even more the woman added: The milicos’ dogs are always pedigree and this one is ‘fina’! (pedigree).  I wrapped her in my scarf and brought her home. As she was only about three-weeks-old I bottle-fed her with affection. We bonded. She was safe from a street life.  In Global South countries unsterilised female dogs on heat are harassed by numerous dogs, endure unwanted mating, end up exhausted and later give birth to endless litters of puppies. I felt a duty to protect her from that life. The colour of her fur prompted my daughters to name her Honey. Two years later and, knowing that I liked animals, a neighbour brought a very weak two-week-old kitten inside a plastic bag. It would have been cruel not to have adopted her. We drop-fed her. Mark named her Pussy Willow because she was identical to the character in Margaret Wise Brown’s children’s book of the same name. Our ‘family’ had grown, we now had three cats and a dog.

However, by then, my idealised ‘return home’ was failing catastrophically. We had built a lovely ‘south facing’ wooden house in Collao district, Concepción. Having missed the sun during my exile in Britain, I wanted my king star to be its decorative feature. But the seventeen-year dictatorship had refounded Chile and the sun couldn’t help me recognise the country I had once known before the coup d’état. Those returnees who managed to ‘adapt’/’assimilate’ through different types of connections, had a more positive experience. I was politically orphaned. No longer being a member of my former political party or any other political organisation, we couldn’t count on ‘friends in high places’. The whole experience was becoming traumatic and destructive particularly as a mother. By the end of 1995 I took the painful decision to leave Chile again, this time, under democracy but with an added aggravation.  Seventeen-year-old Elvira decided to stay behind because no quiero andar pa’llá y pa’cá (I don’t want to be backwards and forwards). Her agentic decision made my failed return even more painful.

The Journey Back ‘Home’

The regreso journey meant another ordeal for our pets. To bring them to rabid- animals-anxious Britain there were more hurdles to overcome. Unlike our previous experience, our train journey to Santiago was aborted. When the Jefe de Estación (Stationmaster) saw us sitting with the pet carriers, he was enraged and yelled at us: animals are not allowed on the train! You must leave! Mark responded but we are all animals! This enraged him even more. He felt offended. In discussing anthropomorphism, Serpell concluded ‘that human beings are still extremely reluctant to admit that the line which separates them from other species is both tenuous and fragile’ (1996, p. 167). To take them to Lufthansa’s Cargo, we had to fly to Santiago with them. Fortunately, we still had the means to find alternatives. This was not the case of Nicaraguan Miskito returnees in 1988 (Refugees, 1990, p.33)

Our pets didn’t have a smooth journey to Britain. Although they were disease-free and had all the documentation and vaccinations required,[11] coming from Latin America, they became suspect animals. They were retained in Frankfurt for twenty-four hours but it was not for rabies. Airport security staff inspected them thoroughly to make sure they were not used to smuggle drugs. Only our desperate efforts from Chile along with those of the owner of the quarantine facility where they would be staying, allowed them to continue their journey to Heathrow where they were picked up to go into quarantine in the countryside. The British quarantine law, known as ‘the Order’, was draconian. ‘Britain’s quarantine law mandated that all domestic animals brought into the country must be detained and quarantined at the owner’s expense for six months’ (Castillo, 1998, p. 459). This Victorian regime of forced separation from pet owners, lasting six calendar months (and a day!), was expensive,[12] cruel and, by 1996, unpopular (Passports for Pets Campaign). It dates back to the ‘dogs’ days’ of Victorian rabies panic, an exaggerated problem in Britain (Pemberton and Worboys, 2013).[13] This is a concern with Ukrainian ‘pet exceptionalism’ today (Sandvik, 2023).

Conditions of the quarantine location were Spartan. Apart from its peculiar whitewashed walls halfway to the ceiling, we weren’t allowed to visit them for a month and visits were restricted. When we visited them, we were locked in their ‘cells’ and had to shout if we needed something. Unlike the cats, Honey was on her own. The three cats could at least interact during their incarceration but for Honey, it was a lonely and long stressful period. Effects on the human-animal relationship during quarantine have been documented (Rochlitz, Podberscek and Broom, 1998) and I experienced that. Besides, seeing what was tragically happening to other pets there, I was concerned about Honey’s well-being.  She left the place stressed and anxious and remained very nervous for the rest of her life.

That was our first encounter with a strange neoliberal rabies-free status Britain.

Besides, I was no longer a refugee. I had lost my refugee status because I spent more than three continuous years in my country of origin and, because of a ‘fundamental change’ in Chile. On 28th March 1994, the UNHCR had applied the Cessation Clause (Article 1C) of the 1951 Convention to Chilean refugees (Fitzpatrick and Bonoan, 2003). By leaving Chile in December 1995, I embarked on a journey from a failed return in Chile and of ‘transnational motherhood’ (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997). In addition, I arrived back in Britain with a new label: ‘immigrant with Chilean citizenship’.

During my regreso, Honey’s origins intrigued me even more than during my return. ‘Milicos’, ‘barracks’, ‘pedigree dog’ were the kind of keywords that preyed on my mind. As I was from Concepción, I knew about the milicos and the barracks ever since I can remember. I could have enquired about Honey’s origins during my return time in Chile but as I was so busy trying to belong in a post-dictatorship society where, the few remaining places available to returnees had been taken (2011), I put that idea aside. The name of the barracks was Regimiento de Artillería Nº3 Silva Renard located in the Collao district of Concepción. In fact, it was fairly close to our house and we could hear their training exercises. The Silva Renard name of the barracks is associated with the struggles of the nitrate workers in northern Chile and particularly with the infamous Domingo Santa María School massacre the 21st of December 1907 in Iquique.

Chilean history has not been as democratic as it is generally portrayed. The recourse by the State to extreme violence to preserve and restore public order, to repress workers and peasants strikes and abort political projects, is a stain on our ‘stable’ democratic history. The 20th century witnessed numerous massacres. To name some: Oficina Ramírez, 1890; Santa María, 1907; San Gregorio, 1921; La Coruña, 1925; Ránquil, 1934, Seguro Obrero, 1938. But it was the barbarity of the Santa María School massacre and its frenzied killing that would remain in Chile’s historic-political memory to this day. General Roberto Silva Renard gave the order to apply the brutal state violence that killed hundreds of the men, women and children who were inside Santa María School and in Plaza Manuel Montt. For that mission, Silva Renard was promoted to the rank of General. Besides, regiment Silva Renard has been identified as one of the dictatorship’s imprisonment and torture centres.[14] That was the birthplace of my dear Honey.

With the arrest of Pinochet in London in October 1998, my intrigue about her existence became critical. In November 1999, during my yearly visit to Elvira, I decided to go to the Silva Renard barracks. Elvira went with me but stayed outside. She was fearful of soldiers and Carabineros (police). I first talked to the guards who asked me why I was there. I told them that I had a dog that had come out of the regiment some years ago and wanted to know about her mother. They laughed at me and said they knew nothing about the existence of a perra (bitch) there. I insisted. They called a superior. He said: I remember that there was a rat-catcher bitch in the stable but I think that Capitán X knows more, I’ll get him for you. I started to get nervous in that disquieting place. Elvira who had a camera took a couple of photographs because, as she put it, I was apprehensive. If something happened to you, I had evidence.  The giggles around me were distressing. After a while, Captain X arrived. In an arrogant tone he asked me about my presence there. I told him that I wanted to know about my dog who came out of the barracks in 1994 and was now living in Britain. ‘What a lucky dog!’ he said. Soon, his mood changed. He associated Honey’s host country with Pinochet’s arrest in London: ‘They don’t like us in that country, do they?’ Pinochet had been under arrest in London for over a year and legal proceedings for his extradition to Spain were frantically taking place. This scenario was changing my mission into a risky endeavour. Hiding the issue behind my displacement and my role in the extradition campaign as an AFDD-UK[15] member,[16] I insisted on my purpose. ‘Now I remember the dog we had at the back of the stable!’ the Captain said.

I knew then that Honey was the result of the visit of a Superior with his pedigree dog when Honey’s mother was on heat. Hence, Honey was not fina, she was a mongrel, a quiltra in ‘Chilean Spanish’.[17] I also knew about her tragic death. While pregnant again, she was kicked by a horse and agonised for a couple of days and was left to die. While talking, the Captain was emotionless, very tellingly. In a military setting, where animals are used as tools of nationalistic power, Honey’s mother was a useful/’working’ dog, yet her ‘work’ was not recognised as such. She was not even considered a domestic animal let alone a source of ‘social ties’ as some of the Western Animal Studies literature proposes (see Charles and Wolkowitz, 2023). It was a brutal overt anthropocentric human-animal interaction. I immediately thought about the gross violations of human rights that occurred during the dictatorship and what might have happened in that particular place. I thought about Roberto, our missing relative. Had he been taken there? I wondered. There is still so much silence in Chile. That ‘visit’ was harrowing.

Through Honey’s life, the brutality of the 1907 Santa María massacre and that of the 1973 coup d’ état merged.  My Chilean dog’s story ended up being immersed in two widespread repressive historical periods of twentieth-century Chile where two Army Generals acted in the same brutal manner. General Roberto Silva Renard’s Santa María’s and Plaza Manuel Montt massacre and General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte’s systematic massacre of his regime’s ‘enemies’.

 In his detailed account of the Santa María massacre, Eduardo Devés wrote:

“[B]ut neither should you forget that on the 21st of December 1907 in Iquique a tiny version was written, as if with a defective pantograph, of what would be written in capital letters that would horrify the world, on this long and narrow canvas, the morning of 11th September 1973. More or less the same contenders, more or less the same result, more or less the same dead, more or less the same shame, but now all on a gigantic scale” (1989, p. 38).[18]

Oblivion and Memory

Before General Pinochet’s arrest, there was ‘a collective silence in a country stricken by the horrors of military dictatorship’ (1998:196). Political amnesia and impunity worked in tandem. His arrest in London and subsequent places of detention and house arrest became places of battle over memory. In total, there were 503 days of struggle for truth and justice. When he was returned to Chile on ‘medical grounds’ in March 2000 and astonished the world, the empty house in Virginia Water, Surrey, became a symbol of impunity. The Piquete de Londres organised a final meeting there. Mark and Beatriz accompanied me and I took Honey. Being a nervous dog, she was withdrawn but was welcomed by almost everybody including Viviana Díaz, the President of the AFDD in Chile who was there too.

Last of All...

I must say that my displaced account and that of my companion pets are inseparably interwoven. It has been claimed that ‘a sociology of human-animal relations should include how animals are/have been appropriated socially into a range of modern human projects’ (Franklin, 1999, p. 2). I would add that return is also a human project. Unlike exile, return is considered a voluntary endeavour. Yet, for whom? Research suggests that, at the moment of deciding to ‘return,’ children did not take part in that decision nor negotiate it as coming ‘home’ (1995; Aruj and González, 2008). When they did, ‘it was an emotional decision based on a real lack of understanding of the country (Pinto Luna, 2013, p. 18). Conversely, as I have shown here, companion pets, had no voice, and hence no choice. They were passively involved in my human project of ‘return’.

Pussy Willow died very young of leukaemia. Yuppa developed thyroid problems and like Pussy Willow took herself off to die. Foofoo died of old age. As for Honey, she developed numerous tumours and endured difficult surgeries. One of Beatriz’ plausible theories was that she was gestated by a malnourished mother who was feeding on poisoned rats. Because of our care, she lasted eleven years but, to end her final suffering, we took the painful decision to euthanise her at home. Human-animal Studies scholars will understand when I acknowledge that my companion pets in displacement were important family members, when I admit that I grieved Honey intensely and that it took some time to get over her loss. I am not ‘cautious about revealing too close a relationship with my animals’ (Charles, 2017, p. 118) and less so with Honey to whom I was ‘politically’ and emotionally attached. Politically, because her presence was a constant reminder of both a ‘failed return’ and of a territorial/political space that was Chile and its convoluted history where she came from. Emotionally, because she was given away by the milicos and she had survived.  

Finally, I want to highlight that this is not an anthropocentric account where I have used my companion pets to tell my story of displacement. We shared our lives. They were embedded in our social life and in their own way, they emotionally supported me and my family during the challenges I faced when trying to ‘remake home’. More importantly, they contributed to memory-making, particularly Honey, whose life highlighted great truths of violent human and canine experiences. I suggest that Stern’s (2004) ‘emblematic memory’ in its specific framework of ‘memory as unresolved rupture’ (pp. 108-109) of which forced displacement should be part, can incorporate human-animal interactions. Our story can serve as an emblem of the broader history of Pinochet’s Chile of which forced displacement is one of its outcomes as is failed return and the enduring search for home.

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Appendix

[1] For a brief discussion of the burgeoning of Animal Studies scholarship see Serpell’s Preface to the Canto edition (1996).

[2] Return migration scholars use the term ‘re-migration’ and more recently ‘double return’. Being a forced migrant, I prefer to use regreso (in Spanish) for the process of coming back to the host country. That process, bypassed by Forced Migration and Refugee Studies scholars, entails ‘failed return’. My displaced status evolved from refugee to immigrant whereas migrants have one definite status: immigrants.

[3] This term is used by Steve J. Stern in the Introduction to Book Three of the trilogy ‘The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile’ entitled Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989-2006. (2010, p.11).

[4] Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA). The National Intelligence Directorate was created on June 14th, 1974 by Decree Law N°521. Articles 9°, 11°, and 19° empowered DINA to raid, arrest and confine prisoners in secret places other than jails.

[5] See Endenburg and Baarda (1995) and the more critical/ambivalent work of James A. Serpell (1996, chapters 1and 6).  For a discussion of this ambivalence see Charles and Aull Davies (2011).

[6] Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI). The  National Intelligence Centre was created on August 13th, 1977 by Decree Law N° 1.878.

[7] One of Chile Democrático-G.B., Saturday Schools located in Islington, north London. Forthcoming.

[8] Originally, these names were different but, as usual with children, these were morphing with time.

[9] She used ‘macha’ instead of hembra (bitch). The word macho is for male. Interestingly, she feminised the word. This episode appears in Allá, a piece I wrote for Letras Lejanas, a women’s literary competition organised by Carmen Gloria Dunnage the Chilean Embassy’s Cultural Attaché in 2002. It was not selected.

[10] I am grateful to UNHCR’s Archive Team and to Anne Kellner from UNHCR’s Global Communications Service for providing the original image and permission to use it in this article. I also thank Sarah Rhodes, Forced Migration and African and Commonwealth Studies Subject Consultant at the Bodleian Social Science Library, University of Oxford for facilitating the contact with the UNHCR Archive Team.

[11] See Appendix.

[12] For the quarantine multi-million-dollars business, see Castillo (1998), pp.472-473.

[13] “Rabies is a killer. We must keep rabies out”. See the 1970s warning film by the Central Office of Information for Ministry of Agriculture available at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_outbreak.htm

[14] https://memoriaviva.com/nuevaweb/centros-de-detencion/viii-region/regimiento-de-artilleria-no-3-silva-renard-concepcion

[15] AFDD-UK, Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Chile-U.K section.

[16] In the documentary UK: London: Augusto Pinochet Arrest Update (2), I appear holding Héctor Roberto Rodríguez Cárcamo’s photo, his detention history and a candle (minute 0:12-0:17). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz7JzwD3NU He was my sister’s fiancé and was arrested on the 19th September 1973. This year, we are also commemorating 50 years of his disappearance.

[17] Quiltro/a is a Chileanism that comes from Mapudungún (Mapuche language) that refers to an indigenous mixed-breed dog. This term is used in a derogatory manner.

[18] Author’s translation.

Helia López Zarzosa is a Chilean sociologist and an independent researcher. Her sociology lecturership was curtailed by the Pinochet dictatorship and she was expelled from the University of Chile in March 1976.

She was a refugee in Britain (1976-1992) and returned to Chile early in 1992. Since the end of 1995 she is a ‘failed returnee’ back in Britain. Helia’s exilic, returnee and failed returnee life has been dedicated to the welfare and empowerment of Chilean, Latin American and other refugees and migrants.

She has established educational and drama schools for the families and children of these communities both in the UK and Chile. She was a Trustee of IRMO (Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation) between 2016 and 2021.

Throughout her refugee cycle, Helia has also participated in human rights organisations such as the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared in Chile -U.K. (AFDD-U.K.), Amnesty International, U.K and United Against (In)Humanity-U.K. (UAI).

As an independent researcher, Helia gives guest lectures on forced migration and participates in conferences. She is currently writing papers for the commemoration of the 50th years of the coup d’ état in Chile and is turning her PhD thesis into a book.

Helia holds a Diploma in Development Planning (1979), an MA in Sociology of Education (1991) and a PhD in Forced Migration (2011).