You’re Practically British!
Maria Vasquez-Aguilar
“You’re practically British!”, is what some people say when they hear that I arrived so many years ago.
Unaware of how deep these 3 words can cut, how unrepresentative they feel. How far away from me.
Because I know who I am, of what I feel.
Of the many identities that make me.
I am a woman, a mother, a daughter, an aunt, a sister, a friend.
I am a trade unionist, a compañera, an activist, an organiser, a luchadora.
I am working class, I am Northern, a space I feel at home in, a humour that I share.
I am Latina, Morena, dancing whilst I cook and speaking Spanish to my son, teaching him of his ancestry so he may too find strength from the history and culture of nuestra gente.
I am a refugee, albeit with a British passport, painfully aware of my family and roots which remain ‘over there’
Yes I am all these things, and many more - but despite all these years - British I have never felt, nor Chilean to be fair
Just me, just us.
Maria Vasquez-Aguilar
Exiled 1978, age 2
Maria Vasquez-Aguilar arrived as a child refugee from Chile withher family in 1978. Daughter of political prisoners, Maria is an activist and trade unionist, and co-founded Chile Solidarity Network and Chile 50 years UK. She currently works as a lecturer in Adult Education and is doing a part-time PhD at the University of Sheffield on the activism of the Chilean exiles in the UK post 1973 and its impact on the second generation.