The Politics of Exile in Latin America

This page intentionally left blank The Politics of Exile in Latin America The Politics of Exile in Latin America addresses exile as a major mech- anism of institutional exclusion used by all types of governments in the region against their own citizens, while at the same time these governments often provided asylum to aliens fleeing persecution. The work is the first systematic analysis of Latin American exile on a continental and transnational basis and on a long-term perspective. It traces variations in the saliency of exile among different expelling and receiving countries; across different periods; with different paths of exile, both elite and massive; and under authoritarian and democratic contexts. The project integrates theoretical hindsight and empirical findings, analyzing the importance of exile as a recent and contemporary phe- nomenon, while reaching back to its origins and phases of development. It also addresses presidential exile, the formation of Latin American communities of exiles worldwide, and the role of exiles in shaping the collective identities of these countries. Mario Sznajder holds the Leon Blum Chair in Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also Research Fellow at the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace. Among his works are the books The Birth of Fascist Ideology (with Zeev Stern- hell and Maia Asheri), Constructing Collective Identities and Shaping Public Spheres: Latin American Paths (coedited with Luis Roniger), and The Legacy of Human Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (with Luis Roniger). He has also published numerous articles on Fascism, democracy, and human rights. Luis Roniger is Reynolds Professor of Latin American Studies at Wake Forest University. A comparative political sociologist, Roniger’s publi- cations include books such as Patrons, Clients and Friends (with Shmuel N. Eisenstadt), Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico and Brazil, The Legacy of Human Rights Violations in the Southern Cone (with Mario Sznajder), The Collective and the Public in Latin America (coedited with Tamar Herzog), and Globality and Multiple Modernities (coedited with Carlos Waisman). He is currently completing a book on Trans- national Politics in Central America. The Politics of Exile in Latin America MARIO SZNAJDER Hebrew University of Jerusalem LUIS RONIGER Wake Forest University CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521517355 © Mario Sznajder and Luis Roniger 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009 ISBN-13 978-0-511-54073-8 eBook (NetLibrary) ISBN-13 978-0-521-51735-5 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. To Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Zeev Sternhell, in deep appreciation of their scholarship, intellectual wisdom, and public commitment Contents Acknowledgments page ix List of Acronyms xi Introduction: The Politics of Exile 1 1 Defining the Exilic Condition 11 Prevailing Approaches 13 Translocation, Displacement 16 Analytical Dimensions 20 Forceful Exclusion and the Will to Retain Control of Life Decisions 23 Moving into Exile 29 The Impaired yet Persistent Will to Return 31 Research Lines 36 2 Forceful Displacement, the Construction of Collective Identities, and State Formation 40 Banishment as a Portuguese Colonial Practice 40 Spanish Americas: Practices of Expulsion 41 Constructing Collective Identities from Afar 45 Expatriation and the New States 49 Forceful Translocation as Tactical Movement 51 Territorial Identities in Undefined Boundaries 55 Confrontational Politics and Expatriation 58 Factionalism and Elites 62 Transregional Political Dynamics 67 3 The Format of Early Exile 73 The Three-Tiered Format of Early Exile 73 Returning to the Homeland 76 The Construction of Collective Imageries 78 vii viii Contents Exile and New State Identities 83 Politics of Exit 88 4 SitesofExile 91 Selecting Factors 91 Early Asylum in the Americas: Chile as a Site of Exile 93 Exiles in the City of Light 105 Mexico and Its Tradition of Asylum 117 Conclusion 133 5 Widening Exclusion and the Four-Tiered Structure of Exile 136 Massive Exile: The Counterface of Political Inclusion 136 Asylum and the Protection of Persecuted Individuals 146 The Emergence of a Four-Tiered Structure of Exile 152 Patterns of Exile 162 Escape and Exile 169 Serial Exile 183 6 Exile Communities, Activism, and Politics 193 Communities of Exiles 193 Brazilian Exiles: Between Elite Exile and Revolutionary Activism 195 The Argentine Diaspora: Debating Political Strategies and Struggle 207 The Chilean Diaspora: Political Mobilization and Openness to Global Trends 229 The Uruguayan Diaspora: Blending Economic and Political Motivations 243 The Exile Communities and the Centrality of the Fourth Tier 252 7 Presidents in Exile 257 The Return of the Dead 260 Circumstances of Exile 264 The Impact of Presidential Exile 265 Timing, Duration, and Trends of Presidential Exile 273 Exile and Expatriation, Expulsion and Reception 278 8 Is Return the End of Exile? 286 TheImpactofExile 287 Exiled Women and Gender 293 Undoing Institutional Exclusion 297 Returning from Exile 301 The Possibility of Undoing Exile 308 Redressing the Evils of Exile 312 Present and Future Exile 314 Conclusions 319 Bibliography 325 Index 347 Acknowledgments We owe a debt of gratitude to many individuals and institutions that con- tributed in various ways to the completion of this work. We are indebted to the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, the Con- sejo de Investigaciones Cientıficas´ of Spain in Madrid, the Davis Center for International Relations, the Aims Byudks Research Fund and the Shain Cen- ter for Research in the Social Sciences of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Social and Behavioral Sciences Fund of Wake Forest University, and the U.S.-Israel Bi-National Science Foundation for their support at different stages of the work. Special thanks are due to those who shared their experiences and hindsight with us, particularly the late Daniel Recanati, Elda Gonzalez,´ Pablo Yankelevich, Clara Obligado, Mempo Giardinelli, Mauricio Frajman, Laurence Whitehead, Pinchas Avivi, Claudia Garcıa,´ Alan Angell, former Israeli ambassador Benjamin Oron, Yehuda Dominitz, Ran Curiel, Blas Matamoros, Abrasha Rotemberg, Adriana Munoz,˜ Arnoldo Liberman, Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro, Tulio Halperin Donghi, Nora Bendersky, Ingrid Hecker, Orit Gazit, Ifat Bachrach, Avital Appel, Yuval Ben-Dov, Esther Lifshitz, Gustavo Silva, Fanny Muldman, Carlos Fuentes, Batia Siebzehner, Samuel Ouman, Nahum Solan, Leonardo Senkman, Florinda Goldberg, the late Dr. Mario Cohen, the late Daniel Moore, and librarians Brenda Golan, Regina Gruzman, and Amnon Ben-Arieh. Interviews with former president of Brazil Professor Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former president of Chile Professor Ricardo Lagos were particularly instructive. We are grateful to the directors and staff of the following institutions and libraries: the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, the Library of the Iberoamerican Institute of the Prussian Heritage Foundation in Berlin, the CIEMI-Centre d’Information et d’Etudes sur les Migrations Internationales in Paris, the Library of Congress in Wash- ington, the National Library of Argentina, the National Library of Santiago de Chile, the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, the National Library in San Jose´ de Costa Rica, Cuba’s National Library in Havana, the National Archives of Israel in Jerusalem, the library of the Ministry of Interior of Spain ix x Acknowledgments in Madrid, the FASIC and the Biblioteca del Congreso in Chile, the Library of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge, and the Fondazione Lelio and Lili Basso in Rome, Italy. We are indebted to Tamar Sof- fer of the Department of Geography of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for her elaboration of the maps included in this book, and to Ronit Nirel and Bella Vakolenko-Lagun, of the Applied Statistics Laboratory of Jerusalem, for their advice and work on the statistical elaborations of the book. We would also like to thank Irina Babchenko of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Ronit Sasson of the Department of Political Science of the Hebrew University. The research assistance of Haim Portnoy, Nathan Brener, Leandro Kierszenbaum, Yaara Angres, Deby Babis, Caroline Kaplan, Andres´ Lindner, Hillen Meirovich, Peter Morris, Melissa Velarde, and Orly Haimovich, at various stages of this project, is kindly acknowledged. We are also grateful to Eric Crahan, Editor of History and Politics at Cambridge University Press, who invested his talent and energy in bringing this project to completion. Parts of this work were presented in several forums and later appeared as articles in Journal of Latin American Studies, 37 (2005), Soziologia Israelit, 6 (2005),

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