Breaking the oblivion. The social memory of the South American exile in Mexico during the Dirty War

Abstract

During the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico became a land of asylum and refuge for thousands of South American exiles fleeing military dictatorships. In the eighties, and in the heat of the transitions to democracy, these actors were direct producers of a social memory about the experience of exile on Mexican soil, which highlighted the hospitable character of the governments of Luis Echeverría and López Portillo. However, during these six years, Mexico was also a territory of state violence, in which different counterinsurgency strategies were deployed to combat urban and rural guerrillas. This included forced disappearances, torture and clandestine practices of repression. This article aims to analyze the social memory of the South American exile and the elements that built a memory of gratitude for Mexico. The memories were marginalizing or leaving in oblivion the repressive dimensions that impacted on the leftist groups and movements in the interior of the country. We are interested in identifying the main characteristics that they recovered from their exile experience, which, among its undesired effects, shaped the constitution of a partial account of the Mexico of the Dirty War and the current process of the rise of a new memory that generates tensions and discomfort.