The military coup of 11 September 1973 in Chile launched the 16½-year dictatorship of the Chilean armed forces dominated by General Augusto C. Pinochet. The regime used state terror to seize and retain control, systematizing the violation of human rights by employing arbitrary detention, torture, murder, and disappearance against those it deemed enemies. By forcing an estimated 200,000 Chileans into exile (some 2% of the population), Pinochet’s government systematically and deliberately violated the prohibition on forced exile defined in Article 13, Part 2 of the 1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” The dictatorship’s policy of exiling its real and perceived opponents produced the Chilean diaspora.
Latin American Mass Exile Since 1959
Latin America has experienced politically motivated exile since its wars of independence (1810 to 1825). For the subsequent century and...
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Wright, T.C., Oñate, R. (2005). Chilean Diaspora. In: Ember, M., Ember, C.R., Skoggard, I. (eds) Encyclopedia of Diasporas. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-29904-4_6
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