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"Retorno de los exiliados / Return of the exiles", by Victoria Diaz Caro. (Photo: Martin Melaugh)

This arpillera shows a joyful reunion of family members who were forced into exile during the Pinochet dictatorship. It was made immediately after the regime ended. Exile took many different forms. When the military coup toppled Salvador Allende in 1973, many government workers and supporters took refuge in embassies and some managed to leave the country. Others, after imprisonment and often torture, were deported and went to countries that accepted them. A third group were forced to take "economic exile" as they had been dismissed from their jobs and had no income. Some were even deprived of their Chilean nationality.

For the returned exiles, finding the country much changed, resettling in their native country was not always the joy they had anticipated. Furthermore, their children who grew up outside Chile were at a loss to understand their parents' longing to return to a country that had violated their human rights.

To deal with the new problems created by the mass return of exiles, the Oficina Nacional del Retorno (National Office for the Returnees) was created in 1990. It operated until 1994 and considered 52,557 cases. It was revealed that most of the exiles had been taken in by Sweden, Argentina, Canada, France and Germany.

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