Children of exile: Memories in transit and the politicization of the experience

The military dictatorships that broke out in South American countries caused an unprecedented and massive wave of exiles. Its novelty lay in the scale of the exile and, above all, in the fact that it impacted entire families. In narratives about exile, children have so far played a secondary role. However, in the new century, the marginal position of the children of exile began to be questioned by the same protagonists who once described exile as a first-person experience rather than a collateral one. This article offers an interpretation of the memories of the South American exile generation and the shifting feelings they have undergone. It hypothesizes that the different memories of the children of exile are in a process of politicization and increasing protagonism. In this transformation, the memories that emerge express a present struggle over the interpretation of the past, which involves positioning children as targets of state violence and exile as a violation of human rights.