Remembering the Chilean solidarity campaign in Australia: Convivial and conflicting memories of activism

In this article, I analyse the memories of the Solidarity Campaign among Chilean exiles in Australia from a dialogical perspective. I argue that dialogic remembering involves taking a position and answering to other voices that populate a mnemonic field, and that the positions in this dialogue are shaped by sociohistorical contexts. I explore this by drawing on data from my research about the memory of the Chilean dictatorship among Chilean exiles in Australia, where I conducted and analysed 46 in-depth interviews with first- and second-generation exiles who arrived in Australia as part of two different waves of migration (1973–1978 and 1983–1990). The findings suggest two major tendencies in the memories of the Solidarity Campaign that reflect different facets of polyphony and dialogue: the memories of conviviality and the memories of political divisions and conflicts, which shape the memories of the Campaign as an ambivalent topic and challenge monological notions of identity and solidarity.