Chilean and Sahrawi exiles Contesting colonial legacies and constructing political projects in Cold War and post-colonial worlds

The Chilean and Sahrawi exiles at the center of this study have, most likely, never met. In both Chile and the Western Sahara, the exiles contributed to the re-shaping of the political landscape and to adjustments of political strategies in a changing post-colonial world. The history of Chilean political exiles at the center of our study begins with a military coup on 11 September 1973. The classification of refugees as political exiles made it difficult to determine with any degree of accuracy how many political refugees left Chile. The military’s killings, arrests and “disappearances” made some flights from Chile hard to detect. Chilean citizens became “outcasts” on paper and in state bureaucracy when their passports were stamped with the letter “L, " indicating that they were listed, alleged enemies of the nation, and thus prohibited from returning home.