>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:22 >> Talia Guzman-Gonzalez: Good afternoon and welcome to the Library of Congress. My name is Talia Guzman-Gonzalez and I am a reference librarian and Luso-Brazilian specialist in the Hispanic Division. It is my great pleasure to have you all here to talk about Exile, Diaspora, and Return: Changing Cultural Landscapes in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay. A team research project by Luis Roniger, Leonardo Senkman, Saúl Sosnowski, and Mario Sznajder. Today we have with us two of the authors of the book, two of the team members, Luis and Saúl, who will be talking with Professor Juan Uriagereka from the Department of Linguistics and Professor Ernesto Calvo from the Department of Government and Politics, both at the University of Maryland College Park. I'm going to briefly introduce Professors Roniger and Sosnowski and then I'm going to pass the microphone to Saúl who will be the emcee for the event. Luis Roniger is Reynolds Professor of Latin American Studies at Wake Forest University. He is a comparative political sociologist and his work focuses on the interface between politics, society, and public culture. He has published numerous journal articles and books on a vast range of topics including human rights, transitional politics, exile and democracy in Latin America. Professor Roniger is the author of "Destierro y exilio en America Latina, Nuevos estudios y avances teoricos" published by the University of Buenos Aires in 2014, and "Tres estudios sobre el exilio: Condicion humana, experiencia historica y significacion politica", co-author with Arturo Aguirre and Antolin Sanchez in 2014 too, and also "Transnational Politics in Central America" published in 2011. Saúl Sosnowski is currently professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at the University of Maryland in College Park besides having held many other administrative positions such as Director of the Latin American Studies Center which he founded in 1989. Professor Sosnowski has been the force we had many important initiatives in academic projects such as a decade-long series of international conferences, "The Repression of Culture and its Reconstruction in the Southern Cone". He is the founder and editor of the literary journal Hispania, currently-- >> Saúl Sosnowski: Hispamerica. >> Talia Guzman-Gonzalez: Hispamerica, sorry. Yeah. Currently in what, currently in what issue, what-- Saúl? >> Saúl Sosnowski: 47th year. >> Talia Guzman-Gonzalez: 47th year. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yeah. >> Talia Guzman-Gonzalez: Amazing. And I lost where I was. Thank you. His work centers on issues of civic education, democracy and conflict management and cultural politics with the focus on Latin America. He is the author of "Julio Cortaza: una busqueda mitica", "Borges y la Cabala: la busqueda del Verbo", currently in its third edition and translated into Portuguese and German, and "La orilla imminente: escritores judios- argentinos, Fascismo y nazismo en las letras argentinas" with Leonardo Senkman, and "Cartografia de las letras hispanoamericanas: tejidos de la memoria". Please join me in welcoming our distinguished guests to the Library of Congress. ^M00:03:46 [ Applause ] ^M00:03:50 >> Saúl Sosnowski: Thank you, Talia. And through you I would also like to thank Georgia Durham for the arrangements and for the invitation to be able to present Exile, Diaspora, and Return: Changing Cultural Landscapes in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, a book that was produced by four colleagues. I was going to say quatro amigos, then the reference is to tres amigos and we are in the [inaudible] pick for two room and this is leading us someplace else. And the four of us, Luis Roniger, a sociologist, Mario Sznajder, a political scientist, Leonardo Senkman a historian, and I from the literary side, have been working on these kinds of issues from different vantage points and different perspectives for quite a while. And we decided at some point that it would be a good idea to approach a neglected area, what we consider the neglected area of research about which my colleagues will be speaking a little later. So the first meeting took place as many meetings of this sort take place in Jerusalem and it-- or the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the Mount Scopus Campus. And once we decided that we were going to engage in this product, in this project that turned out to be a product, we held meetings in different parts of Latin America as well as here and more than once in Israel. And this was due to the fact that we were very lucky to obtain the support from the Binational Science Foundation Israel to US that allowed us to carry out this research which mandated several trips in order to interview a whole array of people in each of the four countries, and more about that a little later. The transition to democracy in each case was subject to very radically different approaches and conditions which in turn conditioned and affected the process of return, the policies to promote such a return and the impact that returnees have had on the respective countries. And this is a subject that I'm sure will be touched upon by our colleagues. I think it is worth noting that though none of the four authors currently live in our birthplace, three of us are from Argentina and even the Chilean among us was born in Buenos Aires but he opted for becoming a Chilean, a common mistake by some people. One of our defining identities is clearly anchored in the region. Objective analysis in carrying out research has been a guiding principle, but so I sense it's a sense of commitment that each one of us has to the region, sort of a necessary unavoidable commitment to both memory and to the unfolding present. I'm very grateful to two of my colleagues from the University of Maryland who have agreed to speak about some of the issues that are addressed in the book, maybe about the book too, but we'll find out shortly since both of them have been very, very active in related issues. Ernesto Calvo who holds a PhD from Northwestern University is a professor and associate chair in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. His research on political representation, elections and congresses has received numerous awards. He is the author of "Legislator Success in Fragmented Congresses in Argentina" published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. "La nueva politica de Partidos" by Prometeo years before in 2005. And relatively-- recently "Anatomia Politica de Twitter en Argentina: tuiteando #Nisman", a project that gathered the attention of many of our graduate students at College Park. He's currently conducting research and patronage networks, co-sponsorship networks and representation. Ernesto Calvo will be going first. But in order to make it a smoother transition, let me introduce already Juan Uriagereka who says that whatever I'm going to be telling you right now really does not represent him. And in a way it's sort of true because he's a lot more done what I'm going to be reading to you. But that is the case of our other friends also. He is a linguist who has joined the University of Maryland in 1989. I must say that when he joined Maryland, he also came in a joint appointment with Spanish and Portuguese. Later he drifted towards linguistic, but that mistake will be remedied effective this coming fall when he will become part of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese while maintaining his affiliation with linguistics. He has published a dozen books on language structure including two textbooks, "The Minimalist Program" and its precursors, as well as many articles and chapters. He is a founding member of the Linguistics Department. And in his capacity as Associate Provost for Faculty, a post he held for quite a few years, he lead the approval and promotion of family-friendly policies, regularizing the status of professional track faculty, organizing leadership forums and updating promotion and tenure policies. ^M00:10:05 His current book projects include the books "Biolinguistic Investigations on the Formal Language Hierarchy", a monograph in progress and structure with Howard Lasnik, and a multidisciplinary project to formulate language structures as linear operators of the sort employed in machine learning. Having said that, which sounds very technical, the most important part is that when he came to Maryland, he said it works with both sides of his brain. And he is a fiction writer. And not just-- and we have a few things cooking along the way that, well, maybe a little presentation here one day. We'll see. Gentlemen, thank you first of all for agreeing to be here and the floor is yours, Ernesto. ^M00:10:56 [ Applause ] ^M00:11:01 ^M00:11:04 >> Ernesto Calvo: So first, thank you so much for the invitation. And I love the book, so it's a nice book to present. I do have to say that it's a bit of a self-serving likeness of the book because there's a lot of things that happened in the book and there are a lot of things that are related that actually go to my personal life. So let me start by pointing to a couple of anecdotes that I think that highlight I think what's a true contribution at least for me of the book. So we're having common Lazaro Cardenas, [inaudible], the Dow Jones, MTV. So let me start with a story. So when-- in 1976 my family went to Mexico on exile. My mother is [inaudible] and pretty much the entire side of my family went to either Mexico, Spain or Venezuela. So, most of the exile community which is actually told here, you know, with the kids, they put kids in communities and we were connected to each other, we form networks. The kind of networks that are-- we're able to describe in the book that have been persisting for, you know, 40 years at this point. So when a lot of us went to one school that was called [inaudible]. Maybe some of you, if you're connected to the Afghan-Mex committee heard about it. And in the [inaudible] we would have practices that we would go to the countryside in Mexico. The first one that we went was to do-- to analyze wood production in Mexico in Michoacán. At the time the governor of Michoacán was Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. And his son, Lazaro Cardenas was actually a classmate of my brother. And because he was the son of the governor, he organized the meeting so that we could put our tents in the government house the first day because then we would go to the area that wood was being produced. So the first night when we were in the government mansion, outside in the gardeners with our tents, we start to hear some odd noises. So we come out, several of us, and start to hear that something was going on in the tent. And tent was Lazaro Cardenas with one of our teachers, which was also a refugee from Uruguay. And outside of the tent was, you know a lot my friends that was the son of Pepe Perez [assumed spelling] which is one of the historians at the time, historians for most historians was the-- the director of the museum archeology and he was [inaudible] which was the stepson of [inaudible] also in the book which later wrote the discourse of [inaudible] and then was [inaudible]. So it was about twelve of us from Chile, from Uruguay, from Argentina because a lot of the community in exile puts in kids in sort of the same school. And it was a school on the left political spectrum. We would organize politically there. And we have formed strong bonds and you would see that through layers of generations that would call our [inaudible] and we would be the, you know, sons and daughters of the people who went in exile. So the book is really good. I'm describing something that generally has not been well portrayed which is that exiles are of very different kinds and they're-- the sort of terror and destruction that triggers the situation exile does not necessarily continues in the same way, you know. In a way eventually exile for many other people that I know became a source of pride, a source of community building. And most of us remain connected. So when there earthquake hit Mexico last year, we were calling all of our friends in Mexico. And when one of our classmates was kidnapped by the-- by Pinochet in 1997, we were demonstrating in Argentina. We were demonstrating in Chile. We were demonstrating in Mexico and Uruguay. So this community started to produce very significant networks that connected our countries and that remains the case. We have, you know, friends that are musicians that are playing in Mexico and some of them are actually faculty here in California, in MIT, some of them-- my friends. That's not me. And so, then-- >> Which I turned it off. >> Ernesto Calvo: Santiago Perez I was saying for example ended up being the director of Dow Jones for Latin America, [inaudible] ended up in MTV as a-- one of the creatives of MIT--MTV doing publicity. So every one of those remained connected to the network and we have our own Facebook page which is [inaudible] where we connect and track each other's history. The source and pride and glory of the school is Chivo Lubezki which is, you know, the one that won three Oscars for cinematography. That was actually was a Mexican. So and-- so one of the interesting things about the book is it starts by narrating exile not just as a source of a terror, demise, death, sort of their picture that you have from there Nacional Buenos Aires where a lot of you have seen these pictures, a very classic picture of [inaudible], a picture of the class of 1975 in the Buenos Aires, most of which ended up in exile or death. So that's a picture that most of the narratives of exiles begin with. But what they don't say is what happen afterwards, which is how these communities start to build roots and they start to become very transnational and start operating a very large number of countries socially, culturally, politically, and start to engage in activities that will signify exile and turn it into something that is pretty different. So the book, what it does that I think is wonderful is rebuilding those later networks. OK. How these people that were on exile are reabsorbed, are reintegrated, how two things are at the core of the community in exile that is returning? One, they come back with political capital, with social capital, with cultural capital that allows them to give a narrative about both the dictatorship, exile. The other one is that it produces a network that overlays the network in Latin America where all of Latin America is touched by notes. So all of us have networks in the other countries and are connected with the Onam in Mexico or with the [inaudible] in Mexico, FPB, the [inaudible]. You know, all the different institutions have actually members of exile. And it's not just the Argentina exiles, the Argentina exiles, the Uruguayan exiles, the Chilean exile. Twenty out of 22 countries of Latin America had authoritarian regimes when we moved to Mexico. And Mexico was a big hub. Most of those countries that were authoritarians produced communities that left to Italy as they described, to Venezuela, to Spain, to France. And all of us remain connected because it was not different families to different places. Oftentimes, we actually have members in, you know, each one of those places. So as I was saying, you know, my family goes in exile. We went to Mexico. One of my uncles went to Venezuela, another one of my uncles went to Spain. Then they moved to Spain, the ones from Venezuela. Then all my cousins ended up in the US doing academic work. And generally, I spend a couple of months in a year in Argentina and maybe a month in the other places in the region. And by rebuilding these other structures that characterize the exile, what-- what they do is to bring what we actually remember from exile. Most of the pictures of exile depict what happens with, you know, at the time of departure. You know, the fact that my father was in jail when he comes out and we're going to exile. He actually produces-- an entire operation to try to cover us so that nothing would happen when we were exiting the country. We arrived to Mexico and everything is depleted. But over two, or three, or four years, these networks actually starts to build things that are extremely interesting, and starts to build catalog that was impossible to being thought about later on. So in-- when in-- the discussion, decision for example to go back to Argentina, they hit right on the nail of the segregation. We had huge discussions about where to go, when to go, what to go for. So for example three months after democratization, I went back to Argentina but my parents were not willing to do so yet. Not without knowing that the situation was going to be politically stable. So I arrived to Argentina, 15-year-old, living on basically my community or, you know, kids and parents from exile that are returning in different stages and that are producing the same kind of-- building bridges that we had in Mexico when we arrived. So the networks starts to be staged both going forward and coming backward. And at the same time we have some friends that had said to go back to Argentina that once they're in Argentina realized that there is no longer a political goal that they actually can sustain or are willing to defend. ^M00:20:06 So some of them go back to Mexico or ended up in the US. So you start to see these sort of very different patterns of migration that carried and networks have been created to a very large number of places. So, each one of the chapters is actually reconstructing part of those debates. Debates about should we accept for example payment for the hardships that we face in an exile? There was a huge discussion in the community whether reparations should be accepted and we were very divided. We didn't want to accept reparations but at the same time other people wanted to accept reparations and the decision to it was very personal, but it was discussed collectively as our problem in our community. The same happened with the recent reparations. My father received one but at the same time, it was a huge discussion whether you should receive reparations for having been in prison under-- or repent, you know, the national executive. So these sort of discussions are building political narratives that do not have to do with the crimes committed by the dictatorship and do not have to do with the conditions in which we left to the exile. But actually daily political life of constructing networks once you are in this position to accept. And that's I think what makes this book different. Most of the other books, they're not that many, but most of the other books that I've seen, what they tried to do is to reconstruct the source of the destruction of this community knowing and then consider how then they say exile accentuates your natural craziness, which is absolutely true. We were all absolutely insane in many different ways just so that you have a taste of that. For a few months, I would go into stores, big stores like we had Liverpool and stole things. And before getting to the door, I would actually leave them by the door so that when I was obtained by the police, I would actually start shouting at them. We were very insane, maybe different ways. But the interesting thing is that this actually builds into networks that produce interesting political results. And we're-- there's reparation, a certain reparation that is done by the community and by the networks that are formed in the community. I think that's a wonderful result of the book. >> Thank you. ^M00:22:20 [ Applause ] ^M00:22:26 ^M00:22:33 >> Juan Uriagereka: I have to apologize because I'm not a professional, so I wrote some notes just to think about this. I was born in the '50s in a normal Spanish family from Spain. President Eisenhower had just ended the blockade that had us start after the Great War. The alternative to invading with Hitler in Mussolini defeated. It wouldn't have been easy for the French or British who hadn't been willing to stop fascism in its inception. Stalin was eager too but fearing the west wanted the Soviets controlling the Mediterranean. Well over half a million people had died in the Civil War, Spanish Civil War, including 200,000 executed in the [inaudible] and other 50,000 were killed after the war ended. Several thousand more died in concentration camps. This is all in Spain. Some 200,000 became permanent exiles. By the 1970s, about 4 million had immigrated once it became legal in the 1940s in a country of 27 million, again get the percentages. As I said, my family was normal. Some had survived the bombing of Guernica that Picasso depicted. Others recounted that in similar stories. I grew up in my grandparents' [inaudible] farm as my father worked for a company in exile. Mom learned to read from another-- from an urban teacher who was relocated to our hamlet as a punishment for having defended democracy. That was actually a break for us peasants as he gave her and my uncles knowledge. Uncle Luis [assumed spelling] was 15 when he left for Argentina. Uncle Antonio, 14, half the family was already in America. In my mind, it was difficult to figure out whether the letters that relatives sent home were from exile, immigration, prison or what. It was just a distant place. In the '60s, much unrest happened in those remote places of our relatives. Dad's company was then working in Chile from where he wrote of hope, illegally mailing books and records about Che Guevara and by Violeta Parra. Practically all the Spanish writers I read then were exiles. During our transition to democracy, many returned from the Southern Cone escaping the dictatorships that we're talking about today. The book that we are presenting brought a smile to my face reminding me of my literary heroes, Onetti, Galeano, Benedetti, Perry Rossi [assumed spelling], Soriano, Roa Bastos, or actors whose skill impressed me the most, Alteri [assumed spelling], Rossi [assumed spelling], Politi [assumed spelling]. Not to speak of the musicians whose songs we sang in the streets, [inaudible], Sosa, Guevara, Warani [assumed spelling]. Our book notes on page 73, the difficulty that American exiles had in Europe echoing the complaint by Perry Rossi that I remember very vividly. That being said, my dearest friends, were those marginalized intellectuals. Some of whom taught me everything I know about the theater, like the late Claudio Narea [assumed spelling] after learning his craft from [inaudible]. I can't imagine the Spanish movie there, the "Almodóvar" made famous without the likes of Cecilia Roth. And so I can't help asking what really happened, why this ties back and forth. I sent this on page 187. This is so that you see I read the book-- reads, "whether clothed in military or civilian guard, authoritarianism has been a mainstay." While the book is talking about Latin America, the motherland is no different. In the two plus century since the French Revolution, one can count 25, 25 military [inaudible]. I don't care whether from the right or from the left, military [inaudible] in 200 years. The latest one in 1981, five years before Spain joined the European Union, still unclear who was behind it. During the 19th century, liberal and conservative administrations so commonly replace one another after a coup. That by the time the monarchy was reestablished, they institutionalize succession of government. So the opposite side routinely change in every two years. Alas, that Solomonic solution didn't last long because both were incredibly corrupt. Eventually further coups led to the famous dictatorships of the 20th century. As the book describes, the fate of these dynamics on page 32 citing Luna involved [foreign language], that is prison, expulsion or entombment, so the dark aspects. And not all is bad that stems from such chaos. It may have been harder to otherwise realize the liberation of American and Asian colonies throughout the 19th century or the African ones during the 20th century. Just as not always good either in the visionary governments that stemmed from uprisings like the French revolution. The Napoleonic standardization fueled resentment leading to successful fascist nationalisms from Italy to Germany to unsuccessful ones from Iberia to the Vulcans. Later still lingering conflicts. Look at the Catalan one. Often find a trigger in Civil Wars of that ilk. As David Armitage reminds us, I am a revolutionary, you are a rebel, and they are engaged in the Civil War. This is why the question of whether nationalistic movements are good or bad has no easy answer. After all, we describe by the same word, the Mapuche or the [inaudible] nation, and the Russian and the Chinese nation. Such dynamics are structure for me in a deep sense, and this is the linguist in me talking now. Within material science, physical tensions of this sort are called dynamical frustration. We may think of it as the unresolvable coexistence of conflicting tendencies that never settle. For those raised in the Marxist tradition, dynamical frustration relates to the Hegelian clash between thesis and antithesis except you never achieve a synthesis. Or if you wish, the synthesis is a state of equilibrium that arises from the clash itself. I raised the idea because yet a further ingredient in the cauldron, one leading to the exiles we are now considering is radicalism and reaction to liberalism. It is fascinating how liberal and radical forces ally to defeat conservatives in the form of fascism. Although, first liberalism aligned with conservatism to keep radicalism confined to the east, Russia and so on. And less than a decade later, the logical combination closed with at least in Europe conservatism and radicalism uniting over how to partition Poland. ^M00:30:04 In this light, one can read the second A bomb in Nagasaki under liberal reluctance to let Stalin go for Franco and Salazar as the new dynamical frustration which crystallizes into the Cold War. The book has several further examples of dynamical frustration beyond that Cold War. We are reminded of the vicious circle in which fear of revolution brings about repression which fuels the desire for revolution and so on. Or different instantiations of modernity when the ideological path concocted in the west an urban reality confirms the multifarious nature of the rural colonial or frontier realities beyond. Indeed, these revolutions, rebellions, civil wars, whatever you want to call them that led to the creation of the very nations we're talking about, from the Spanish empire and from one another. Those are all prime examples of dynamical frustration. All these dynamics are frustrating and including the fact that exile is both welcomed and threatened. And this is another quote from the book, "You who left are now returning like heroes and we who stayed behind are the ones who suffered." Those are the inxiles [phonetic] that are mentioned in the book. Those are very complicated dynamics with-- There is no right or wrong here. The book also interestingly brings to the equation the unintended consequence of exile in a globalized world. The media related, university and culturally driven, and ultimately politically effective role of exiles in making their countries change. Another example of this earlier on is what intellectuals from Nazi Germany did. That's one of the main pillars of the American University. The book puts it on-- book on page 26 as followed, in the long run, exile backfired given the connections established by exiles and the resonance their plight received, perhaps partly as a result, while the Spanish dictatorship lasted four decades, 39 years. And ones whose effects were examined with the exception of Paraguay, which is almost as long as the Spanish were between half and a fifth shorter, depending. Now, that allowed for larger role of the exiled communities. That's what chapter 7 mainly is about. And what chapter 5 goes into, procedures for repatriation that we were discussing, investigation, eventually fair trials, again, with the interesting exception of Paraguay. Situation in Spain aligns more with Paraguay than the more democratic Argentinean nations. Argentina, Chile and especially Uruguay where you have a former diplomat are becoming the head of state. For a member of a comparable armed group-- armed group in Spain, that would be just unthinkable. Indeed, the moral debate about arm struggle that chapter 6 raises, extremely interesting, inconceivable in a country that only a couple of weeks ago was ruled against by the European Court of Human Rights for jailing activists after burning effigies of the king whose role in the coup d'etat is still murky. Despite the fact that as the book notes on page 70, Southern Cone exiles had a hard time explaining their messy politics to Europeans. This is still the case. It's very difficult to understand by European standards. Spanish exiles with a more traditional message were not able to summon action against Franco who died in bed and as he wished, leaving things very well bounded. To this date, speaking in Spain not just of reparation or restoration, but even investigation is taboo. It is presently inconceivable to find a situation equivalent to what the book discusses on page 149 where the day of the national stop rising in Spain turns into a national day of memory, truth and justice as is the case in the Southern Cone. Chapter 8 speaks of shifting frontiers of citizenships, exploring transnational networks, topic that fascinates me. This can be seen as a new phenomenon. Describing present migratory processes, this is a quote as having complicated, the possibility of defining diaspora in purely ethnonational terms. But this is now me. I would say modern notions like nation itself are liberal inventions of the 19th century, while Diasporas are many, many, many tens of thousands of years older. Before the birth of nation states, those were immigration dynamics, not conquest ones for the most part. Now, mere emigrants built humanity as we understand it. Interbreeding for example with Neanderthals and Denisovans to yield the miracles of art and myth. Those errant Jews and gypsies and aborigines and Indians and other expatriates of all kinds, those are the holders of human existence. Only very slow time in evolution will tell whether it's dynamical frustrations lead to emergent structures that we may call forward thinking. Certainly new realities will emerge that way too. Witness the web, witness social media. The way art did-- and eventually writing, and eventually the printing press, all as momentous as the internet these days. In our world, it may not be all that bad to start dreaming of electronic exiles, because one runs out of physical locations to take the children to in case of real and tangible civil wars or familiar and not electronic prisons. Thinking of normal families in Syria, Iraq does make me wonder. Our book cites Perry Rossi's line representing the dilemma of exile, "to part is to part in half." It echoes the one line that Cole Parker, adapting that unforgettable goodbye, which is to die a little. Then again, the horrors we continue to witness in other authoritarian societies remind us that to die is to part a lot. So let's hope that before the finale exile, we leave our children in a more democratic, transparent, pluralistic world of the sort our dear exiles fought for, successfully in that they kept our hope alive. This is one tangible legacy of this wonderful book. Well beyond the accurate facts and testimonies in regard to institutional transformation. As it notes on page 187, electoral democracy and the periodic change of government seem to have taken a firm hold. It is uplifting to see such a comprehensive analysis of exile placed in the context and exploring without anger, even nostalgia, how it contribute to the development of democracy in countries where that exile originated and in countries like my own where it ended. Thank you. ^M00:37:38 [ Applause ] ^M00:37:43 ^M00:37:46 >> Thank you. >> Saúl Sosnowski: If Roniger should join us. I could hear his comments. So let me tell you something about, one of the difficulties in writing this book. There are four of us, as I mentioned before from different disciplines, with writing habits that are very far one from the other. And Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder collaborated on a number of books, so they knew each other fairly well. Leonardo Senkman and I wrote one book together about fascism and Nazism in Argentine letters. But Leo Senkman has one way of writing and one way of thinking that is about, I don't know, whether 180 degrees, but at least 90 degrees away from my own. And that was one of the difficulties, trying to find a common voice, how are we going to find some sort of language that will accommodate the perspectives from which we were coming. The other thing is each one of us has a very different style of work and there is one among us who is the most workaholic of all. No, it's not me. It is Luis Roniger. And he is the one who really kept us in line. And so, in addition to all the merits of his scholarly work and so on, I have to tell you that he is really-- I don't want to say slave driver, it's not nice, but he's the one who kept us on track and partly it's because he also has a secret weapon, his wife Shirley who is the one who also did the index for the book, a rather awesome task for which all authors are most grateful to you, Shirley. Thank you. ^M00:40:08 Let me turn this over to Luis and who is partly to a good degree responsible for the fact that we were able to finish this book. Luis. >> Luis Roniger: Thank you. ^M00:40:22 [ Applause ] ^M00:40:25 >> Luis Roniger: Thank you, Saúl, for your kind words. And thank you Ernesto and Juan for the generous evaluation, talk about the book and also sharing your personal perspective. And listening to you, I would like to say that what is exile and what is the key that brings such creativities, such innovation, not just to the countries that we analyze but overall there is an open possibility that [inaudible]. And the idea of exile is that at least in the modern world, it breaks the hyphen between nation and state. Whenever people are forced to flee their own countries, they are no longer obligated. They cannot take the markers of that certainty for granted. They cannot take their common assumptions for granted, something has broken. In the nation state, collective identity and political rights are built together. This is the hyphen between nation and state. But once they leave, they cling even more to the nation but they are no longer committed to the state. And these open a range of possibilities of learning, of getting to use new-- getting used to new institutions, new forms of interacting, new forms of partnership, even the very conception of being in a relationship changed. And as you know, many in exile have eventually broken apart diverse as being a characteristic of-- thank you, diverse as being a characteristic of exile. And there are many losses of exile, but there are also gains. This possibility of opening themselves to new ideas, to new forms of understanding the world, understanding politics pays off. Because together with the losses, and losses certainly are numerous and countless and have been a-- both in personal terms, in terms of the life of people going to exile, many, many losses. But also gains not just individually, not just in terms of human capital but things that will eventually come to serve the countries of origin. People will remain attached to their countries, to their background and once the possibility opens, they should consider whether to return. And though-- although the return, the word, is in the title of the book, we emphasized throughout the book that this is just one possibility among many. And therefore there are not just the returnees that we should consider. There are the sojourners that people who stay abroad but maintain relationship with others in the diaspora. And let me-- beyond the individual gains, it mentioned something about the contributions to the country. Let's start with politics. We cannot understand the transition from authoritarianism to democracy in some of those countries without considering exile. The most evident case among the four that we consider is the case of Chile. In Chile, exiles were crucial in the transition but because they were crucial while in exile, they recompose the political alliances, the socialist change their attitude, broke ranks with the communist. Within the communist there were also divisions. Eventually they build a coalition of 17 countries. This is called the [inaudible] that led to the defeat of Pinochet in the referendum of 1998 and eventually opened the door to transition. But also in the cabinet of the successive governments that came after the transition, exiles played a crucial role. Even-- in terms of their numbers among the cabinet members you can trace exiles. They were a prevailing force. In Uruguay for example, Danilo Astori, the vice president of President Mujica was an exile. The minister of education, Ricardo Ehrlich was an exile. They were also scientists, but they moved into politics beyond the politics of the university then in academia. In academia in Uruguay for example, until 1984 there was just one university, the UdelaR, Universidad de la Republica, exiles opened a range to new universities, new disciplines, new investment in science and technology. For example in biology, in the biological sciences, there were five tenure position before the exiles returned. As exiles started returning, they build a faculty of 100, over 100, they invested millions. They used their connections with France, with Mexico to create new avenues, new subdisciplines, et cetera, et cetera. Three of the four provosts in Uruguay following the return of democracy were exiles, and some of them were very, very instrumental in revamping the entire educational system of higher ed-- entire system of higher education in Uruguay in the realm of new disciplines. For example in Chile there was no social history until Gabriel Salazar returned to Chile. Bioethics, in Argentina there was no sense of what is the ethics in dealing with biological research until somebody who did his career in the US, Victor Penchaszadeh, returned to Argentina and opened a new ground supporting also the mothers and especially the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and eventually created a new field of research and investigation. In the publishing industry, in each of the four countries, you can find people who recreated the impetus that existed in the '60s once back in their countries after exile. Let me mentions some of them. Divinsky in Ediciones de la Flor en in Argentina. Pablo Harari, he founded Editorial Trilce in Uruguay. Carlos Orellana in Chile. In the case of Paraguay, [inaudible] by himself on its own effort, as you know Paraguay is a totally different universe. It's a universe of an oral culture, not necessarily a written culture. But he managed somehow to eventually fail in the long run because Paraguay is Paraguay with not enough readership, but he tried so hard. And other people who did not go into exile collaborated with people in exile, exiles coming back. And for instance the first-- a film, a long-- a feature film in Paraguay was done by a returnee. "Miramenometokei" was the name of this film in 2002. And also, there were failures of course, institutional failures. One may ask why the democracy in Uruguay or democracy in Chile seems to have overcome to a larger extent the polarization, political polarization down the democracy in Argentina. A part of this story is that the contributions of exiles is not enough. It is the meeting point between the ability of the exiles, the willingness to do something for the country and eventually the long-term conditions that enable those contributions to be pervasive or be fleeting away and disappear. ^M00:50:03 In the case of Argentina, we have with initial democratization starting on December of 1983, we have very important contributions in science for example with Sadosky which democratized the entire system of academia. They [inaudible] and try to democratize it, and that the realm of politics the group of Esmeralda who were the advisers to president Alfonsin and wrote these discourses as was mentioned before. The Cultura Sosyalista that was supposed to be an open ground-- an open meeting ground for people to debate the ideas without political polarization. Nonetheless, politics are at large and the connection between politics and the political economy for Argentina failed. And as you know, there were many waves and ups and downs both in transition of justice and the recreation of democratic culture. But nonetheless, the level of civil society, the transformation was there to stay and as a-- and despite the institution imbalances that we see in Argentina and still the tradition of political polarization, Argentina of the 2010 is not the same in terms of embracing human rights. It has gained a lot in that support. ^M00:51:55 ^M00:52:00 I think that political exiling Latin America has something to say-- something of comparative relevance for other regions of the world. And we are-- before Juan started mentioning the case and talking about the case of Spain and this brings me-- it brings to my mind also the case of Germany. Case of Germany and in the case of this space. There's not been a re-accommodation of exiles as in the case of the Southern Cone and in particular I would say the case of Uruguay, then followed by the case of Chile, the case of Argentina, and finally the case of Paraguay. Various degrees of accommodation, but there's been a willingness somehow after initial period of resistance to re-accommodate exiles and give exiles the proper place. Of course Uruguay is at the top because in the case of Uruguay, they decided to bring the people who lose their jobs in the public administration. They are called the exonerados. This was the word that was used. People who lost their position, what they were thrown out of work and then many of them left for exile. With democratization, Uruguay decided to bring them back to their former positions. For instance, Samuel Lichtensztejn who was in the '70s, in the early '70s the provost of UdelaR, of the Universidad-- Universidad de la Republica was brought back in the '80s and given his old post. Now with a new perspective and new exposure, a new context, transnational connections, et cetera, et cetera. And this is a fantastic push for institutional transformation. In the case of Germany, they-- Even the word exiles was not used for the people who fled Nazism. The word [inaudible], those who were pushed out from their own land was used for those who are to leave East Germany and were received in West Germany. This-- even the label recognizing that something wrong are being committed against them was not granted them. And the same with the case of Spain that you saw wonderfully exposed [inaudible]. And certainly in Spain the-- if they have received the figures of intellectuals, they have tried somehow to depoliticize them or try to take any characteristic that may be affecting the view of the field. For instance Garcia Lorca and his sexual orientation was somehow taken apart and not emphasized in the celebration of Garcia Lorca. Finally, a word about-- and just coming to an end, a word about the networks. Exile opened a Pandora box of multiple possibilities. Again, return is just-- was just one of them. That as Ernesto emphasized, people leaving their countries as part of a wave of exile may remain and many were in such position, may remain attached emotionally, intellectually to what is going on in their country of origin. And even if they remained abroad, many of them try to contribute, become members of networks, academic networks, intellectual networks and political networks, and as such they continue to contribute to the opening of those societies. And the major sign of such opening has been the embracing of two characteristic of modern and Latin America. One of them is the rural discovery of Latin America. This is not something new. For instance if you go back in history, many of the revolutionaries of Latin America were playing not just with the support of their-- of the citizens of their own country but with a wide range of people coming from all other countries. This happened in Central America. For instance, look at the biography of Sandino and who were the lieutenants of Sandino. And this is just one example of many networks. For instance, female networks of intellectuals, those were networks of people building on that transnational identity which did not deter from their support and commitment to a national sense of identity but was combined and intertwined with a national identity. And so the rediscovery of Latin America beyond the national has been part of this experience of exile. And the second characteristic is that through the dispersal of these networks, some of the countries have come to the conclusion that they should grant also political rights to national [inaudible]. You can see that in Argentina, you can see that in the case of Paraguay. And in the case of Uruguay and Chile it's more complicated but still there have been attempts to launch this connection. On the academic field, there is what we call the [inaudible], the drive of those countries to reconnect with academics, with intellectuals, with people who-- with professionals staying abroad. And this is an active effort on the part of those country. To sum up, to sum up, exile has opened those countries to globalization, to the [inaudible] of human rights, to rediscovery of Latin American ties beyond their commitment to national identities and eventually to the possibility that to reconsider that the nation is broader than the territory of a single state. Just to finish with one example of that in the realm of literature for Saúl, [inaudible] after exile, during and after exile, organized a multivolume work of critical Argentine-- critical space of Argentine literature, which consider for-- but it's not the first time but which consider in a proper place the work of Argentine writers writing beyond the territory of Argentina. ^M01:00:20 For me it has been a-- together with Saúl, with Mario and with Leo and exercising in long running field. It's not a short term but long running. Somebody asked me how long have you been working on this book, and I told him, 20 years. Oh, 20 years? Really? Yes, multiply five years by four. Thank you. ^M01:00:53 [ Applause ] ^M01:00:59 >> Saúl Sosnowski: Thank you, Luis. He just proved that I was right in what I said in his introduction. And we have time for comments among us. We have time for comments and questions, observations, rebuttals from the audience. And the floor is open. Let me just add one thing in the context of exile, and that is the contributions that exiles themselves have done, have made to the countries that have hosted them. And since Juan eloquently spoke about Spain, what would El Colegio de Mexico be. What would be the publishing industry in Mexico and in Argentina without the contribution of Spanish exiles. So this is an entirely dynamic process that we have to take into account. And, obviously, the issue of repatriation, the issue of return, the issue of recognition of exiles once they return home when they are allowed to return home, the flag that justice has not been meted out equally in each of these countries, that the process of returning was radically different in each one of them. The flag that Spain still refuses to address major issues such as unearthing the tombs of those who were executed during and after the Spanish Civil War. These are issues that affect us all in one way or another and I-- They do address some of the keywords that appear in this book. So hopefully we opened up something beyond addressing some of the issues that we wanted to incorporate into this first book. The floor is open to all of you. Gwen? >> Milagros Peran: Yeah, OK. Hello. My name is Milagros Peran [assumed spelling]. I'm a Nicaraguan poet and translator and I also happen to have a master's from the University of [inaudible]. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Of course. Yes. >> Milagros Peran: And you not-- Thank you so much because you touched on two questions that I have or comments that I had. The first one about Sandino because he, you know, he was sort of like politically trained in Mexico and he [inaudible] his ideas. And the second one was about the subject for the book because when I received this invitation, the first thing I thought was exile. Something that I've been, you know, that I heard more than 20 years ago. And you just mentioned that it took you maybe 20 years to come up with the book. So, that's the comment that I wanted to make because I remember when I was about to publish my second book of poetry it was in 2000. And talked to the professor, well, about some of these themes. He said, oh, exile, you know, that was more in the '90s but, you know, not in the 21st century. So, thank you so much though for bringing this because I learned so many things from you today, from all of you. It's very valid and, you know, we have such a problem now with amelioration and it's everywhere. It's everywhere. I mean, so [inaudible] you know, people that have been here all their lives, and now what? They're supposed to go back home? And what if they don't have, you know, the [inaudible], what if they forgot about that, what are they going to do about it? So, thank you so much. Wonderful. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Gwen? >> Gwen: Yes, I was a-- thank you all very much. A lot to think about. I was thinking about so much of the wonderful story of the weak and creation and the redemocratization. The different points in some of these places focuses on the contributions of people who went back or who were able to form strong networks, educate themselves, et cetera. And I can't help thinking about just a couple of things and-- Around 2000 there was a Chilean TV documentary called Guevara, the people who were often-- other parts of the world and some of it was fun and wonderful. But there were a few who had gone into exile and was just sort of [inaudible] up on the shore, a mechanic in Moscow. No-- And I think around the characters in their novel of Alejandro Zambra, you know, standing on the snowy street corner in Copenhagen and crying because of his son who had been separated for so long. And I guess I just wonder how-- I mean, that sounds very pathos and all that but it's also part of the whole like [inaudible] passage, especially for those who are less-- I think of so many of them. [Inaudible] immigrants that were exiled from Central America who were not into-- not as well situated to have some of the [inaudible]. I just-- I wonder if that is in a-- in-- what part it plays in your book or probably your part or-- with the literature I guess. >> Saúl Sosnowski: That is the part that we are going to write in book two, but in-- >> Luis Roniger: There is one more in contribution in the back and then we may address the-- >> Juan Uriagereka: Yeah, I think he has [inaudible]. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Why not. >> Thank you. Happy Friday. So I was wondering you guys talking about the Southern Cone and the [inaudible], transnational ideas, if in your research you talked about Brazil. If it has a model that maybe similar to these other Southern Cone countries or a little different? >> Saúl Sosnowski: OK. Very briefly on Brazil and then Luis can expand. We decided at the very beginning to exclude Brazil because it required a different type of treatment all together. And that was the only reason why we stuck to these four countries. Although we are all aware of the fact that the whole wave of coup-- coup d'etats begin with Brazil in 1964, that the impact it has had, the fact that it also received exiles from each of the other countries. But we decided on the methodological basis to leave Brazil out of this consideration. And in terms of what Gwen was addressing, the fact that some people ended up in exile in certain countries sometimes was just happenstance. It just happened. And the moment you mentioned the mechanic in Moscow, I was reminded of the case of [inaudible] who was a Tupamaro who spent about a decade in jail and so on. When he got out of jail, he ended up in Sweden. I asked him, why did you go to Sweden? That was the first ticket that was offered to me. And in some cases that's how it happened. >> All right. >> Saúl Sosnowski: So he went to Sweden, he learned Swedish. He published there. He had great success within the Swedish community until one day he woke up and he said, it happens to all of us at one point, what am I doing here? And that he's more a literary and he's also visual artist. He was the director of the National Library and several things are very, very interesting about him because he broke with the Tupamaros while being in jail and he decided that was the wrong approach and so on. So I asked him, so what happened then? And his response was very clear, look at me. I interviewed him when he was a director of the National Library. Pepe Mujica appointed him to that point-- to that post. ^M01:10:01 So that indicated to the degree to which there was a certain openness, ideological openness, political openness, and as well as experience in practicality in terms of how they related to each other within the Tupamaro movement at least while in jail and once they got out. But he goes to Sweden because that's where the ticket was. Obviously the case of exiles from the communist party was different. Everything was very organized and they moved in blocks to certain countries, to Eastern Europe and so on. So-- but it did vary quite a bit. And then there were the cases of many people who went wherever they were able to go and however they were able to get to the border. So, I don't think we can make a blanket statement that-- >> No, it wasn't that-- >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yeah, I know you weren't making that but I was-- basically thinking of the whole process of how somebody will end up in a certain place that is not necessarily logical. >> Ernesto Calvo: But I do, I mean emphasize in something that you said and the book describes on my count between half a million and 800,000 exiles. And the group of people that the Insulsas [assumed spelling], the Portantieros, you know, the ones that were mentioned are a fraction of those. And many of those that we are talking about that are a fraction of those were already Insulsa and Portantiero before leaving. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Absolutely. >> Ernesto Calvo: So Portantiero had created [foreign language]. Insulsa was on his own right already an important scholar and when he arrived he forms [inaudible] Mexico. Most of them, when they arrive from exile-- I mean on exile, immediately they were absorbed in the societies. They did not train and-- so that talks about social capital what was there but not about the entire million. There's a lot of people that went on exile that only face destruction but not face the other side of the book, you know, the constructive part, chapters 5 through. And they are in a sense the ones that only pay the cost and have none of the benefits. And that is sort of a different picture. But I do think that is something to commend on, on the way which they build a book which is generally that's the only painting that we have. Generally exile is starting this way. I mean if we think of the contribution of that book not as being 20-year-old but being a roadmap for the next 20 years, we can think that, you know, the refugees that we're getting today from Syria, you know, are going to be also refugees in 20 years. You can have an incredible amount of structure on the one hand and an incredible amount of human capital and political capital that's going to be generated. And most people are looking at the human costs which are the most important thing to focus now. But it is true that there's human capital to be built and that's also an important feature that I think the book does bring, you know, very forcefully. >> Luis Roniger: Yes, if I may ask-- add something the label of exile something sometimes-- something very Byronic about it. That is maybe manipulated as well. We should be aware of that. It's not by chance that we distinguish between the exiles of the Southern Cone and the refugees of Central America. Even the words that we use, color, what we are looking for, but we may turn as analyst, as people who started this phenomenon. We may turn it being the word of the danger of using these labels, we may turn it into a tool of investigation. And this is what I think we have done because we find differences between the different diasporas in the way even in these four cases, in the way in which the exiles within the community of nationals abroad, unless you said-- and those are not exactly the same. Exiles are part of a larger community of sojourners, of diplomats, of students, of migrants of-- and all sorts of people who left their countries for different reasons. Some for economic motivations, others for political reasons but still there is a core of exiles and the question for research is did they became the voice that represented the community. And in some cases we found that exiles spoke in the name of all the people who are in some way or another forced to leave the country. And in other cases, this was less prominent. And so-- And this is the differentiation that we can trace in these four cases and we trace them and it can be also traced in other cases. In about Brazil, Brazil there is a lot of interest today in Brazilian exile. It started unlike of what you were told. It started with a book in 1999 by a historian. You may know her, Denise Rollemberg. The title of her book is very telling. It was called "Entre Raizes e Radares". This looking back and looking forward and in the middle, strength in the middle. We did not touch it but there is a large community of people working on the theme of exile and return now in Brazil. It came late, relatively late. In the period that you were talking about exile, this was the period of many testimonies, many personal stories. But it took another, almost another decade or decade and a half to reach the point of being able to analyze from a distance the phenomenon of massive exile and forced displacement. OK. >> Saúl Sosnowski: One of the issues that we also touched upon was and that was remind-- I was reminded by your comment. Some people when they went overseas they had already been established. They had their own signature and so on. And they also carried wisdom the same splits, particularly in the case of the Argentines, the same fractures, the same oppositions, the same internal fights that they had within the country, they carried them into exile. And so you had even in Mexico, you had two big groups that we're not particularly-- >> Ernesto Calvo: A cast was way bigger. That's wrong in the book. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Explain. >> Luis Roniger: Cast [inaudible]. >> Ernesto Calvo: What? No, no, no, no. I was just. I was in the cast but the cast was in [inaudible]. >> Saúl Sosnowski: I know. >> Ernesto Calvo: Had way more people. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yeah, that's true. >> Ernesto Calvo: But they're very-- [inaudible] gets more, you know, it gets a lot of prominence here. >> Luis Roniger: Because it has been researched. >> Ernesto Calvo: Sorry. >> Saúl Sosnowski: For the second edition there will be a new footnote. >> Ernesto Calvo: Yeah, and we will print size for. Sorry. >> Luis Roniger: And then-- and by the-- By the way, Saúl, following your-- no, later. >> Saúl Sosnowski: OK. And the other thing is that the children that were born there and the impact on the children once the possibility of returning opened up. And that was another issue that we touch up on and at least we point to an issue that it was quite significant to address. And within all of that, I would like to stress although Luis already has done so, is the uniqueness of the Paraguayan case. Yes, it is a different universe in terms of what it was from the very beginning to how the exile operated, to how the Paraguayan community operated, to the fact that their most important cultural institutions were not based in Paraguay but were based in exile. And it is a way of also marking the impact of what the dictatorship can have in the long term. Namely we're talking about the dictatorship that is just a few years to a dictatorship that lasted for decades and therefore had an impact on the entire country that is still being felt today. The dictatorship, the basis for the dictatorship has not disappeared and we see it in the daily news coming out of Paraguay. The fact that Stroessner's birthday is still celebrated by many, that many still say [foreign language] referring to the fact-- >> Juan Uriagereka: Same thing in Spain. >> Saúl Sosnowski: -- same as in Spain. >> Ernesto Calvo: Yeah [inaudible]. >> Luis Roniger: Yes. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yeah, yeah. ^M01:19:59 Namely these are issues that had-- that have not ended. This is a life open channel. So this is one of the issues that we have to keep tackling. It's not over. >> Luis Roniger: Yeah. And it's recreated every generation. For instance, I'm thinking of Patricio Guzman-- >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yeah. >> Luis Roniger: -- as he retained-- the filmmaker from Chile. As he returns from Chile and shows what he has done for all the filming for the battala for-- batalla for Chile, he shows to the new generations and people are amazed. They were not aware at all. By the way, Patricio Guzman did a wonderful film two years ago. I don't know if you know it, "El Boton de Nacar", have you seen it? "El Boton de Nacar", highly recommended. Showing that the entire perception of Chile being connected to the land, to territory, fighting the Mapuche is a totally miscarriage of the true identity of Chile should be connected to the sea. And the Mapuche were people of the sea, not necessarily people of the land despite their name. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Any comments, please. >> Ernesto Calvo: Yeah. >> Saúl Sosnowski: One, two. Yes. Please >> My name is [inaudible] presentation. And part of somewhere the way you talk-- You are talking like dictatorship is totally bad, democracy is totally good. But I don't see how you explain like people are anti-- antifascism and then the people here, they don't like it and democracy because they don't really have their voice heard, then another nonvoter as you can see. And then I also don't see why that our history tell us that United Kingdom, sometimes they explain, sometimes there is a construct such as China, sometime you explain-- you have Manchuria, you have Mongolia, you have [inaudible] and sometimes you don't have that many. And then some-- in terms of culture, in other places, they might [inaudible] confusion is that the best is sent in the world and the people will travel far to go to India to some Buddhism. So that kind of [inaudible] value I don't think you explained in your book or in your presentation. You know, I just wonder if you can comment of those if exile or the way you intend criticism, have you used a refugee [inaudible] is interchangeable. I just wonder is the exile is really that some people are just sort of being influenced or-- it's not really a threat by the political power by the influence by the affair or in the other way people think they have some entrepreneurship, they want to go overseas. That before, several decades ago, people will think Brazil is a good opportunity for the entrepreneurship to have a big ownership of the big land, something like this. So I don't know if you can address this issue. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Is it official. Yup. >> I work here at the Library of Congress. I'm just wondering, I know Argentina like the United States is a country of immigrants. I imagine all your families came from somewhere else originally and I wonder did you think about that in terms of your discussion and how might that have affected your thoughts on-- ^M01:24:04 ^M01:24:08 >> Luis Roniger: Yeah, OK. I'll start. First of all, the questions that you posed are far ranging and certainly very important from a comparative perspective. It's a-- what we have done is part of a larger canvas of human mobility and you rightly indicated that some of that mobility is for interest to be open to opportunities, economic opportunities, for instance all sorts of ways of migration coming to Latin America or coming to the USA, et cetera, et cetera, and also that the boundaries of states in nations can expand or shrink. So our contribution is more modest in the sense that we don't address the entire range of phenomena of human mobility. We address especially that part, a part of that universe which is connected with forced mobility or some connection between forced mobility and some kind of prospects of a better life, but especially forced mobility. And this has been a tradition in the societies that we have finalized for a very long time. Going back to colonial times, they were already the [foreign language]. There was an institution of forcing people to go out. Not simply for political reasons, could be for social reasons, for affecting the public decorum, et cetera, et cetera. But by the way, you mentioned China. Also in China the region of Xinjiang [assumed spelling] in the western part of China was used as a place of sending people who the Chinese empire did not want to remain because of corruption, because of other issues. There was also exile in China. All empires use exile. The UK use exile in Australia. The Russia used exile in Siberia. China in Xinjiang. So there is a longer history even of the narrow phenomenon of forced exile. Our book is about the last half century, if you wish. So it's more restricted. It's more modest than the topics that you suggested to cover, but thank you. And about certainly in the book we have a section or subsection about Jewish or half Jewish creators. And in that sense we connect through their work we show that this out-migration as we related to other waves of migration crossing the Atlantic in previous generations. Also the phenomena of people trying to flee a country in disarray-- in economic disarray which has been the case of Argentina in the early 2000 following the economic crisis. Many rediscovered that they were the descendants of Spaniards, of Italians trying to regain the nationality of their forefathers in order to immigrate from a country in economy crisis. So this is-- we-- there are some sections of the book in which we address that. Especially interesting for me is the chapter on the Jewish or the subchapter, the section on the Jewish or partly Jewish authors because they recreate through their work the reminiscence of their-- the diaspora of their forefathers. This is a-- I'm doing bad service to the authors but it's wonderful to read how they reflect on their own personal experience in the book. >> Ernesto Calvo: And the book does in the beginning discusses immigration in these countries and not just exile. >> Juan Uriagereka: Yes. >> Ernesto Calvo: And in quite detail. That said in-- so in the US and the Latino in Argentina exile the-- in Mexico [inaudible] so you know the-- >> Luis Roniger: Yes. >> Ernesto Calvo: I came to the US 20 years ago, 25 years ago now and you know nothing of-- in fact when you introduced me, nothing of what defines my professional career is in any way connected to the fact that I am exilee. So we have competed in identities. And on the book I think it's very clear, I'm saying that at some point being part of exile mutated to a lot of very different things. It's very clear by the end that, you know, what you just said about some journey, you know this journey [inaudible] that are taken on different identities and making different roles and choices. So, my grandfather was a refugee from Lithuania, actually from Vilna and got to Argentina. And my great grandmother died in Auschwitz but I don't consider that and he didn't consider himself as an exilee and he moved when we was 15. ^M01:30:04 And then my mother moved at 15 to Buenos Aires from [inaudible] after the great depression and then I moved to Argentina when I was 15 by myself because they were in Mexico. So we are cut by different identities but each one of those movements were in a sense different identity formation events. And here I think it's very clear what they define as exilee. That reminds me in a way of Chris Rock, that he has his joke about, you know, I used to have a job, now I have a career. You know I was a dishwasher so I had a job and now I'm a comedian so I have a career. So I do think there's a very important class component-- >> Luis Roniger: Oh, yes. >> Ernesto Calvo: -- on being exilee rather than refugee. >> Luis Roniger: Yeah. >> Ernesto Calvo: And that that's not quite describing the book. I mean that's why I was, you know, mentioning. And being an exilee in a sense is a status symbol. Being a refugee is a sign of being, you know, [inaudible]. And so this is taking the most positive and constructed-- >> Saúl Sosnowski: Totally. >> Ernesto Calvo: And to some extent upper elite-- >> Saúl Sosnowski: Oh, definitely, yes, yes. >> Ernesto Calvo: -- view exile with not necessarily corresponds to the million people that weren't on exile. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Absolutely. >> Juan Uriagereka: But there is a testimony that you guys have. I don't know if it is Dorfman. I forget who it is that says they offered me the possibility of being an exile which had all of consequences-- >> Luis Roniger: Dorfman. >> Juan Uriagereka: Dorfman, right? >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yeah. >> Luis Roniger: Yes. >> Juan Uriagereka: And I said no. And he chose-- he made a choice for that so-- but I've-- >> Saúl Sosnowski: Of all the people he made the-- Dorfman was already Dorfman before he left. >> Juan Uriagereka: Yes. Yes. >> Saúl Sosnowski: So he can afford to play that but it's absolutely true that we did cut across in the selection that we have with the people who are able to make an impact on higher education, in public policy, in governmental approaches to [inaudible], redemocratization and so on. There is no question that we did leave out the majority of the exiles who had "the common people". And so yes, definitely, that is the case. >> Luis Roniger: And without the graciousness of over 150 such individuals-- >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yeah. >> Luis Roniger: -- this book would not have been produced. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Juan was going to say something else. >> Juan Uriagereka: Well, I was just going to say a footnote on that. Those are the people I know for two reasons. A, because many of them came to Spain. B, because I was a working class kid so they lived in working class neighborhoods. In fact we faced very similar problems including drug addiction and things like that but they had a level of education that I certainly didn't have. So the reason they taught us many things is because they could. Kind of like when this teacher was internally exiled by Franco, my mother learned how to read from somebody with more culture. So these are interesting, unintended consequences of these dynamics. Yeah. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yup, absolutely. Yeah. >> Ernesto Calvo: My mother have medallion of [inaudible] she have received, so. But yes there was a-- And there's an-- We were in a sense a backdrop of history but it is true that you're talking about a very particular group. >> Saúl Sosnowski: You might want to mention who your mother was, not just the name. >> Ernesto Calvo: I think-- >> Saúl Sosnowski: You mentioned the name. >> Ernesto Calvo: Yeah, she was a well known sequentalist and a writer. She had [inaudible] 10 years ago now. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Yup. Final word. Thank you all. Talia? >> Talia Guzman-Gonzales: Thank you. >> Ernesto Calvo: Thank you. >> Talia Guzman-Gonzales: [Inaudible] questions? Well, thank you to our authors and panelists for [inaudible]. >> Saúl Sosnowski: Thank you [applause]. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.