Bearing Witness to Injustice: Latin America, Refugees, and Memorialisation in Australia

Abstract

A community’s past trauma and memory shapes responses to subsequent traumatic events. This chapter explores the responses of Latin American refugees in Australia to 9/11 and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Australia is home to almost 100,000 Latin Americans. Many originally came to Australia in response to the violence of dictatorship and civil war in their homes. In all of these conflicts, the United States of America (USA) proved a decisive protagonist, training forces, providing intelligence, and supplying funds to right-wing governments and paramilitaries. Many Latin Americans in Australia have been understandably critical of USA imperialism since their earliest arrival. As such, the expatriates possessed an authority to critique the USA that derived from personal experience of dispossession, death, and trauma. USA actions following 9/11 reinvoked memories of dispossession and sharpened awareness of historical injustices that remained unresolved. This chapter draws on approaches from memory studies, migration studies, and history to explore how this helps refugees reformulate a sense of self and historical justice through the Wars on Terror.