Immigration and the Construction of the Chilean National Identity

By: Sabrina Kayser

November 13, 2015

Chileans drink German beer, have British tea time, eat Italian ice cream, and grow French wine. The traditions brought by these groups of immigrants have become so thoroughly integrated into the Chilean national identity that you can’t really call the beer produced in the south of the country “German,” but rather “Chilean” beer. Nor are the other traditions considered foreign: Chileans have adopted tea time as their own (called once for eleven o’clock), and, of course, no one would doubt that the internationally-recognized wine grown here is completely Chilean. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, European immigration to Chile was actively encouraged by the government both to help spur development and to europeanize the young nation. This historical immigration was welcomed with open arms, and the descendants of these immigrants joined the ranks of prosperous business owners, politicians, intellectuals, and so forth, becoming fully a part of Chilean society. Their influence is made publicly visible through statues of Romulus and Remus, an arch commemorating the British Empire, and a myriad of German high schools.

Nevertheless, there is a stark contrast between the acceptance of this old migration and the xenophobia towards more recent immigration into Chile. Perhaps this is partly because of the abrupt and clear division between the two phases of immigration, marking them as different. During the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who was president from 1973 to 1981, immigration to Chile drastically declined not only because of the unappealing political situation, but also because of government policy officially written into the constitution which treated immigration as a threat to national security.

The principal groups of immigrants that have come to Chile in the last two decades are Peruvians, Argentines, and Bolivians. In contrast to the welcome that the European settlers received in the former century, many of these recent immigrants face rampant discrimination and incredibly difficult conditions when they arrive. Perhaps this coolness is partly due to the economic and temporal realities of the country: Chile no longer needs massive immigration to build its population and jumpstart the economy like it did in its early years.

Nevertheless, this alone does not paint the whole picture. Although nearly as many Argentines as Peruvians immigrate to Chile, they pass mostly unseen, integrating quickly and facing little to no discrimination. Peruvians, on the other hand, are often seen as a threat, and struggle with a host of obstacles to establish their lives in Chile. While Argentina is the second-most European nation in South America in terms of racial makeup (Uruguay is first), Peru’s population is largely mestizo. This anti-Peruvian sentiment is due to a long history of trying to blanquear, or whiten, the nation. During the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), when Chile was struggling to maintain power over territory also claimed by Peru and Bolivia, the government tried to force indigenous and African populations out of the region. In a country that has been trying to deny its non-white heritage for more than a century, where the dictator claimed a complete absence of an African influence in the population (although a recent project by University College London discovered that one out of every two Chileans has at least one African ancestor), any threat to this version of the Chilean identity is seen as a problem. Although it passes largely unnoticed, Chile still harbors strong racist sentiments that influence the lives of many immigrants and makes being a Peruvian, Bolivian, or Colombian in Chile a difficult reality.

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