Dra Zabaleta in Education Suplement The Times.

Latin American Junta:

Argentina and Chile

DR MARTA ZABALETA

SPSL Beneficiary 1979–1981



Buenos Aires, 22 November 1976

I am expelled

by the Argentinean military junta, ordered to be at the

airport with my Chilean daughter to board the plane

on which my Chilean husband, still in detention, will

be flown to the UK, due to distant British ancestry.



Heathrow, 23 November 1976

I have survived

detention and torture in Chile. In Chile and Argentina

I am a highly qualified economist, but I land at

Heathrow as the invisible ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ of

political refugees.



Glasgow, 1976-1978

The Latin American Council

of Social Sciences has arranged a Glasgow University

research fellowship for my husband. For two years,

four of us share two rooms. I am not even allowed to

use the library. World University Service (WUS) awards

my Chilean husband a grant, but does not support

Argentineans, despite my protests of discrimination.

Several people make contributions to help us survive.



Essex, 1978-1979

With a week’s notice to leave our

Glasgow ‘home’, we move to a small house in Essex,

helped by Amnesty International (AI). I volunteer for

AI on Wednesdays, where two of us record some 8,500

cases of disappearances in Videla’s Argentina. I apply

to read for a doctorate.



London, 1979

Pauline, my husband’s WUS

caseworker, arranges an interview with Liz Fraser (SPSL

Secretary 1978 - 2002). She doesn’t speak Spanish.

I don’t speak English. She questions and I answer,

moving my head, my eyes, my feet. She takes notes.

The climax of the interview: “Do you intend to settle in

this country?” The word ‘settle’ is a total mystery to me.

There are two options, I think: to be positive and say

yes, or... I answer, “Yes!” Liz’s face lights up. She gives

the table a little slap and says goodbye. An SPSL form

follows. It asks: Have you ever felt persecuted for any of

the following reasons? a) political, b) racial, c) religious.

I add, ‘d) for being a woman’ and a tick. I receive small

grants from SPSL and others on which we live during

my studies. The SPSL grant covers childminding and

travel costs for weekly visits to Sussex University. I don’t

want to uproot my children again.



Museum of London, 2005

A meeting with

the curator of ‘Belonging’, an oral history project

dedicated to refugee contributions to London culture

and society. There are three CARA grantees, in addition

to myself, Liz the interviewer. It is the first time I

have seen Liz since 1979. I tell her I completed my

D.Phil in Development Studies in 1989 (IDS); she explains

how difficult it was to fund childcare and travel, rather

than fees and books. How times have changed.



Essex, 27 March 2013

I am still a mother, but I

haven’t been a wife for 20 years. Forty years on, I still

live in exile, but less invisible, and proud to have been

supported by the SPSL during one of the most bitter

and significant periods of my life.

Dr Zabaleta D.Phil. IDS, Sussex University. Argentinian-

British Social Scientist, writer and poet, first jailed in

Argentina in 1954 aged 17 for defending female secondary

school students. Marta is widely published and translated.

Mother and best friend to Yanina and Tomas Hinrichsen, she

has been an active human rights campaigner for 55 years,

with particular interest in international women's rights