Poetry News

Pablo Neruda's Impact on Immigration

Originally Published: February 22, 2018

At the New York Times, Ariel Dorfman contributes an op-ed reminding readers of poet Pablo Neruda's influence on Chile's immigration debates in the middle of the twentieth century. Today, echoing global trends, Chile leans to the right, but in the 1930s and 1940s, Neruda was successfully lobbied for the nation's acceptance of Spanish immigrants, who sought refuge from European fascism. "Chileans aren’t alone in witnessing growing xenophobia and nativism," Dorfman writes, "but we would do well to remember our own history, which offers a model for how to act when we are confronted with strangers seeking sanctuary." From there:

On Aug. 4, 1939, the Winnipeg set sail for Chile from the French port of Pauillac with more than 2,000 refugees who had fled their Spanish homeland.

A few months earlier, Gen. Francisco Franco — aided by Mussolini and Hitler — had defeated the forces of the democratically elected government of Spain. The fascists unleashed a wave of violence and murder.

Among the hundreds of thousands of desperate supporters of the Spanish Republic who had crossed the Pyrenees to escape that onslaught were the men, women and children who would board the Winnipeg and arrive a month later at the Chilean port of Valparaíso.

The person responsible for their miraculous escape was Pablo Neruda, who, at the age of 34, was already considered Chile’s greatest poet. His prestige in 1939 was indeed significant enough for him to be able to persuade Chile’s president, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, that it was imperative for their small country to offer asylum to some of the mistreated Spanish patriots rotting in French internment camps.

Not only would this set a humanitarian example, Neruda said, but it would also provide Chile with much needed foreign expertise and talent for its own development. The president agreed to authorize some visas, but the poet himself would have to find the funds for the costly fares of those émigrés as well as for food and lodging during their first six months in the country. And Neruda, once he was in France coordinating the operation, needed to vet the émigrés to ensure they possessed the best technical skills and unimpeachable moral character.

Continue reading at the New York Times.