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MIGRATION-CHILE: Celebrating Multiculturalism

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Apr 23 2007 (IPS) - As a tangible way of appreciating diversity, tolerance and non-discrimination, and in order to launch a debate about migration policy in Chile, university students are organising the First Multicultural Festival to be held in the capital on the weekend of May 26-27.

“We are sure that this event will have a big impact, because it is inviting us as a country to discuss migration and its social implications, and to reflect on tolerance, non-discrimination and integration,” Nelson Contreras, one of the festival organisers, told IPS.

“It’s a sociocultural project with broad educational aims,” explained this final-year business engineering student, who is also head of Inicia Acción, a centre for social enterprise and intervention founded in May 2006 at the Jesuit-run Alberto Hurtado University.

At present Inicia Acción is made up of five students, reading law, business engineering, sociology, social work and psychology.

In September, Inicio Acción’s proposal for the Santiago Multicultural Festival won the Con-Vivir prize, awarded by Comunidad Mujer, an organisation of women professionals, and amounting to three million pesos (5,500 dollars).

Other organisations then began to lend their support, such as the non-governmental Fundación Ideas, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), as well as a number of embassies and immigrant communities in the country.

The Foreign Ministry and the National Institute for Youth will also be participating, as will the Bicentennial Commission, created in 2000 by then President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) to promote projects and programmes to prepare for the 2010 celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Chilean independence.

The festival will be held at the Mapocho Station Cultural Centre, a city landmark, and will involve a multicultural fair offering food and crafts for sale, an art exhibition, and discussion groups. Contreras said that stalls at the fair would be run by embassies, immigrant communities, government bodies and organisations working with migrants.

Performances will be put on by Chilean and immigrant bands and dance groups, and documentary films will be screened. Round table discussions will be held on discrimination, human trafficking and migration policy issues.

As part of the festival, Inicia Acción has organised a drawing competition on “Room for Diversity”, for children aged six to 12. Children of all nationalities residing in the country, and those living abroad whose mother or father are Chilean, have until May 9 to submit their drawings.

Contreras said, “Although migration in Chile can’t be compared to the phenomenon in countries like the United States or Spain, it is clearly increasing.”

According to the 1992 census, only 1.2 percent of Chile’s more than 15 million people were foreigners, but by 2002 the number of immigrants had risen by 75 percent.

Argentines constitute the main immigrant group living in Chile, making up 26 percent of the total foreign population. They are followed by Peruvians, at 21 percent of the total, and Bolivians at six percent.

“Immigrants in our country meet with widely varying receptions. In general, the treatment they receive is related to their physical features,” Contreras said.

Thus persons with clearly indigenous features, like Peruvians and Bolivians, are more discriminated against because they are associated with cultures considered to be “inferior,” he said.

The ostracism experienced by this segment of the population affects them at all levels, from everyday interactions to social benefits, since many have difficulty gaining access to the health and education systems, and are excluded from all but the most precarious jobs, Contreras said.

“In Chile, communities such as Peruvians are discriminated against strongly, and we think physical and psychological violence has increased,” the student said.

“Chileans are proud of their solidarity, but in these cases it isn’t applied. It’s always easier to discriminate against others than to welcome them, and our country hasn’t made up its mind what it wants in terms of migration policy: to emphasise security (like in the United States) or integration,” the festival organiser said.

President Michelle Bachelet’s government strategy includes plans for a new law on immigration “that would reflect the current reality in Chile, as a receiving country for significant numbers of immigrants,” according to the government. But there is still no sign of the draft law.

Gabriel Flores, project assistant for IOM Chile, which is sponsoring the festival, praised the initiative of the university students, and said he would be chairing a discussion on illegal trafficking of migrants and human trading for purposes of exploitation.

While emphasising the progress achieved by recent Chilean governments in migration issues, especially access by foreigners to health and education, he acknowledged that important challenges still remain.

One of them is raising public awareness about multiculturalism. “There are few institutional opportunities to discuss migration issues as widely as the festival is proposing to do,” he said.

Flores told IPS that he had reason to believe that the government was working on drawing up the new law to protect immigrants.