From Uprooted to Rooted | A Latin American Community’s Journey in Aotearoa
Latin America is generally defined as not a geographical region but as a region with a shared cultural-linguistic identity with the primary language being either Spanish or Portuguese due to their history of colonisation by those former colonial powers. Latin America comprises of countries spread across the Americas and the Caribbean. While migration from Latin America to New Zealand is not new (earliest recorded in the 1870s), the numbers were very small until Chilean refugees fleeing unrest from 1974 to 1990 were resettled in various urban areas of the country, mainly Auckland, Hamilton, the Hutt Valley, Wellington and Christchurch. This was before the official refugee quota programme was established in 1987, and re-settlement in New Zealand was though private sponsorships and church organisations.
The Latin American community is now a mix of both refugee and migrant background populations with varying needs. With supporting and enhancing mental health wellbeing at the core, the now named Aotearoa Latin American Community (ALAC Inc) provides a range of services by a team of social workers, counsellors, and well-being navigators to assist with successful resettlement and finding home in a new country. ALAC was established in 1993 by Esteban Espinoza with a mission to provide holistic support to the growing Latin American community.
Esteban was a young student in Chile in the late 1970s when he was imprisoned and tortured several times for political activism. 28 years prior to 9/11 being synonymous with the attacks on the US, 46 years of constitutional democracy in Chile came to an end on the 11th of September 1973 with the democratically elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende being overthrown in a military coup supported by the US. What followed was almost two decades of military rule by General Augusto Pinochet where any dissent was violently suppressed.
Through his mother’s determination to get Esteban to safety, he and his wife were sponsored through contacts and resettled in Auckland in 1981. Esteban found himself with a sense of loss, a sense of not belonging and struggling with mental health in a country where he could not speak the language. There were others like him who had been imprisoned and/or tortured. The workforce at the time was not used to working with refugee communities. This is what inspired Esteban to advocate for refugee mental health; and eventually establish ALAC.
When asked what ‘belonging’ means to him, Esteban replied, “belonging means not just knowing who you are and who you are with but taking care of those who you are with and the place you are in”. Through finding a sense of purpose and helping others to feel belonged, Esteban now feels a deep sense of belonging in the land he initially felt like a stranger.
What does belonging mean to you?
For more information on ALAC, please visit https://www.alacinc.org.nz/
Dulani Abeysinghe, eCALD® Educator, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora
