Francisco Laxalte, recomponiendo retazos desde un lugar. Problematizar una experiencia de exilio interior en la frontera uruguaya

Abstract

Francisco, the “priest”, lives in Chuy, a Uruguayan community located at the adjoining Brazilian border. Francisco is a political activist dwelling in a place that he finds difficulty in considering his place. He was sent to this community by orders of a dictatorship, a repressive regime that detained and tortured him; Francisco spent time as a political prisoner in several detention centers until the regime gave him two “choices” to regain his freedom: to be sent abroad or go to a border area. This is a multi-location account, i.e., one that bears in mind my vital relationship with Chuy and the research subject, a situated account vis-à-vis the person who shares his memories, recollections that relate to the way he thinks about, represents, and inhabits Chuy from the stance of forced mobility. I problematize several categories, namely exile from a conceptual viewpoint, the historical account from a historiographic perspective, and the border from a spatial approach. I investigate these issues through in-depth interviews and informal conversations carried out in the period 2020-2022. A critical reading around the notions of internal exile, place-as-belonging, and politics as the meaning of person’s life leads analysis of the data. The article deals with mechanisms of exclusion and control, and the way agents of the Uruguayan, repressive, dictatorship of the early 1970s handled those people who were considered a threat to the regime.