I Renounce my Chilean Nationality

9th June 2011

I, Ulises Hernán Urriola Urbina, born in Chile on January 9, 1952, RUT 6344.
800-1, a political refugee in France from November 28, 1974, decided to voluntarily give up my nationality and my rights as a citizen, violated by the Chilean state, for the reasons outlined below:

  1. I was born and educated in a family that had ethical values ​​and who held high the notion of justice and respect for all citizens. Over the years what I witnessed through my life eventually convinced me that in Chile this was a myth and that Chile was in fact a chimera that did not translate to reality.

  2. Democracy and freedom, concepts which are manipulated, according to the conveniences of economic power and illegitimate interests, confirmed my doubts about the veracity of the intentions held by caste politics and the state institutions which they so easily endorsed.

  3. I was lucky enough to witness history and be part of a new process of socio-economic, cultural and political changes, encapsulated in the Popular Unity government which for 3 years took root in the consciousness of the Chilean people yet was violently ill-fated by the Pinochet military coup, which led to an unparalleled event in the history of Chile.

  4. Almost 17-year’s of dictatorship finally gave way to a much yearned for democracy. The dictator went, but not the dictatorship. This settlement resulted in a consensus between the power elite, it allowed a civilian to ascend to the highest office of ruling the country. 20 years passed with a coalition government,  the so called (Conceracion) who simply administered only the interests of neoliberalism to the detriment of the majority of social sectors.

  5. The illusion of change fooled many people, the forced disapearances and extra-judicial killings appeared to be a thing of the past during the process of democratic reconstruction. The 4 governments of the coalition (concertacion) not only failed to break with the dictatorial institutions, but also to encourage and create laws that allowed them to preserve and develop a deeply unfair exacerbating inequality among Chileans.

  6. The racial and ethnic discrimination was most apparent in the past 38 years and the yoke imposed on the Mapuche Nation was flagrant, accelerating its destruction as such, from the countless acts of subjugation and dispossession of their lands and natural resources, contrary to all international standards for the recognition of indigenous peoples and particularly in opposition to the ILO Convention 169.

  7. The governments of the supposed "democracy" that impressed the world with its macro-economic results which led to Chile's membership of the OECD, did not account for the disproportionate inequalities that prevail in Chilean society, nor even less, the marginalization and political persecution against the Mapuche, especially those struggling to recover their ancestral lands taken from them.


 

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