Mercedes Rojas came to the UK from Chile in 1977. She travelled with her husband, Oscar, who had been imprisoned by the Pinochet regime for his trade union activities. He was released after a campaign led by Amnesty International. Oscar later returned to Chile where he became one of the disappeared. Mercedes, already a qualified nurse, successfully re-qualified and now works as a district nurse in London.
At the beginning I was very down, I couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel, I couldn't really think my life being separated from him, but on the other hand I couldn't know how this, you know, nightmare could end. And I remember at the time there was a lot of pressure towards Pinochet from many, many countries from--, you know the United Nation, human right groups, Amnesty International, that he had to change his way of behaving.
And, it was during that period that he allowed the prisoners to exchange their sentence for exile and it was thanks to all of those people in all over the world that supported the prisoners and our rights is that we were the chance to be together, to kind of make a sense to this madness, to this starting a new life,
hard as it is to come to a new--, completely new way of living, come to a country without language, without work, without family, without nothing really. It's--, it's not an easy job but we had to.
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