The Etalia Project

It wasn’t until I started editing that I noticed the sign, “Llevo lo bueno,” positioned directly above Johan’s head from his seat at the table in the little coffeeshop near Santiago’s main plaza where we met. It means, “take the good,” and revealed more and more to be fatefully placed as his story trickled out throughout our conversation. A man who maintained positivity throughout a life rocked with heavy turbulence since the very beginning, Johan’s city reinforced his message behind him as he spoke. 

Johan Canelo-Clark was only four months old when his family was forcibly taken from their home in Santiago in 1976, stripped of their citizenship and sent away on the first available plane. His father’s position in the Union had deemed him a threat to the newly established dictatorship in Chile under the rule of Augusto Pinochet (supported by the USA), and the family had received the lesser of the regime’s two favored punishments in the form of deportation.

Upon the plane’s landing, a family without papers nor answers did not bode well, but Johan and his parents were not the only ones. Throughout the world, disoriented Chilean families arriving in random airports were met with equal bewilderment as foreign governments tried to figure out what to do with them. As Chile continued their sporadic expulsions, certain countries like Mexico and Australia began sending planes specifically to collect these people so as to ensure their arrival in a country that was equipped to accept them. 

Johan’s family arrived as refugees first in Mexico, then Venezuela, then Spain, then Canada, and then finally they were sent to the United States where they were granted citizenship in recognition of their suffering from such blatant human rights violations. Landing first in Miami, Florida, they were quickly moved to the Bronx, New York, where they began the overwhelming process of setting up a new life in a brand new country.

Johan remembers a Bronx much different to the gentrified version he perceives today, remarking on the constant crime and rawness of the neighborhood. Still, he is overwhelmingly grateful to the city that became his family’s new home. It was there that he became the big brother to three younger siblings and was able to pursue an education, learn English, and discover a chosen extended family in the Latino community around him. 

The option to return to Chile arose with the end to the 17 year dictatorship, but Johan’s parents were initially very hesitant to return to a country that had so harrowingly banished them, and that was sure to have changed immensely since their departure. Finally in 2010, they began the migration back south to their homeland where a two year process ensued for Johan in regaining his citizenship. Much paperwork and a DNA test later, he was able to prove that he indeed was that same baby who had left so many years prior and turned to face his next hurdle: reintegration. 

After some time, Johan found himself completely in love with his country, having explored the nation and met blood relatives and an array of new friends and acquaintances. He was enamored with the diversity of the land and the richness of the history and soon began work as a professor at the Arcis University in Santiago where he remained up until the COVID-19 shutdown. He then decided to alter paths and begin leading tours of Santiago to share his new beloved with the rest of the world.

His siblings scattered across the globe; his brother choosing a life as a member of the Marine Corp stationed in Quantico, Virginia, his second brother marrying a woman from Texas and moving the family to Santiago as well, and his sister finding love across the Atlantic in France where she has remained and is raising her own children. 

As I removed the mic from Johan’s collar and began wrapping up my equipment, Johan poured himself a small glass from a large beer bottle and joked with me that it was not all for him, and that a friend was to be joining him. I asked if I could sit with him until his friend arrived, to which he warmly consented and poured me a glass from the Mexican coke I myself had ordered. 

As Johan himself is a historian and political scientist, I brought up local politics eager to gain insight to his wisdom; he described a polarized society mirroring the one I had left back home in the States. Throughout our conversation, it became quite apparent that he embodied compromise (his greatest wish for the world) in his experience of human existence. He had become a host in the Couchsurfing community shortly after establishing himself in Santiago and hence met wandering travelers from all over the globe. Through one such individual, he was connected with a couple from Venezuela whom he hosted in his own home for several months upon their arrival after six days in a bus. Immigration, he claimed, is one of the top five current points of dispute amongst Chilean politics and such controversies are largely directed at Venezuelans who widely choose Chile as their landing point upon fleeing their own country.

“It is a very complicated topic, but I sympathize greatly with them,” Johan shared. “That couple I now consider my Venezuelan family here in Santiago. But then, the friend I’m going to share this beer with is from the far right. But he is a good friend, and we find common ground in other things.”

Johan’s presence is warm and steady, a man who knows himself and has studied his world, he sees past the details of our collective differences and into the heart. He wishes compromise for humanity so that others too can come together, work together, and make a better world.

Thank you Johan, for sharing your story///Gracias Johan, por compartir tu historia.

Watch the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCDumBclVKs&t=24s