Written by Roberto Pérez Castro
Juan Alberto (“Jack”) Adams Langley, the son of an English engineer, was born and raised in Chile. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he could have stayed comfortably in a neutral country, unbound by any recruitment or conscription by the British government. However, he travelled halfway across the world to join the Royal Air Force, where, as a Flying Officer, he was shot down in northern France in July 1944.
In his hometown of Antofagasta, “Jack” was stereotyped as one of the “gringos”. In the United Kingdom, his peers simply labelled him after the song “South American Joe”, a Latin “gringo” from South America. A historical curiosity? Social and cultural historians of war, even scholars from Latin America, tend to portray these cases as soldiers of fortune, self-reliant adventurers who suddenly surfaced in Britain to serve King and Country. Nothing can be further from the truth: During World War I, over 1,300 volunteers from the West Coast of South America joined the British forces, while almost 7,000 arrived from the River Plate. In World War II, more than 600 West Coasters continued in their parent’s footsteps, alongside nearly 4,000 from the River Plate.
Few of them had ever set foot in the UK. In London, civil society organizations linked to British interests in the region created facilities to accommodate them, with the help of South American diplomats. These institutions helped maintain morale, assisted with processes such as demobilization and repatriation, and provided a connection to their countries of origin. These Volunteer Houses helped them forge bonds with other Britons born in places such as Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela, forming an informal contingent known as the British Latin American Volunteers (B.L.A.V).
The contributions to the war effort of British descendants based in Chile and other South American countries remain largely overlooked. In fact, these networks of expatriate communities not only pooled funds and resources to pay for the volunteers’ expenses and housing in London; they also made an important fundraising effort for charities as the Red Cross or Saint Dunstan’s, clothing drives, Spitfire funds, and war bonds. Those who remained in the Americas were crucial in the preparation and promotion of Allied propaganda and British cultural diplomacy.
Jack Adams was just one member of one of the many tightly knit Anglo-Chilean communities – communities spread out over 3,000 miles across Chile, from the nitrate-rich region near the Atacama Desert to the Magellan Strait, connected by the port of Valparaíso, its major hub for international trade and cultural exchange.
Britons and their descendants replicated a social and cultural imaginary that connected them to their roots in the UK. They kept cultivating their homeland customs in their own clubs, associations, and schools, blending them with Chilean traditions such as the creation of volunteer fire departments. The war tested their loyalties and sense of belonging. The English-language press such as The South Pacific Mail (1909–65), linked these dispersed enclaves, helping connect, inform, and engage their communities.
The transnational efforts led by British ethnic communities in South America were fuelled by a deeply rooted network of support, proving essential for British diplomats while circumventing the strict neutrality of their host countries. Even as British economic influence in the region had declined during the first half of the twentieth century, the Latin “gringos” preserved a sense of duty to promote their cultural heritage overseas.
Roberto Pérez Castro is a doctoral candidate at the Universidad San Sebastián in Santiago, Chile and member of the Grupo de Estudios Históricos sobre la Guerra (GeHiGue) of the University of Buenos Aires. His research, funded by the Chilean Agency of Research and Development (ANID), examines the role of British expatriate communities in Chile during the Second World War. In 2024, he was a visiting researcher at the Centre for the History of War, Media, and Society at the University of Kent. He has recently published ‘¿Diplomacia pública o propaganda cultural? : Gran Bretaña en América Latina durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La red de sociedades anglófilas en Chile’ in Cuadernos de Historia Cultural 12 (2024).
Image Credit: VOLUNTEERS FROM SOUTH AMERICA TRAIN TO JOIN THE BRITISH NAVY. ©IWM (A 13244), Licence: IWM Non-Commercial Licence.