Letter from John Wake, Harlow.
Harlow Council Leader Russell Perrin’s proposal to re-name Allende Avenue is a disgrace.
In 1970, a socialist called Salvador Allende was elected as President of Chile, which was once known as “the England of South America” on account of its tradition of democratic freedoms. The USA waged a campaign of sabotage and economic warfare against his left-wing government, culminating in the CIA-backed coup by the US-trained armed forces on September 11, 1973, which installed General Pinochet.
General Pinochet’s regime murdered 3,000 political opponents and tortured 40,000, and also forced 200,000 people (2 per cent of the population) into exile. Pinochet’s extreme monetarist policies, implemented on the advice of economists from the University of Chicago, impoverished ordinary people in Chile.
Infant mortality, which had reduced significantly during Allende’s Presidency, increased by 18 per cent during the first year of the military government. By the end of 1975, Chile’s annual rate of inflation had reached 341 per cent. It was estimated that by the end of 1975, the real income of the poorest urban workers had declined to one-third of what it was in 1972.
Before the coup, unemployment in Chile was 3.1 per cent, one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere. By July 1976, approximately a quarter of the population had no income at all, and depended on food and clothing distributed by humanitarian organisations.
General Pinochet’s thugs “disappeared” his opponents, and now Councillor Perrin wants to “disappear” the memory of Allende and the circumstances of his overthrow. This nasty attempt at historical denialism may not be unconnected to the fact that Pinochet was a friend of Margaret Thatcher, whom he visited on a number of occasions.
Some on the left have long suspected that the commitment of some Conservatives to democratic values is only skin-deep. Russell Perrin’s proposal to paint over the memory of the best-known victim of General Pinochet does nothing to allay that suspicion. Many people in Britain, Chile, and the rest of the world will see Councillor Perrin’s proposal as metaphorically spitting on the graves of Pinochet’s victims.
