Jeremy: The people of Chile will never forget your camaraderie
Jeremy: The people of Chile will never forget your camaraderie
Aug Thursday 11th 2016
Former prisoner of the Pinochet regime, RICARDO FIGUEROA writes this open letter to the Labour leader
DEAR JEREMY,
I am one of the many thousands of my compatriots who support you. even if you have no idea of our existence. But you may have read the lines in which our Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda celebrated the Communist Party of Chile in his poem To My Party. The verse — which I have never forgotten — is this: “You have given me fraternity toward the unknown man.”
When reading those words in Spanish I could only feel an echo of their deep meaning, for I was not to experience this human solidarity until many years later; and then it was in reverse — fraternity from those we do not know.
This solidarity came from all over the world after the 1973 military coup — or Chilean September 11 — the day that tanks and aeroplanes attacked La Moneda Palace. Salvador Allende, then president of Chile, lost his life defending his right to be true to the mandate he had received from his people. In response, he and we Chileans received the support of people from all over the world.
In your country, British people came out on to the streets of their cities to express their solidarity with my people, the victims of a fascist coup.
Exiled in Britain, I saw with my own eyes the giant London demonstrations in 1974 when thousands filled Trafalgar Square, while thousands more marched in Hyde Park.
More:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4aba-Jeremy-The-people-of-Chile-will-never-forget-your-camaraderie
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Jeremy Corbyn [/center]
