The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Escaping from evil
When thousands of people fled Chile after General Pinochet’s coup 42 years ago today, many found a safe haven and warm welcome across Tayside and Fife, as Michael Alexander discovers.
As world leaders wrestle with what to do with refugees fleeing war-town Syria, it is a reminder that Scotland has a long history of welcoming those in need.
From thousands of Polish soldiers displaced after the Second World War, to Vietnamese boat people seeking asylum during the late 1970s, Fife and Tayside have taken their share of refugees over the years.
However, it is events which happened 42 years ago today in South America which brought horrific stories of a whole new set of atrocities to the streets of Dundee and Fife.
On September 11 1973, General Augusto Pinochet staged a military coup which ousted the elected Marxist government in Chile and installed a junta.
After Pinochet seized power, there followed 17 years of persecution, torture and disappearances.
Thousands headed to Europe, settling in countries ranging from Sweden and Spain to East Germany and Scotland. In total around 3,000 ended up living in Britain, including 500 in Scotland.
Among them were ordinary working people, including a group sponsored by the mining community in Cowdenbeath, as well as other groups dispersed around the UK.
Among 30 Chilean families who settled in Dundee was Mario Uribe’s.
A photographer working for a news magazine in the capital Santiago during the early 1970s, he suffered arrest and detention before being forced to leave in 1976.
The family arrived in Dundee with virtually nothing. They were allocated a home in Whitfield and found to their surprise that people who did not even know where Chile was were willing to help them.
Mario has since passed away. However, in 1990 he told The Courier: “When we moved in we did not even have chairs or a table but total strangers gave us so much help. I am very grateful to the city of Dundee and its people.”
Another Chilean exile who settled in Dundee’s Perth Road was Lilly Van Der Schrast.
On the morning of the 1973 takeover by the Chilean military, Lilly and her husband were preparing to leave their home near the presidential palace for another day’s work at Santiago University.
“It was dreadful, chaotic,” she told The Courier in 1988. Lilly was trapped inside her home for three days but was later thankful she did not make it into work that morning as many who did were killed or disappeared into concentration camps.
In the Cowdenbeath and Lochgelly areas, the locals were also quick to open their doors to the exiles from South America.
In 1975 The Courier reported how three families had settled in Lochgelly with the support of the Chilean Solidarity Committee, National Union of Mineworkers, the National Coal Board and Lochgelly Town Council.
Carlos Arredondo was one of the first Chilean refugees to arrive in Scotland in October 1974. He settled in Glasgow where he still lives today. He has worked to research, document and write a history of the Chilean refugees in Scotland.
He said: “The experience of exile was sad and very hard. One of the main problems for any refugee was to learn a new language... and integrate in a society that was very different from ours.
“When we arrived we were full of uncertainties and worries. On top, we had to worry about those left behind.
“Most of us, however, who came to live in Scotland were well received.”
Jim Barlow, a member of the Unite trade union and the Socialist Workers’ Party in Dundee, was part of the Chilean Solidarity Campaign. The group appealed to Dundee City’s Labour Council at the time to help with housing for Chilean refugees.
Jim told The Courier: “To their credit, they agreed to give council housing assistance to around 30 families during the late seventies.
“I remember well that these families were welcomed here with open arms and given much support by the Labour and trade union movement of Dundee.
“Practically all these families eventually returned to Chile in the years after democracy was restored.
“I believe we should show the same level of humanity with political and economic support to families fleeing wars from across the Mediterranean.”
Thousands of trade unionists, socialist and communists were incarcerated as Pinochet claimed he was “saving” Chile from communism.
An estimated one million fled the country.
The most famous torture centre was in the Santiago football stadium, where some 40,000 people were held. Many who were tortured there never came out alive.
Pinochet, a staunch ally of late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, died in 2006. However, his legacy endures.
When we moved in we did not even have chairs or a table but total strangers gave us so much help.
MARIO URIBE, 1990