Skip to main content
Advertise with the Morning Star
First we marched for Chile. Now it’s Palestine
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER recalls the anger and heartbreak over the 1973 coup in Chile, with its torture and massacres, which we now relive with the horrors carried out by Israel in Gaza – and also through our solidarity
Rosa Soto, sister of Enrique Soto who went missing after being detained during the Pinochet dictatorship, attends a ceremony in Villa Baviera, September 7 2024

THE first time I marched through London to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza last January, along with half a million people, I found myself walking beneath the banner of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).

It felt like a strange, if rather unwelcome, homecoming. Fifty-one years ago I joined the Chile Solidarity Campaign during my first weeks at university.

On September 11 of that year, 1973, a US-orchestrated military coup ousted Chile’s democratically elected socialist government and its popular president, Salvador Allende, who died during the attack on the presidential palace.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
US President Donald Trump during a press conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, on day two of the president's second state visit to the UK, September 18, 2025
Features / 19 September 2025
19 September 2025

Women opponents of the Trump regime fear his misogynist, racist and anti-immigrant views are taking hold in Britain, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER, as protests against his visit hit London’s streets

People taking part in a Tommy Robinson-led Unite the Kingdom march and rally in central London. Picture date: Saturday September 13, 2025
Features / 15 September 2025
15 September 2025

But the beneath the racism and misogyny of the far right lies a shared grievance with the left — Starmer’s complete betrayal of working people, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Arthur Ashe
Men’s tennis / 5 September 2025
5 September 2025

Still the only black man to win the US Open tennis title, a statue of the legendary champion, Arthur Ashe, is now the only one remaining on Monument Avenue in his Richmond, Virginia hometown, where confederate leaders of the Civil War were also once displayed, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Courageous: Vanessa Redgrave
Features / 13 August 2025
13 August 2025

Danni Perry’s flag display at the Royal Opera House sparked 182 performers to sign a solidarity letter that cancelled the Tel Aviv Tosca production, while Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Tel Aviv hotels, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Similar stories
chile
Books / 16 May 2025
16 May 2025

RON JACOBS welcomes an investigation of the murders of US leftist activists that tells the story of a solidarity movement in Chile

RESISTANCE: Demonstrators at the University of California, B
Features / 25 March 2025
25 March 2025
That should be warning enough to end the company’s contract with the NHS, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Destroyed buildings by Israeli bombardments as seen inside t
Features / 18 January 2025
18 January 2025
After 46,000 dead and countless more from disease and starvation, Palestinians can celebrate a truce, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER, yet even as the Democrat and Republican leaders scramble to take credit, Israel continues killing
JVL members and supporters protest outside the BBC's offices
Features / 24 October 2024
24 October 2024
Many are no longer in the party, others excoriate the new Labour government’s capitalist and discriminatory policies, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER