HUNDREDS of people in England and Wales mobilised at the weekend to mark the 50th anniversary of the brutal military coup in Chile.

On September 11 1973, the democratically elected left-wing government of president Salvador Allende was overthrown by the military, led by General Augusto Pinochet and assisted by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Thousands of people were murdered.

Britain, under an international agreement, was one of the countries that welcomed Chilean political activists who fled into exile.

Many settled permanently in in this country and were among those who took part in Saturday’s commemorations in cities including Leeds, Sheffield and Swansea.

Five hundred people staged a march and rally in Sheffield organised by the city’s Chile Solidarity Network and supported by its trade union council.

Maria Vasquez-Aguilar, who was three years old when she arrived in Britain with her parents and two siblings, led the organisation of the event.

“It was really moving,” she said. “We showed Ken Loach’s film The Other 9/11 about the coup.

“We wanted to remember those we had lost but also to bring us up to the present in Chile. There is still repression.

“There are still those who were ‘disappeared’ by the military.

“All the groups who said they would be there were there. We had music and food. It was a real community effort.”

Organisations represented included Sheffield and Rotherham TUCs, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Cuba Solidarity Campaign, South Yorkshire Migration Action Group, Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) and the University and College Union.

Speakers included Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths, Kate Flannery of the OTJC and Charlie Simmons, a former steelworks union steward who welcomed Ms Vasquez’s family to Sheffield on their arrival from Chile.

In Swansea, more than 200 people packed the Volcano Theatre for a commemoration in the evening.

Following the coup, the south Wales city welcomed more than 100 refugees from Pinochet’s dictatorship. Many later returned to their homeland, but the city still has a small Chilean community.

Against the backdrop of the South Wales Chile Solidarity banner, bearing the inscription: “The people united will never be defeated” in Welsh and English, speakers included Welsh Minister for Social Justice Jane Hutt, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Rocio Cifuentes, the daughter of Chilean refugees who settled in Swansea.