My sister-in-law Wendy Tyndale, who has died aged 82 from multiple system atrophy, made secret visits to Chile after the military coup in 1973, smuggling out microfilm sewn into the lining of her clothes with evidence of torture, which helped persuade a new Labour government to offer sanctuary. The Chile Committee for Human Rights (CCHR), which she led, and other campaigners organised the escape of about 3,000 refugees to the UK during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. In 2018 the then Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, awarded her an honour for her contribution to saving their lives.
Wendy had spent a year studying at the Catholic University of Talca in Chile from 1972, during the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, living in a village 150 miles south of Santiago. She shared a roof, food, even the children’s bed, with a peasant family who told her stories that had been handed down through generations.
Back in the UK, in January 1974, Wendy became founding secretary of the CCHR. The following month the Labour MP Judith Hart, who was a sponsor of the CCHR, became minister for overseas development; working in her private office, I became a contact point for Wendy and other anti-Pinochet activists. Wendy’s first research visit to Chile came in August that year.
Wendy and her identical twin sister, Anne, were born in Srinagar, Kashmir. Their English mother, Lorna (nee Morrell), had gone there with her older twins to avoid a feared Japanese invasion that would threaten the tea estate managed by their father, Humphrey Tyndale, in West Bengal. The family returned to Britain in May 1945. Wendy and Anne went as boarders to St Mary’s school, Wantage, then to St Andrews University, where Wendy graduated in French and Spanish in 1964.
Wendy spent 1965 as a volunteer for the UN Association in Cuzco, Peru, where she became fluent in Spanish, then qualified and worked as a teacher in London for five years, before going to Talca. Her thesis about village life was burned after the coup as a subversive document; but the tape recordings were finally published in 2019 in cooperation with the National Library of Chile.
In 1977 she moved to West Germany, reporting for Amnesty and others on human rights in Latin America, and returned to London 10 years later as the regional director at Christian Aid. From 1995 to 1997 she represented CA in Guatemala. Ten years later she went back as a volunteer to support the diocese of San Marcos, near the Mexican border, in the aftermath of a hurricane.
Inspired by Latin American grassroots churches and the theology of liberation, as well as by her parish churches in the UK, Wendy was asked in 1999 to establish the World Faiths Development Dialogue. She published Visions of Development (2006) and a history, Protestants in Communist East Germany (2010).
Wendy was an active member of the Oxford Zen Centre. She had an extraordinary talent for friendship, and her empathy and sense of humour were evident even after MSA had robbed her of the power of speech.
Anne, whom I married in 1980, died in 2024. Wendy is survived by her elder sisters, Diana and Susan, and by eight nephews and nieces.
