WHO WAS LUIS ESPINAL?

It is coming towards the end of the seventies. Bolivia is a beautiful country, situated in the heart of South America. But its great human and material wealth has found itself vulnerable to the interests of a few national and foreign minorities that have managed to impoverish the majority of the country, and turn it into a scene of continuous military attacks and counter-attacks. For its part, the Church that has become accustomed to the regime of Christianity y a bendecir más que no a profetizar, is beginning to realise since the Medellín Conference that a new task of liberation lies ahead, in keeping with the Gospel message. The Bolivian people, renowned for their courage and always hoping for a better future, now feel powerless and invisible before the magnitude of the task ahead and in the face of military tanks and bullets. In this human and religious context that is so typically Latin American, the best years of Luis Espinal’s life unfolded.

He was born in the Catalonian village of Sant Fruitós de Bages, near Manresa in 1932, and joined the Society of Jesus in 1949. Once his religious training was complete, he studied journalism and audiovisual media in Bergamo (Italy). After two years working with TVE and employed as a film critic in Barcelona, he left for Bolivia in 1968 where he lived for twelve years until his untimely death. He became a Bolivian national in 1970 and devoted the rest of his life to the critique of film production, on TV, radio and in the newspapers. He worked on Radio Fides, on the La Paz newspapers ''Presencia'', and ''Ultima hora", he produced several short films for Bolivian television, and became part of the film production group “Ukamau”. He also wrote ten books on cinema, worked as a Professor of Media Studies in the University of San Andrés and the Catholic University of La Paz, and from 1979, he edited the weekly '“Aquí”. On March 21st 1980, he was abducted in the middle of the night by a group of paramilitaries, tortured and murdered. Two days later Monsignor Oscar Romero was assassinated in San Salvador.

This man who was gifted with a unique artistic and poetic sensibility (as a student he had discovered and translated the poems of the Englishman Hopkins), did not just limit his career to the media, but rather made the media into an instrument that could be at the service of the voiceless and despairing nation of Bolivia. His experience of the Franco dictatorship in Spain and above all, his personal integrity and deep sense of justice, made him a prophet of liberty and hope. And so he found himself walking a very thin line: the line between life and death, the line between powerful leaders and the lives of a nation under threat. But he chose life, and the God of Life. His words and work were entirely devoted to exorcising the gods of death and in its place bringing about faith in life. And he did this so wholeheartedly and with such conviction, that it led him to give up his life for the people, thus making his own life into an existential gesture that confirmed the very sincerity of his words. Among the EIDES collection, in booklet nº 31 we have published an anthology of writings and poems by L. Espinal with the title “Oraciones a quemarropa”. (Only available in Spanish and Catalan). If you would like to find out more about the life of Luis Espinal we recommend the CiJ booklet nº 64 called “ Luis Espinal, gastar la vida por los demás”. (Only available in Spanish and Catalan).