Luis Espinal Camps

Luis Espinal Camps, also known as Lucho Espinal (San Fruitós de Bages, February 2, 1932-La Paz, March 21, 1980), was a poet, journalist, filmmaker and Spanish Jesuit religious nationalized as Bolivian.

Camps, with a relevant activity in film and media, denounced social injustice and abuses of power and the system in the world. His professional work was always aimed at advocating for spaces of justice, freedom and equality. He developed a large part of his activity in Bolivia, where he became relevant and was assassinated for it.

In June 2015, the National Assembly of Bolivia created the Order of Merit "Father Luis Espinal Camps" in recognition of those who profess religious faith and stand out for defending sick, marginalized and poor people.

The Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia has opened a beatification process for Luis Espinal. During Pope Francis' visit to Bolivia in 2015, he was asked for support for it.

Biography

Luis Espinal Camps (Lucho Espinal) was born on February 2, 1932 in the city of San Fructuoso de Bages, near Manresa, in the province of Barcelona, Catalonia (Spain).

Between 1944 and 1949 he studied secondary school at the school and minor seminary of San José in Roquetas (Tarragona). August 17, 1949: he enters the Jesuit novitiate (of the Society of Jesus) in Veruela in Zaragoza. He made his first vows as a Jesuit on August 15, 1951.

He studied Humanities and Classical Greco-Latin Literature between 1951 and 1953. He is a professor of Greek Literature and Latin Poetry at the San Pedro Claver school for Jesuit students. He also obtained a degree in Philosophy at the Civil University of Barcelona, with the thesis The Anthropology of Lucretius.

In 1959 he began his theology studies at the Ecclesiastical Faculty of San Cugat del Vallés (province of Barcelona), which he would finish in 1963 with the thesis Theology and symbolism. In July 1962 he was ordained a priest in the city of Barcelona.

In 1964 he moved to Italy to study film and television at the Scuola Superiore de Giornalismo e Mezzi Audiovisuali of the University of the Sacro Cuore of Milan in Bergamo. There he began writing the Prayers at Point-blank Range, very well known in Bolivia.

Once he finished his film and television studies, he returned to Spain and began to do his first work in the media. He works on Spanish Television where they censor a program called Urgent Question which makes him resign.

In Bolivia

In 1968 he was assigned as a missionary to Bolivia. He arrived on August 6, 1968 in La Paz. Between 1969 and 1979 he worked as a film critic in the morning newspaper.

In 1970 he acquired Bolivian nationality and produced the television program: En carne viva on the state channel. The following year he began to work at radio Fides where he would remain until his assassination in 1980.

In 1976 he founded, along with others, the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia (APDHB) and collaborated on the film Chuquiago. In December of the following year she actively participated in the 19-day hunger strike led by mining women to request amnesty for the political prisoners of the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer Suárez. That same year he became director of the weekly HERE .

He worked as a Jesuit priest, filmmaker, social communicator and radio broadcaster in his pastoral work in Bolivia. His positions against dictatorships and his support for mining movements, especially the anti-dictatorial strikes of workers and his wives, led by Domitila Barrios de Chungara (1937-2012), earned him enmities from military leaders such as Luis García. Meza Tejada.

Murder

In January 1980, according to documentary evidence, the drug trafficker and soldier Luis Arce Gómez (b. 1938), together with the future dictator Luis García Meza, made a blacklist with 115 people who had to be eliminated before the coup d'état that They would perpetrate on July 17, 1980 against President Lidia Guéiler (1921-2011). It included political and union leaders, soldiers, intellectuals, journalists and priests.

Espinal was chosen because as director of the weekly Aqui "he was going to make a complaint about a deal, corruption in the purchase of some Hercules airplanes" for an amount of 0.7 million US dollars (2.1 million dollars in 2016) each.

On the night of March 21, 1980, Luis Espinal was arrested by soldiers and paramilitaries of the Ministry of the Interior. His body was found with marks of torture on the afternoon of the next day at kilometer 8 of the road to Chacaltaya, next to the Choqueyapu River. Some 80,000 people attended his funeral. Three days later, Monsignor Romero was assassinated in El Salvador.

Beatification

In May 1978 the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia (APDHB), of which Espinal was a co-founder, issued a resolution to achieve the beatification of Espinal. Five more entities joined this resolution, among which the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés stands out and has the support of the Company of Jesus.

Osvaldo Chirveches, head of the Jesuits in Bolivia in 2015, stated:

If Lucho Espinal is regarded as martyr by faith, that is, he has died by his faith, then the next steps come to call him Servant of God, Blessed and later holy.

Visit of Pope Francis in July 2015

During the visit made by Pope Francis to Bolivia in July 2015, he honored Luis Espinal by praying at the place where the body was found in the Villa de las Nieves neighborhood, near Achachicala. The Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia

On Wednesday, July 8, 2015, Pope Francis prayed for Father Espinal in front of the mountains where his body was found. The next day, the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, gave Pope Francis a replica of the "communist crucifix" that the Jesuit priest Luis Espinal Camps made in the seventies to express the union of the Christian world with Marxist ideas.

The Order of Merit 'Father Luis Espinal Camps' decoration

In June 2015 the Legislative Assembly of Bolivia created the special decoration "Luis Espinal" to award it to Pope Francis during the visit he was going to make to Bolivia in July. On Tuesday, June 30, 2015, the plenary session of the Senate approved the bill that establishes the Decoration of the Order of Merit 'Father Luis Espinal Camps'. This decoration is attributable to the President of the State, through a Supreme Resolution. It will be conferred following a unanimous decision of the Council of the Order, which must study all the requirements and merits of the proposed person. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be the one who prepares a file that records all the candidate's background, merits and services provided. The first to be decorated by the Order of Merit "Father Luis Espinal Camps" It was Pope Francis.

Books

• 1972: Film genres; first edition: 56 p.; second edition (1977): 166 p.
• 1970: History of cinema, 1945published in 1972, 99 pp.
• 1972: Film language; first edition: 147 p.; second edition (1977): 181 p.
• 1973: Film directors, 159 pp.
• 1947: Psychology and cinema160 pp.
• 1975: Cinema in front of television, 64 pp.
• 1976: Symbol in cinema121 pp.
• 1976: Cinematography114 pp.
• Sociology of cinema
• 1979: Cinema as myth140 pp.
• 1980: Film script technique.
• 1980: The cry of a people (Lima).
• 1988: Prayers to quemarropa (Lima). Archived on 26 March 2017 in Wayback Machine.
• 2010: The language of comics and cinema (199 pages). La Paz: Fundación Simón I. Patiño, Cinemateca Boliviana, 2010.

Filmography

Cinema

• 1966: Bartolomeo Colleoni. Documentary in black and white, engraved in 35 mm with a duration of 45 minutes. He participated as assistant director and assembly.
• 1966: Enlightened night. Documentary in black and white. He participated as a screenwriter.
• 1969: Pystolas for peace. Documentary led by Luis Espinal.
• 1977: Chuquiago. Antonio Eguino's colored film, engraved in 35 mm, 87 minutes duration. Espinal participated as manager of continuity and general adviser.
• 1978: The haunt of my land. Jorge Guerra's colored film, engraved in 35 mm, of 90 minutes duration. Espinal collaborated in the technical script.

Movies for Bolivian television

Between 1970 and 1971, Lucho Espinal was in charge of directing the program En carne viva, a series of black and white documentaries recorded in 16 mm, 20 minutes long, that address the social problems, including the following titles:

• Prison
• Prostitution
• The drug
• Violence
• Immigration
• Unnamed children
• Sexual education
• Single mother
• Alcohol
• Workers' Priests
• Juvenile crime
• Female inferiority

Scripts

Luis Espinal wrote several scripts for film, also collaborating on many others. Some of Espinal's unrealized film scripts are:

• Blood in the Chaco (1974),
• What do we do? (1977) and
• The Pacific War (1979), written in collaboration with Oscar Soria.

Bolivian Film Day, a tribute to Espinal

In 2007, President Evo Morales declared, through Supreme Decree No. 29067, March 21 as Bolivian Cinema Day, in commemoration of the anniversary of the assassination of Luis Espinal as a tribute to Father Espinal's fight for the human rights and democracy in the country, and in recognition of his contribution to Bolivian cinematography.