A martyred Jesuit remembered

World
Mar 1, 2010

Jesuit Father Luis Espinal was a priest from Spain missioned in Bolivia in the 1960’s. He was assassinated by the military dictators on March 22, 1980 in La Paz. That was two days before the same fate befell the prophetic Archbishop, Oscar Romero, in San Salvador. The thirtieth anniversary of their deaths brings back personal memories worth sharing.

I remember well the last encounter I had with Luis two weeks before his death. It was outside the movie theatre downtown where I had just seen the American movie, “Foul Play”, with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. The musical comedy was a light diversion considering that in those months nightly bombs were set off in La Paz by agents provocateurs of the military to justify the military coup which everyone knew was coming. And it viciously came with General Garcia Meza on July 17.