Gaspar García Laviana (November 8, 1941December 11, 1978) was a Spanish

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

priest who took up arms to fight as a soldier in

Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...

with the

Sandinista National Liberation Front The Sandinista National Liberation Front (, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistan ...

(FSLN) in 1977.

Early life

García Laviana was born in 1941 in Les Roces, San Martin del Rey Aurelio,

Principality of Asturias Asturias (; ; ) officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensive with the provinces of Spain, province of Asturias and contains some of the territory t ...

(

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), moving during his childhood to

Tuilla Tuilla (Spanish language, Spanish) or Tiuya (Asturian language, Asturian) is a small parish (administrative division), parish and former mining village in the municipality of Langreo, Asturias, North Spain. It is located to the southeast of the c ...

Langreo Langreo () or Llangréu () ( Asturian) is a municipality and town in northern Spain, in Asturias. It is the 4th largest town of Asturias with 43,000 inhabitants. Langreo is located in the centre of Asturias, approximately south-east of Oviedo. I ...

. He was ordained a

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...

of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) in 1966. Thereafter, he took charge of a church in

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for three years, working at the same time as a carpenter.

Missionary in Nicaragua

In 1969, García Laviana arrived in Nicaragua as a missionary priest. Through his missionary work with Pedro Regalado in the parishes of

San Juan del Sur San Juan del Sur is a municipality and coastal town on the Pacific Ocean, in the Rivas department in southwest Nicaragua. It is located south of Managua. San Juan del Sur is popular among surfers and is a vacation spot for many Nicaraguan fam ...

and

Tola Tola may refer to: Places * Bella Tola, a mountain in the Pennine Alps in the Swiss canton of Valais * La Tola, a town and municipality in the Nariño Department, Colombia * Tola (Shakargarh), a village in Pakistan * Tola, Rivas, a municipali ...

in the

department of Rivas Rivas () is a department of the Republic of Nicaragua. It covers an area of and has a population of 183,611 (2021 estimate). The department's capital is the city of Rivas. The indigenous inhabitants of Rivas are the Nicarao, and was the locat ...

, García Laviana worked closely with the Nicaraguan peasants and was intimately aware of the many hardships they faced. He joined other progressive Christians in ''concientización'' (or awareness raising) in poor rural communities around the country.

Activism against social injustice

García Laviana happened to arrive in a country where a revolution was in the making. His work as a missionary inevitably led him to side with the poor and join the revolutionary process. His loud complaints about the neglect of the poor, including sit-ins in government offices, caught the attention of Anastasio Somoza's administration. García Laviana was also an outspoken critic of the brothels located in his parish, many operating with underage girls.

Exile in Costa Rica and involvement in the revolution

When he exposed this scandal on the radio, Somoza's National Guard tried on two occasions to assassinate him. He fled to

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

where he met exiled members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). He agreed with them that the overthrow of Somoza was a moral—even religious—necessity. After agonizing soul-searching, and deep reading in church doctrine, he decided that taking up arms to fight evil did not violate his Christian principles. His decision was broadcast in two secretly distributed public letters which made clear that, with a heavy heart, he felt armed struggle was his Christian duty as a priest in

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with the oppressed. Trained in explosives in

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, he returned to Central America and joined the "'Benjamín Zeledón' Southern Front" in the Sandinista guerrilla war against Somoza. His unit was betrayed by a traitor and ambushed on a farm called "El Infierno" along the Costa Rican border. García Laviana rose up to fire when he should have stayed down; he was killed instantly. He never lived to see the triumph of the insurrection the following July.

Legacy

A closet poet, García Laviana expressed his outrage at the poverty and neglect of Nicaraguan peasants, society, as well as his own mixed emotions as he took up arms, in many secretly circulated poems. After the triumph of the insurrection, in 1979, they were published as a collection called ''

Songs of Love and War A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usually ...

''; this was the first book published by the

Sandinista The Sandinista National Liberation Front (, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistan ...

government's Ministry of Culture, headed by another poet and priest,

Ernesto Cardenal Ernesto Cardenal Martínez (20 January 1925 – 1 March 2020) was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived fo ...

. Biographies include ''Gaspar vive'' by Fr. Manuel Rodriguez Garcia, and ''¡Gaspar! A Spanish Poet/Priest in the Nicaraguan Revolution'' by David Gullette, which contains a bilingual collection of his most important poetry. Laviana was greatly influenced by the spirit of liberation theology, which focused on a "preferential option for the poor", as declared at the Latin American Bishops' conferences in

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and

Cuernavaca Cuernavaca (; , "near the woods" , Otomi language, Otomi: ) is the capital and largest city of the Mexican state, state of Morelos in Mexico. Along with Chalcatzingo, it is likely one of the origins of the Mesoamerica, Mesoamerican civilizatio ...

Daniel Ortega José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (; ; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguan politician and dictator who has been the president of Nicaragua, co-president of Nicaragua since 18 February 2025, alongside his wife Rosario Murillo. He was the 54th an ...

, president of Nicaragua, acknowledged the importance of García Laviana's participation in the revolutionary struggle. García Laviana's involvement in the Nicaraguan Revolution encouraged Catholics to support the FSLN by providing the revolutionary movement with a sense of moral legitimacy. Many of his concerns became priorities for the Sandinistas when they assumed power. The revolutionary government took up health care as a major priority, implemented

agrarian reform Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution. Lan ...

initiatives that redistributed land back to many peasants individually and in cooperatives, made education through the fourth grade free and universal, and denounced prostitution.

References