Gaspar García Laviana

Gaspar García Laviana (November 8, 1941[1] – December 11, 1978) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest who took up arms to fight as a soldier in Nicaragua with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1977.

[2] García Laviana was born in 1941 in Les Roces, San Martin del Rey Aurelio, Principality of Asturias (Spain), moving during his childhood to Tuilla, Langreo.

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 solidarity with the oppressed.

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.

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 Medellín and Cuernavaca.

The revolutionary government took up health care as a major priority, implemented agrarian reform initiatives that redistributed land back to many peasants individually and in cooperatives, made education through the fourth grade free and universal, and denounced prostitution.