Bautista van Schouwen

Bautista van Schouwen Vasey (San Lorenzo de Tarapacá, Chile, 3 April 1943 - Santiago de Chile, 13 December 1973) was a medical doctor and one of the founders of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), the Chilean guerrilla organization which earliest resisted the Military Coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973.

Five among the "Ten most wanted" opposition figures wanted by the military government after the 11 September coup were militants of MIR.

Bautista van Schouwen was at the time member of MIR's "Comisión Política" and the "Secretariado", the highest executive organ of the MIR.

The military had set a reward of 500 000 Escudos to anyone who would lead them to the capture of Van Schouwen.

The family arrived in the Concepción region in 1953 and established first in a rural property in the nearby La Florida and then in Concepción.

During the second half of his high-school studies he met Miguel Enriquez and Marcello Ferrada de Noli.

The group first entered the socialist cell "Sierra Maestra" (also called "Espartaco", of the Socialist Party Youth in Concepción) led by Marcello Ferrada de Noli and who have according to their plans established earlier a "pie de terre" in the Socialist Party 1961.

In fact, the group was from the beginning a fraction within the Socialist Party in Concepción.

These friends, together with an elder brother of Miguel Enríquez (Marco Antonio) and a new comrade they met at the first year of medical studies at the University of Concepcion (Jorge Gutiérrez Correa) started the secret group Movimiento Socialista Revolucionario in 1962.

Other two members joined 1963-1964.

Historians have referred that this political group developed around their publication "Revolution" which first issue appeared in 1963.

In October 1965 Bautista van Schouwen Vasey participated in the foundation of the MIR in Santiago and was elected at that opportunity member of MIR's Central Committee.

Two years after was elected chairman of MIR's Regional Committee for Concepción, the largest in the MIR, nationwide.

The ideological stance among the early generation of youngsters from Concepción that founded MIR in 1965 correspond to a variety of political ideologies ranging from Social-liberalism to Marxist and Trotskyite positions.

In 1966 he was President of the Medical Student Union of the University of Concepción and led with Nelson Gutierrez (President of the Sociology Students Union), Marcello Ferrada de Noli (President of the Philosophy Students Union) and Luis Moreno (President of the Engineer Students Union) a long, and at times bloody, struggle for a university reform at the conservative University of Concepción.

Although official declarations of the epoch, MIR had not a truly uniform ideological stand until the Congress of 1967 (see Movement of the Revolutionary Left) in which prevailed the Leninists positions represented by the new elected General Secretary Miguel Enriquez.

Bautista Van Schouwen did follow his friend Miguel Enríquez in this regard.

However, it has been put forward that van Schouwen would have been a closer follower to the doctrine of Rosa Luxemburg, favouring general strikes over cadre-organization political work as in Leninists traditions.

Other authors of the epoch have placed Van Schouwen's earlier ideological positions in the line of socialist humanism and also sympathetic with social-anarchist positions.

Contrary to what "official" versions have maintained, historians have established – based in interview testimonies of Marco Antonio Enríquez, a History Professor at Sorbonne ( also referred above as elder brother of Miguel Enríquez) - that Bautista Van Schouwen did not participate in the elaboration of the first historical document in the foundation of MIR, The "Insurrectional Thesis".

Bautista van Schouwen Vasey married in the summer of 1968 to Inés Enríquez Espinosa, an English literature graduate and the only sister of Miguel Enríquez Espinosa, the best man of their wedding was their other old-time friend Marcello Ferrada de Noli.

Bautista van Schouwen Vasey and Inés Enríquez Espinosa had one child named Pablo.

Years 1968-1969 the student-movement in Chile had scored notable victories but at the same time increased a confrontation with the authorities both at the universities and government.

It was at that time when Bautista Van Schouwen Vasey and Miguel Enríquez Espinosa published the document De las luchas estudiantiles a las filas de la Revolución ("From the students' struggles to the ranks of the Revolution").

Bautista van Schouwen Vasey graduated in 1968 from medical school with the second best marks of his promotion and he took afterwards an internship and postdoctoral training in neurology.

In 1969 the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei declared MIR out-law and many MIR cadres had to pass to clandestine life.

The government implemented a nationwide persecution of the thirteen most known leaders of the organization at that epoch (among those wanted were Miguel Enríquez, Luciano Cruz, Bautista Van Schouwen, Nelson Gutierrez, Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Anibal Matamala, Jose Bordas, José Goñi, Juan Saavedra Gorriategy, and others).

Bautista Van Schouwen was however never captured.

The cause against the MIR was eventually dismissed the year after by the new government of Salvador Allende through an amnesty decree.

By then Bautista Van Schouwen had moved to Santiago and had taken the political leadership and the editor-in-chief post of El Rebelde, MIR's official newspaper.

Together with medical student Luciano Cruz (another notorious MIR leader, died 1971) and other students of prominent participation in such struggle – mainly from the Movimiento Universitario de Izquierda, MUI - they finally succeeded in 1968 obtaining a university reform which became model for the student movement in the country elsewhere.

Some time before in 1972 Bautista Van Schouwen Vasey was married for the second time to Astrid Heitmman, a registered nurse at the university hospital.

He was abducted in Santiago December 13, 1973, in the church Parroquia Capuchinos (2345 Catedral Street), after having been caught when the priest who was sheltering them, unwittingly let slip to his military cousins, that they were at the church.

Father Enrique White was also detained and tortured, later exiled to England.

Van Schouwen and his lieutenant Patricio Munita had previously obtained clandestine refuge in the Capuchinos church-premises.

They were soon after their capture killed under torture in the Army-managed detention and torture centre of Villa Grimaldi.

The assassinations of Van Schouwen and Munita were however concealed by the Pinochet government and the Van Schouwen case during several years labelled as desaparecido (the "missing ones") by Human-rights organizations in Chile (see below Demise whereabouts).

Bautista van Schouwen Vasey was the first son of Industrial Chemical Engineer Bautista van Schouwen Figueroa and Carlota María Valentina Vasey Crozier.

He had two younger brothers named Carlos and Jorge.

He left those activities shortly thereafter for full-time dedication to the political and military activities of MIR, in preparation to resist the imminent 1973 Chilean coup d'état against the Salvador Allende government which finally took place on 11 September 1973.