Miguel Humberto Enriquez Espinosa

Life & Legacy

Miguel Humberto Enríquez Espinosa (Spanish pronunciation: [miˈɣel enˈrikes espiˈnosa]; March 27, 1944 – October 5, 1974) was a physician and a founder of the Chilean Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), founded in 1965. He was General Secretary of the MIR between 1967 and his death in 1974.
After the September 11, 1973, coup Enriquez led the political-military resistance of MIR against the newly established dictatorship.
After a year of Enríquez operating clandestinely, Pinochet's secret police, the DINA, discovered his safe-house in the working class district of San Miguel in Santiago. On October 5, 1974, his house was surrounded by DINA agents backed by heavily armed security forces personnel with an armored personnel carrier and a helicopter. He was wounded in the beginning of the assault covering the retreat of his pregnant wife (Carmen Castillo, also wounded) and two other men that fled. He received ten bullet wounds, including one to the head.
His son, Marco Enríquez-Ominami, is a prominent politician in Chile, and was a candidate for the presidential election of 2009, and then again in 2013, 2017 and in 2021, losing all of the elections.