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Street Wise
Comandante Espinar
By James Rudolph

Comandante Ladislao Espinar was born in Cuzco in 1843. An artilleryman in the Army, he fought in the celebrated combat on May 2, 1866, when Peru successfully fought off Spain's effort to occupy Callao. Comandante Espinar subsequently studied in the United States and, with the outbreak of war with Chile in 1879, he joined the General Staff of Peru's First Army in the south under the command of Francisco Bolognesi. Later that year, he fought in the Battles of Tarapacá and San Francisco. In the latter, Peruvian history books remember his heroism in leading a Peruvian charge up a hill occupied by Chilean guns, when he was mortally wounded.

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