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Eduardo Lopez Bustamante (9 December 1881 – 30 June 1939) was a Venezuelan journalist, lawyer and poet. He was a leading intellectual of the Zulia State, Venezuela, and a figure within Venezuelan jurisprudence.
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Biography
Eduardo Lopez Bustamante was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on December 9, 1881. He was the eldest son of Eduardo Lopez Rivas and Carmen Bustamante. His father was a journalist, publisher and editor of the newspaper Diario El Fonografo (The Phonograph Daily) and the magazine El Zulia ilustrado (The illustrated Zulia). He was also the owner of a Venezuelan publishing house, Imprenta Americana (American Press). His mother was the niece of pioneer Venezuelan physician Francisco Eugenio Bustamante and a descendant of General Rafael Urdaneta.
He grew up into the intellectual environment created by his father and during his childhood he learned several languages. This knowledge enabled him to become, at eighteen, the translator of international news in El Fonografo, which, by that time, reached newspapers in the original language of each country.
He gradually became involved in journalism and in the family business. He and his brothers, Carlos and Enrique, as well as his sister Teresa Lopez Bustamante, were educated as journalists under their father's principles. According to historian Alfredo Tarre Murzi, they became a true dynasty of writers.
He married Aurora Perez Luzardo in 1910, daughter of General Eduardo Perez Fabelo, a military linked to the history of Zulia state. The couple had six children. Aurora was also sister to Venezuelan lawyer Nestor Luis Perez Luzardo, a minister in the Eleazar Lopez Contreras cabinet.
He died in Maracaibo on June 30, 1939.
Director of El Fonografo
In 1908 Eduardo Lopez Bustamante was appointed director of the newspaper El Fonografo and of the publishing house, Imprenta Americana. That same year general Juan Vicente Gomez became president of Venezuela and imposed strong censorship. According to author Jose Rafael Pocaterra, due to its independent editorials, El Fonografo was constantly threatened by the government. In his book Memorias de un venezolano de la decandencia (Memoirs of a Venezuelan in decline), he refers to the Gomez regime as a "Tyranny far more brutal than all previous ones". "The previous despotic regimes", writes Pocaterra, "had respected that newspaper, whose material progress was a result of its enormous moral responsibility".
World War I
When World War I began in 1914, Gomez favored the German Empire in the conflict while maintaining a veneer of neutrality against the allied community. In 1917, Eduardo started a simultaneous edition of "El Fonografo" in Caracas, under the direction of his younger brother, Carlos Lopez Bustamante. According to the writer and columnist of "El Fonografo", Jose Rafael Pocaterra, the Capital's edition "enjoyed a great popularity from the beginning" because, unlike other Venezuelan newspapers of the time, El Fonografo sympathized with the Allies. This position annoyed Gomez who, thereafter, decided to put an end to the newspaper. In the words of writer Pocaterra, "anonymous and insulting threats rained down" during those days.
The newspapers's policy in favor of the Allies resulted in economic imbalance for "El Fonografo" because most of its advertisements, that came from Maracaibo German import and trading firms, began to be withdrawn. Government pressure on the newspaper became more and more intense but Eduardo Lopez Bustamante did not change El Fonografo's editorial line.
On August 23, 1917, the newspaper was raided by government troops. The headquarters of "El Fonografo" in Caracas and Maracaibo were closed permanently, ending with it, writes Jose R. Pocaterra, "the efforts of two generations ... and 38 years of the great Zulia newspaper." Lopez Bustamante escaped to Curacao where he lived as an expatriate for two years.
Prison
Eduardo Lopez Bustamante returned to Venezuela in 1919, under a false promise of armistice, and was imprisoned for five years in a colonial fortress located at the entrance to the Gulf of Venezuela: the San Carlos de la Barra Castle. Many of his better poems were written during his captivity.
Lopez Bustamante spent five years in the castle on the island of San Carlos del Zulia, shackled and bolted by the feet and living in subhuman conditions. During his captivity he devoted himself to studying law, with a view to taking steps to rejoin the Venezuelan society still governed by Gomez. The permanent closure of the family publishing house and newspaper made it clear to the journalist that he needed to have another profession.
Legal career
Eduardo Lopez Bustamante earned his Political Science degree at the University of Los Andes, on October 14, 1924. Author Gaston Montiel Villasmil writes that, "from then on he developed a true passion for the essential foundation of law."
Lopez Bustamante was a popular lawyer within Zulia state, particularly among workers of the oil sector. Venezuelan writer Ciro Nava explains in his book Centuria cultural del Zulia: "When the oil industry started in Venezuela, as a result of oil exploitation, Eduardo Lopez Bustamante sided with them and became a leading advocate of the workers' rights". "In this respect", writes Nava, "the performance of Eduardo Lopez Bustamante is always deeply remembered and appreciated by the people of Zulia." Venezuelan writer Gaston Montiel Villasmil adds that Lopez Bustamante "wrote several works of interesting legal content related to the subject, being best known the one entitled Responsibility for accidents occurring at work.
Lopez Bustamante conducted an investigation of eleven chapters about the lease of works under Venezuelan law, which is still often reviewed by Venezuelan publications dealing with jurisprudence. The 1963 edition of Zulia State University Journal of Law refers to this work: "This superb work on law entitled The lease of works, product of the fertil estrous that was Eduardo Lopez Bustamante throughout his life...outstanding intellectual figure..."
Editor
During the years he practiced law Lopez Bustamante once more became an editor. He created ORDO, a monthly magazine of Law, Jurisprudence and Legislation, that reviewed a variety of legal issues. A collection of all issues of the magazine has been preserved by the National Library of Venezuela, located in the city of Caracas.
Positions
Eduardo Lopez Bustamante was a professor at the Maracaibo School of Law, lieutenant governor of the Zulia State and Minister for the Zulia State Supreme Court. He was the legal adviser of the Ministry of Development during Lopez Contreras presidency and of the City Council of Maracaibo. He was a Spanish legal interpreter in French, English and Italian.