Luis Enrique Tejeda

Luis Enrique Tejeda Oliva (13 May 1904 – 24 September 1983) was a Chilean lawyer, writer, and politician of the Communist Party of Chile. He served as Deputy for the 19th Departmental Group (Laja, Mulchén, and Nacimiento) from 1965 to 1973.

Born in Mulchén, he was the son of Francisco Antonio Tejeda Escobar and Ana Rita Oliva Godoy. His brother was writer Juan Tejeda. He studied at the Liceo de Aplicación and then studied law at the University of Chile, becoming a lawyer and taking the oath on 15 March 1928. He earned a doctorate in law with a specialization in criminalistics at the Central University of Ecuador.^[1]

Between 1924 and 1927, during his university years, he was detained 27 times for political activities and exiled to Ecuador. In 1927 he led the Law Students’ Center. Starting in 1938, he rose in the ranks of the Communist Party in regional leadership positions over the next twenty years. During the government of President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, he went into exile and, upon returning, was relegated to Mulchén, later to Chiloé, and again to Mulchén, which left him bedridden for seven years in Los Ángeles. There he continued political activism—organizing committees and publishing his clandestine newspaper, La Pulga. He was also among the first exiled to the Pisagua internment camp, and later held in Lautaro and Alhué.

In the 1965 Chilean parliamentary election Tejeda was elected Deputy for the 19th Departmental Group (Laja, Mulchén, Nacimiento), joining the Permanent Committee on Constitution, Legislation and Justice. In the 1969 Chilean parliamentary election he was re-elected to the same commission, and again in the 1973 election. His mandate ended with the coup of 11 September 1973. During the Pinochet regime, he went into exile in Frankfurt, West Germany, eventually relocating to Vienna, where he died on 24 September 1983.

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