Osvaldo Peredo

Who is Osvaldo Peredo?

Osvaldo Peredo Leigue is a physician and was a Bolivian revolutionary. He now lives in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where he is an alderman on the Municipal Council of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

Peredo was born and grew up in Beni Department in northern Bolivia, and was strongly influenced by his older brothers who helped found the Bolivian Communist Party and were leaders in guerrilla movements. After receiving his initial medical training Peredo left the profession and joined the Ñancahuazú Guerrilla movement of Che Guevara, known as the National Liberation Army. However, because of the need for medical services, Peredo left to attend Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow where he received advanced medical training as well as idelological training. Upon his return to Bolivia he began one of the leaders of the movement. After Che Guevara was killed, Peredo was among those few who managed to escape to Chile. In November 1970, Salvador Allende, after he assumed the presidency of Chile, pardoned Peredo and the other survivors.

While practicing medicine as a guerrilla, Peredo developed his use of hypnotism as a therapy, both for the control of pain and for psychological trauma. He developed a hypothesis somewhat similar to L. Ron Hubbard's engram theory in Dianetics, namely that past painful memories were the source of some current illness.