Salesian Padre Carlos Crespi Croci, born in Italy in 1891, dedicated his life to Ecuador from 1923 to 1982. Educator, Anthropologist, Botanist, Artist, Explorer, Cinematographer, Humanitarian and Musician, his unfathomable wealth of talents and benevolence served and illuminated rich and poor alike, in recognition of which an impressive sculpture to his memory was erected in Cuenca, his adopted city, by an adoring populace. After meeting Padre Crespi (see photo) in 1975-76, presbyterian-raised Stan Hall declared to a friend, ‘If ever I felt I'd been in the presence of a Saint it was Padre Crespi!’ In the World Explorers Club magazine, David Hatcher Childress has added a photographic section on Father Crespi at the end of the 'Metal Library of Atlantis' article.

(left) The enigmatic Crespi plate. Magyar? Sanskrit? Pali? (right) Stan Hall with Padre Crespi, Cuenca 1976

 

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A Tribute to Padre Crespi: Born a Saint

The film excerpt below is from ‘Los Invencibles Shuar del Alto Amazons’ shot in 1927 by Salesian Padre Carlos Crespi, the first film of Shuar community life and culture ever made. The Shuar-Achuar population of Ecuador numbers 70,000 over 400 communities. They are called ‘Invincibles’ because neither Incas nor Conquistadores could dominate them. In the 1990s Stan Hall, an ‘Honorario Vitalicio’ and International Representative of the Shuar Federation, mediated the release of an Ecuadorian Atomic Energy delegation taken prisoner because it arrived in a Shuar community unannounced. The only words the Shuar associated with Atomic Energy were ‘Hiroshima’ and ‘Nagasaki’. After consulting specialised geologists Hall convinced Shuar and Achuar representatives in Quito that uranium deposits in their territory were negligible and of no commercial value.

 

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