Hugh O’Shaughnessy, who died peacefully on 1 March, aged 87, was one of the most courageous journalists to have covered Latin America in recent decades; he was also terrific if sometimes unpredictable company, acerbic observations alternating with kindness, curiosity and encouragement.

Hugh O’Shaughnessy, who died peacefully on 1 March, aged 87, was one of the most courageous journalists to have covered Latin America in recent decades; he was also terrific if sometimes unpredictable company, acerbic observations alternating with kindness, curiosity and encouragement.

His parents, first-generation immigrants from Ireland, scrimped and saved to put him through St Benedict’s, Ealing. O’Shaughnessy had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. He covered Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in Chile in 1973; he was one of the few journalists to stay on to document the murder and torture of dissidents that followed, and later he exposed the “disappearance” of victims of the Argentina military. He denounced Catholic leaders who cosied up to dictators, and honoured the courage of the priests and bishops who faced up to them, often at the cost of their lives. He played a discreet role in campaigning for the release of journalists detained by military regimes. Jimmy Burns, who served as the Buenos Aires correspondent of the Financial Times during the 1980s, was among them. “I and my wife Kidge owe our release from detention by the Argentine military junta during the Falklands War to Hugh,” Jimmy tells us.

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