My Great Friend Dr. H. Ricardo Suarez Gaensly

I decided to author this article as a tribute to the life and work of Dr. H. Ricardo Suarez Gaensly, who dedicated his life to helping many people and at the same time expressing his creativity and empathy using his passion for poetry and photography.

It is incredible how in life we meet people with whom we have shared school in our youth and yet we never met, and suddenly they appear on the internet and in our lives being close relatives of friends from our youth. Most incredible of all is to discover that we share remarkably similar beliefs and feelings and similar occurrences throughout our lives.

On October 19, 2024, I posted on Facebook a tribute to the British High School in Santiago de Chile. As usual I added to my posting colleagues from the British, by mistake I included another great friend married to one of my best friends from my youth, Marcia Jiménez Kroeger, in Chile, who have taken up residence in Los Angeles California many years ago; to this publication Dr. Ricardo Suarez Gaensly responded with the following:

“I felt nostalgia! The British High School in Santiago de Chile is an emblematic place that holds memories and valuable experiences for many. Its history begins in 1918, thanks to the vision and generosity of Mary Woollcott, who financed the creation of the school.
The institution grew and evolved under the direction of the Manley family. Elsie’s mother Manley was the second owner, and Elsie later became the third owner of the school. Under his leadership, British High School expanded and was established in two locations: downtown (260 Ejercito St) and uptown. The 1970s marked a significant shift in the school’s history. Elsie Manley Findlay made the decision to sell the schools and move to Australia. This event meant the end of an era and the beginning of a new stage for the institution.
British High School is more than just a place of learning; is a symbol of the connection between Chile and the UK, and a testament to the dedication and commitment of people like Mary Woollcott and the Manley family. Its arrival lives on in the memories and experiences of the students and teachers who passed

through its classrooms. The history of British High School is an inspiring example of how education can bridge cultures and make a lasting impact on society.”

I was extremely impressed by what he wrote, I had the feeling that I had to meet him, I also realized that my friend Víctor Martín was a friend of Ricardo’s as well, thereby, I decided to add him as a friend, and he accepted me. I began to read his poetry, and I loved it, from there we began to talk, and I discovered that he was Victor’s cousin and that he was a psychiatrist. That’s how our friendship was born.

Some of his poems I publish immediately after publishing this article.

I decided to interview Dr. Ricardo Suarez Gaensly because I was very interested in what I read in his poems and in a short story that he sent me, these facts convinced me that I wanted to know him more deeply, discover his life and write an article presenting the life and work of Dr. H. Ricardo Suarez Gaensly, who is a psychiatrist. Chilean poet and photographer with an impressive career.

The first thing I researched was his surnames: The Gaensly surname is originally from Switzerland and there are many in Brazil, but in Chile there is more density. Guillerme Gaensly was born in Switzerland in 1843 and emigrated to Brazil, became a famous photographer, and died in 1928. His descendants mostly graduated in medical and law fields. It is interesting to note that on Ricardo’s mother’s side many are Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers and Judges, and Ricardo has been extremely interested in photography for at least 20 years of his life as well. Genes are never wrong! On the part of the surname Suarez, it is originally from Asturias of Germanic origin (Visigoth), and I arrived in Chile at the time of the conquest, Ricardo’s genetic background is remarkably interesting.

I begin by giving you a synopsis of Ricardo’s biography:

Dr. H. Ricardo Suarez Gaensly was born in Concepción in 1954, one of six siblings (three girls and three boys) son of a social worker mother and a chemical engineer father. He studied at British High School in the sixties; His university education included the University of Concepción; the University of Chile and he did his master’s degree in integrated projects in countries at war at the public University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. He was a professor of master’s degrees at the University of Chile. He lived in Mozambique during the 80s and 90s and was part of the team that built a hospital in the African jungle and also completed a UNICEF project. Returning to Chile, he was head of mental health in the Concepción’ Araujo Health Service during the years 1994 -1998.

Dr. H.R. Suarez Gaensly currently owns the practice and lives in Providencia, a residential neighborhood of Santiago, Chile.

Next, I will talk about Ricardo, my dear friend, psychiatrist, poet, photographer, and incredible person:
The first thing I asked Ricardo was what motivated him to specialize in psychiatry. His answer is as follows in his own words:

“Perhaps the one who inspired me to study medicine was my mother, a selfless Social Worker, who worked in a hospital for chronic patients in the 50s-60s, I used to do my school homework in her office and she introduced me to a great Dr. Enrique Molina, son of the same name founder of the Enrique Molina Garmendia high school and the University of Concepción, I studied in both are institutions. This doctor related to me so beautifully all about his patients and invited me to visit them, I was about 13 years old, I saw so much tenderness and commitment from him and my mother to their patients that I believe that that’s where this passion for medicine germinated within me and later Africa, of course.”

Ricardo arrived in Africa with his second wife and children, family stayed in the city while he built the hospital in the jungle, which meant that his marriage did not survive.

Ricardo’s life is remarkably similar to the life I lived because of my father’s profession since I was born, including living in the jungle, but in my case not the African one but the Colombian one…

I asked Ricardo when he started authoring poems and what his inspiration has been, the answer in his own words is as follows:

“I begun writing in high school in workshops as entertainment, I made my creativity dormant for many years and in while I was in Africa I resumed it upon seeing the harshness of a civil war in Mozambique while working for UNICEF… Later I took a brake from writing poetry again due to as my fascination with photography with which I captured what my eyes saw, and because of it my soul burst with pain… I took it up again a year ago I think because of my mentor, friend, colleague, and soul brother, Dr. Miguel Raurich, passed to better pastures, his illness and his departure inspired me to assume the pen again… Then ensuing my son’s accident, my passion for poetry persevered.”

Ricardo’s experience in Africa is particularly moving.

During his stay in Africa, Dr. H. Ricardo Suarez Gaensly earned his work there the “National Award” in Mozambique for the work he did and photographed during the years of the war wounded arriving at the emergency department, which was well established by Dr. Suarez Gaensly within the hospital he built. The photographs were unpublished, a work called “The epidemiological profile of the war wounded in the rural hospital of Massinga, province of Inhamban

e. ̈ which integrated all the unpublished photographs and their narrative, this work was what Dr. H.R. Suarez Gaensly presented at a national congress in Quelimane, northern Mozambique. From there Ricardo collected all the information and arrived at the UNICEF headquarters in Maputo, capital of Mozambique, where together with an expert computerized the data collected, the photographs were added to this work and Dr. H.R. Suarez Gaensly scientifically proved that civilians were the most affected and those who died the most in that war; over 90% of the figures were different from those published by the Red Cross International. UNICEF asked Ricardo’s permission to use the most graphic and atrocious images along with the complete work and UNICEF published it on the cover of their magazines.

Ricardo’s work in Mozambique is a testament to his commitment to humanity.

The Mozambican health minister invited Ricardo to his office and asked for the slides. This meeting was stupendous, of which Ricardo described to me, in his own words:

“It was a meeting that amazed me for its transcendence, I felt part of its Socialist Revolution… what a great pride.”

During our conversations I discovered that like me, Ricardo is a very empathetic person, I loved that; I also had the opportunity to read several recommendations from his former patients and in all of them his skill as a psychologist prevailed. In my research I also discovered that Ricardo is a Surgeon graduated from the University of Chile, specializing in Psychiatrist. Ricardo has extensive experience in the evaluation, diagnosis and therapeutic approach of psychiatric pathologies, psychologic

al disorders and mental disorders in children, adolescents, and adults. Dr. H. Ricardo Suárez Gaensly worked with a large number of patients for many years in conjunction with his younger brother Dr. Luis Suárez Gaensly.

His poems are incredibly profound and in my personal case, they make me vibrate and, in some cases, bring nostalgia. Very few of my favorite poets when reading them are able to affect me in such a way… Obviously the aptitude to write poetry and short stories definitely has a strong genetic aspect; a younger brother of Ricardo, Dr. Luis Suarez Gaensly, who died a few years ago, was a psychiatrist specializing in psychotherapy and a great poet as well; During Luis’s university years, he and his classmates published a magazine with all those beautiful poems.

Ricardo also has a great photographic talent, and it is thanks to that great photographic talent and his storytelling in a work based on his medical experience during the civil war that he received the “National Award for Foreign Doctors” in Mozambique. I wish I could publish his photographs; however, he keeps them in slides and does not have them in digital form.

I know Ricardo as a friend from a distance and yet he has become a particularly important person for me; Through our similar conversations and experiences it has been immensely beneficial to my mental health. This beautiful friendship is the reason I admire Ricardo so much and decided to author this article.
My next publication will be with a dozen poems written by Ricardo and that personally touched my soul.

Written by Bianca M. Ghikas Basso on November 25, 2024