Juan Pablo Wainwright

Juan Pablo Wainwright Nuila (1894–February 18, 1932) was a Honduran revolutionary leader. A former member of the Canadian Army in World War I, he joined the Communist Party in El Salvador in 1928. He was expelled from the country that year, returning to Honduras. He was later identified as one of the major communist agitators in Latin America. After an escape from a Honduran prison in 1930, he was arrested in Guatemala in January 1932. Following a confrontation between Wainwright and Guatemalan dictator Jorge Ubico in a prison office, Ubico ordered Wainwright's execution.

Youth Wainwright was born in Santa Barbara in 1894. He was born to an English father (hailing from Leeds) and a Honduran mother Carlota Nuila Leiva. Many of Wainwright's biographical details remain unclear. According to Robert J. Alexander, Wainwright was imprisoned in the United States for a period. After his release, he joined the Canadian Army and fought at the battlefront in France during the First World War. According to Alexander's account, he travelled across Europe, Africa and the Orient, returning to Honduras in 1924. An article in a Guatemalan newspaper labelled him as one of the foremost communist agitators in Central America, accusing him of seeking to establish a Soviet federation in the region. Wainwright used his family business, the sweets and tobacco company Hondusal, for his cross-border activities. In Guatemala he used the pseudonym Nicolás Guerra. In February 1931 he was elected as External Relations Secretary of the Communist Party of Guatemala, at a clandestine party plenary held at the General Cemetery of Guatemala City.

Execution In January 1932 he was jailed in Guatemala, accused of preparing a revolt in the country on the lines of the insurgency in El Salvador.

The death of Wainwright contributed to the emerging vacuum of leadership of the labour movement on the Honduran north coast.