Article Originally published in Spanish in Revista Nómadas 25 (2006) 1

Science, revolution and belief in Camilo Torres: a secular Colombia?

Alejandro Sánchez Lopera

The figure of Camilo Torres (1929-1966), represented in literature like the „scientist‟

the founder of the first program of sociology in Latin America; Camilo, like the

“revolutionary”, guerrilla man of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN); like the “priest”,

decisive figure in the dynamics of the revolutionary ecclesiastical movements of Latin

America. This article analyzes the form in which, in agreement with the literature that

constructs him like a hero, his experience altered the scientific practices en Colombia,

transformed the revolutionary ways of fight, and reshaped the joints between belief and

politics.

In our opinion, the way in which the experience of both the Colombian priest guerrilla

combatant Camilo Torres and the abstainer popular movement propitiated by his action,

Frente Unido (FU)1, crosses tradition, science and revolution in Colombia, turns into a

possible way of resistance against the obsession for secularization and the fear of non-state

action forms, usual in the praxis and in the ruling intellectual production since 20 th century

60s in Colombia. Given its closeness to “dogma”, belief and revolution, Camilo‟s experience

has been excluded from the prevailing ideas as a possible and praiseworthy form of social

experience. Nevertheless, we think that it is precisely an affirmative praxis where science,

revolution and mysticism are experienced as part of an indiscernible process in which they

differ and simultaneously coexist.

This text is a pragmatic analysis of a part of what has been written about Camilo

Torres and Frente Unido from the 20th century 60s till today in Colombia, aiming historically
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examine some of the social procedures embodied in the construction of the personage. In

general, it is possible to describe the outstanding processes in such literature. Specially those

that consolidate a ritual intending to construct the hero –as an anomaly-, consummated with

his sacrifice some decades later and reconstructed in the form of a legacy capable of being

inscribed in the horizon of the liberal democratic politics in the 90s.

At the same time, the literature builds a series of tensions to place those processes,

especially the one between science and revolution that sometimes puts intellectual praxis

together with revolutionary activities and in other cases split them. For this reason, during the

20th century 60s and 70s, through a scientific and religious image of Camilo, literature goes

from a conception of science as an insurrection weapon to one in which any possibility of

radical politics is tamed, highlighting Camilo‟ skills as a politician and thinker, free from the

“dogma” common in the revolutionary politics of previous decades.

As starting point, we can see that the literature referred to Camilo Torres shares three

fundamental features. First, there is an accumulative perspective of what “it is known” on

Torres, aiming to fulfill some voids or deficiencies to configure a comprehensive profile of

him. Second, in analyzing Torres‟ experience there is a search for retrospective coherence: by

applying modern analyzing categories to study the past, his experience was understood as a

“failure”, a “deviation”, a “waste” or even a “betrayal”; the anachronism here states a

perversion or corruption regarding an essence inscribed in the subjectivity, that is, a „nucleus

of interiority´.

Finally, through the “search” of circumstances giving coherence to his thought and

actions, the reviewed literature aims to construct the “creator” figure (which leads us to some

exercises on the history of ideas) or that of the “hero” (which points out to chronological

biographic studies). Showing Camilo as an „exception‟, disconnected from any social relation

that made him possible, we think that most of the literature traces the leader‟s agony,
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celebrating the ritual of inscribing a “self” (scientist, hero, and martyr) in the liberal way of

life. In short, it is a fight to build the history of a soul in the most reliable way.

Moral, truth, subjectivity

We propose an alternative to inquire the material in another way, tending to promote

or form other relations that, rather than establishing some tensions that explain the social

forces able to produce the experience of Camilo Torres, reconstruct a “self” or interiority.

Setting Camilos‟ experience in a series of social tensions, in a crossing of relationships,

means to be apart from some obsessions present in the literature. Among them, there is the

insatiable desire to convert society into secularism, trying to suppress any religious vestige

through homologating believe and mysticism to dogma and millennialism.

Following Michel de Certeau‟s words, it is possible to think on mysticism not as an

antisocial mechanism or a process that breaks up the social bond: instead of considering this

as a mere experience of ecstasy involving redemption or provoking messianic forms in

politics, one can ask what happens when religion and mystic experience does not lead to an

interiority, an asceticism or an exile or to a meditation or isolation exercise. 2

Likewise, according to Michel Foucault´s perspective and apart from the history of

sciences, the institutions and the taxonomy of values, our perspective tries to establish the

relationships between a field (science), a structure (politics) and practices (moral), aiming to

discern the strategy to produce the truth carried by these texts, instead of making judgments

about the truthfulness of their contents [1982; 1992].

It is necessary to clarify that this truth analysis does not intend to reveal the mystified

ideas, either denounce a distorted conscious, nor expose the effects of some hidden power –

the end of the illusion-, as maybe a critic of ideology would perform; it neither tries to portray

a history of shames or deceives, like a deviated history that, betrayed in its intend of getting to
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an aim, prevent us to reach the origin, the revealed truth of the text, of the author, of a

founding subject. In other words, the truth is “not the real statements to be found out or

accept, but the set of rules that allow to say and recognize those statements taken as truth”

[Veyne 1987].

In our case, the question would not be what the truth in the history of Camilo Torres

Restrepo is, but the history of the truth intended to construct around him. For this reason, the

analysis is not looking for content or linguistic analysis (semantic, syntactic, logic-

propositional) but focused on finding out the various moralities and the different truth values

present in the texts. We agree that the discourse implies appropriation, power deploy,

subjugation; to sum up, it entails a materiality.

Therefore, we are not gradually revealing the hidden, essential or primary meaning of

the texts or designing validity scales to measure their statements, or balancing what is known

about something. Following Paul Veyne‟s words, it is not about studying the object and

expressing what one knows about it, but about what is possible to know at certain time on that

object. From this view; this implies that rather than what do we know about Camilo, the

question is about what is possible to know about him at present. Then, the issue is to analyze

the history of a set of interpretations going beyond the auto-referential and internal logic of

the discourse to explain the facts configuring a case like the one of Camilo Torres; that is to

say, what were the social procedures that gave cause for the development of this history, and

to what extent the analyzed texts are symptoms of that.

Setting free the endless semantics, dealing with the signifier and meaning categories

and yielding to their temptation of setting themselves up as despotic entities is, in Deleuze‟s

words, to revitalize “forms of restoring the interiority of the text”. Words are meaningless,

there are only external powers that make them work or blow up; the text exists just like an

exterior field where moralities, affects and bodies struggle since the text is no more than “a
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small mechanism of an extra-textual practice”. So, it is necessary to find out “what is [the

text] for in the extra-textual praxis prolonging [it]” [326; 331].

So that, this proposal does not attempt just to write another version of Camilo Torres‟

history but at the same time a history of those who have written Camilo‟s history; a history of

historians, biographers, militants, and monks who while writing Torres‟ history write theirs

and their collectives‟. This analysis then avoids the temptation to increase the knowing of the

ego or a soul requires certain reading strategy and a peculiar conception of the target material.

In the process of interpreting the discourses, we go beyond the understanding of the texts as

produced by a conscious (author, creator) to discern what is taken for grant, and how some

natural objects that amalgamate heterogeneous practices are configured in the texts, as well as

the way in which data is produced disregarding its emerging conditions. Under this

perspective, the narratives bring dispersed social processes together, clot diverse practices,

and make them coherent, sequential, and above all, intelligible by giving them a history.

The process of recreating the prejudices accepted by who writes the history, and

establishing the “dogmatic moment” and the moral these texts carry allow us to decipher the

way in which the multiple struggles, the confrontation and the forces that contend for leading

the social processes are suppressed; in some way, the texts being analyzed are like strategies

trying to make stable the multiplicity of social forces. Thus, the text analysis will look for the

basic links the discourse establishes between force relations and truth relations in the

articulation of the above mentioned science, politics and moral.

At the same time, taking into account his functions as priest, politician, revolutionary

humanist, caudillo, among others, Camilo Torres is given different qualities: idealistic,

ingenious, victim, altruist, thus diminishing the importance of the social forces impelling him.
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This images and features act as natural illusions and are suitable for catching heterogeneous

spread practices.

As a matter of fact, the temptations of unity permeating the versions about Torres,

tinged with an epical and willful character, perform a unifying liturgy that usually produces

biographical works that imply apologetic or disqualifying judges of the subject. The

genealogical approach of history opposes to this kind of unifying rituals (the search for

origins), thus avoiding univocal explanatory facts or triggering ruling principles aim to

restitute, in a truthful way, the unity of an epoch, a way of thinking, and in our case, a self.

Consequently, the narratives and versions written about Camilo Torres become

strategies for capturing and unifying multiple practices; so that, they are valuations, forces

competing for leading or tempting to impose certain interpretation of the process. Therefore,

it is not about comparing more or less reliable versions about the history of an individual or a

soul, or between conventional perspectives confronted to less known ones whose explanation

will be acceptable according to their grade of certainty.

The scientist

Contrary to what critical social scientists usually state about the 20th century 50s

science [Castro and Guardiola], it played a fundamental role, not only as an instrument of

organized planning or as a watching platform to legitimize public policies under the economic

development model but as a protagonist in the rebellious processes as well, in order to

become a possibility of subversion or revolution weapon which led to a particular conjunction

between science and revolution. Such situation is evident in the revolutionary literature of

those times.

Science and revolution are combined in some studies like Orlando Fals Borda‟s, who

intersects a functionalist analysis model that at that began to reach a crisis point with an
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intervention strategy whose purpose was to reach a “new objectivity”, “derived from the

application of the scientific method to problematic and conflictive facts” that carries “in itself

certain tendency to look for solutions, to show alternatives and even to make warnings and

calls for action, as showed in these book, related to the current situation and its alternatives”

[Subversión IX].

The “new objectivity” suggested, among other issues a perspective on violence not as

a barbarian threat or individual disintegrating choice as it was usually understood, but as an

archaic blind factor condemning us to a “collective fratricide” [Guzman and others 1962], or

the individual choice of an “idealistic” redeemer, naïve and “disoriented”, victim of his time.

This is a common explanation of the reasons city people had to get involve in guerrillas and

also was the explanation of Camilo joining Ejercito de Liberación Nacional, ELN3, a rural

foquista guerrilla highly influenced by the Cuban revolution experience [cf. Guevara;

Debray].

Analyzing Torres‟ conversion into a warrior, Fals states that Camilo resorted to

violence “given the emerging social order, the one that will come”. Such rebellion “would

make poor masses guided by new leaders to consider illegitimate the use of violence by the

government, claiming then the fair right to rebel, that is to say, the counter-violence” [167].

Nevertheless, the warrior existence is not enough; he has to be supported on scientific

weapons.

Then, the rigorous study of history and its “teachings” to find out the “adjusting

maneuvers frustrating or promoting subversions” [161], is the key to make out the chances of

a new subversion of the social order, expressed by the FU as a new utopia or positive

subversion project. This way, science states that revolution is possible and desirable, and at

the same time justifies a set of practices outside the communist position prevailing in

Colombia and other Latin American countries [cf. A.Sánchez, 147-160].

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This conception of science expressed by the literature about him shows a peculiar approach

between scientific work and mysticism in a moment when science constitutes the

transforming factor of society whose aim is, as scientists now can say, to become rational and

pluralistic where religion is turned into a “study object”, rather than a dogmatic principle

ruling social life.

That specific place of science, made possible due to the radicalization of the economic

development policy in Colombia, was shaped not only by expert knowledge (public policies),

written works (research) or the combination of both, anchored to State institutions and

universities; there were also a favorable atmosphere reinforcing the importance of scientific

knowledge as a condition to transform reality.

This resistance in which science, insubordination and mysticism were combined was

quickly excluded from the institutional context where it was built up. According to the

catharsis of this process carried out by one of the intellectuals 20 years later, the reform of the

Faculty of Sociology of Universidad Nacional in 1969 broke down this kind of sociological

and political praxis. The fact that Torres, in his character of scientist joined ELN, a catholic

rooted guerrilla, and his death in combat in 1966 gradually produced a change in the function

of intellectual people at a time when science, politics, and reforming policy began to be

presented as a sign of “pacific laicization”. As chronicles say, one of the most important

events of such character was the new type of relations established between the government of

the time and the Faculty of Sociology [A.Sánchez and Zuleta].

According to the bill that gave rise to the mentioned reform, the new profile for the

scientific work in Colombia had to follow the knowledge “global trends” and the objective

learning, through a “scientific” and “political” sociology, given its “interest in transforming

the State through knowledge” [G.Restrepo, 1987,32]. This new secular project conveys a

sense of liberal democratic and reformist modern society that “undoubtedly, allowed that
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many people were moral and intellectually protected in a decadent environment”. Then, the

function of the intellectual was distanced from that of the revolutionary follower of the

sudden transformation, who “fell into oblivion”. Opposite to this, the reformist promoting the

society gradual changing through the existing institutional channels arose.

The reformist proposal is followed by a critic about Torres‟ role that in our opinion

was part of the same mechanism. While the University favored a debate about the ideas, not

anymore about actions and praxis, the scientific validity of that personage‟s “discourse” was

also discussed. They criticized the Camilo‟s supposed lack of theoretical accuracy to analyze

the situation which led him to a haste judgment and finally to his premature death [Vieira

1966; Andrade 1966].

The religious man

Although the resistance which conjoined science, revolution and mysticism was

thrown out from the university context, it shifted to protest movements in the later 60s and

along 70s. Such displacement had a bifurcation important to consider because it explains a

light deviation inside the Colombian official Catholic Church with huge repercussions in the

country.

Torres‟ joining to the guerrilla and his subsequent death becomes an event narrated in

several kinds of ecclesiastic literature as well as part of different bishops‟ Mensajes and in the

Conferencia Episcopal Colombiana [1968]. It also has a history of deep confrontation

between Camilo and the Catholic hierarchy, partly broadcasted by the liberal press [Salazar,

Fals and others, 1965]. Although the way in which these events are told is intended to show

this man as an exception in the priestly life, his choice is seen as a heroic one, no matter if

importance is exclusively given to his religious life instead of to the hero actions.
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While the ruling church takes this posture, the church protest movements follow

Camilo‟s experience in their own revolutionary activity as in the case of Golconda, a

dissident ecclesiastical collective supported by some bishops that performed a vast experience

of working with base communities in Colombia [cf. Muniproc; Dussel]. This point of view is

expressed in an analysis about the second conference of the Conferencia Episcopal

Latinoamericana CELAM in Medellín, 1968 –in a similar way of Gustavo Gutiérrez´s

Liberation Theology-:

Violence being a constant and probable risk is showed under a negative aspect. The

diversity of charismata inside Church implies diversity in the Christians‟ commitment.

Violence and non-violence would be two complementary sides of the Christian love

for manhood. Therefore, it is not about violence executed “a priori” or wanted in it

self, but as a way of protecting men, dispossessed of their fundamental rights, from

another kind of violence. So that, violent actions must be supported by people and

emerge after having experienced the inefficiency of pacific means to get the desired

changes [García and others, 1968].

As an example, Germán Zabala, intellectual founder of Golconda, emphasizes the

need of interweaving the empirical scientific learning with the transformation planning and

the social change concerning the pastoral and revolutionary work of Catholic groups working

with Base Communities [cf.J.Restrepo 111-112]. Thus, Camilo‟s revolutionary experience

would be showed as coherent due to the “continuity” between the priest principles and the

“theoretical-empirical commitments” of the intellectual who choices the armed fighting, “as

the highest action of the scientific consequence demanded by the revolutionary struggle”

[Zabala and others 1972, 11-12].

Equally, boosted by the literature of the time, Camilo‟s individual experience falls

within a global movement that, additionally, is given a history. Then, even if his leadership is
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highlighted, in this kind of literature Camilo is not anymore an exception but a main

experience in a broad Latin American movement [cf. López Oliva, 1970; Dussel; Gutiérrez].

As a consequence, some literature leaving aside facts happened in Latin America related to

the conflict between Christianity, science and political praxis, shows Camilos‟ life just an

accidental, ingenious, exceptional case. In contrary to this, it is challenging to examine the

social forces involved in the emergence revolution statement as possible in the sixties, where

Camilo Torres would be a symptom, not a simple malfunction, an incarnation of heroic

subjectivity or proper name.

Moreover, currently historians of that time Church associate the facts surrounding

Camilo with the labors union and family praxis of Acción Católica started in the late 30s in

Colombia that gave birth to the Acción Católica Especializada movement and some others

similar in Latin America from 1950 to 1968 [cf. Bidegain, 1998; Cifuentes and Florián,

2004]. Therefore, it is relevant to question if the crossing between church praxis and

revolutionary struggle, that is, between believe and subversion, is only a Camilos‟ peculiar

method, or rather a Church apostolate technique put in practice in different insurrectional

experiences in Latin America.

As is known, one of the attempts to work out the theological question about the evil

(the scandal of "God's` silence 'to the suffering of human being") ended in Latin America by

binding Christianity and violence, due to the unbearable situation of the present. Through

statements from the World Council of Churches in 1966, and later positions of CELAM,

Golconda and the theology of Gustavo Gutierrez during the second decade of the sixties, the

violence is beginning to be questioned as exclusive mandate of the State, as an exercise

"worthy" exclusively since the law. The possibility - "legitimate" - of violence, thus, would

not be in exteriority with respect to the subject [cf. A.Sánchez]

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The association of science, revolution and mysticism explains a close interweaving among

revolutionary praxis supported by secular approaches like Leninism and Maoism, church

praxis characteristic of the base communities getting together around a pastor, and some

scientific learning-based techniques to carry out field investigation, like ethnography and

demography. So, the construction of the personage brings new elements contributing to the

analysis of that time regarding the friction among customs, belief and revolution along Latin

America.

The resistance created another concept about the secular facts, paradoxically produced

by those specifically ecclesiastic activities and discourses. From the perspective of the

revolutionary religious movements such point of view conceived society as formed by small

groups of citizens-brothers, living under equalized, democratic relationships led by a priest.

Historians of these movements interpret that those connections were evidencing a non-

rational society impelled by dogmatic, messianic and millennial social liaisons. Furthermore,

some of them affirm that “the presence of some Christian groups” in the left and some

dissidence “reinforced the suspicion of politics harmfulness” [Archila, 2003, 305; Pizarro,

1995; De la Roche, 1994].

The connection between revolutionary and religious praxis through science evidences

a role of mysticism little different from that usually conferred by Colombian historians. As

part of a resistance movement, mysticism together with science and revolution are the needed

components for a social change giving room to democracy; so, the secular life has a place

through spirituality not contrariwise.

Similarly, such secularization is possible only if there is a propitious scientific work

allowing small groups to learn “the general”; this way “science become a work tool for

common population, and culture democratization is not anymore a minimal education of

masses but putting the highest level of science at people‟s service” [García and others, 1968].
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However, it is important to point out that such interpretation of the secular, as well as the

resistance giving birth to it became completely marginal.

The politician

The rise of the guerrilla movements in the 20 th century 80s in Colombia, the end of the

agreement restricting the elections between the liberal and conservative parties, the

appearance of drug trafficking as a large enterprise, the emergence of many different civil

movements, etc. coincide with the rise of the literature about Camilo Torres, which regardless

slight differences build that personage as a politician.

This construction performed by the literature of some revolutionary groups, marginal

ecclesiastic clusters and social movements [Harnecker 1988; López Vigil 1989] is significant

when different forces and conceptions about struggling search convergence inside some

transversal collectives (including different forces and social sectors), as well as in the

consensus perspectives through the acknowledgement of Torres‟ “perspective of

revolutionary unity” and in the continuity of his “unity project” [Trujillo, 1987 2;

A.Jaramillo, 1986 11; Ramírez, 1984 12-13]. This literature, which relocates Camilo Torres in

the political field is accompanied by a new reading made by some intellectual groups that

shows him as one of the “pioneers” of Colombian Sociology, in an exercise that displaces the

image of Camilo as a warrior and a revolutionary [cf. Cataño, 1987; J.Jaramillo, 1987].

The mentioned literature appears in a time when the political forces are re-structuring

themselves and different insurgent groups are changing their force composition through the

convergence process in the Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera in 1987, which generated

struggle around some conceptions on politics and revolution, tactics and symbols.

Furthermore, a restructuring process inside ELN is observed, together with the fusion of this

foquista group with the MIR-Patria Libre organization, coming from the Partido
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ComunistaML, and connected with the Maoist Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL), which

would originate the Unión Camilista-ELN in June 1987.

A movement of more open composition, characterized by the existence of different

conceptions about struggling methods and privileged insurrection forms, emerged from the

articulation between diverse revolutionary experiences, where the figure of Torres was

decisive. As Fernando Hernández, ELN spokesman during the 1980s said,

… All resulted during the Primera Asamblea Comandante Camilo Torres Restrepo in

the first document of systematic political and theological review in 1986, intending to

synthesize Marxism and Christianity. The ELN made a highly important decision in

that Congress, when stating that for the Colombian revolution was necessary to work

on a strategic agreement between Christians and Marxists [Hernández, 2001, 59].

Nevertheless, the construction of Camilo as a politician is based on a new different

conjunction among mysticism, science and political action, which annuls any possibility of

resistance previously produced by this sort of union. In fact, the insurgent unity process

between ELN and EPL had its consequence in the “political trade-union agreement” A

luchar!, strongly directed by the ELN, that served as a convergence nucleus for different

forces and struggle conceptions, in a process where Torres‟ experience, understood as an

articulation between his Marxism and Christianity, is constructed as a transversal proposal for

unity among different social sectors.

In this point we find a different conjunction between science, revolution and belief,

which neutralizes its radical components to produce a specific form of secularization, a

liberal-like laicization. The transformation of the previous relationship between revolution,

science and belief is accompanied by the ELN decision of negotiating with the Colombian
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State by 20th century mid 80s, respecting the democratic framework, thus producing a

secularization way different from that promoted by the Church in previous decades.

It is noticeable that ¡A Luchar! (the insurgency political apparatus) at first considered

the truce between ELN and the government as a capture of the revolutionary process; later the

mechanisms of the liberal democracy [¡A Luchar! 1988] were accepted and finally the

electoral way was adopted, displacing the non-state action forms in politics. Consequently,

the construction of Torres as a politician becomes a mechanism that empowers the appearance

and stabilization of a liberal democratic political practice, by suspending the previous

resistance that caused the opposition to the liberal secularization mode.

Consequently, the discussion around Torres‟ role gets another element in mid 80s: it

deals with how to extract and use in the organizational level the Marxists and Christians

struggling experience from previous decades, and also to think about the role of believers, and

specially that of intellectuals in the political struggle and revolutionary process. In the case of

Camilo, his “conversion” into a warrior and his insistence to be treated as any simple

combatant4 is interpreted by some people as the sacrifice of a Christian redeemer in an ecstasy

state [cf. Archila, 306].

This transformation experienced by the urban students and intellectuals who joined the

insurgency movement caused the appearance of some practices inside ELN (execution among

them) against some of its members who came from the city and who, according to the

organization leaders, were unable to “assimilate the peasant way of thinking” 5. In spite of

that, we consider that these practices show a deeper controversy about the -tragic- right

subject to start and command a revolution, rather than a strategic mistake from ELN leaders

causing the hero‟s death in combat [Arenas, 1971; A. Jaramillo, 1986].

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Once the resistance formed by the conjunction of science, belief and revolution was

dissolved, the secular liberal mandate was accepted, framed in the debate about the role of the

priestly function, of belief, and the “sense” of the rural in revolution. Thus, the way in which

the experience of Torres, in his condition of mid-class urban intellectual, stresses the

discussion about the combatant profile would be an expression of the composition of the

secular new project that would separate the function of the politician from that of the

intellectual in the revolutionary struggle.

This disjunction was recreated later in the insurgence literature by Manual Pérez –

highest leader of ELN-, who would recognized that after what happened to Torres, that

guerrilla project would have a “fundamental change of perspective since mid 80s, because

now being a member of that organization does not require going across swamps or shooting

bullets. Even more, [being] a peasant … and not everybody have to be a guerrilla hero”

[López Vigil 1989, 133].

In the late 80s, under a different perspective some intellectuals sectors separate science

from revolution by inscribing Torres‟ experience in the “history of science”. From a view of

the history of ideas, Torres‟ image as a “pioneer” of Sociology and his contribution to the

increasing of scientific rationality, and also some judgments about his deficient academic

formation [Cataño, 1987; J.Jaramillo, 1987] make evident a transformation in the

relationships between science and society, in which scientists repress their political militancy

and assume the pragmatic exercise of politics, being emancipated from any dogmatic vestiges

or truth presumptions from previous times.

According to Foucault‟s proposal [2000], rather than trying to establish the scientific

character of a discourse, it would have to discern the implications of doing that. Pursuing an

author‟s figure and establishing a discourse that pretends being scientific implies to delimit,

cut, capture and annihilate other discourses and experience subjects. Thus, by constructing
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Torres‟ figure as “a founder” of the secular scientific practice, intellectuals construct

themselves otherwise in a kind of act of contrition by proposing different articulations among

belief, politics and science.

Therefore, the inscription of Torres inside the history of science does not aim to

“rescue his work as an investigator” but is the result of a new configuration of forces that

stresses the intellectual practice, a correlation where science, belief and revolution separate

again, giving way to a new secular movement. When politics experience is revaluated as a

“doctrine”, belief separates from as a scientific practice viewed as secular and the warrior

becomes an intruder because of the anxiety to consolidate the civil. This way, it is possible to

construct around Torres‟ figure the narrative about his work legacy. This heritage finally

consummates the hero construction ritual.

The thinker

The Torres‟ legacy construction constitutes a turn that deepens the separation between

revolution and science, by banishing the “warring intellectual” and his obsession with

weapons to reappraise one who, due to his intellectual vocation and permanent questioning, is

justly opposed to those who hope that “times change by a sudden collapse of the world and

national capitalism” [Restrepo 2002, 135; 156-157].

This “turn”, produced by a new analysis of the literature about Camilo, has occurred

since 90s; its effects remain nowadays, surrounding as phantoms the radical possibilities in

criticism and politics. Darío Botero, former student leader and outstanding figure of

philosophy in Colombia, establishes the personage function in a particular way. According to

Botero‟s words,

Camilo was the opposite of an ideologist. He was the most similar to an intellectual

since he did inspire respect or affection but not mobilizing impetuses. According to
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my interpretation, Camilo was mainly an academician, a researcher who was impelled

by his own personal conditions and the atmosphere of his times to a confrontation

against Church, the traditional parties and finally, the national army to his tragic death

[1991, 9].

After naming Camilo as a “democracy martyr” and “leader of social modernity in

Colombia”, Botero declares that “…because of his formation and academic tradition, Camilo

could be, in fact I think he really was, a democratic leader. So that, rather than a reappraisal of

some Camilo‟s undervalued aspects, what is observed here is the effect of a new

configuration of forces stressing the intellectual practice in Colombia and a new political

commitment from those who participate in the construction of the personage narrative.6

Besides the prevailing pacification atmosphere and the condemn to the brutality of

certain insurgency practices, Camilo‟s figure as a “thinker” stands there to take him apart

form that warring path and to inscribe him again inside the secular and liberal program, far

from the totalitarian temptation latent in belief and revolution. The previous construction of

Torres as “scientist”, “priest” and “revolutionary”, constituted as a radical resistance process,

give way to a pragmatic analysis of the “philosopher” that builds another narrative of the

personage and another proposal about the liaisons between science, the sacred and revolution,

in which the subverting power of the initial particular intersection vanishes.

In the recent literature about Camilo, besides a particular proposal about the place

given to intellectuals in society, there is a condemn to his vital choices, especially to the

armed way, because of his rigid “voluntarism” and “lack of focusing” that undervalues the

careful and detailed analysis of the diverse social forces in conflict and other facts

determining the choice of a proper tactic [Escobar, 1991]. Similarly, many authors judge the

way in which Camilo “constructs” the reasoning of armed fighting as inevitable; they attack
 Article Originally published in Spanish in Revista Nómadas 25 (2006) 19
Camilo‟s view of violence as a political action resource by arguing the horror caused by some

current insurgency practices [G.Sánchez 1991, 42; Mesa 2002, 118]7

According to this point of view, the mystic crossing Camilo‟s vital choices results in

his abandon of civil channels and his exaltation of cruelty and violence, while, according to

various authors, his deep honesty and Christian spirit freely act as a connection thread trough

the mentioned functions of scientist, religious man and politician [M.Medina, 1995: 13;

Broderick, 2001: 35-36].

The judgment of Camilo‟s choice for insurgency is founded on the construction of the

philanthropic and altruistic image tied to a pretended ingenuousness regarding politics and to

his deep Christian devoutness [Botero]. The liaison between belief, science and revolution as

a resistance possibility is then annihilated. Notwithstanding, those views should be disturbed

because what is important here is whether the retrospective liberal secular approach allows a

critical reading of experiences like those of Torres and mainly, the finding of some elements

suitable for the current political and intellectual action (or rather, that approach is an echo of

the revolution exhaustion in the contemporary world).

In this way, a key issue is how belief, science and revolution are disconnected again

through a liberal democratic political commitment when considering Torres‟ experience as

anomalous, ingenious and altruist, and consigned to a warrior lineage and to a yet vanished

conception of politics. Even more, that occurs when the current condemn exerted on the

rebellious movements formed since the 60s implies a “pacific secularization process”

obstructed by insurgency and those collectives impregnated with millennialism that

suffocated the civilian society space [cf. Pizarro 1989, 393 and Archila, 125].

It may be also interesting to know how science, belief and revolution cross each other

when, as supposed by most of the writers, and in spite of a secularization or pacifying

 Article Originally published in Spanish in Revista Nómadas 25 (2006) 20
process, the Frente Nacional agreement made by the mid 50s could not stop the war. Camilo

Torres, “priest”, “scientist” and “revolutionary” plays a particular role as a resistance against

the secular obsession and the horror of non-state political practices and also as a detonating

element of de-stabilization of the pretended civil agreement “reached” then and whose effects

are still been observed today8.

What could be the role of an intellectual and of science in general in these rebellious

processes and in leading the insurgences? Rather than increasing “fidelity” in a deadly duel,

looking for a more transparent version of Camilo‟s life, it would be more interesting to

question about the way in which the intellectual conception present in the literature of Camilo

and about him has been tied to the multitude struggle and how they have been affected,

subverted, empowered or contained.

We think it is not a choice between democracy and authoritarianism, between

revolutionary and dogmatic politics, based on a cruelty inventory as an effect of “totalitarian”

and “emancipating” politics from the past decades. Then, rather than projecting over the past

a secular view that erases the revolutionary aspect of belief and politics from history and

social struggles it is worthwhile instead to question if this perspective constitutes an arid

ground in the construction of libertarian experiences, or another type of obedience.

At the end, the capture of this disturbance, the internalization of that excess with

respect to the institution, will proceed in several ways. Indeed, the subsequent closure of this

possibility will depend on a number of strategies that promote the assimilation of change in

the social value of violence in society. This change will not drive to an internalization of the

peace, but to a marginalization of other possible modes of secularization. The capture of

different modes of secularism, will be developed then by undo the previously established

relationships between religion, knowledge and radical political experiences.

 Article Originally published in Spanish in Revista Nómadas 25 (2006) 21
Religion and radical politics then would act as a kind of psychological mechanism, whose

deployment is chained to the messianism and therefore to the individual and irresistible

temptation of violence. The interiority and the soul find again its possibility of existence, its

vitality, in the recent versions about the experiences that mingled knowledge, religion and

radical politics: then we assist to the restoration of a proper name. Henceforth, violence

would be seen as a "weakness" of the subject, and we would witness the exhaustion of the

revolution statement in Colombia.

 Article Originally published in Spanish in Revista Nómadas 25 (2006) 22

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NOTES


This paper is a modified and shorter version of an article first published in Journal Nómadas No. 25 October
2006.
1
The Frente Unido was an abstainer protest movement, with a transversal unifying proposal among different
social groups: peasants, students, workers, most of them “non-aligned” with the leadership of any of the
constituted right or left parties, which promoted an unusual mobilization in Colombia in a very short period of
time. “Among every political platform and program from the last decade, the one that caused the higher impact
and reached the larger number of people was undoubtedly the Frente Unido platform…until now the main
attempt to bring together and mobilize masses” as stated by the collective Proletarización [1975], the most
important and more accurate source about the left groups of that time.
2
“Finally, experiences and doctrines are distinguished according to the priority that they accord either to vision
(contemplation) or to the spoken word. This first tendency emphasizes knowledge, the radicality of exile, the
unconscious initiations that free one from consciousness, the solitude of silence, and ´spiritual´ communion: such
are the ´gnostic´ mystics and the mystics of Eros. The second tendency links the call with a praxis, the message
with work and the civic community, the recognition of the absolute with an ethics, and ´wisdom´ with brotherly
relationships: such are the mystics of agape” [De Certeau, 1992: 23-24].
3
The Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), still in war footing and significant among the current insurgent
movement in Colombia and Latin America, emerged in the region of Santander by 1965 under the influence of
the Cuban revolution. It has catholic roots and foquista direction with strong influences of the radical liberal
party as well as of the stronghold brigandage and former liberal guerrilla from the middle 20 th century in
Colombia.
4
Nicolás Rodríguez, an ELN leader, said: “In fact, Camilo wants to be one more in the group. This is important.
Camilo is not looking for a protagonist role, he is not looking to be the chief, he is not looking for something; he
wants to dedicate all of his efforts to gain the available elements in the guerrilla and be integrated to the group in
the best possible way. He is worried for learning about the weapons, how to walk in the forest, how to make a
relay, how to talk with the peasants. He said: I am conscious that I cannot be a hindrance from the operational
and military point of view; I have to overcome my condition of novel combatant coming from the city”
[C.Medina, 1996: 70].
5
This tension is recreated by former insurgent Medardo Correa in his narrative about the ELN. He remembers a
conversation with Fabio Vásquez –leader and founder of this guerrilla-, who explained the execution of some
guerrilla members since “.. enslaved in their condition of petit bourgeois, they did not hide their contempt for
those guerrilla members coming from the countryside and for those coming from the city who did fully
assimilate the rural way of thinking” [Correa, 1997: 94].
6
According to E.Umaña, Torres “with his own life set an example of his discourse, more sociological than
political… He showed a deep sociological knowledge; hence I dare to affirm that, rather than a Colombian-like
politician, he was during his whole journey an insuperable master of the new social thinking streams [1991: 4].
7
Marco Palacios criticizes Camilo‟s conception of science as a revolution weapon, his existentialist political
view originated in a posture tied to “an exaltation of violence against the egoistic reactionary elites” from which
he interpreted the available “scientific” studies on violence as “a moral key that justifies the Castroist armed
way” [2001: 198, 201].
8
Palacios [1995: 239] presents the Frente Nacional (National Front) agreement as “an institutional attempt
conceived and directed by political leaders, enterprise elites and Catholic hierarchy to slowly overcome the
authoritarianism and political violence from the previous period” and so “acclimate a pacific pluralist and
participative civilian culture”. Fernán González [1997: 397] also points “one of the positive effects of Frente
Nacional is to have laicized the country in a record time and without many conflicts”.