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Science, revolution and belief in Camilo Torres: a secular Colombia?
Alejandro Snchez 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 Ejrcito de Liberacin 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, Camilos 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 FrenteUnido 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 apolitician 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 leaders 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 Certeaus 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 Foucaults 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 Veynes 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 Deleuzes
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 ofthose who have written Camilos 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
naturalobjects 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 naturalillusions 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 Bordas, 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
[Subversin 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 o thers 1962], or
the individual choice of an idealistic redeemer, nave 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 Liberacin 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.Snchez, 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.Snchez 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 personagesdiscourse was
also discussed. They criticized the Camilos 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 bish opsMensajes 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
Camilos 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 Medelln, 1968 in a similar way of Gustavo Gutirrezs
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 [Garca and others, 1968].
As an example, Germn 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, Camilos revolutionary experience
would be showed as coherent due to the continuity betwee n 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 revolutiona ry struggle
[Zabala and others 1972, 11-12].
Equally, boosted by the literature of the time, Camilos 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. Lpez Oliva, 1970; Dussel; Gutirrez].
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 orproper name.
Moreover, currently historians of that time Church associate the facts surrounding
Camilo with the labors union and family praxis ofAccin Catlica started in the late 30s in
Colombia that gave birth to the Accin Catlica Especializada movement and some others
similar in Latin America from 1950 to 1968 [cf. Bidegain, 1998; Cifuentes and Florin,
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.Snchez]
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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 peoples service [Garca 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 apolitician.
This construction performed by the literature of some revolutionary groups, marginal
ecclesiastic clusters and social movements [Harnecker 1988; Lpez 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; Ramrez, 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. Catao, 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 insideELN 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 Ejrcito Popular de Liberacin (EPL), which
would originate the Unin Camilista-ELNin 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 Hernndez, ELN spokesman during the 1980s said,
All resulted during the PrimeraAsamblea 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 [Hernndez, 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 apolitician 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 heros 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 Prez
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
[Lpez 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 [Catao, 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 Foucaults 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
authors 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 reappraiseonewho, 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. Daro Botero, former student leader and outstanding figure of
philosophy in Colombia, establishes the personage function in a particular way. According to
Boteros 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 Camilos 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, Camilos 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 latentin 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 at tack
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Camilos view of violence as a political action resource by arguing the horror caused by some
current insurgency practices [G.Snchez 1991, 42; Mesa 2002, 118]7
According to this point of view, the mystic crossing Camilos 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 Camilos 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
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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 agreementreached 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 Camilos 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.
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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.
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NOTES
This paper is a modified and shorter version of an article first published in Journal Nmadas No. 25 October2006.1 The Frente Unido was an abstainer protest movement, with a transversal unifying proposal among differentsocial groups: peasants, students, workers, most of them non-aligned with the leadership of any of theconstituted right or left parties, which promoted an unusual mobilization in Colombia in a very short period oftime. 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 platformuntil now the mainattempt to bring together and mobilize masses as stated by the collective Proletarizacin [1975], the mostimportant and more accurate source about the left groups of that time.2Finally, 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, theunconscious initiations that free one from consciousness, the solitude of silence, and spiritual communion: suchare the gnostic mystics and the mystics ofEros. The second tendency links the call with a praxis, the messagewith work and the civic community, the recognition of the absolute with an ethics, and wisdom with brotherlyrelationships: such are the mystics ofagape [De Certeau, 1992: 23-24].3 The Ejrcito de Liberacin Nacional (ELN), still in war footing and significant among the current insurgentmovement in Colombia and Latin America, emerged in the region of Santander by 1965 under the influence ofthe Cuban revolution. It has catholic roots and foquista direction with strong influences of the radical liberalparty as well as of the stronghold brigandage and former liberal guerrilla from the middle 20 th century in
Colombia.4Nicols Rodrguez, 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; hewants to dedicate all of his efforts to gain the available elements in the guerrilla and be integrated to the group inthe best possible way. He is worried for learning about the weapons, how to walk in the forest, how to make arelay, how to talk with the peasants. He said: I am conscious that I cannot be a hindrance from the operationaland 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 aconversation with Fabio Vsquez leader and founder of this guerrilla-, who explained the execution of someguerrilla members since .. enslaved in their condition of petit bourgeois, they did not hide their contempt forthose guerrilla members coming from the countryside and for those coming from the city who did fullyassimilate the rural way of thinking [Correa, 1997: 94].6
According to E.Umaa, Torres with his own life set an example of his discourse, more sociological thanpolitical He showed a deep sociological knowledge; hence I dare to affirm that, rather than a Colombian-likepolitician, he was during his whole journey an insuperable master of the new social thinking streams [1991: 4].7 Marco Palacios criticizes Camilos conception of science as a revolution weapon, his existentialist p oliticalview originated in a posture tied to an exaltation of violence against the egoistic reactionary elites from whichhe interpreted the available scientific studies on violence as a moral key that justifies the Castroist armedway [2001: 198, 201].8 Palacios [1995: 239] presents the Frente Nacional (National Front) agreement as an institutional attemptconceived and directed by political leaders, enterprise elites and Catholic hierarchy to slowly overcome theauthoritarianism and political violence from the previous period and so acclimate a pacific pluralist andparticipative civilian culture. Fernn Gonzlez [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.