Escritos Políticos de Camilo Torres

by Camilo Torres Restrepo, Walter J. Broderick (Prologuist)

Book in Spanish

140 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Father Camilo Torres Restrepo was a Colombian socialist, Roman Catholic priest, a predecessor of liberation theology and a member of the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla organisation. During his life, he tried to reconcile revolutionary Marxism and Catholicism.

Torres was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1954, but continued to study for some years at the Pontifical Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain) in Belgium. When he returned to Colombia, he increasingly felt obliged to actively support the cause of poor and the labouring class. Camilo Torres believed that in order to secure justice for the people, Christians had a duty to use violent action.

As part of the academic staff of the National University of Colombia, he was a co-founder of the Sociology Faculty together with Orlando Fals Borda in 1960. His involvement in several student and political movements during the time won him a large following as well as many detractors, specially from the Colombian government and the church itself. Due to the growing pressure to back down from his radical politics, Camilo Torres saw himself persecuted and went into hiding (leaving his job as an academic) by joining the guerrillas in Colombia. He served as a low-ranking member of the ELN to whom he also provided spiritual assistance and inspiration from a Marxist-Christian point of view. He was killed in his first combat experience, when the ELN ambushed a Colombian Military patrol. After his death, Camilo Torres was made an official martyr of the ELN.

He is perhaps best known for the quote: "If Jesus were alive today, He would be a guerrillero."

Reviews

[paula☭ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eterno Camilo. Aún tenemos mucho que aprender.

[Kribsoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Camilo Torres Restrepo born in Bogotá Colombia was Latin America first radical priest What some might call a maverick Camilo was ahead of his time the Liberation Theology movement which spread across the continent soon after his death espoused principals and values eerily similar to those which he had developed during his lifetime Camilo ideological position was shaped and influenced immensely by the horrific period of Colombian history during which he came of age; a period known simply as La Violencia From the bitter feuds between the Liberals and Conservatives beginning in the 1800s to his joining of and death in battle as a member of the ELN this paper will discuss the events people and decisions that made Camilo Torres the prolific individual that he was a spokesperson for the poor and the oppressed denouncer of the oligarchy and advocate of revolutionary social change