Camilo Torres Restrepo

In January 2016, the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, instructed the Colombian National Army to begin the process of searching for and exhuming his remains, in a gesture to accelerate the start of the peace talks with the ELN guerrilla group.

In the Dominican Republic in 1970, a revolutionary group that included Catholic clergy members and university students was founded under the name CORECATO, which stood for Comando Revolucionario Camilo Torres (Revolutionary Command Camilo Torres). In New York City, San Romero of the Americas Church-UCC has founded the Camilo Torres Project in 2009. This project works for social justice and peace for the people of the Washington Heights community.

Torres died on 15 February 1966 in Patio Cemento, after combat with troops of the Fifth Brigade from Bucaramanga, led by Colonel Álvaro Valencia Tovar, who, ironically years earlier, was his childhood friend. The National Army hid the body in a strategic location separate from the other mass graves and the location was not revealed to the public. A symbolic funeral was held in the church of San Diego and a symbolic burial was held. A mass was also held in the grounds of the National University.

The Cuban Revolution, which impacted every country in the Americas, caught Torres' attention after he returned to Colombia from Europe. In 1965, the Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (MRL) went into decline after its split following the presidential elections of 1962. The 1964 parliamentary elections were marked by an enormous abstention, in which Torres concluded that the traditional parties; Liberal and Conservative, were abandoned by public opinion, so he considered creating a new instrument that would bring together the "Non-aligned" in politics; unions, guilds, associations, students and workers, to confront the decadent traditional parties, although for the time being calling for abstentionism. Torres also tried unsuccessfully to act as a mediator between the peasants and the National Army to prevent the attack on the so-called Independent Republic of Marquetalia, which was his first contact with the Colombian Communist Party.

In 1965, his activities as head of the Institute of Social Administration of the ESAP began to be strongly criticised for their political bias. Faced with the failure of some intellectuals who had undertaken to write articles and papers for a publication aimed at making the situation of Colombian society visible from the perspective of the social sciences, Camilo drafted a political platform open to debate by different groups of intellectuals, students and workers, in which he proposed the union of the popular class to socially renovate the country. This document was widely disseminated during his travels around the country and, thanks to the discussion it was subjected to during this tour, became the platform of the United Front of the Colombian People, the political movement that Camilo promoted as an alternative for the transformation of society in Colombia.

Torres sought to bring together all the opposition of the time (Anapo, MRL and Colombian Communist Party); however, he didn't declare himself a Marxist due to the atheism of the ideology, but related several points to Catholicism itself instead. In June 1965, Torres was reduced to the lay state by his ecclesiastical superior, Cardinal Concha, given his practices and teachings that disregarded what was already established by the Catholic Church in the condemnation of atheistic communism made by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris in the year 1937, and which was confirmed by Pope John Paul II in two documents published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during his pontificate in 1984 and 1986 which set out the errors being promulgated by the liberation theology, and at the same time he was removed from his post at ESAP and once again had disagreements with Cardinal Concha, who offered him and his coadjutor bishop Rubén Isaza the post of director of sociology department in the Archbishopric of Bogotá with the mediation of the then priest Ernesto Umaña de Brigard. Torres turned down the offer, seeing that the position was to prevent him from intervening in politics as well as presenting the socio-political platform in Medellín, which was the reason why he had previously been removed from his position at the ESAP. Cardinal Concha argued that the platform went against Catholic ideals and that priests should be apolitical in order to dissociate themselves from Catholicism's ambiguous and traditional relationship with the Conservative Party. Torres met with Concha who vehemently opposed Torres' entry into politics. Umaña then met with Torres and offered him an ecclesiastical post, but Torres requested a dispensation so that he could devote himself to politics and avoid problems with the ecclesiastical authority. Concha accepted the dispensation but offered Torres to accept it if he returned to the priesthood. Torres gave his last mass on 27 June 1965 in the Church of San Diego in Bogotá. Torres then travelled to Lima returning to Bogotá on 3 July to be received by his mother and a crowd of young people.

The platform of his movement sought to address the needs of rural and urban areas, to eliminate the restricted democracy of the National Front at all costs, and the participation of the Church in Liberation Theology. However, the National Front lacked a clear political platform, despite being close to and sympathetic to the revolutionary left; they also had their own newspaper, headed by Pedro Acosta, of the same name, which was only distributed three times a week from 26 August 1965, printed in the workshops of the Antares publishing house and owned by Torres' friend Gonzalo Canal Ramírez. Despite the growing popularity of the United Front, Torres decided to contact Fabio Vásquez Castaño through student leader Jaime Arenas on 6 July 1965, who had previously led the strike at the Universidad Industrial de Santander. The United Front lasted from August to September 1965 (one month) after breaking with Christian Democracy for imposing a guerrilla line. His decision to resort to armed struggle was taken in the case of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and expressed to Gloria Gaitán, daughter of the assassinated leader, who offered asylum to Torres, who gradually went underground. Despite this, Torres led a peaceful march with his students in Medellín and was arrested with his demonstrators, all university students, and held at the Asociación Sindical Antioqueña. He would later be intercepted in Ventaquemada on his way to Tunja, and in Bogotá he would also be detained after police repression of a demonstration by the Frente Unido. On 7 January 1966, Torres announced his incorporation into the ELN.

As he explained in his "Message to the Christians" published in the first issue of Frente Unido, he realised that the "effective means for the well-being of the majorities [...] are not going to be sought by the minorities [...]". ...] will not be sought by the privileged minorities in power, because generally these effective means oblige the minorities to sacrifice their privileges", Torres concluded that "it is therefore necessary to take power away from the privileged minorities to give it to the poor majorities" and that "the Revolution is not only permitted but obligatory for Christians who see in it the only effective and ample way of realising love for all". This is how Camilo Torres justified his decision in 1965 to quit his job as a teacher and priest, and join the guerrilla, more precisely the National Liberation Army (ELN), although he had previously been interested in joining the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) due to his peasant background.

In 1964, Concha would later relieve Torres as coadjutor, only admiring Torres as a sociologist, allowing him to become an associate professor in the Faculty of Sociology. He was in turn appointed dean of the Institute of Social Administration of the Escuela Superior de Administración Pública (ESAP) and promoted to member of the Board of Directors of INCORA.

The Unidad de Acción Rural de Yopal (UARY) was inaugurated on 1 March 1964, after overcoming the bureaucratic obstacles of the Ministry of Agriculture, which allowed him to work at the grassroots with the peasants of the capital of the plains. He combined this with the struggles in the junta, especially with the conservative politician who was a staunch defender of the interests of the landowners. He first considered creating a guerrilla group together with Álvaro Marroquín, a student at the National University and member of the JUCO. Torres in turn considered INCORA a deficient entity to attend to the needs of the Colombian peasantry, especially in informal education for their organization in search of an agrarian reform different to that proposed by INCORA.

In 1964, the Cardinal Luis Concha Córdoba informed the national public opinion that no priest could collaborate in the socioeconomic study commission that had been set up to intervene in the case of Marquetalia, Tolima; this commission, of which Camilo Torres was a member, was trying to evaluate the situation in that region and at the same time to prevent a military solution to the conflict. An attempt is being made to stop a peasant movement that has declared the area an "independent republic". In the absence of support and guarantees, the rest of the commission was forced to back down - bombings and military occupation of the region followed, leading to the withdrawal of the peasant militias that would later form the guerrilla movement known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. At least in its first period, the FARC had the backing of the Colombian Communist Party.

Later the same year, Torres came into closer contact with groups that agreed with the armed revolution or were already committed to it. He was sympathetic to these groups and his solidarity with them grew stronger and stronger. The Cuban-oriented guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army was founded on 4 July 1964, and made its public appearance with the seizure of the town of Simacota in Santander on 7 January 1965. Camilo considered it extremely important to connect with this insurgent group and he managed to do so through his urban networks.

The National Front regime led Camilo Torres in January 1964 to found the Frente Unido del Pueblo; a movement in opposition to the coalition of the traditional parties. Torres went to the home of Marroquín and his partner María Arango to seek contacts with the Communist Party. A meeting with the goal to create a political platform was held, with the participation of the MOEC, the MRL Youth, the JUCO and some student groups from the Universidad de los Andes. However, the hierarchs of the Colombian Church sought to make Torres travel to Leuven, with the ESAP offering to cover the travel costs. However, a meeting in homage to Torres held by the students of the National University dissuaded Torres from travelling. Although Torres was not yet politically active and had no clear political discourse, he was already quite popular.

MUNIPROC's work led to the founding of the first Junta de Acción Comunal (JAC) in Tunjuelito, at that time a working class enclave in the south of Bogotá, where he had been working continuously for several years. In 1963, he chaired the first National Congress of Sociology, also held in Tunjuelito (Bogotá), and presented the study "La violencia y los cambios socio-culturales en las áreas rurales colombianas" (Violence and socio-cultural changes in rural areas of Colombia). Torres was also a member of the technical committee of the agrarian reform founded by the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform (INCORA), where he represented the most reformist position of the Board of Directors, which was divided between the Conservative and Liberal parties, typical of the National Front but considered by Torres an inefficient entity in the face of the needs of the Colombian countryside. In his career as a member of the Board, the episode of the project to set up an Agrarian School in Yopal (Casanare) and the difficulties presented by the then director of INCORA Enrique Peñalosa Camargo (liberal, father of the former mayor of Bogotá Enrique Peñalosa Londoño) and Álvaro Gómez Hurtado (conservative, son of former president Laureano Gómez) stand out.

In 1962, the year in which the Second Vatican Council was initiated by Pope John XXIII, Torres was one of the first priests to offer a mass facing forward and in Spanish, when by then the mass was offered facing backwards and in Latin. Between 8 and 9 June of that year, under pressure from Cardinal Luis Concha Córdoba, after entering, together with other professors, into contradictions with the rector, by honouring at mass the students killed after a demonstration repressed by the National Police and by opposing the expulsion of other students, he was forced to resign from all his activities at the National University of Colombia, being transferred to the Church of La Veracruz in Bogotá as coadjutor; assistant to the parish priest with only confession and baptismal certificate functions. This unleashed a strong depression in Torres, who wanted to be close to the people. Shortly before, the Colombian Communist Youth (JUCO) had proposed Torres as rector of the University to a possible shortlist of three but Torres politely declined the offer for fear of tarnishing his name.

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, as well as some intellectuals such as Eduardo Umaña Luna, María Cristina Salazar, Virginia Gutiérrez de Pineda, Carlos Escalante, Darío Botero and Tomás Ducay, in 1960.

In 1959, when he returned to Colombia, he felt compelled to actively support the cause of the poor and the working class. That year he was appointed auxiliary chaplain of the National University of Colombia, in Bogotá. The following year, in 1960, he participated along with Orlando Fals Borda, Carlos Escalante, Eduardo Umaña Luna, María Cristina Salazar, Darío Botero Uribe, Virginia Gutiérrez de Pineda and Tomás Ducay, among others, in the founding of the first faculty of Sociology in Latin America (today a department) of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he was a professor and was close to and popular with the students. He was a founding member and president of the Movimiento Universitario de Promoción Comunal (MUNIPROC). With the creation of the Juntas de Acción Comunal (JAC), promoted by the government of Alberto Lleras Camargo, from Law 9 of 1958, Torres recognises in it the possibility of decentralising political power and giving possibilities of empowerment to grassroots communities. Together with teachers and students, he carried out community action programmes in working-class neighbourhoods in Bogotá. Torres was also the organiser of the IX Congress of the Latin American Sociological Association.

In 1958, the Belgian university awarded him the degree of sociologist. His doctoral thesis, Una aproximación estadística a la realidad socioeconómica de Bogotá, a pioneering work in urban sociology in Latin America, was published in 1987 under the title La proletarización de Bogotá.

In 1955, in order to specialize, Torres travelled to Belgium, to study for a few more years at the Catholic University of Louvain. The first months were very difficult for the Bogota priest because of the cold climate, Belgian food and the conditions of the boarding house where he lived with Gustavo; for this reason, at the end of the first semester, he moved with his mother to a flat. With a group of Colombian students at the university, he founded the ECISE (Equipo Colombiano de Investigación Socioeconómica) and came into contact with Christian Democracy, the Christian trade union movement and Algerian resistance groups in Paris. He founded the Bogota, Paris and London sections of ECISE. In 1957 he met Marguerite-Marie 'Guitemie' Olivieri, a Frenchwoman of Corso origin and bourgeois daughter of a doctor like Torres, who was to become his closest friend and secretary, and who by then was living in a poor neighbourhood of Paris, accompanying the pieds noirs in sabotage work against the French regime that was being imposed by force in Algeria. In turn, Torres met Villar Borda again in Berlin and spent holidays in Belgrade where he unsuccessfully wanted to exercise his priesthood, or failing that in Prague.

Poverty and social injustice attracted his attention and, together with his fellow disciple Gustavo Pérez, he created a social studies circle that functioned even after Torres was ordained a priest in 1954 under the direction of Jonatan Gómez. Camilo started social activities in the neighbourhoods surrounding the Conciliar Seminary, which were populated by displaced families from the countryside.

His parents took him to Europe when he was only two years old. He returned to the country in 1934. Three years later, in 1937, the couple separated, leaving Camilo and his brother Fernando at their mother's side. Expelled for his criticism of the teachers at the traditional Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, he finished his baccalaureate at the Liceo de Cervantes in 1946 where he met and became friends with Luis Villar Borda and Ricardo Samper.

Camilo Torres Restrepo (3 February 1929 – 15 February 1966) was a Colombian Marxist–Leninist, Roman Catholic priest, a proponent of liberation theology, and a member of the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla organization. During his life, he tried to reconcile revolutionary Marxism and Catholicism. His "social activism and willingness to work with Marxists troubled some.

Jorge Camilo Torres Restrepo was born on 3 February 1929 in Bogotá into a well-to-do family of the liberal bourgeoisie. His mother Isabel told him the story of Father Cuco (Juan de la Cruz Gaviria), a liberal businessman who financed the military campaigns against the conservatives in the civil wars of the 19th century.