Torres Restrepo, Camilo (1929–1966)

Despite his short life, Camilo Torres Restrepo's legacy to the movements of social justice is indisputable. The coherence between his beliefs and actions and his commitment to work on the side of the oppressed and exploited was exemplary. As a Colombian priest with a degree in sociology from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, Camilo could not accept Christianity without a commitment to radical change within unjust social structures. His rebellion against the conservative Colombian Catholic Church caused him problems but also served to propel the liberation theology movement in Latin America.

While in Europe in the 1950s, he worked with and learned from the various Christian and independence movements in effervescence during the period. He engaged actively in organizing Colombian students and professionals living in major cities in Europe and the United States to study the Colombian reality as a basis for implementing radical changes. This organization provided him social networks that, in addition to those inherited from his own family's influential status, helped him to occupy important positions when he returned to Colombia in 1959. His first position was chaplain and cofounder (with Orlando Fals-Borda) of the Department of Sociology at the National University of Colombia.

His determination to work against injustice resonated among the most conscientious and activist students inspired by the Cuban Revolution and other social movements in Latin America and worldwide. Because of his influence, he was ordered to move out of the university and became Dean of the School of Public Administration, within which he created the Institute of Social Administration. He wanted to prepare public administrators with a social conscience who were willing to work for the people and not for what he called the “dictatorship of the oligarchy” which was promoted by the National Front, an alternating government of conservatives and liberals.

As a member of the board of directors of INCORA (National Colombian Institute for Agrarian Reform), he founded an experimental farm in the east plains to educate and organize peasants to participate in transforming their own situation for their own benefit. Eventually, he abandoned sociological analysis and transformed his nonconformity into political action. When his work benefited those in power, he received praise and support, but when he started criticizing them, he became the rebel, the Communist, the subversive, someone who needed to be punished and isolated.

Pushed out of governmental agencies and forced to resign his priesthood, Camilo actively engaged in political action by founding the United Front. This was an attempt to unite all progressive and leftist parties, grassroots organizations, and students' and workers' movements around the goal of revolutionary change of basic social structures. The collective agreement became the platform of the United Front with its own newspaper, El Frente Unido (the United Front). Camilo printed in this small paper his proclamations aimed at various sectors of the Colombian people, including the army, calling for armed struggle against the oligarchy.

The establishment responded to Camilo's popularity with repression and persecution. In October 1965, Camilo joined the National Liberation Army (ELN), a clandestine guerrilla group that had been founded a few years earlier by his disciples. The ELN continues in existence today. Camilo died in his first military operation in February 15, 1966. His remains are kept hidden by the army, but his legacy as a fighter for social justice cannot be repressed.

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