Colombia revisits the legacy of 'guerrilla priest' Camilo Torres.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
As a pending peace accord between the government and the guerrillas of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) gives Colombia a chance to finally contemplate a post-war future, public attention has also turned to a controversial figure from the past: Camilo Torres, a rebel priest who died in combat 50 years ago last month.
While the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), the guerrilla faction to which Torres belonged, uses the anniversary to hail the fallen Jesuit as an example young people should aspire to, the government of President Juan Manuel Santos is going to great lengths to neutralize that message. The controversy coincides with discussions between the government and the ELN regarding a possible peace process similar to the one involving the FARC (NotiSur, Jan. 15, 2016). In the meantime, one of Torres' signature phrases is appearing at every turn: "The duty of every Christian is to be a revolutionary; the duty of every revolutionary is to make revolution."
Media outlets across the world, from the BBC in London to Deutsche Welle in Germany to Xinhua in China, marked the anniversary of Torres' death with articles and analyses exploring the supposed contradiction between the Bible and the Marxist ideology that lay behind the short life of Torres, a graduate of Belgium's Universite Catholique de Louvain, who was just 37 when he died on Feb. 15, 1966. In Colombia, the Universidad Nacional (UNC), the Catholic hierarchy, public media, the ELN and even President Santos have spoken at moments about the priest and tried to bank in some way on the resurgence of his ideas.
The UNC, where Torres was a staff member, organized a week of tributes. The Catholic Church's Conference of Bishops said, "Camilo is much more than a guerrilla." State television produced a well-reviewed documentary called El Rastro de Camilo (Camilo's Trail). And President Santos ordered that the rebel priest's remains be located "so that his family and religious congregation can give him a Christian burial." At the same time, there seemed to be a coordinated effort, according to Javier Giraldo, a priest who is central figure in Colombia's Jesuit order, not to talk about "the lack of social commitment shown by the Church, which was a vital part of Camilo's analysis of why the Cuban revolution had such a powerful influence on young people and intellectuals in our society."
The president's call for a "Christian burial" came in response to a demand made Jan. 8...
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