Camilo Torres Restrepo

Jorge 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).

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.

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.

His sister Gerda Westendorp Restrepo, daughter of Isabel Restrepo's first marriage, was a medical student (the first woman in Colombia to pursue a university degree).

Her brother Fernando devoted himself to medicine like his father and older half-sister, and settled in the United States.

He was close to Camilo although their professions caused them to see each other sporadically.

Camilo Torres entered the Faculty of Law at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he would meet again with Villar Borda, and only studied there for the first semester.

During this brief period Camilo and Luis edited the university page of the Bogota newspaper La Razón, and on some occasions wrote criticisms against some university magazines that they considered radical.

Influenced by the social ideas of two French Dominican priests, Nielly and Blanchet, whom he met through the father of his girlfriend Teresa Montalvo, daughter of a prestigious Bogota family, the idea of becoming a priest began to take hold of Camilo, and to make this decision, he withdrew to meditate in the eastern plains.

After breaking up with his girlfriend and despite the reluctance of his mother and father, Camilo entered the Conciliar Seminary of Bogotá of the Archdiocese of Bogotá (in agreement with his parents to avoid entering the Dominican Seminary of Chiquinquirá which was in poor condition) where he remained for seven years, during which time he began to take an interest in social realities.

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.

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.

In 1958, the Belgian university awarded him the degree of sociologist.

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.

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.

His involvement in several student and political movements during the time won him a large following as well as many detractors, especially from the Colombian government and the church itself.

Due to the growing pressure to back down from his radical politics, Camilo Torres was 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 Christian communist point of view.

He was killed in his first combat engagement 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."

He was a life-long friend of fellow socialist Luis Villar Borda and Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.

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.

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).

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 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.

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.

His parents took him to Europe when he was only two years old.