2.03 Colombia . Colombia has a population of 30 million. The Communist Party of Colombia (Partido Comunista de Colombia, PCC) currently has 10,000 members. When it splintered off from an earlier party in December 1926, it called itself the Revolutionary Socialist party. It took its present name on July 17, 1930. Since 1926 the party has been involved in refinery and plantation union organizing in the sugar, coffee, oil and tobacco industries. It is a veteran of doing battle against the U.S. multinational companies that dominate the country's economy, such as Texas Petroleum and the United Fruit Company. [Walter Broderick, Camilo Torres: A Biography of the Priest Guerrillero (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1973), p. 202]. The party also helped establish in the 1930s and has also given leadership to the 300,000-strong Trade Union Confederation of Colombia (CSTC). In combination its with trade union work, the PCC from its earliest years has helped organize and defend a number of independent, communist republics within the country. In the southern bloc these are Marquetalia, Rio Chiquita, El Pato and Guayabero. In the northern (and eastern) bloc that borders Venezuela there is Bucaramanga in the mountains of the Santander region. [German Guzman, Camilo Torres (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1969), pp. 214, 242]. Marquetalia in Tolima is typical of the southern bloc republics. It is in the high plateau of the country's central mountain range. For centuries the people of Marquetalia have farmed as a commune, conducted their own government and maintained a standing army. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 191). Communism for them is traditional.

Since the 1960s the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has led armed struggle in the southern bloc. FARC was founded in 1964. In the northern bloc the National Liberation Army (ELN) has led the struggle. The ELN was also formed in 1964 and takes its inspiration from the Cuban revolution and Jose Antonio Galan, an 18th-century Colombian revolutionary. The PCC works in a tactical alliance with the FARC and ELN and some of the PCC serve in the FARC and ELN rank and file. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, pp. 202, 265). However, the PCC puts the focus on peaceful co-existence, disarmament, defense of democratic freedoms, voting, parliamentary struggle and self-defense in the countryside. (Broderick, Camilo Torre, pp. 197-198).

The PCC is governed by its Congress, which meets at four year intervals and by its 54-member central committee. It publishes a weekly newspaper, the Voz Proletaria, and a monthly theoretical journal Documentos Politicos, which has a circulation of 5,000. In addition to its trade union and military work the party engages in electoral and educational activities. For example, since 1972 several of its members have been elected to the national legislature and to local municipal councils. [Daniel Premo, "Colombia," in Richard Staar,Yearbook on Communist Affairs: 1979(Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1979), p. 133].

Catholics. Catholics are part of Colombia's communist movement. One of the early members of the ELN was the Catholic priest, Fr. Camilo Torres (1929-1966). In the 1950s Fr. Torres studied in Europe and was impressed by the priest-worker movement in France and the ideal of sharing the destiny of the working class. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 224). While teaching in Bogota in the 1960s he helped establish and lead the United Front of Popular Movements. Its newspaper was Frente Unido . The PCC, FARC and ELN were members of the United Front. The PCC's organizational network throughout the country resulted in it being the distributor of Frente Unido. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 279).

The United Front's program, as promoted by Fr. Torres, centered on land and urban reform, on the nationalization of banks, hospitals, insurance companies, public transport, radio and television and all natural resources, and on liberation from the ideology of consumerism. (Broderick, Camilo Torre, pp. 235, 238). It rejected parliamentary struggle and voting in elections, which serves only to divide workers. (Broderick, Camilo Torre, p. 279). When an anti-communist cleric of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) advised him to reform the church, Fr. Torres replied, "I'm not interested in reforming the church. I'm interested in the revolution." (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 281). Because the United Front sided with Cuba and against the United States, the CDP eventually broke with the Front. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 295). The editor of Frente Unido also resigned after Fr. Torres refused to exclude the PCC from Front membership. The editor had been a Trotskite for 30 years. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 292). Besides the United Front, Fr. Torres had other ties to the PCC. Maria Arango, a party member, served as his advisor. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 195). At the party headquarters in Botoga he gave conferences on the teaching of John XXIII inMater et Magistraand Pacem in Terris . (Guzman, Camilo Torres, p. 182). He spoke on the same platform with party members. After he gained a national following, the PCC gave him an armed bodyguard to protect him from assassination. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 299). Fr. Torres was popular with the Catholics within the PCC and celebrated religious events with them. One PCC Catholic had Fr. Torres baptize his son with the name Lenin de Jesus or Jesus's Lenin. (Guzman, Camilo Torres, p. 293). Fr. Torres commented that in his view even PCC members who were not aware of it, were "Christians" and "will be saved:"

Even though the communists themselves may not know it, you have many among them who are authentic Christians. If they are in good faith, they have sanctifying grace; and if they have sanctifying grace and love their neighbor, they will be saved. My role as a priest, even though it is not in the exercise of external cult, is to see to it that men find God; and for that, the most effective way is to help serve their neighbor in accord with their conscience. (Guzman, Camilo Torres, pp. 182-183).

Fr. Torres summarized his communist theology in Message to Christians (1965), which quoted from Jesus, St. Paul and Thomas Aquinas:

In Catholicism the principal foundation is love for neighbor. "If you love your fellow man, you have carried out your obligations." In order to be true, this love must search for effectiveness. If the beneficence, the alms, the few free schools, the few housing projects--everything that has been given the name "charity"--does not succeed in feeding the majority of the hungary, or clothing the majority of the naked, or teaching the majority of the illiterate, then we must search for effective means to bring about the welfare of the majority.

The privileged minority which holds power is not going to look for such means because, generally, effective means will oblige the minority to sacrifice its privileges. For example, in order to see to it that there is more employment in Colombia, it would be better for them not to take their capital out of the country in dollars but rather to invest it in sources of employment. But as the Colombian peso is devalued day after day, those with money and power will never prohibit the export of money because in this way they escape the consequences of devaluation.

It is necessary, then, to take power away from the privileged minority in order to give it to the poor majority. This, done rapidly, is the essence of the revolution. The revolution can be peaceful, if the minority does not give violent resistance.

The revolution, therefore, is the way to obtain a government which will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, teach the ignorant, fulfill the works of charity, of love of neighbor, not only occasionally or in passing, not only for the few but for the majority of our neighbors.

Therefore, the revolution is not only permitted but is obligatory for Christians who must see in it the only effective and complete way to achieve love for all. It is certain that "there is no authority except from God" (Romans13:1), but St. Thomas says that the concrete assignment of authority comes from the people.

When an authority is against the people, that authority is not legitimate and is called tyranny. Christians can and must fight against tyranny. The present government is tyrannical because only twenty percent of the electorate supports it and because its decisions come from the privileged minority.

The temporal defects of the Church must not scandalize us. The Church is human. What is important is to believe that it is also divine and that, if we Christians fulfill our obligation of love of neighbor effectively, we are strengthening the Church. I have left the duties and the privileges of the clergy, but I have not stopped being a priest. I believe that I have given myself to the revolution out of love of my neighbor. I have stopped saying Mass in order to realize that love of neighbor in the temporal, economic and social sphere. When I have accomplished the revolution, I will again offer Mass, if God permits. I believe that thus I am following the command of Christ. "So then, if you are bringing your offering to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother first and then come back and present your offering." (Matthew 5:23-24).

After the revolution we Christians will know that we established a system which is directed towards love of neighbor. The fight is long; let us now begin. (Guzman, Camilo Torres, pp. 291-292).

After the ELN's military victory at Simacota on January 7, 1965, Fr. Torres secretly joined the guerrillas. Initially he worked as a propagandist using the resources of the United Front. He also raised $4,000 to start the ELN's own newspaper. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 271). The ELN's program, as set forth in the Simacota Manifesto, states:

The reactionary violence unleashed by a succession of oligarchic governments and continued under the corrupt regime of Valencia, Ruiz Novoa and Lleras, has been a powerful weapon used to squash the revolutionary peasant movement, a powerful weapon of domination for the last fifteen years.

Education is in the hands of traders who enrich themselves on the ignorance in which they maintain our people.

The soil is tilled by peasants who own nothing and who waste away their strength and their families' health for the benefit of oligarchs who live like kings in the cities.

The workers receive starvation wages and are subjected to the misery and humiliations of big industry, both foreign and national.

Democratic young intellectuals and professionals are obliged to place their talents at the service of the dominating class, or perish.

Small and medium-sized producers, both in the country and in the city are ruined by ruthless competition and credit monopoly in the hands of foreign capital and its local flunkies.

The riches of the Colombian people are looted by American imperialists.

But the people, who have felt the scourge of exploitation, of misery, of reactionary violence, have risen up and are ready to fight. The revolutionary struggle is the only path open to the people in order to overthrow the present regime of violence and deceit. (Quoted in Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 213).

When the government sought to arrest him in October 1965, Fr. Torres escaped to the countryside where he joined an ELN combat unit. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, p. 314). Against the ELN, which then had less than 100 guerrillas, and FARC, were 16,000 government troops armed with U.S. napalm, germ warfare, helicopters, "civic education" units and a $30 million annual budget. (Broderick,Camilo Torres, p. 191). Since the 1940s the U.S. military had been helping the Colombian government protect the pipe lines of Texas Petroleum and Cities Service from the guerrillas. (Broderick, Camilo Torres, pp. 285, 301).

On February 15, 1966 not long after going into the countryside, Fr. Torres was killed in the line of battle in the municipality of San Vincente, southern department of Santander. The PCC was the only party in Bogota that expressed its solidarity with Fr. Torres in death. Gilberto Vieira, secretary general of the PCC, wrote:

All Colombian patriots are moved by the tragic end of the revolutionary priest Camilo Torres, who was one of these exceptional personalities who succeed in expressing the needs of an entire people and who rise up courageously against old and tottering social structures. Camilo Torres is a new martyr for our people. . . The martyrdom and glorious end of the Catholic priest Camilo Torres will never be forgotten. His example will be productive and his sacrifice will show the grandeur of the Colombian guerrillas to those who are vainly engaged in ridiculing them as bandits. (Quoted in Guzman, Camilo Torres, pp. 281-281).

Priests, take the martyrdom of Camilo as a sublime example of a love of neighbor which gives all and asks nothing in return. Become a part of the people in the fight against oppression. (GuzmanCamilo Torres, p. 254).

It turned out that over the years, other priests did take up the fight. Illustrative is the life of the ELN's recently deceased Fr. Manuel Perez (1943-1998). Fr. Perez was originally from Spain's Aragon region. He joined the ELN in 1969 and helped build it from 60 to 5,000 fighters. He was part of the region's defacto government that brought about agrarian reform with the big landlords losing out completely or selling out at reduced prices. He helped the ELN maintain a free public education, health care and police and court system. He was part of the working-class oriented rank and file that corrected the the ELN when it occasionally wandered from its program. A 1977 ELN self-criticism paid tribute to those like Fr. Perez who always insisted on class struggle:

In homage to the working class we wish to reaffirm its indisputable condition as vanguard of the Colombian revolutionary process. We have reached this conclusion after having unsuccessfully attempted to advance our revolutionary cause outside the class struggle. We now recognize the error of that policy. (ELN, "Policy Declaration of May, 1977" in Premo, "Colombia," p. 133).

Return to Home Page
Return to Internationalism Page
Return to Top of Page