Camilo Torres Priest, Liberation Theologian, Guerrilla Fighter

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Maps

List of Illustrations

Introduction

     An Unforgettable Evening

     Goals of the Book

     Structure

     For whom is this book intended?

Chapter 1: Colombia: Basic Information and Fundamental Problems

     General  Historical  Aspects

     The Political and Economic System

     "El Bogotazo" of 1948 and the "Outbreak of Violence" (La Violencia)

     The Lessons of the "Independent Republic"

     The Culture of Violence – Colombian Style

Chapter 2: The Global Catholic Church and the Catholic Church in Colombia

     The Catholic Church and Modernity

     The Church in Colombia

     The Colombian Church and the Question of Social Welfare

Chapter 3: Camilo Torres: Biographical Aspects

     Childhood and Adolescence

     The Belgian Period: Studies in the Shadow of an Era of Crisis

     A Religious and Professional Career

     Tests of Torres’s Approach

Chapter 4: The Crystallization of Camilist Theopolitics

     Torres's Social-Theological Rationale

     Rebellion is Inevitable: Why must Christians be revolutionaries?

     On the Necessity of Structural Reform: Camilist Thinking

     The Omission of Jewish Tradition from Camillist Thinking

     One Step before a Theopolitics of Liberation

Chapter 5: The United Front of the People (Frente Unido del Pueblo) as a Third      Center of Power

     The Platform of the Movement

     The Crucial Day

     The 12 Messages

     Evaluating the Messages

     The Disagreement with the Church and Torres’s Defrocking 

     Delegitimization and Character Assassination: The Day after the Defrocking

Chapter 6: The Failure of the Movement's Campaign

     A Final Effort: The Meeting at the Bavarian Brewery

     Between Optimism and Pessimism

     The Final Message from the Mountains

     The Reasons for Failure

Chapter 7: Joining the Guerrillas

     A Moment of Truth and Isolation

     Torres and the National Liberation Army (ELN)

     “A Prophet is not without honor except in his own town and his own home.”

Chapter 8: The Camilist Legacy

     New Social Perspectives

     A New Species of Apostolism

     The Medellín Conference 

Chapter 9: Torres: The Catholics’ Che Guevara?

     Similarities: Biography

     The Tendency to Theorize Reality

     The Symmetry of the Failure and of the Hope for a Heroic Return

     Che Guevara and Camilo Torres: Theologians of Liberation

     Differences

     A Che Guevara of the Catholics alone?   

Epilogue

     A Return to the Unforgettable Night

     A Final Look

     Camilo Lives!

Bibliography

Index

Biography

Eitan Ginzberg is a retired associate professor of history and culture at the Kibbutzim College of Education in Israel, a senior lecturer at Achva Academic College, and a Research fellow at the Sverdlin Institute of Latin American History and Culture at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on the history and culture of Mexico and Latin America, as well as the study of genocide. Dr. Ginzberg is the author of numerous articles and several books, including Lázaro Cárdenas, gobernador de Michoacán (1928–1932) (1999); Revolutionary Ideology and Political Destiny in Mexico, 1928–1934: Lázaro Cárdenas and Adalberto Tejeda (2015); The Destruction of the Indigenous Peoples of Spanish America: A Genocidal Encounter (2018).