“La Violencia”

A serious historian instinctively dislikes the notion of “world conspiracy” as a universal key to the explanation of disparate phenomena in various parts of the globe. Yet it is difficult not to become suspicious when one constantly encounters almost identical situations on one’s travels. The Vietcong officially still refer to themselves as “Forces of National Liberation,’ as do the armed bands of the ALN in Venezuela, the ELN (Ejército de Liberacién Nacional) in Colombia, the FLN (also called FALN or FIR) in Peru. The leaders of such “armed forces” in the Western Hemisphere are nearly always “intellectuals” from the universities of the Americas, and their followers are only in the rarest cases workers but almost always poor, usually illiterate peasants to whom not collectivization, but individual farms or additional land have been promised. The same pattern governed the Russian and, up to a point, the Chinese Revolutions. This combination of half-education and starry-eyed ignorance amounts to a magic formula. In Latin American universities, professors fawn upon their students, obsolete nineteenth-century ideas achieve a luxuriant growth and a desperate desire to appear modern (!), patriotic, and emancipated rounds out the picture. Even deluded religious zealots join in, and an appeal is made to the peasantry with its insatiable hunger for land. Thus we are faced with the perverse situation where hunger for more property is put in the service of “no-property,” the Communist ideal. The industrial workers—contrary to Marxian prophecies—play only a marginal part. Colombia’s time-honored violencia serves as a classic pattern because there the Communist maquis has a non-Communist ancestor: the fratricidal wars in the open country between the liberals and the conservatives, terminated by the treaties of Benidorm and Sitges (1956). Yet, after the senseless explosion of April 1948 in Bogota, following the still unsolved murder of the Left-liberal Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, an exodus of mixed criminal-extremist-political elements from the capital to the country took place, a migration which soon crystallized into a new wave of guerrilla warfare. The rise of Fidel Castro and the active material and moral aid coming from Cuba gave added impetus to the violencia which tried to take over the state, and, as an initial step, to establish a state within the state. Villages were occupied and a new social and political order set up in them. The action entirely paralleled that of the Vietcong. It was put down by the army and today survives only in a few remote places in the East and the North, where there there have been for short periods little, well-run Soviet republics right in the heart of Colombia.

From 1956 to 1966 the violencia was fostered by a priest, Camilo Torres Restrepo, scion of two old families, who renounced his priestly functions and took to the hills with the rebels. Having joined the “Army of Liberation,” he was killed in battle, rifle in hand. His case is a tragic one: here was a young man with a fair theological education and a European sociological training (Louvain). He represents the typical Christian Social Romantic, the idealist with a certain amount of sociological knowledge but with little understanding of man’s nature and no economic training whatsoever. Torres was a fiery demagogue, convinced that the (indisputable) misery of the Colombian masses could be alleviated only by a radical expropriation of the rich, and while he denied he was a Communist, he adopted the Communist program. Social demagogy in Christian garb, as scored so tellingly by Oswald Spengler, has finally matured in our age. The hierarchy of Colombia made every effort to give Torres a position from which he could preach the Social Gospel, but he wanted revolution, not reform. He did not realize that what the Colombian masses need is systematic moral and_ intellectual training. This, for instance, the Catholic Accién Cultural Popular (often referred to as “Sutatenza”) is trying to give with its “radio schools,” a means of teaching the natural virtues, literacy, and technical and hygienic know-how.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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A serious historian instinctively dislikes the notion of “world conspiracy” as a universal key to the explanation of disparate phenomena in various parts of the globe. Yet it is difficult not to become suspicious when one constantly encounters almost identical situations on one’s travels. The Vietcong officially still refer to themselves as “Forces of National Liberation,’ as do the armed bands of the ALN in Venezuela, the ELN (Ejército de Liberacién Nacional) in Colombia, the FLN (also called FALN or FIR) in Peru. The leaders of such “armed forces” in the Western Hemisphere are nearly always “intellectuals” from the universities of the Americas, and their followers are only in the rarest cases workers but almost always poor, usually illiterate peasants to whom not collectivization, but individual farms or additional land have been promised. The same pattern governed the Russian and, up to a point, the Chinese Revolutions. This combination of half-education and starry-eyed ignorance amounts to a magic formula. In Latin American universities, professors fawn upon their students, obsolete nineteenth-century ideas achieve a luxuriant growth and a desperate desire to appear modern (!), patriotic, and emancipated rounds out the picture. Even deluded religious zealots join in, and an appeal is made to the peasantry with its insatiable hunger for land. Thus we are faced with the perverse situation where hunger for more property is put in the service of “no-property,” the Communist ideal. The industrial workers—contrary to Marxian prophecies—play only a marginal part. Colombia’s time-honored violencia serves as a classic pattern because there the Communist maquis has a non-Communist ancestor: the fratricidal wars in the open country between the liberals and the conservatives, terminated by the treaties of Benidorm and Sitges (1956). Yet, after the senseless explosion of April 1948 in Bogota, following the still unsolved murder of the Left-liberal Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, an exodus of mixed criminal-extremist-political elements from the capital to the country took place, a migration which soon crystallized into a new wave of guerrilla warfare. The rise of Fidel Castro and the active material and moral aid coming from Cuba gave added impetus to the violencia which tried to take over the state, and, as an initial step, to establish a state within the state. Villages were occupied and a new social and political order set up in them. The action entirely paralleled that of the Vietcong. It was put down by the army and today survives only in a few remote places in the East and the North, where there there have been for short periods little, well-run Soviet republics right in the heart of Colombia.

From 1956 to 1966 the violencia was fostered by a priest, Camilo Torres Restrepo, scion of two old families, who renounced his priestly functions and took to the hills with the rebels. Having joined the “Army of Liberation,” he was killed in battle, rifle in hand. His case is a tragic one: here was a young man with a fair theological education and a European sociological training (Louvain). He represents the typical Christian Social Romantic, the idealist with a certain amount of sociological knowledge but with little understanding of man’s nature and no economic training whatsoever. Torres was a fiery demagogue, convinced that the (indisputable) misery of the Colombian masses could be alleviated only by a radical expropriation of the rich, and while he denied he was a Communist, he adopted the Communist program. Social demagogy in Christian garb, as scored so tellingly by Oswald Spengler, has finally matured in our age. The hierarchy of Colombia made every effort to give Torres a position from which he could preach the Social Gospel, but he wanted revolution, not reform. He did not realize that what the Colombian masses need is systematic moral and_ intellectual training. This, for instance, the Catholic Accién Cultural Popular (often referred to as “Sutatenza”) is trying to give with its “radio schools,” a means of teaching the natural virtues, literacy, and technical and hygienic know-how.