Rethinking the Role of Religion in Orlando Fals Borda’s Ideas of Social Change, 1948–1970

• Author: Juan Mario Díaz-Arévalo
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221099445
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles: Zavaleta Mercado, Cueva, and Fals Borda

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221099445

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 245, Vol. 49 No. 4, July 2022, 172–190

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221099445

© 2022 Latin American Perspectives

172

Rethinking the Role of Religion in Orlando Fals Borda’s

Ideas of Social Change, 1948–1970

by

Juan Mario Díaz-Arévalo

Scholars of the renowned Colombian sociologist and cofounder of participatory action

research Orlando Fals Borda (1925–2008) have generally acknowledged that both his

Presbyterian upbringing and his friendship with the Catholic priest Camilo Torres

strongly influenced his thinking and writing. An examination of the way this religious

background appears in his early academic writing both extends and refines this more

conventional view by considering how his involvement in religious matters influenced his

understanding of what social change was and hence of his role as a sociologist committed

to it. Analysis of the complex network of knowledges and relations articulated with regard

to Fals Borda’s involvement with religious matters during a crucial stage of his intellec-

tual history sheds light on the close relation between ethics, social research, and politics at

the basis of participatory action research.

Estudiosos del reconocido sociólogo colombiano y co-fundador de la investigación acción

participativa Orlando Fals Borda (1925–2008) suelen reconocer que tanto su educación

presbiteriana como su amistad con el sacerdote católico Camilo Torres influyeron fuerte-

mente en su pensamiento y escritura. Una investigación de la forma en que este trasfondo

religioso aparece en su escritura académica temprana extiende y refina esta percepción un

tanto convencional al considerar cómo su participación en asuntos religiosos influyó en su

comprensión de lo que implicaba el cambio social y, por lo tanto, de su papel como sociólogo

comprometido. El análisis de la compleja red de conocimientos y relaciones articuladas en

torno a la participación de Fals Borda en asuntos religiosos durante un período crucial de su

historia intelectual arroja lluz sobre la estrecha relación entre la ética, la investigación y la

política que forma la base de la investigación acción participativa.

Juan Mario Díaz-Arévalo is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Politics of the

University of Sheffield. His doctoral research at the University of Roehampton focused on the

relationships between Fals Borda’s critique of political violence in Colombia and his participatory

action research. This article was made possible by the research project “Improbable Dialogues:

Participatory Research as a Strategy for Reconciliation,” funded by the Economic and Social

Research Council (UK) (Grant Ref. ES/R01096X/1) and the Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento

para la Ciencia, la Tecnología y la Innovación Francisco José de Caldas (Convocatoria 791-2017,

Contrato 276-2018) and led by an alliance between the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and the

Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular (Colombia) and the University of Sheffield. An

earlier version of this article was presented at the conference “As It Was in the Beginning?

Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America” held online by the Institute of

Latin American Studies in November 2020. The author is grateful for the invaluable contributions

of Henry Staples and thanks Simon Rushton, Arlene Tickner, and Jefferson Jaramillo for useful

comments, Mónica Moreno for generously sharing archive material obtained for her own research,

Gabriel Escalante of the Archivo Central e Histórico of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia,

and Gill and Rolf. This article is dedicated to the memory of Leonidas and Carmen.

1099445LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221099445Díaz-Arévalo/RELIGION IN FALS BORDA’S IDEAS ON SOCIAL CHANGE

research-article2022

Díaz-Arévalo/RELIGION IN FALS BORDA’S IDEAS ON SOCIAL CHANGE 173

Keywords: Orlando Fals Borda, Participatory action research, Religion and society,

Theology of revolution, Subversion and social change

The life and work of Orlando Fals Borda (1925–2008), one of Latin America’s

most renowned and influential thinkers of the second half of the past century

and cofounder of participatory action research, continues to be of keen interest

to scholars across myriad disciplines. Yet despite the consensus that both his

Presbyterian upbringing and his friendship with the Catholic priest and revo-

lutionary Camilo Torres strongly influenced his thinking and writing (Cataño

etal., 1987; Cendales, Torres, and Torres, 2005; Pereira, 2008; Restrepo, 2008;

Suárez, 2017), the question of how and to what extent his intellectual career was

influenced by his involvement in Christian progressive thinking has only

recently begun to receive scholarly attention (Perez Benavides, 2010; Poggi,

2015; Moreno, 2017; Díaz, 2018). Seeking to contribute to this growing body of

work and drawing on his early works as well as on letters and unpublished

writings across four archives,i this article centrally argues that Christian ethical

and theological concerns are a major but underappreciated contribution to Fals

Borda’s ideas about social change.

Until recently, it was generally assumed that Fals Borda’s radical ideological

stance —culminating in his decision to resign from the Universidad Nacional

de Colombia and join the campesino movement’s struggle—had a mainly intel-

lectual basis, his abandonment of positivist functionalism (Cataño, 2008;

Pereira, 2008; Rojas Guerra, 2010). Indeed, his letter of resignation, published

in a nationwide newspaper, appeared to suggest this. The university’s School

of Sociology, founded by Fals Borda and Camilo Torres in 1959, was regarded

as “one of the important centers in the development of sociology in Latin

America” (Lowry, 1967: 337). However, as Fals Borda wrote in his letter, the

reforms carried out during his time at the United Nations Research Institute in

Geneva “represented a significant setback for a pioneering academic program

established with the purpose of seeking radical changes in society.” According

to him, the destruction of past achievements was accompanied by a re-enthron-

ing of structural functionalism, a framework the faculty had been gradually

discarding since 1962 as having proved inadequate to understanding Colombian

reality. His letter concluded: “There is much to do for the country outside the

university, and one cannot be constrained by these circumstances that so pain-

fully limit the liberating role that the National University should play among

the bases” (El Tiempo, July 29, 1970).

However true this was, the “new Fals Borda”—as he jokingly wrote to José

María Rojas Guerra in 1969 (ACH-UN, FOFB. Relaciones Internacionales,

Europa II, Suiza, 32)— was also shaped by the events that marked his life as a

member of a Protestant church. Christian commitment, not only intellectual

concerns, underlay the invocation of a moral basis for subverting an unequal

and exclusionary state of affairs in Colombia. Close analysis of Fals Borda’s

intellectual history between 1948 and 1970 reveals radical changes as well as

recurrent leitmotifs that he wholeheartedly embraced throughout his life,

including, most important, his commitment to social change for the people of

his native land rather than to any theory or institution. By exploring the