Economic, Social and Cultural Changes of the 1960s*

Álvaro Tirado Mejía

UPTC – October 27 2015

Thank you very much for this compelling invitation, I am proud to be here with Dr. Javier Guerrero and with you all. On other occasions, I have already had the opportunity to be here at the university in Tunja, it is always very gratifying and I hope this is not the last time I can be here with you.

The title of the conference is based on my last book, "The sixties, a revolution in culture", I am going to give a small twist to what I had thought, what I thought would make the international framework, as should be done, especially in the modern era, to study social phenomena and delve into it, and then take some aspects of the book. I am going to slightly reduce the international part on the occasion because of this day of the funeral of our colleague Jaime Jaramillo, I want to focus more on the field of culture where, as I said a while ago, Jaime Jaramillo was a master, he was a great historian.

This book deals with events of half a century ago, as we are in an environment where many of you are or are going to be historians or work in the social sciences, a question is raised. In the presentation that I made in Madrid in the house of America, one of the presenters Carlos Malamud said something that is valid, these are contemporary events and there has been a question and it is if the historian can deal with issues that he has lived through, and that are relatively contemporary? Or should that be for the journalist, the political scientist or something like that and the historian devote himself instead to issues that imply that everything there that is dealt with and all those who participated are dead, I really refuse to be dead to be able to deal with these themes. Colombian historiography has evolved. I would say that unlike what happened fifty years ago when Colombian historiography was very backward, very traditional, with very few works of value, really Colombian historiography is the most advanced there is in Latin America and indeed has international standards, and had proliferated the careers, institutes of history, there are professionals in history and many good researchers. However, one notes that historiographic production, and I see this from the degree thesis’s that I sometimes have to look at, a lot stayed in the colony, the more you get now on the two hundred years of independence, there has been chronological progress, but work on the nineteenth century begins to disappear and there are almost no works on the 20^th century. Tthis does not mean that there are none, there are good ones, but I apply to that situation what a great Venezuelan historian, Germán Carrera Damas, said of the historiography of his country, that it has a horror of the contemporary and I would say that here we also have a horror of the contemporary, there are caveats, for example, on the recent violence of the mid-twentieth century and on. There has been a great profusion of works to the point where, in this country we have a profession that does not exist in any other part of the world; that is the profession of "violentologist." There have been very good works, much progress has been made in this field, but in the field of biography, the field of political history or the foreign relations of Colombia, to name a few, there are many gaps. Economic history developed greatly in a moment that starts to give more space to simple economists. That, among other things, motivated me to write a text as regards a recent period, with emphasis on the international context and its influence on the Colombian situation, especially in the cultural field.

On the other hand, it was not by chance that I chose the 70s, because the 70s, as the title of my book says, imply a turning point, a revolution in the occidental cultures given to many reasons: political, economic, in foreign relations, from a cultural point of view in a broader sense that goes from music, with rock and roll, the Beatles, the different clothes, non-traditional, the sex life, the fortunate participation of women, greater and more important in the social life, phenomena such as birth control through the contraceptive pill, which was precisely developed in the 70s and allows women, among other things, to make decisions about their bodies and their sex life. I mean, the cultural changes are highly important, to the extent that one could see how many of these points which were, let’s say, in a cocoon in the 70s, are valid nowadays, some have been solved, others will be solved in the future. For example, when we were in the 70s, there were science fiction novels in which the authors wondered if a black man could become president in the United States, today we have Barack Obama, great president of the United States. Women had peripheral trades; they were just starting to get accepted at universities, in different fields of work, in social life. Who is the most eligible candidate in the United States? Hillary Clinton. There are three women who have been Secretaries of State and very successful ones. Which has been the most important piece of news of the last three months? The United States resumes its relationship with Cuba; those relations were broken fifty years ago, precisely in the 70s and marked Latin America’s political life. What do we hear every day? In the morning, we are told that there is an agreement in La Habana or that a process of conversations with the ELN will start soon. Well, all the guerrilla groups arose in the 70s: FARC, ELN, EPL, M19, and the list goes on. Now, it was discovered that there is water in Mars, water that flows. It was in the 70s that the conquest of space took place and man traveled to the moon. One of the great revolutions, was that of the mass media, to the extent that Marshall McLuhan said at the time that thanks to the development in these fields, society had turned into a global village. The moon ceased to be a distant object, inspiration for the poets; one is lucky to be able to see the cultural changes brought about by the 70s in the international and the national contexts. And in the political field it was a really tumultuous time. There were changes of thhe utmost importance, for example the view of power, in May 1968 in France, and not only in the French case there was a revolution. The great demonstrations in Paris, with thousands and thousands of people marching along the streets of Paris, and nobody looked at the ministries. It is that power started to be seen in a different way, it was not like 14^th July 1789, when the Bastille was taken, or the day that Lenin and the bolsheviks rose to power because they took the Winter Palace, no, power meant something else.

This is a time of youth turmoil around the world, due to demographic changes, among other causes. The young people who protested in the 70s were the result of a boost in births from the pairings that took place after the war, when soldiers returned to the United States, Russia, Europe, everywhere, even in Latin America, where population growth rates skyrocketed. The idea of marriage changed as from the 70s, the young people who were born in 45, 46 and 47, and they are the ones who afterwards went to universities all around the world, where they had an old-fashioned concept of the world and they were authoritarian, the premises were small so they were overcrowded. These young people protested in Berkeley or in Columbia, and a week later the Sorbone was closed for the first time in 700 years, and the young people in Berlin were protesting, too, and they are protesting in Prague against the Soviets, and in Yugoslavia, and precisely at that time, it is that the young people in the cultural revolution were engaged in its activities. It was the first generation to have been raised within a revolution, in a unified China, after the communists took power.

Of course, what happened there also happened here, the press in my city (Medellín), or the great press of the country, said that was communism and that those were the agents of Castro (Fidel), but it was the same thing that happened all around the world, in Chile, in Madrid, California, or Warsaw, in Medellín or Tunja, in the Universidad Nacional, del Valle, it was the protest of the middle-class youth that disrupted university life. Among other things, that is the generation who lived its youth in the best conditions until that time, because the Europeans did not live the war, there was a boost in the economy, there were jobs, their parents and/or grandparents had never had those conditions and, as things currently stand, it seems quite unlikely that things will be what they were back then. For this reason it was a revolution or a semi-revolution of a cultural nature which had a worldwide expression, but each country lived it in their own particular way, this means that, the young people in Mexico who protested against the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, by its acronym in Spanish) and against what someone called “the perfect dictatorship,” so perfect that the killing of Tlatelolco took place, leaving more than one thousand people dead in that park; we, the young people from Medellín protested against an absolutely closed, clerical, and authoritarian education; the young in Madrid, a very interesting movement, protested against Franco’s dictatorship; in Prague, same as the young people from Poland and Yugoslavia, protested against the Soviet system, and in the case of Prague, against the invasion of the Soviet troops to their country. The protests, though universal, had their particular national circumstances. They were anti-authoritarian movements, understanding by this political authority, patriarchal authority, the authority of the family, etc., and it is for that reason that all those institutions enter into a crisis, including the parties. During the French May, one of the slogans said: “elections pour les cons”, “elections for the jerks”, that is what our generation left us, to a great extent, even more to the leftists or progressives, we used to say: why are we going to waste our vote? We should not vote; our choice has no relevance. All around there was an anti-party attitude, with the exception of some countries, and this had its consequences.

At that point, a special appreciation for nature arises. Green movements appear that would later consolidate as political parties, many of them diverted, unfortunately, but with great interest and with a genuine concern about what is happening with the planet and how we were destroying the resources. Even what happened with the way of dressing is very interesting. For Eric Hobsbawn, this very classical English marxist historian who, as a good classical marxist, his view was the traditional one in that doctrine, the revolution is done by the working class, etc. In his memoirs, he says that he was in Paris in an UNESCO meeting, during the rebellion of May 1968, and he went out in the street and saw all that, and thought to himself: “I do not understand anything.” And he said: “I cannot understand anything.” The most important cultural revolution of the 20th century was the blue jeans and a man who has never wore them cannot understand what has happened. This exemplifies how there were many people that in the political aspect were progressists, but they could not understand this type of rebelion. I saw it in Medellín when at the time the Nadaístas appearred. They are a literary school like any other, many of its members are defficient, literarilly speaking. There are some good poets, but they represent a cultural break. They actually marked an era, the era of juvenile scandal, a time of anti-authoritarianism. The fact that they did not cut their hair and they let it grow, less than any other young person of the time, caused a scandal and brought about the scorn of the liberal elites, conservative or leftist. I remember, because I was friends with them although I was never Nadaísta, that they wore red shirts and the fact that they wore red shirts or colorful ones was reason enough for poeple to hit them, throw fruit at them, to insult them, because for a very traditional mind set that was a challenge. Luckily, there was a cultural rebellion and each country embraced it in their own particular way.

Possibly, the United States was the country that had the movement with the greatest social relevance, not only because of the content, but also because of its effects. In the United States in the 70s many situations conjugated together: to begin with, at the end of the 50s the oldest president in the history of the country up to that point finished his mandate, General Dwight D. Eisenhower –afterwards came Ronald Reagan, who was even older- and was succeeded by the youngest president in the history of that country, who was John F. Kennedy. There was a gerational leap that was reflected in the team of technocrat assistants, of Harvard university professors who even proposed a new model from the Alliance for Progress. At the same time, that was a society with some massive problems that exploded in the 70s. In the 50s, in the midst of the Cold War and while on the other side there was the barbarianism of Stalinism, the United States was undergoing that terrible thing called McCarthyism. When Kennedy arrived, the country was just coming out of McCarthyism, with this change in government, some unresolved issues of the American society exploded, and they have not solved them yet, though they have advanced: the racial problem. At the same time, there was the American imperialistic adventure in Vietnam, the war came and those young people who were protesting in part because they were going to be sent to the war, started a huge anti-war movement supported by religious sectors, by pacifist sectors. Simultaneously, there was an anti-system movement, but with different characteristics, and I am going to refer to the hippie movement. It started in the 70s and it was not by chance that it had started in the richest state of the richest country in the world, California. What was the hippie movement? It was a protest against the society of consumption and was mainly formed by young, wealthy and middle-class people who protested against the way of consumption of their parents and the society, against automobiles, smart suits, they were in favor of the conservation of nature. It was a movement that had some very important musical expressions and they have to be linked, in the case of the United States, with the generalization of drug consumption. Not because drugs did not exist before, humanity has always consumed drugs, but at that time drug consumption by certain groups became public. In the United States the Smoke-in was practiced, which consisted of large demonstrations where people smoke marijuana only as a challenge; LSD appeared at the time, too. The hippie movement was not very relevant in third world countries. Here, in Bogota, there were some hippies who rented a street next to the Hilton, there were rich kids from Bogota who are now well-known businessmen and, in general, do not like that people remember that experience. The hippie movement in the United States which had very interesting musical expressions also had its festivals, the most well-known of them was Woodstock. For a week, surrounded by mud, drugs, and anything one can imagine, 500 thousand people gathered together to listen to music. So, a country like ours could not be less, and the paisas (the people from Medellín) had the Ancón festival, close to the Medellín river; some people bathed there naked. The organizers claim that there were two people in charge of the advertising and, for that reason, so many people attended. An arcbishop and a priest prohibited the attendance due to moral reasons, but many people went because the hippies were going to bathe naked.

Now, let’s pass on to other types of expressions that are related to the 70s. And when I speak of culture, I do it in a broad sense, I am not only going to talk about what is called “serious culture.” That is culture: a way of dressing, the hair, the way of singing, of relating with the family, all that is culture. It is in that sense that I take culture in my book. I take it, without excluding; of course, there are other more refined elements of culture such as the literature, the theater, history or the ideas and the political systems, etc.

The 70s were politically marked by a situation that was the bipolar world. After the Second World War, the world was divided into two large blocks, the capitalist block (occidental) and the Soviet block which became even larger after the war. It should not be forgotten that a great part of the weight of the war was received by the Soviets: the death toll was 30 million, the red army advanced and for that matter it is not by chance that they had reached Berlin first, and then, with the strength of the red army, Stalin imposed communist governments under the aegis of Moscow in all those countries of Central Europe. At the same time, the Chinese revolution took place, the most populated country in the world, Mao Tse Tung and the red army, unified the country and another socialist experiment started.

In addition, another really relevant thing happened and that is the decolonization movement which is not generally given the importance it deserves. Two thirds of humanity lived in territories that were not politically independent. Until the end of the Second World War, in Africa, there were only three countries that formally were politically independent: South Africa; Morocco, which had almost finished a protectorate with France; Egypt and Liberia. Nowadays, and this mostly due to the growth of the United Nations, in Africa there are more than sixty free countries as a result of decolonization, and then there was Asia and even Latin America, because many of the Caribbean islands where English and Dutch was spoken achieved their Independence in the 70s. That situation was fundamental as, during the Second World War, the English, the French, the Dutch, and the Belgians had offered the people in those territories that if they fought against the Nazis and the Japanese with their armies, they would be granted their Independence. When the war ended, those governments did not fulfil their promise, and there came all those processes of national liberation with wars, such as that in Algeria or the processes in Indo-China. The English were more pragmatic and, in general, avoided going to war and granted Independence to those countries and especially to India, without going to war. The decolonization process was highly important because those countries took a political identity and eventually occupied a relevant role in the world context. It is worth saying that those were considered irrelevant territories, many of them had no political identity, and today they are world economic powers. The BRICS. China which is the first or second economic power; India which is the fourth or fifth; Brazil, and other economies linked to the oil countries in the middle east. I mean, this had some huge consequences and in the 70s they started to have a political presence and the Movement of Non-Alligned Countries was formed, the countries of the Third World. The denomination “Third World” appears for the first time as a commonly used term in politology and foreign relations in the year 1953, or around that time, and it spread in the 70s. The Third World countries which neither wanted to be communists nor capitalists, they arrived in a new political life, those countries have great relevance these days.

In my book, there is a chapter where I highlight something that I find interesting, and that is the connection between the new economic and political situation of those countries that are just flourishing and the appreciation and recognition that they had been having in the field of literature and culture. The colonialist view or colonial Euro-centered view, was somehow condescending, unapprecitative, or simply pleasing due to the exoticess of those cultures that, at times, were not even called so. With the Liberation Movements and the Independence of these countries, that view started to change. Nowadays, people go to China in order to visit Shanghai, the New York City of Asia, and possibly of the world. The view of Third World literature also changed. A proof of this is the adjudication of Nobel prizes. Until 1945, there were no Nobel Prizes for countries other than those of Europe or North America, Rabindranath Tagore obtained it, but India was a British colony. The change started with Gabriela Mistral in 1944, afterwards, with all this Third World movement there were Nobel prizes for Latin America, China, Africa, and Asia. Between political existence and recognition of their literature and culture; in the 70s, the Eurocentrist and Nordic world acknowledged Latin American culture through the so-called “boom” and started to regard it not as subordinate, but as an equal, or even as superior to European or North American expression. We have a Nobel Prize in Colombia, precisely Gabriel García Márquez, who could be cosidered the embodiment of the 70s, but there were also Mario Vargas Llosa, the Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias, Octavio Paz, Cortázar, Borges, Alejo Carpentier, etc.

In the 70s, in this bipolar world where the Soviets were on one side, and on the other was the so-called free world, although it was full of dictators, or the occidental world where, for example, Japan was, too. We lived a polarization in the political, military, and cultural order. This situation was lived differently depending on the circumstances. In Berlin, for example, people lived it with a divided city, half with one system, the other half with another. When the students of the Free University of Berlin protested, they did so against both systems, against the communist because they knew what it was like and against the occidental because it was imperialistic. However, in Indo-China, they lived it differently because of the war. In Europe, it was different too, with the Marshall Plan and asking for protection from the United States and NATO. In Latin America, we lived it through the Cuban revolution. Here the problem was not with the Soviets directly, but the conflict between the United States and the Cuba of Fidel Castro. There is no doubt that, initially, the Cuban revolution had great acceptance in Latin America, there were guerrillas in almost all Latin American countries, but in the cultural aspect it was also huge. It is sufficient to see the Casa de las Américas magazine, the Conference of the Intellectuals in La Habana where the greatest intellectuals in the world gathered, Nobel prize winners, those from Europe. Afterwards, the charm started to fade with the Padilla case, a case of intellectual persecusion which led many intellectuals to pronounce themselves against it, even many who sided with the revolution, and they took distance from Cuba. So, the United States, which had a new government with John F. Kennedy, created a policy, let’s call it a contension policy in relation to the Cuban revolution which had two elements: a military and a political-cultural one. With the former, it is intended to strengthen the national armies, they tried that North American soldiers did not get involved, except through the Green Berets. And that was the Vietnam experiment, and there was all the anti-subversive movement, the School of the Americas, which thousands of officers from Latin America attended, with an attitude of contension especially regarding the Cuban Revolution. But, as the Cuban Revolution was so important, a program was laid out; that program, in very simple terms, was through the Alliance for Progress. The Alliance, John F. Kennedy said, had to foster economic development, democracy, had to handle concepts like planning, modernization, agricultural reform, all that type of thing, and that was what was intended with the Alliance for Progress. And in all that, there was a very important element that was education. If Cuba was the mirror for many Latin Americans, so then in the educational field something important had to be done and that was done, in part, by the peace organizations, and in part through North American foundations and a political action in the educational field.

Colombia, from the political point of view, especially during the government of Alberto Lleras, helped the United States to politically block Cuba in the OAS, work that was done juridically in a very efficient way by Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala and other Foreign Affairs ministers. To this purpose, should anyone want more detailed information, they can consult my book Colombia en la OEA (Colombia in OAS). What is true is that Colombia had the role of blocking Cuba and, obviously, there was the payback from Cuba with the support and the strengthening of the guerrillas in Colombia. The situation repeated itself when, for the second time, during the government of Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala, Colombia blocked the entrance of Cuba into the Security Council of the United Nations. There were more than 120 votes, it was possible to vote until the 31st of December at 9 pm, and in the end, the seat was occupied by a third party: Mexico. But also, that game of Colombia with the United States had compensation on the American side. Colombia was what at the time was called “the window of the Alliance for Progress,” it was the country that received the most credit from the United States and the international institutions managed by the United States, especially during the government of Guillermo León Valencia when there was a substantial scarcity of money and the Colombian economy was very poor. Just to have an idea, the exports were 470 million dollars, and now they are 40 billion. This was the compensation in the economic field, but it was even bigger in the educational field. In that field, the United States made donations and loans, actively participated in the building of university cities, that of the Universidad de Antioquia, which is beautiful, which was mainly made with money from the AID and other credit organizations, as well as Universidad del Valle, Universidad de Santander, even Universidad Nacional. At that time, it was very easy to get a scholarship. There were Ford, Rockefeller, LASPAU, and many other scholarships available and, at that time, we were 20 thousand students who went to study our degrees or postgraduates abroad. In those 10 years, more students went abroad, more to the point, to the United States, than in the 150 years prior to the independent life of Colombia or since the colony. This had a great implication because, on top of that, we traveled at a time when the world was in turmoil: there we encountered the hippies, the civil rights movements of the United States, we saw the May revolution, the problems in Italy and France, I mean, that opened our minds enormously and we came back to the country and we were professors at a time in which, due to the Plebiscite, it had been established that 10% of the revenue from the budget had to be allocated to education. There was a moment during the presidency of Carlos Lleras Restrepo when more than 10% was invested, that was the moment of growth for the universities in Colombia, similar to what was happening around the world. For example, Ignacio Vélez Escobar, rector the Universidad de Antioquia used to say: “our project is to go from 10 thousand to 12 thousand students at the end of this decade.” And there came the reforms in the Universidad Nacional, the Patiño reform, in the Universidad de Antioquia, del Valle, Santander, etc. There was a transition from a French university model, in medicine and also in the sciences and in the humanities, to a model of the North American university. Courses were divided into semesters, the system of credits per subject was established, departments were created instead of the old faculties, general studies were imposed, etc. New courses of studies and programs were created: sociology, antropology, political science, etc. In Colombia, the study of economics was very defficient. There is an anecdote, perhaps it was during the mandate of Miguel Abadía Méndez or that of Enrique Olaya Herrera that a graduate economist was sought for the position of Minister for Economy and that in Colombia there were no graduates. The great policy makers were lawyers who studied Public Policy, such as Esteban Jaramillo, Carlos Lleras, or Antonio García.

In the field of economic theory, there is also something very interesting: what are the economic theses available? Are the ECLAC theses in our continent? Why? The ECLAC was created in 1948 against the opposition of the United States and the Soviets. I narrate that in my book, the voting in the General Assembly of the United Nations where there were only 4 votes against: Russia, Belarus, the United States and Canada. Why? Because the United Nations are universal. The Soviets said no, that is for Latin America and Latin America is an American territory. And the Americans said no because that has to do with the United Nations, and the Europeans and the Soviets are geting involved, and that is our space. It was the time of McCarthyism and it was said that planning was a something communist, as well as modernatization, more taxes on agricultural reforms, etc. For that reason, Jacobo Arbenz was removed in Guatemala. So, when the Alliance for Progress got together in Punta del Este, there was a new vision to oppose the Cuban view, the ideology and thoughts of the ECLAC are incorporated and Colombia is the country that puts into practice the outlines of the ECLAC more than any other, which implied, in general lines, the strengthening of national industry, protectionist fees, regional markets, the Andean Pact, the Latin American Association of Integration (ALADI, by its acronym in Spanish), and all those issues. On the other hand, on the left, the dependence theories became fashionable, in particular those of Andre Gunder Frank, who spoke about the “development of underdevelopment.”

In the 70s, the economics undergraduate courses either arose or strengthened, they started at the end of the 40s in the Universidad de Antioquia, they continued in Universidad de Los Andes, Universidad Nacional in Bogota, and they strengthened and multiplied in the 70s. The state created the Office for National Planning, the Banco de la República became technified, the first National Development Plan was issued as well as the Agricultural Reform, and the INCORA is created, so there is a beaurocracy that has work and becomes technical. The international reports about the country gain special interest: the pioneering report of the World Bank directed by Lauchlin Currie or that of Father Louis Joseph Lebret, which was of great importance, above all, in the catholic sectors, and the ECLAC report on Colombia. It was the golden time of sociology in Colombia.

In the 60s, the second Vatican Council started in order to modernize the Church, and for the Church to know and be more involved in modern life. So, they had the purpose of studying reality through sociology, especially in Lovaina and in the catholic universities. It is no accident that one of those who fostered sociology was Camilo Torres, who came from Lovaina. Another great promoter was Orlando Fals Borda, who was a protestant bishop, and the Second Vatican Council that has its greatest achievement through the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM, by its acronym in Spanish) and its Episcopal conference in Medellín in 1968. It was from there that all this Golconda movement arose, which ended up in the theology of liberation and, even, something that is no secret, linked with the creation of the ELN, which has always had a religious component, they had Camilo Torres, and they had many other Spanish priests directing it. New sociology faculties appeared, especially with a catholic orientation for example in Universidad Javeriana and in the Bolivariana – both pontifical- in Santo Tomás and San Buenaventura, among others, as well as lay programs in Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana de Medellín and Universidad de Antioquia. With all the reforms introduced by the Alliance for Progress, sociologists had plenty of work.

By way of example, Orlando Fals Borda as well as Camilo Torres were part of the Colombian Institute of Agricultural Reform (INCORA, by its acronym in Spanish) board. They were advisors of the Ministry for Education, it was very easy for a sociologist to find work at INCORA or in the Ministry for Agriculture. But when the student movement confronted the authorities, the break took place, especially in the government of Carlos Lleras Restrepo. Then, nobody wanted to see sociologists and they lost their jobs. Simultaneously, the overpolitization of the universities took place. And in the late 70s some important events happened: for example, Orlando Fals Borda, a man from the left, was removed from the Universidad Nacional, accused of being a CIA agent and an agent of imperialism. There was a climate of absolute intolerance at the universities at the end of the 60s, beginning of the 70s.

In the 60s the so-called New History arose and consolidated, as an approximation of Colombian history by professional historians who had had their formation in the programs created in the 60s, especially in the Universidad Nacional, and in others, who receive their training abroad, with doctorates. It is a new view of history, a broader one. In the center of this process was, of course, Jaime Jaramillo Uribe who, from the late 50s, was fostering the degree in history in the Universidad Nacional with the new parameters of the discipline of history, with great impact in historiography, giving origin to important debates regarding national life and introducing the modernization of the Colombian university that we have mentioned earlier.

To conclude, I would like to say that I would have liked to analyze the topic of what happened with the theater, the Golden age of university theater in Colombia; cinematography, and what happened with other artistic expressions, such as painting –the arrival of Marta Traba to the Universidad Nacional-; also with music, but in what refers to Colombia and the cultural field, Jaime Jaramillo was highly involved and was the driver of many changes of the time and for that reason, I have dedicated this talk to him.

We could continue talking, but I believe that this is enough. Our time is over. Thank you very much.

Questions

Public: I believe that women have not been mentioned. What was their role in this time of transformation?

Answer: No, I really think I have mentioned it, and I said that it was one of the most important things, and I say it again now. This means, well, some things are reversible, I believe that there is one that is irreversible, and I said it now, that is the role of women in society. I did not go into detail. I think I said it, too, as regards birth control, the right women have to make a choice about their bodies, etc. But I do disagree on certain specific things, with beloved friends of mine, historians and feminists, I have disagreed, for example. I do not believe that the fact that Mrs Berta Hernández Ospina has reached the senate has been an important achievement for women in Colombia. There were other things of that nature, but I think that I said the most important and if I did not, I missed it, because this has to be said out loud. This is one of the important things that took place in the sixties and women, of course, had a great participation to the extent they could, and there lies the courage of those who dared to go beyond, because there was a more coercive attitude, more than now, regarding the role of women and their place in society.

Public: Professor Tirado, let’s say that as from the sixties and in virtue of the fact that you are a lawyer, I would like to know if during that decade, or as from it, there was a turning point, of break in the Colombian legal culture. And the second question is: what is your opinion on the method and the object, of the way in which historian Diana Uribe interprets history and communicates it?

Answer: I am going to start the other way around, I do not like either to talk ill or worship my colleagues, no, I believe that Doctor Uribe has had an important role, very necessary for society, that is dissemination, and that is very good so that the study of our society, of the world and national history is not left in merely academic cenacles, and in that sense I believe she has had a great role. Now, giving her the role of historian…I would be more sparing, I do not think she has contributed to the research field and that has its role. In that sense, well, I repeat, I think her role is important, but not the way I heard it in December in her CD sales, where some people said that she was the most important historian of the continent; she is a disseminator.

In relation to the legal culture, I do not think so, we should enter into very specific aspects of the law, for example, in the sixties, the role of the state was broadly discussed, as it is still discussed now, and there was a moment in which in the 68 reform, Dr Carlo Lleras and his followers, ideologically imposed a very statist scheme: and if there has been a statist constitutional reform, that is the one of 68, where almost 100 decentralized institutes were created. That, for instance, I would see as a legal profile, not the rest.

Public: I could point out one, Álvaro Tirado was in Medellín, with the first human rights groups and a tradition was created, and then a whole current. There were no NGOs, each political group had the defenders of their political prisoners, but there was not a trend of thought about human rights, and I believe that there there is a good contribution. Why don’t you tell us what the first phase was like and the first multi-partisan committee and almost all the political sectors for the defense of the human rights?

Answer: There is a chapter in my book that seems to be unfinished, but the thing is that I could not go chronologically further and that is the international part of protection of human rights. I believe that the big leap in human rights in the last few years was not that much the acknowledgement or the recognition of the human rights that come from the French Revolution. All of our constitutions, even the one of 86 in the third title, spoke about what is now called human rights, which are rights that are political, above all. After 36, social and economic rights were spoken of. What is interesting about this, and that sometimes is not perceived, is the international protection of human rights. Until the Second World War, it was said that each state had to deal with the before mentioned topics as a matter of the Penal Code. Furthermore, there was an appalling case in which a Jew, I believe he was Austrian or from Central Europe, who was being perscuted by the Nazis, took his case to the League of Nations, and it refused to take the case by saying that “it was a problem of each particular country.” The Nazi barbarism and all the things that happened in the Second World War brought about a consciousness for that protecting these rights the state was not enough and that it was necessary to create international institutions to protect them. This is contemplated in the United Nations Charter and the in the Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. I am gladly going to quote a woman, Eleanor Roosevelt who was key to this instrument, which is a historic instrument, even more, against the North American establishment.

In the 70s, due to this conflict, there were movements that defended political prisoners, but, to be honest, and that should be put in writing, I am trying to narrate this, the way it really was, each armed group had their political prisoner’s movement: the ELN had theirs, and the FARC, too. That was limiting in the sense that politics were involved but, on the other hand, it has to be acknowledged that if their human rights were infringed, if they were kidnapped and tortured, then they had the right to create their own committees, because those rights are inalienable. It was interesting when in the 70s, with the Security Statute, there was here a great human rights movement where, despite what can be said, like in everything else there are myths about this, it was not the NGOs that fostered it, the NGOs did not exist, people did not know what they were. It was the civil society, I remember those who went to the Jorge Eliécer Gaitán theater (including myself). We were: Galán, Gloria Galán, many members of the new liberalism, Caballero Calderón, there were liberals, there was Alfredo Vázquez Carrizosa who was a conservative, and Gerardo Molina, a socialist, there were some clergymen, some protestants, of course the communists were there, I mean, it was a very strong movement. I almost forgot, J. Emilio Valderrama was there as well as a member of parliament whose last name was Montoya, one conservative and the other one from the ANAPO, apart from other people with whom we founded the Primer Comité de Derechos Humanos de Antioquia (First Committee of Human Rights of Antioquia). Héctor Abad Gomez also took part in it, who was its soul, its main advocate and who was murdered along with 50% of the committee, among them were Luis Fernando Vélez, Leonardo Betancur, Jesús María Valle, and a great activist, member of the Communist Party, called Carlos Gómina. From that moment, a defense movement that we called of human rights developed, which was about public freedoms and for the state of law. At that time, as the dictator Pinochet came to power and the coup d’état took place, the Chilean exiles made a great contribution to making a great international campaign and international protection of human rights became strong, especially through OAS. With Carlos Gaviria and others, we asked, and for the first time, that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights came to see the Colombian reality. It is a very interesting story and it has to be told as it is, a story full of merit, with many victims, with people who were really courageous, but also, at times with a great deal of political involvement. Afterwards, I was the presidential counselor on human rights of President Virgilio Barco, it was an honor because he was a democrat, and the idea was that human rights could neither be the patrimony of the right nor of the left, but an obligation of the state. For accepting that position I was the target of many extremist sectors, because I believed, as we believed, and as it is now being said in La Habana, that human rights violations came from all sides and that it was not possible to simply say: they are coming from the other side, but not from mine, that is, for human rights to be effective, everyone’s rights have to be respected. The members of the guerrillas, of course, if they broke the law, they had to go to prison but after the due process, without torture, without kidnapping, but it was also necessary to condemn the political kidnapping, the tortures and other violations perpetrated by the armed groups. For that matter, I disagreed with the Report of Amnesty International (AI), whom I respect and I have never disqualified. For this reason, the first response to AI said that they could not keep quiet about the other side of what was going on. Some time later, in a meeting of AI in Japan they started to change their position and nowadays no international institution of human rights turns a blind eye when a kidnapping or any kind of atrocity is carried out by an agent that does not belong to the state. When it is from the state, they have to be punished, of course.

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* Conference organized by the Institutional Project “Alianza Ruta del Bicentenario” together with the Doctorate and the Masters’ in History of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia.