Abstract

ACEVEDO TARAZONA, Álvaro  and  LAGOS CORTES, Emilio. Trotskyism In Colombia: historiographical and documentary analysis of its origins and intellectual, political and university impact in the 1970s. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2022, vol.45, n.2, pp.45-67.  Epub Jan 11, 2023. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v45n2/96298.

The article takes a tour of the main Trotskyist organizations in Colombia, their most relevant moments and the appreciations that their leaders had about other leftist movements with which they disputed the role of vanguard force of the Colombian revolution. For the development of this text we carried out a review of the existing historiographical and documentary production that was divided into four large groups: a first collection of sources elaborated around Colombian Trotskyism, that is, investigative works and periodical publications. A second collection of texts refers to the origin and impact of Trotskyism in Colombia; authors as Robert J. Alexander, Martha Cecilia García, Óscar Collazos, Umberto Valverde, Álvaro Acevedo Tarazona, and Franklin Patiño Romero, among others, have published analyzes of Colombian Trotskyism and are a theoretical source for this article. A series of publications issued by the different groups linked to Trotskyism were also consulted. Finally, internalist texts produced by the same Trotskyist groups of the time were consulted. From this historiographical and documentary production it can be concluded that Colombian Trotskyism was linked to the international revolutionary movement through organizations and political currents. It is also deduced that the appearance of Trotskyism in Colombia occurs as a consequence of a reconfiguration of the left in the American continent, influenced by the Chinese and Cuban Revolutions, criticism of Stalinism and the debate about the validity of guerrilla warfare as road to revolution in Colombia. The first section presents an overview of Colombian Trotskyism, its historical stages and some general features that characterized it. The second section deals chronologically with the development of the Trotskyist current in Colombia during the 1970s, its organizations and the main ideological debates that its members staged among themselves and with other left-wing organizations. In a third section, the relationship that Trotskyism had with the Colombian university is established, since its origin is more university than worker or union; Likewise, the characteristic intellectual approach of Colombian Trotskyism stands out.

Keywords : Colombia; historiography; new left; revolution; socialism; Trotskyism.

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