The Making of an Intellectual: Orlando Fals-Borda, 1948-1958

Abstract

The decade 1948–1958 influenced Fals-Borda’s later career much more than his critics have recognised so far. By tracking many previously unstudied primary sources, this article looks at Fals-Borda’s positivist stage, which has been generally regarded as a hindrance to his career, against the backdrop of his personal and professional motivations to become a rural sociologist. Thus, it argues that his abandonment of the establishment and commitment to the peasant struggle for land in the 1970s were much less a disjunction than a continuation of some concerns and leitmotifs wholeheartedly embraced since the very beginning of his career.