Francisco Leal Buitrago made significant studies on clientelism, the State, and national security.
Photo: Private Archive / José Luis Ramírez
Profiling Francisco Leal Buitrago is not an easy task. As Henry Ramírez mentioned, following his recent passing at the age of 85, the word Maestro, with a capital M, would be the appropriate definition. Pacho Leal, as his friends, colleagues, many of his students, and especially his family knew him, shone with a very low profile and very great accomplishments in the field of academia, especially in the Social Sciences.
In his personal case, he had not one, but two mother… souls. The National University, where he trained and where he carried out significant academic activity, creating the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations, IEPRI, and later became vice-rector, as well as the University of the Andes, where he created the Department of Political Science, a pioneer in Latin America, as well as the Faculty of Social Sciences.
“The Pacho Leal I knew mixed rigor and harshness with a singular affection.” This is how his longtime colleague at the University of the Andes and very good friend of his life, Sergio Fajardo, remembers him. And not only he. His students can attest to the strict way in which he conducted his classes, the comments with a sharp humor, which were a depth charge, but at the same time that great heart he had and that he tried to hide behind his strict demeanor. Pacho took pride in never having belonged to a political party, so he could criticize, as corresponds to an independent academic, all parties equally.
After finishing his high school studies at the San Bartolomé de la Merced school in Bogotá, he had to do the mandatory military service in the Miguel Antonio Caro Battalion, MAC, created by the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla. At the suggestion of some colleagues, he joined the Army Officer School in 1955, where he graduated in Engineering and retired in 1962. By that time, he had traveled all over the country, especially the border areas, in the process of georeferencing and had firsthand experience of the large economic and social gaps faced by Colombians. From there he entered the National University in 1963, deciding on Sociology, despite his personal liking for mathematics, where he trained alongside Orlando Fals Borda, Camilo Torres, and Magdalena León, among others, she being a graduate of the first class of sociologists from the National University and who would later become his professor and then his wife.
Upon graduating in 1966, he pursued a master’s degree at the same university, with teachers of the highest level in Latin America, all sociologists, as Political Science did not exist in the region, as he himself recalled. After finishing his postgraduate studies, he entered the Department of Political Science, which was starting in 1968 at the University of the Andes, at the initiative of Professor Fernando Cepeda. There he coincided with Professor Gary Hoskins, with whom he designed the first study on the legislative power in Colombia, between 1969 and 1971, which as a book became a mandatory reference for study in Latin America, being the first time an academic approach of this dimension had been conducted with such rigor. The methodology and use of statistics turned it into a pioneering text in this genre.
From his work at the Andes, he moved on to the University of Wisconsin where he pursued doctoral studies in Development and returned to the country in the mid-70s to the Andes, where he created the first postgraduate program in Political Science that existed in the country, which began operating in 1975. Pacho obtained scholarships from ICFES for professors from public universities, especially regional ones, who could pursue the postgraduate program, going to Uniandes for two weeks every two months, until they finished their thesis. From there came several outstanding political scientists based in the provinces. Meanwhile, he continued with his undergraduate and graduate classes.
I gained greater clarity about who Pacho was, the academic, beyond the political or politological uncle, in the early ’80s. I was working with Silvia Galvis, director of the Investigative Department of Vanguardia Liberal in Bucaramanga, and Pacho was going to do a pioneering work on regional clientelism. He had chosen the emblematic case of Tiberio Villarreal Ramos, a liberal chief from Rionegro, Santander, who had started as a messenger in the Mayor’s office and had become the great municipal leader. Silvia had been one of his disciples at the Andes and immediately offered to help him with whatever was needed. Several of his students traveled with Pacho, among whom I believe I remember Ana María Bejarano, Andrés Dávila, Gonzalo de Francisco, Andrés López, and I think also María Emma Wills. I accompanied them several times to Rionegro for their fieldwork. From there would come a very important book on the subject of clientelism and local power in Colombia. Ana María Bejarano was his most outstanding disciple in the academic world, until her unfortunate death at a very young age. Andrés Dávila was also one of the notable students, currently linked as a professor to the Department of Political Science at the Javeriana University.
In 1986, with the support of his friend and rector of the National University, Marco Palacios, he founded the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations (IEPRI) at the National University. According to Pacho, it was a great pride to receive a paragraph from a university resolution and transform this idea into what ultimately became this important Colombian academic center of thought. He immediately invited Professor Gonzalo Sánchez to come to the university and put the IEPRI into operation, with professors coming from outside the National University. A year later, in 1987, he promoted the creation of the important magazine Análisis Político, within the Institute. From this group emerged what later became known as “the violentologists,” an unprecedented group of academics dedicated to studying the origins and realities of endemic violence in Colombia.
In the IEPRI, the Gólgotas would become famous, the meetings on Friday mornings attended by all those involved as professors and researchers, where they presented the progress of their research, to be “whipped” without “compassion” and under the “whip” of academia by their peers. The name Gólgota is due to the impeccable and fine humor of Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, a founding professor. Those who passed through there still remember today the marks left on their broad academic backs. Among the people who were part of the IEPRI in its early days were also Socorro Ramírez, Luis Alberto Restrepo, Martha Ardila, Pilar Gaitán, and Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín, Álvaro Tirado, Jorge Orlando Melo, Alejandro Reyes, and Álvaro Camacho, among others.
While Rudolf Hommes was rector of the Andes, he lured him away from the National University, where he had been Vice-Rector, and invited him back to the University in 1996 to create the Faculty of Social Sciences, which he structured and of which he was dean.
As a curious fact, Pacho recalled that the undergraduate Political Science program at the Andes was unique in the country until the ’90s, when the second was just created at the National University. There were indeed postgraduate programs at other universities. Paradoxically, now there are around 30 programs in Colombia. Not all, he himself pointed out, are of good academic quality. Paradoxically, and despite all this, he said that this is the country where Sociology and Political Science have had the least influence in the formulation of government policies.
He received the highest distinctions as an emeritus professor both at the National University and at the University of the Andes. His columns in El Espectador, previously in El Tiempo, were a compulsory reading to understand the national reality from the dispassionate and argumentative perspective of the academic. His knowledge of security issues, clientelism, state management, the military establishment and its relationship with civilians, the legislative branch, and many more, were documented in his numerous books, academic articles, and lectures.
Due to his condition as a free thinker, and while at Stanford University in the late ’70s, his farm was raided looking for arms during the robbery at Cantón Norte by the M-19. Of course they found nothing, as Pacho and Magdalena had been opposed to armed struggle and always preached that the change should occur within the institutional framework and through the struggle of ideas. Later, he had to leave for Ecuador, where he lived for several years with Magdalena, due to absurd threats from paramilitary groups.
Pacho was someone incredibly disciplined in everything he did. That seriousness and strict way of being, which was his personal hallmark, was set aside with notes of fine humor that made him famous. A family man, he was always by Magdalena’s side, his colleague and life partner, and with his daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren. Claudia and Shawn, professors at the Andes, and his grandchildren Siena and Niko, as well as Marta and Chris, who live in the United States. The countryside was one of his passions, and he loved to go to the small plot they had on the outskirts of Bogotá. Music was also a passion for him, ranging from Colombian rhythms to classical, jazz, and independence music. Talking with Pacho, especially as a family, was always an absolute pleasure. He was a true oracle. Listening to him was to have a very deep insight into the reality of the country and the international situation.
Last year, the University of the Andes paid special tribute to him, during which the re-edition of his books was presented, to highlight his intense academic activity. A little-known characteristic, due to the low profile he gave to his personal matters, was reported in El Espectador: in recent years he donated money to four different funds to support the studies of students. “I have not been willing to accumulate capital, so when I saw that I had surplus for my basic needs, I decided to set aside some money to support students.”
Among his direct disciples, not counting those who have been formed with his books, are important figures in Colombian political life, ministers, deputy ministers, ambassadors, officials of multilateral organizations, non-governmental organizations, and journalists.
We last saw each other in February of this year in Bogotá, to talk with him and Magola about the unfortunate passing of our dear mutual friend Rodrigo Pardo. His calm voice and accurate analysis, free from emotion, will be greatly missed to help understand an increasingly polarized and complex country.