Bibliographical confusion or political premeditation? Colombian communism's reception of the biographical essay written by Karl Marx about Bolivar in 1858

Abstract

This article’s main aim is to analyze the reading and interpretation by the intelligentsia (militants) of the Colombian Communist Party (PCC), of the biographical essay Karl Marx wrote about (against) Simon Bolívar, which was published in Volume III of the New American Encyclopedia in 1858. The article only came to be known in Latin America in 1936 (78 years after it was published), when Aníbal Ponce published it in the first issue of the Revista Dialéctica (Dialectical Magazine). The analysis is framed within the category called Organic Intellectual put forward by Antonio Gramsci, and the different moments of the intellectual reception process described by Horacio Tarcus, which are applied to the interpretation of the biographical essay by the Colombian communists.