Action Research
Volume 6(4): 439–444
Copyright© 2008 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC
www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/1476750308099811
Orlando Fals Borda: 1925–2008
Orlando first wrote to me in 1979 after reading our study of the Bhoomi Sena
movement in India1. When we met thereafter in Geneva in 1981, we discussed
and discussed participatory research, zeroing in on why we should put the ‘A’ in
‘PAR’: when oppressed people participate in research as full subjects they don’t
do so to write a book – they do so to promote their own struggling lives through
collectively self-deliberated action. Thus people’s self-research unites organically
with their own action. And on this interpretation of the ‘A’, we grasped each
other’s hands. Orlando invited me to elaborate this for the World Congress of
Sociology in Mexico (1982) as a theory of ‘dual social transformation’ opposing
the ‘vanguardist’ trend in liberational thinking, putting unequal relations of
knowledge on a par with unequal relations of production, both to be transformed
by radical action.
Thereafter, Orlando coordinated a project for the ILO’s PORP2 programme
that I was running, to initiate PAR in Columbia, Mexico and Nicaragua. The
quality and commitment of the colleagues he mobilized in the three countries to
work on this project were testimony of the leadership he provided in the region in
PAR. To have been able to initiate research by the people as opposed to the
‘party’ in Nicaragua seeking transition to ‘socialism’ was an achievement in itself.
The synthesis that Orlando did of the PAR work in these three countries,3 replac-
ing me in the ILO for four months to do this,4 gave to the world PAR movement
a comprehensive understanding of the what and how of this art, a lasting contri-
bution.
Following this, we continued working together on PAR – an immensely
enriching partnership for me personally.
This, of course, is a tiny fraction of Orlando’s life dedicated to the cause of
oppressed people. His contributions and sacrifices as a courageous human rights
and political activist; his leadership in liberational sociology, in stimulating Latin
American intellectuals to work with popular movements and take inspiration
from indigenous roots of the nations; his works on oppressions, on peasants and
on people’s history; and his leadership in Columbian progressive politics, becom-
ing honorary President of the country’s second biggest political party – ‘leftists
moving forward with locally inspired socialism’, as he wrote to me on 21 January
2007 – are of bewildering magnitude and depth for a single person.
439
440 • Action Research 6(4)
And yet he had time to sit with me whenever we met in World Congresses
and elsewhere, to listen to songs of Rabindranath Tagore, and to write to me
from Bogota that he and Maria Christina, his beloved partner in life and in his
struggles, were often reading Tagore and longed to hear more of his songs.
A more complete man than Orlando, so brilliant and so dedicated a human-
ist and at the same time so very lovable in personality, I have not met. Such per-
sons do not die. Orlando will continue to live, within the many that he has
touched and inspired, and through the profound works that he has left behind
him.
Notes
1 De Silva, G.V.S., Mehta, N., Wignaraja, P., & Rahman, A. (1979). Bhoomi Sena:
A struggle for people’s power. Development Dialogue, 2, pp. 3–70.
2 Acronym for ‘Participatory Organisations of the Rural Poor’.
3 Fals Borda, O. (1985). Knowledge and people’s power. Lessons with peasants in
Nicaragua, Mexico and Columbia. New Delhi: Indian Social Institute.
4 The fuller story of this switch in personalities is narrated in Rahman, A. (2007).
Through moments in history. Memoirs of two decades of intellectual and social
life (1970–1990), pp. 238–239. Dhaka: Pathak Samabesh.
Anisur Rahman
Research Initiatives Bangladesh, Bangladesh
Celebrating the legacy of Orlando Fals
Borda
Almost 30 years ago, my first job in Colombia as an NGO adult educator
included something fairly innovative at the time: doing action research. I now
remember finding inspiration for that work in the then recently published
Mompox y Loba: Historia Doble de la Costa (Mompox and Loba: Double
History of the Coast), by sociologist Orlando Fals Borda. That was in the late
1970s. Fals Borda’s work opened the path for a different way of doing research
and inspired us to be bold in our own work.
In addition to the powerful ideas, most intriguing about this book was its
unique format offering parallel narratives derived from the research. On one side,
almost magical realist stories and legends were registered in the voices of fisher-
