Javier Ocampo López


Javier Ocampo López is a Colombian historian, writer, folklorist and professor. He has been important in the fields of Colombian folklore and history of Latin America and Colombia, especially contributing on the department of Boyacá, the homeland of the Muisca and their religion and mythology. He wrote exclusively in Spanish.

Biography

Javier Ocampo López was born in Aguadas, a village famous for the pasillo, in the department of Caldas in west-central Colombia to parents Francisco Ocampo Gutiérrez and Doña Teresa López Hurtado. He has one brother, Fabio. In 1956 he finished his secondary education as best student of his class. Ocampo plays the clarinet since the age of twelve and was a member of the music group of his village of birth.
Ocampo went to study in 1956 at the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Económicas of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia in Tunja, Boyacá, where he obtained his degree in social sciences.
Ocampo López obtained his PhD at the Colégio de México in 1969 with his thesis titled Las ideas de un día. El pueblo mexicano ante la consumación de su independencia.
Over the course of 57 years, Ocampo López has been the author of 100 books, co-authored 47 and published 200 studies in specialized literature and national and international newspapers.
In 1960 he taught at the Colegio Nacional Académico in Cartago and from 1963 at the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia in Tunja.
Ocampo wrote several biographies about Colombian historical figures; presidents, generals and others; Antonio Villavicencio, Julián Trujillo Lagarcha, Santos Gutiérrez, María Antonia Santos Plata, Manuel Antonio Sanclemente, Eustorgio Salgar, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, Manuel Rodríguez Torices, Antonio José de Sucre, José Miguel Pey, José Manuel Marroquín, Carlos Holguín, José de Obaldía, José Eusebio Otálora.
A public library in his birthplace Aguadas has been named in his honour.

Works

This list is a selection.

Books