Javier Ocampo López

Biography

Javier Ocampo López was born in Aguadas, a village famous for the pasillo (a Colombian type of waltz), 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 has played the clarinet since the age of twelve and was a member of the music group of his village of birth.

Ocampo began his higher studies in 1956 at the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Económicas ("Faculty of Social and Economical Sciences") of the Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia. He obtained his degree in social sciences.

Ocampo López obtained his PhD at El Colegio de México in 1969 with his thesis titled Las ideas de un día. El pueblo mexicano ante la consumación de su independencia ("Ideas of one day. The Mexican people before the consummation of their independence").

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 (Valle del Cauca). From 1963 he taught at the Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia in Tunja.

Ocampo wrote several biographies about Colombian historical figures; presidents, generals and others; Antonio Villavicencio, Julián Trujillo Largacha, 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.