El mediador intelectual maoísta Enrique Posada Cano y el papel de la librería Cinco Continentes en la difusión del pensamiento marxista en Colombia en la década de 1970

Objective: To reconstruct the emergence of the leftist bookstore ‘Cinco Continentes’ in Colombia and to explore the pillars of the bookstore: books, films, and magazines, examining their incidence in the conformation of a Marxist culture in the country and their role in the configuration of capillary networks of circulation of Marxist works in Colombia. Methodology: The work is based on oral and documentary sources, which are interpreted through critical analysis of sources. Originality: Although there are various works on the role of bookstores, this article addresses a virtually unknown area in Colombian historiography: left-wing bookstores and their role in contributing to a Marxist culture in Colombia. Likewise, it presents a relatively unknown figure in the historiography on the Colombian left: Enrique Posada Cano, who played a key intellectual role in the dissemination of Mao Tse-tung’s thought and led the formation of the bookstore. This work represents a contribution to the studies of the intellectual history of the left in Colombia. Conclusions: Enrique Posada Cano’s intellectual role as editor, translator and disseminator of Mao’s works and founder of the Cinco Continentes bookstore is noteworthy. The bookstore had an impact on the formation of a Marxist culture in the country, since it received and distributed the material coming from revolutionary China: the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (in different forms and sizes). Cinco Continentes was a link in the transnational character of the dissemination of Chinese print media, since the Maoists considered it an internationalist duty to spread revolutionary thought throughout the world.