Editorial: Antonio José Lemos Guzmán

Abstract

After a conservative hegemony, the liberal reformers of the liberal period (1930-1938) found a good moment for their ideas of change in education and in the university. They fostered the open debate about the new needs in higher education in a country like Colombia that opened itself to external markets, and -in health- it wanted to participate in medical developments in methods, techniques and mainly, in therapeutics. Antonio Jose Lemos Guzmán (1900-1967) was one of those progressive reformers of the liberal period. He graduated from the Universidad de Chile, rector of the Universidad del Cauca, major of the city of Popayán and parliamentarian. He was a visionary leader who introduced positive changes in the missionary work of the University, in research and the quality of teaching to bring foreign teachers and adapt the physical plant of the Alma Mater that expand the local perspective. He created the Escuela de artes y oficios, an intermediate institution. It was the predecessor of SENA. The main auditorium of our faculty bears his name. Remembering the name of Antonio José Lemus and his work at the University and in Popayán, is to continue with his example and legacy, to boost the university and the Faculty of Health Sciences by courses closer to the Colombian happening in medical education, to argumentation and debate as instruments of democracy, and in the technologies applied to the teaching of the four programs we have. Far from just serving as labor producers for health intermediaries and their businesses, the faculty should be able to create a critical environment reducing the gap between basic and clinical sciences and clinical medicine and public health. The possibility of peace for Colombia implies that the four programs should be turned to the new context, where we find a way to metabolize the violence and reinforce tolerance.