Eduardo Raul Colombo (Quilmes, Argentina, 1929 – Paris, France, 2018) was a physician and psychoanalyst, and very early on began the anarchist militancy that would constitute the salient feature of his entire existential path.
Already in the 1940s, whilst still a student, he joined the FORA (Federación Obrera Regional Argentina), participating in its anarcho-syndicalist struggles throughout the country, even during the recurring periods of dictatorship that marked Argentina’s history. He also started collaborating with the most important Argentine anarchist periodical, La protesta, later assuming editorial responsibility.
After graduating in medicine, he became a professor of social psychology at the universities of first La Plata and later Buenos Aires. He was expelled from the university after the 1966 military coup at the hands of General Onganía. In 1967 he took over the direction of the magazine Psiquiatría Social, but in 1970 he was forced to flee to Paris, together with his partner Heloisa Castellanos and their two children, Laura and Mateo. Despite the initial difficulties encountered in reintegrating into work, he soon established himself as a psychoanalyst, a profession that continued until the end of his days, always with a Freudian, strongly anti-Lacanian orientation. Even before re- establishing his career path, he began a sustained and intense collaboration with European anarchist movements, particularly in France, Spain and Italy.
In the early 1970s, he joined the Informations et Correspondances Ouvrières (ICO) group, which used to publish the bulletin of the same name. When this latter terminated its activity, he co-founded the periodical Lanterne noire (1974–1978) together with various anarchist militants from the Mouvement du 22 Mars and the editorial staff of Noir et Rouge (1955–1970).
In the meantime, his collaboration with the Italian movement strengthened, in particular with the group around the Centro Studi Libertari/Giuseppe Pinelli Archive in Milan. He took part in their first international conference organised in 1976 to mark the centenary of the death of Bakunin. Both Eduardo and Heloisa joined the editorial group of Volontà in 1980 until the closure of the journal in 1996.
Eduardo also engaged in an intense activity as an essayist that led him to write about twenty political books (translated into various languages), accompanied by a more strictly psychoanalytic production. As a member of the French CNT [Confédération Nationale du Travail], he edited the CNT- RP editions for a period and above all he was one of the founders, in 1997, of the French anarchist journal Réfractions, of which he remained one of the main editors until his death.
After a short illness, he died in Paris on 13 March 2018. The funeral ceremony held at the Père-Lachaise cemetery on 19 March saw a large participation of anarchists from various countries, especially from the Latin world, who recognised him as one of the more consistent and refined anarchist thinkers of the last decades.