rities, who labeled him as a Communist and expelled him from his home state. Angered by the decision, he crossed the border into Colombia and enrolled in a Bogot university to study law. Not long after commencing his studies, he aligned himself with a leftist faction in Bogot and by the time he had completed his law degree he had become a committed Marxist-Leninist.Determined that Ilich would not waste his life pursuing Christian ideals, Jos taught his son Marxist doctrine and regaled him with the exploits of the many leftist revolutionaries that South America had spawned. His mother, on the other hand, refused to stand by and see her son turned away from the church and had him baptized in secret. On other occasions, while her husband was away on business, she took Ilich to mass in an attempt to dilute her husband's teachings. Even though he loved his mother for her tenderness and respected her for her refusal to bow to her dogmatic and overbearing husband, Ilich later embraced Marxism as his "one true religion" and turned his back on the church forever.In 1951, his brother was born. Again, Jos had his way and named the boy Lenin. Seven years later a third son was born and according to the same tradition was named Vladimir. In later years "Carlos" was quoted as saying: "It was bloody stupid of my Father to give his children such weird names. That kind of thing weighs on the children. In my case it was fortunate, but things were different for my brothers. They are not ashamed of their names, but it did cause them problems in later life." Owing to the success of his legal practice Jos was able to afford to hire private tutors to teach his eldest son the finer points of communist doctrine. While Ilich was singled out for specialist teachings, he reared all three of his son's under a strict code of ethical behavior to the point that he later wrote a pamphlet for them setting out the moral, ethical and civic standards that he ins...
