This research article is part of a broader project about the intellectual history of human rights in Colombia between 1974 and 1998. This piece is a preliminary interpretation of the relationship between the Colombian left wing and the ideas of human rights that emerged between 1974 and 1978. The questions that structure this essay are: bearing in mind the classical distrust in liberal legality, what type of relationship did the left built with the rising ideas of human rights? Why was it possible for some leftist groups to embrace the human rights language? The hypothesis is that the left understood the defense of human rights as a project of naming and shaming the bourgeois state for unleashing violence and repression. Showing systematic violence intended to raise consciousness of a “popular social class” that was being targeted by state violence. To defend this thesis I focus on the context surrounding the publication of one of the first reports that tried to make sense of human rights ideas: El libro negro de la represión, written by the Comité de Solidaridad con los Presos Políticos, CSPP. In sum, this article is an interpretation of this report from the perspective of the tension between bourgeois legality (embodied in human rights) and the revolutionary project of the left.