This article presents an approach to the intellectuals concerned with homeless children or “institución gamin” in Colombia between 1960 and 1990, by focusing on two Colombian psychiatrists in particular: Francisco Cobos and José Gutiérrez. The former, as a state intellectual, and the latter, as a critic, highlight, on the one hand, the political and epistemic positionings played out in the context of the emergence of the contemporary conception of childhood in Colombia; on the other, the significant bifurcations and tensions in the hegemonic imaginary of childhood that has prevailed since the nineteenth century until the present day.