The Assassination
The Liberal Party's candidate for the Presidency of Colombia in 1950, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala, was popular with the poor in particular. An orator of great ability, he looked set to win the election in 1949, but was denied the chance to stand due to an assassin or more likely a conspiracy. Gaitán carried the hopes of most of the country on his shoulders, but Colombia was to be robbed of its future on April 9th 1948 and earn a succession of unwanted tags.

Gaitán had spent the previous night preparing the defence of Lieutenant Jesús María Cortés Poveda until 4.00 a.m. Cortés was subsequently acquitted – Gaitán had won his last case from beyond the grave. Despite having worked hard the night before, Gaitán arrived at his office four hours later on April 9th. A young man had been observed waiting outside Gaitán's office in downtown Bogotá. He had arrived around 9.30, waiting to see the lawyer and Presidential candidate. Gaitán left his office for the last time shortly after 1.00 p.m.

He didn't get far. An assassin had been lying in wait and shot him three times, twice in the head and once in the chest, with a .32 calilbre gun around 1.15 in the afternoon. He was carried to hospital, but it was too late; Gaitán died soon afterwards. His assassination quickly enraged the people of Bogotá and beyond. His supporters called people onto the streets to protest. For the next ten hours Bogotá was ablaze. The alleged assassin Juan Roa Sierra was rapidly subjected to mob justice, but his violent death did nothing to quell the angry mood of the crowd, or solve the issues surrounding his death.

The Patsy?
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala, the People's Champion, was dead – struck down by an assassin. But who did it? The assassination was quickly pinned on 26 year-old Juan Roa Sierra, who was suffering from delusions, which included believing that he was the 19th century Colombian national hero Francisco de Paula Santander y Omaña or the Spanish adventurer Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada who seized control of Bogotá in the 1530s, claiming it for the Spanish Emperor Carlos V.

Roa clearly had serious mental problems, but he was also a very convenient suspect, as his delusions meant that the lone (lunatic) assassin hypothesis would seem plausible, but did he do it, and if he was involved in the assassination, did he do it alone? These questions divide Colombia even now. Even though Roa was not seen by anyone at the scene of the crime at the relevant time – he was first seen between two policemen – he still had the opportunity and he was discovered carrying a gun that the official report concluded he had been told to hold nearby while the 'real killer' made his getaaway.

He had tried to get close to Gaitán previously, seeking employment, but never got an appointment. At the very least, he had an interest in Gaitán if not an obsession with him. While forensic sciences were rudimentary then, they could have resolved some issues, especially regarding the gun Roa had. Colombian General Secretary and later conservative Minister of Education, Rafael Azula Barrera, claimed that it was incapable of being fired accurately. There is no evidence that Roa was proficient, or even competent, with firearms, while the assassin of Gaitán was clinically efficient – two shots to the head and one to the chest.

In the light of all this, was it really likely that Roa could have committed this terrible crime, especially on his own? The Colombian government's report concluded that Roa had been paid to stand nearby with a gun. In short, they believed that Roa was one in a long line of patsys, but if Roa was a patsy, who really did it? There were a large number of conspiracy theories to answer that, but few solid facts.

The Cast of Incredible Suspects
There was no shortage of people who hated the Colombian lawyer and Liberal Party's Presidential candidate for the pending elections in 1950, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala. He had enemies on both left and right of the political spectrum and therefore a wide range of suspects in conspiracies to kill him. He was assassinated on April 9th 1948 and chaos followed along with a very unfortunate legacy. Violence (Bogotazo) erupted over the next ten hours and the assassination contributed to a culture of violence that sadly continues to this day.

Unsurprisingly, Gaitán's political opponents were suspected and blamed as conspiracy theories took root. After all, the conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez was not only an implacable opponent, but his policies, especially the land-seizures, were vigorously opposed by Gaitán. Ospina and his party certainly had much to gain from Gaitán's death, as they were as unpopular as Gaitán was the opposite. He looked a shoe-in to win the Presidency in 1950, which meant not oly r4eversal of conservative policies, but radical liberalism.

Ospina, meanwhile, had previously placed the country on a collision course with his harsh and controversial land seizure policies. Gaitán was an outspoken critic of this policy. There was no love lost between the men who would have contested the next election, but for the assassination. Instead the country was engulfed in violence and the Liberal Party refused to contest the next election, resulting in a deeply unpopular government clinging to power until the army decided to act.

The Agent?
The People's Champion Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala was dead, murdered in clinical fashion by an assassin. Some conservative opponents took advantage of the presence in Bogotá of a young Cuban who would later go on to lead the resistance to the corrupt regime of playboy dictator Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro Ruz. Castro, according to the accusations, was not only in Colombia, but was a low-level agent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), but even if that was true, what was his task?

Castro's job was to persuade Gaitán to abandon his beliefs and become a communist. Even if Castro was an agent and that was his task, it was ludicrous to put it mildly. Why would the USSR believe that a low level agent who had nothing on, or influence over, Gaitán would be able to persuade Gaitán to abaandon his beliefs and join their cause when Gaitán was clearly winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the Colombian people anyway?

If there was any wish to try, they would surely need someone that Gaitán trusted and respected as an equal. Castro could not possibly have been that in 1948. Gaitán had no reason to change his course then. If there was any recruiting to be done, it was more likely that the skilled orator Gaitán would recruit the Cubans to his cause than the other way round if indeed they had come to try to do that.

A Convenient Presence
Fidel Castro Ruz overthrew the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. He had served a long apprenticeship in revolutionary activity. Tthat included seeing the power of an irate people first hand. The assassination of Colomabian lawyer and Liberal Party Presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala on April 9th 1948 unleashed the power of the people as Gaitán's supporters reacted furiously.

The future Cuban leader was in downtown Bogotá at the time of the assassination and its aftermath, but that hardly proves him to be Gaitán's assassin and nor does the fact that Rafael del Pino met supposed assassin Juan Roa Sierra 90 minutes before the assassination. Castro was also present during Bogotazo – the violence  that followed the assassination – and therefore got a first hand view of what working people and peasants were capable of when aroused to anger.

It certainly may have influenced his beliefs and strategy for the future, but there is no credible evidence that Castro was involved in the assassination of Gaitán. The Cubans had nothing to gain from assassinating Gaitán before that meeting which might have resulted in them getting what they wanted from him and there is no evidence of a conspiracy to neutralise Gaitán to benefit the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), let alone one involving Castro.

An Outrage
Unsurprisingly the Santa Marta outrage – a strike by banana workers in the Colombian town against the harsh policies of the United Fruit Company (UFC), which was broken up by the army opening fire on strikers on December 6th 1928 killing up 2000 according to reliable reports – provoked widespread revulsion. It also resulted in guerrila attacks, which in turn was combatted by the declaration of martial law by then Colombian President Miguel Abadía Méndez.

The massacre and ensuing military operations put the lives of US citizens in jeopardy, rather than the alleged militancy of the banana workers' strike. Some of them had to defend themselves from attack as predictably Colombians reacted angrily to what was termed State Terrorism.

Abadía's popularity plummeted and the Colombian Senate and media and activists reacted to the outrage. Among those to express eloquent disgust was the 25 yar-old rising star of the Liberal Party, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala. The Santa Marta Massacre was a turning point in Colombian politics. It provided the justification for armed resistance and radicalised Colombia's workforce.  Also the correspondence of US diplomats in Colombia left much to be desired to put it mildly.

Misguided
Despite the disastrous nature of the operation – one that its commander, General Cortés Vargas, only carried out as he believed that a US invasion was imminent – the US Embassy in Bogotá sent appalling dispatches to the State Department, defending the atrocity and then complaining that the opposition was exploiting the situation to criticise the government.

Viva Gaitán!
It was a crime that spawned an industry of conspiracy theories in Colombia and Latin America, some of which stretched credibility, but the legacy of the assassination of radical lawyer and politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala was huge. He was the Liberal Party's candidate for a bid for the Presidency of Colombia when he was shot dead on April 9th 1948. It would have been his second attempt, as he lost in 1946 to the conservatives, which resulted in land seizure from peasants and armed resistance.

There had been sporadic violence after the Liberal Party implemented more radical policies in the 1930s. Nevertheless, the scale of the violence mushroomed in 1946 after Mariano Ospina Pérez came to power controversially and set about reversing the liberals' land reform policies. Gaitán's assassination unleashed an orgy of violence, but some argue that even that was not the real start of La Violencia. They point to the violence that erupted after dispossession began in 1946 and others to Liberal Party's policies in the 1930s (see La Violencia, which is to be published by us soon). But who was  Gaitán and why was he assassinated?

The Early Years
Gaitán was just 45 when he was gunned down near his office in downtown Bogotá in the early afternoon of April 9th 1948, but he had already crammed a great deal into a short life. He was born in January 1903 into a poor background. The sacrifice of his parents gave him the opportunity of an education usually denied to those of his class in the prestigious Collegio Simón Araújo, but his origins enraged the offspring of the liberal élite.

A Pivotal Event
Lawyer and Liberal Party politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala had completed his apprenticeship by 1928. He was just 25, but only had twenty years to live when the event that would propel him to national attention in Colombia occurred. The United Fruit Company (UFC) has a long history of disreputable conduct in Latin America. Banana workers in the town of Ciénaga, which is near Santa Marta, had been on strike for a month, demanding better conditions, but their strike offended powerful interests abroad.

The UFC and President Calvin Coolidge's administration in the USA – the State Department and US diplomats in Colombia to be precise – were determined that would not happen under any circumstances. In order to break the power of trade unions they demanded punitive action against the strikers from the Colombian government. To achieve that aim Coolidge's administration threatened intervention by US marines if Colombia's President Miguel Abadía Méndez did not take decisive action to protect the interests of UFC.

Abadía buckled under this pressure and sent in the army to arrest the strikers and 'restore order.'

What followed was an outrage under any normal interpretation of the word. On December 6th the  strike was viciously attacked by the Colombian army under the command of General Cortés Vargas. The official version settled on a death toll of 47 with Gaitán and others insisting that the real total was far higher.