Gustavo Rojas Pinilla

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Lore & Background

During La Violencia, Rojas was commander of the Third Brigade in Cali and gained major recognition for having managed to appease the rebellion that happened in this region as a consequence of the assassination of the popular leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948, for which he was honoured by the incumbent Conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez. He was promoted to Lieutenant General on October 11, 1949, and on December 3, 1949, appointed as Minister of Posts and Telegraphs in the government of President Mariano Ospina Pérez. In 1951, he was nominated as a delegate for Colombia to the United Nations in Washington, and as such he inspected the Colombia Battalion, then attached to the American 21st Infantry Regiment fighting in the Korean War. Rojas took offense at the overseas posting, which he interpreted as an intentional slight on Gómez's part, and returned to Colombia in September 1952. In 1952, he was ascended to General of the Army and appointed as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Colombia by Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, who was serving as interim president while Gómez took a leave of ill health. When Gómez returned to office, he ordered the immediate removal of Rojas; the Minister of War Lucio Pabón Núñez, an ally of Rojas, resigned rather than comply with the order. On June 13, 1953, Rojas took the Caldas Battalion to the Casa de Nariño and, after confusion among the coup plotters, was persuaded by Minister of War Pabón to assume power. The bloodless coup was supported by the Ospinist Conservatives as well as Liberals, who hoped that Rojas would reestablish peace and political order in the nation.

Reader's Guide

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla's significance lies in his brief but transformative military dictatorship, which ended a period of intense civil strife but ultimately succumbed to public pressure. He was the first president of Colombia to assume power through a coup d'état since José Manuel Marroquín in 1900, during the Thousand Days War, and the first to hold power with an active military commission since Santos Acosta overthrew Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera in 1867. He was military dictator of Colombia from 1953 to 1954, when he was officially designated President of Colombia by the National Constituent Assembly, by its Legislative Act Number 1 of 1953, without a popular election. His presidency introduced television, constructed several hospitals and universities and the National Astronomic Observatory, and promoted projects such as the Atlantic railway, the hydroelectric dam of Lebrija, and the oil refinery of Barrancabermeja. He also allied himself with organized labor, forming the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, or CNT, as an independent alternative to the two Liberal and Conservative-dominated unions. However, opposition from the Conservatives and the Roman Catholic Church forced Rojas to shutter the CNT in 1955. After being deposed, he founded the National Popular Alliance (ANAPO) in 1961 in opposition to the National Front, the power-sharing agreement which the Conservatives and Liberals had brokered after he had been deposed. His contested defeat in the 1970 presidential election led supporters to form the M-19 guerrilla movement, which would contribute to the country's insurgency unrest in the second half of the 20th century.

Did You Know?

• Rojas studied civil engineering at Tri-State College in the United States, graduating in 1927 while working the assembly line at a Ford factory.
• In 1936, he was sent as an envoy to Nazi Germany to obtain machinery for munitions production in Bogotá.
• He presented his project for airports in Colombia under the title 'Landing Strips in Colombia,' which served as a dissertation for his promotion to colonel of the Army; he would bring this initiative into being with the El Dorado Airport.
• During the 1953 coup, Minister of War Lucio Pabón Núñez surprised Rojas by announcing to Ospina and Urdaneta that Rojas had assumed the presidency, leaving Rojas unsure what to do until General Berrío Muñoz began to applaud.
• Rojas enacted legislation that gave women the right to vote in Colombia.