The Assassination of Gaitán: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia

7. The Crowd

7 The Crowd We have come to destroy, to end everything, not to steal! A rioter (April 9, 1948) The Crowd and the Social Order Although violent, the first actions of the crowd followed traditional lines. The first protesters had partisan aims. They marched on the palacio to seek justice from a Conservative government for the death of a Liberal. Others followed Liberal leaders who walked to the presidential residence in search of a political solution to an infractionof the moral order. The first targets were the symbols of Conservative power: the palacio, El Siglo, and the detective headquarters across the street. By two-thirty a dense group of men and women stood outside the El Siglo building demanding Gomez's head and the end of Conservative rule. One man cried hysterically as he tried to pry the bricks loose with his fingernails. l The protesters threw rocks at the building, and someone suggested that they burn it to the ground. No one knew quite how to go about it until a driver brought a can of gasoline from his nearby cab. Soon the building was in flames.2 Heliodoro Africano, an off-duty police sergeant, looked up to see Bogota'scrimefiles flying out the windows of detective headquarters.3 TheEl Tiempo building, on the other hand, was left intact, and a rioter who accosted Roberto Garcia-Pena was subdued when he was shown a picture of the editor chatting amicably with Gaitan.4 Later that afternoon the building that housed El Espectador was saved when someone remembered that Jornada was published there.5 155 156 The Crowd Wide World Photos The crowd destroys the Gobernacion de Cundinamarca on the Avenida Jimenez, a half block from the site of the assassination. During the two and a half hours after Gaitan's assassination, the crowd's activities broadened and gained strength. Across from where Gaitan had been shot, the Gobernacion de Cundinamarca, where Liberals and Gaitanistas held a majority, was seized. By two o'clock the scene resembled a ticker-tape parade as those who were inside the building ransacked archives and desks. Paper, office machinery, and furniture were thrown into the street. Rioters The Crowd and the Social Order 157 took over trolley cars and privateautomobiles, stuffed them with the property of the Gobernaci6n, and set them afire. Across from the Clinica Central rioters set fire to the Ministry of Interior, housed in what once had been a private residence. A half-block up the street the Third Police Precinct was the first to fall to the crowds, whose members worried that the police would disband them in order to protect the officers many held responsible for Gaitan's death. Shortly after Lieutenant Carvajal's men opened fire on the crowd on the Calle Real, a small crowd rushed the capitolio, breaking doors, chairs, and desks and ripping down the ornate curtains. More than a hundred foreign diplomats were caught inside. By the time El Siglo's offices were beginning to go up in flames, those who had gone to the palacio had been violently pushed back and the building secured. The subsequent attacks on the palacio were uncoordinated and easily repelled. Armed men in the blocks surrounding it tried individually to get closer, and some went up to the roofs of nearby buildings to shoot down at the palacio. But the building was not seriously threatened again. It was no longer a target. Less than an hour later, before three-thirty, the multitude surrounding the Liberal leaders on their way to see the president lost momentum and direction when the leaders ducked into the theater, not to be seen again for several hours. Throughout the two and a half hours after Gaitan's assassination, people streamed into the city center from the outlying neighborhoods and even nearby towns. Some arrived in time to participate in or at least witness the first partisan actions. Many more made it into downtown Bogota after the attack on the palacio was over. They saw dead bodies in the Plaza de Bolivar. When the stonesmason Pio Nono Barbosa Barbosa, an early member of the JEGA and one of Gaitan's most loyal followers, arrived outside the palacio, the Calle Real had been cleared, and only one body, which he assumed to be that of Gaitan's assassin, lay in front of the building. He continued down the Calle Real, unopposed by the...