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

Conclusion

Conclusion I have said the highest, the most elevated, the most unselfish mission of mankind is to participate in politics.... I have invited the pueblo to participate in politics, and I believe that the salvation of our country resides in all of us participating in politics. Jorge Eliecer Gaitan (1947) What is remembered? Colombians recall different pasts. Memories are so vivid that it is difficult to believe that these events occurred more than thirty years ago. It is as though Gaitan and the bogotazo, known in Colombia more historically and simply as "el nueve de abril,"1 had taken place just yesterday, as though the long Violencia of which few wish to speak had not taken place between them and the past that has been recalled in these pages. The memories of Gaitanistas are riveted on Gaitan and on the three shots that changed their lives. The leading convivialistas recall in minute detail their own actions on April 9, and shudder at the memory of Gaitan. Year after year the newspapers they still control commemorate their behavior. Pictures displaying the city's destruction bear captions that compare Bogota to the European cities destroyed during World War II. The crowd is remembered for what it did, not for who was part of it. That question is not asked. The crowd remains anonymous. Colombians remember what is most important to them.2 Gaitan's close followers proudly recount episodes of his public life in baffling detail. While talking about him, many take on his behavioral traits, offering vivid glimpses of a man who disappeared long ago. Others have memorized long sections of his orations and replicate his voice and gestures as they loudly declaim them in Bogota's cafes, bars, and streets. For them the future would have been entirely different had Gaitan lived. He would have 200 Conclusion 201 held the convivialistas accountable, Gomez would not have become president , and a minority Conservative party would never have had the opportunity to violently hang on to power. Even Gaitan's most bitter opponents concede that he would have become president on August 7, 1950. For Liberal and Conservative leaders, as well as for Gaitan's opponents, the tragic events that followed the assassination are etched in stone: convivencia was doomed and the spread of la Violencia inevitable. Neither effect had much to do with Gaitan, but was the result of deeper historical forces. Had Gaitan lived, his ability to use social and economic hatreds to mobilize the pueblo might well have made the civil strife even more destructive. After the outbreak of "barbarism" on the nueve de abril, it was but a small step to see la Violencia in the countryside as the continuation of the bloody destruction wrought by the pueblo in Bogota. Soon the idea developed within the elite that la Violencia was a cancer of the pueblo-or, to use another of their metaphors, a bloodletting-that had little to do with them.3 Smaller concerns, however, fill the minds of the politicians. Who made the fateful call at three in the afternoon on April 9? Did the Liberals ask for Conservative help, or did the Conservatives call out for the Liberals? What time did the Liberals finally arrive at the palacio? Who said what to whom and in what tone of voice? Did the Conservatives have dinner while the Liberals were left hungry? Was the president clean-shaven when he faced the disheveled Liberals on the morning of AprillO? These issues are of overriding importance for those who treasured the stances they took, for those who believed that their exalted public life was the embryo of the nation and of the civilizing process. The Conservatives felt that they had taken a stand on principle against the Liberals, who performed their public roles through "demogogic" appeals to the urban crowd. It was of the utmost importance that they could demonstrate that they had maintained those principles in the gravest moment of crisis the nation had ever faced. In their minds they had not produced the riot, had not killed Gaitan, and had not taken over the radio stations to urge the crowd to lay waste to the city. They were the legitimate representatives of order and the consititution, and they had defended the palacio from the multitude. They had to believe that they could weather the crisis on their own. They always relied heavily on their public image of pride and self-reliance, possibly because so little tied them...