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4. The Expansion of Public Space
- University of Wisconsin Press
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4 The Expansion of Public Space In Colombia there are two countries: the country of politics [pais politico] that thinks ... of its power, and the country of nationhood [pais nacional] that thinks of its work, its health, its culture, all of which are ignored by the country of politics. Dreadful drama in the history of a pueblo. Jorge Eliecer Gaitan (1946) Rushing into the Middle Ground Early in March 1944 on a small farm outside of Bogota, surrounded by his closest friends and associates, Gaitan decided finally to take the plunge and run for president.l The decision came in the middle of Lopez's crisis-torn term of office, two full years before the election. The president himself was being widely accused by El Siglo of having approved the July 15, 1943, assassination of Mamatoco, a popular thirty-five-year-old black boxer who had turned to politics to denounce Liberal party irregularities within Bogota's police forces, where he had been a coach. In addition, Silvio Villegas charged that Lopez and his son, Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, had profited illegally from the World War II-induced nationalization of the Handel, a threshing company owned by Germans. Four months after Gaitan's decision to run, a group of military colonels took the president prisoner in Pasto while he was touring the southern part of the country. They backed down rapidly when they failed to gain popular and military support.2 Gaitan knew that he was bucking all the odds and that his campaign would provoke the wrath of the convivialistas. He knew that he would need that opposition to be at all successful, for much of his prestige among the pueblo depended on it. He would have to run against the leaders and the machinery of his own party. Gaitan was again settingouton his own, but this time he kept 77 78 The Expansion of Public Space the comforting Liberal mantle wrapped closely around him. He was to be the true Liberal. Gaitan campaigned as though there was never a doubt in his mind that he could win the election.s Rarely had he been denied, and he had always overcome the stumbling blocks placed in his way. The fact that the decision to run came two years before the election is an indication of his seriousness. It also demonstrates his awareness that his campaign would have to be different from all previous ones. The behind-the-scenes deals that had crowned previous presidents would have to be replaced by a mass movement that would cancel those decisions at the election booths. In Gaitan's mind a twoyear campaign did not seem so long. Several factors led Gaitan to embark on this lonely trail. By 1944, with two decades of unprecedented victories behind him, he had established an enviable position within public life. He also knew that he would always be seen as an outsider in convivencia. More important than these personal considerations was his conclusion that there was little honor left in the world of traditional politics. All around him Gaitan saw the center of the social order giving way: in the Santos "pause" and the conformity Lopez displayed in his second administration, in the inability of the convivialistas to develop new forms of leadership, and in the corruption and immorality all could see in the highest public offices. Gaitan's hope that convivencia could cut capitalism down to size had ended . Far from being solved in the thirteen years since the Liberals and Conservatives of his generation had come to power, the backwardness and injustice in Colombian society that they had exposed so daringly in the 1920s had intensified. At the beginning of convivencia Gaitan's critique was tempered by optimism. Now he saw society farther along the road to domination by an uncontrollable and impersonal market. Gaitan was convinced that something had to take the place of convivencia. The historical mission of his generation was no more. He feared that the decline in authority that the Liberals were producing through their behavior in office was inviting social turmoil and unrest. He saw that the reforms they had all hoped to bring about had not been realized because of the fear that gnawed at the private and public lives of his colleagues. By 1943 he had concluded that the leaders displayed a "dread of autonomous struggle," and that they were in "a panic" at the idea of "walking without parameters." They seemed to him to have given up...