Gustavo Rojas Pinilla

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla was born on March 12, 1900, in Tunja, Boyacá, and died on January 17, 1975. He served as Colombia’s president from June 1953 to May 1957, leading a military dictatorship. Before that, he worked as an army general and a civil engineer. His rise began during La Violencia, a period of intense conflict between the ruling Conservatives and Liberal guerrilla groups in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As a colonel, he entered the cabinet of Conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez. In 1953, he overthrew Ospina’s successor, the far-right Laureano Gómez Castro, in a coup and imposed martial law. His goal was to curb political violence, so he governed as a dictator, building alliances with trade unionists, launching infrastructure projects, and granting women the right to vote. Public pressure forced him to resign in 1957.

After leaving power, Rojas Pinilla founded the National Popular Alliance (ANAPO) in 1961. This party opposed the National Front, a power-sharing deal between the Conservatives and Liberals that was created after his ouster. He ran for president in 1970 but lost to the National Front’s candidate, Conservative lawyer Misael Pastrana Borrero. Rojas Pinilla and his supporters claimed the election was fraudulent and illegitimate. This dispute led ANAPO followers to form the M-19 guerrilla movement, which later fueled Colombia’s insurgency in the latter half of the 20th century.

Rojas spent his early years in Tunja, Villa de Leyva, and Arcabuco. He attended the Tunja School of Presentation and earned a secondary degree from the Normal School of Tunjasu Leiva. After graduating with a bachelor’s in 1917, he entered the José María Córdova Military School in Bogotá as a cadet that same year, becoming a second lieutenant in 1920. While stationed in Manizales, Caldas, he was promoted to lieutenant in 1923. Dissatisfied with army life, he requested retirement in 1924. He then studied at Tri-State College in the United States, earning a civil engineering degree in 1927 while working on a Ford assembly line. Back in Colombia, he helped build highways and other engineering projects, including managing construction of the Belén-to-Socha road.

Rojas returned to the military in 1932 when Colombia went to war with Peru over a border region. Recommissioned as a captain, he joined the 1st Artillery Group in Bogotá. In 1933, he commanded coastal batteries in Buenaventura, a port thought vulnerable to Peruvian attack. The war ended that year with the Rio Protocol, which confirmed Colombia’s claim to the disputed area, and Buenaventura never saw combat. In 1936, he became lead engineer of the army’s ammunition factory and was sent to Nazi Germany to get machinery for munitions production in Bogotá. After returning, he headed the factory’s technical department. In 1943, he visited the United States to secure weapons and materials through Lend Lease aid during World War II. He also directed the Artillery School from 1942 and served as assistant director of the School of War from 1944. In 1945, he was named Director General of Civil Aviation, then part of the Ministry of War. There, he presented a project called “Landing Strips in Colombia,” which earned him promotion to colonel and later led to the creation of El Dorado Airport.

During La Violencia, Rojas was promoted to colonel in 1946 and commanded the First Brigade in Tunja. In 1948, he took over the Third Brigade in Cali. He gained national recognition for calming unrest after the assassination of popular leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948, and was honored by President Ospina Pérez. He became a lieutenant general on October 11, 1949, and joined the Army General Staff on October 19. His rise came amid a split in the Conservative Party between moderate “Ospinists” (backers of Ospina) and far-right “Laureanists” (supporters of Laureano Gómez Castro, elected in 1950). Gómez was widely disliked by Liberals and even many Conservatives doubted his ability to stop the violence. Rojas aligned with the Ospinists, as Ospina promoted him over more senior officers. On December 3, 1949, he became Minister of Posts and Telegraphs under Ospina. In 1951, he was sent as Colombia’s delegate to the United Nations in Washington and inspected the Colombia Battalion, which was fighting with the U.S. 21st Infantry Regiment in the Korean War. Rojas saw this overseas assignment as a deliberate snub by Gómez and returned to Colombia in September 1952. In 1952, he was promoted to general and made Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces by interim president Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, who filled in while Gómez was ill. When Gómez resumed office, he ordered Rojas’s removal, and the Minister of War, Lucio Pabón Núñez, who was Rojas’s ally, resigned.