Some of those who came out loaded down with fine clothing and great bolts of woolen cloth on their shoulders left them abandoned in the middle of the street. I picked one up, not thinking it would weigh so much, and much to my sorrow I had to leave it behind. Wherever we went we stumbled across household appliances thrown into the street, and it was not easy to walk through the bottles of expensive brands of whiskey and all kinds of exotic drinks that the mobs beheaded with blows of their machetes. My brother Luis Enrique and José Palencia found remnants of the looting in a good clothing store, including a sky-blue suit of very good wool in my father’s exact size, which he wore for years on important occasions. My only providential trophy was the calfskin briefcase from the most expensive tearoom in the city, which allowed me to carry my originals under my arm on the many nights during the years that followed when I had no place to sleep.
I was with a group making its way along Carrera Octava toward the Capitolio, when machine-gun fire swept over the first ones to approach Plaza de Bolívar. The instantaneous dead and wounded piled up in the middle of the street stopped us cold. A dying man bathed in blood who dragged himself out of that promontory clutched at my trouser cuff and shouted a heartrending plea:
“Boy, for the love of God, don’t let me die!”
I fled in terror. Since then I have learned to forget horrors, my own and other people’s, but I never forgot the hopelessness of those eyes in the brilliant glow of the fires. Yet it still surprises me not to have thought, even for an instant, that my brother and I might die in that pitiless hell.
At three in the afternoon it began to rain in great gusts, but after five o’clock a biblical deluge put out many smaller fires and lessened the impetus of the uprising. The small Bogotá garrison, incapable of confronting it, managed to separate the fury in the streets into smaller groups. It was not reinforced until after midnight by emergency troops from neighboring departments, in particular Boyacá, infamous for being the school of official violence. Until then the radio incited but did not inform, so that no news report had a source and the truth was impossible to determine. In the small hours the replacement troops took control of the business center devastated by the mobs and with no light other than the fires, but politicized resistance still continued for several days, with snipers stationed in towers and on roofs. By then, the dead in the streets were uncountable.
When we returned to the pensión most of the city’s center was in flames, with overturned streetcars and ruined automobiles serving as improvised barricades. We put the few things worth saving in a suitcase, and only later did I realize that I left behind the first drafts of two or three unpublishable stories, my grandfather’s dictionary, which I never recovered, and the book by Diógenes Laercio that I received as a prize in the first year of my baccalaureate.
The only thing my brother and I could think of was to ask for shelter in Uncle Juanito’s house, only four blocks from the pensión. It was a second-floor apartment with a living room, dining room, and two bedrooms, and my uncle lived there with his wife and children, Eduardo, Margarita, and Nicolás, the oldest, who had been in the pensión with me for a while. We almost did not fit, but the Márquez Caballeros had the good heart to improvise spaces where there were none, even in the dining room, and not only for us but for other friends and companions of ours from the pensión: José Palencia, Domingo Manuel Vega, Carmelo Martínez—all of them from Sucre—and others whom we did not know.
A little before midnight, when it stopped raining, we went up to the roof to see the infernal landscape of the city illuminated by the embers of the fires. In the background the hills of Monserrate and La Guadalupe were two immense masses of shadow against the sky darkened by smoke, but the only thing I kept seeing in the desolate fog was the enormous face of the dying man who dragged himself toward me to beg for impossible help. The hunt in the streets had subsided, and in the awful silence you could hear only the scattered shooting by countless snipers posted all around the center, and the clamor of troops who little by little were exterminating all traces of armed or unarmed resistance in order to control the city. Overwhelmed by the landscape of death, Uncle Juanito expressed in a single sigh the feelings of all of us:
“My God, it’s like a dream!”
Back in the semidarkness of the living room I collapsed onto the sofa. The official bulletins from the radio stations occupied by the government depicted a panorama of gradual tranquility. There were no more speeches, but you could not distinguish with precision between the official stations and those still controlled by the rebellion, and even these were impossible to differentiate from the uncontrollable avalanche of ill-intentioned rumors. It was said that all the embassies were overflowing with refugees, and that General Marshall was staying in the embassy of the United States, protected by an honor guard from the military school. Laureano Gómez had also taken refuge there in the first few hours and had held telephone conversations with his president, trying to stop him from negotiating with the Liberals in a situation that he considered directed by the Communists. The former president Alberto Lleras, who was then secretary general of the Pan-American Union, had saved his life by a miracle when he was recognized in his unarmored car as he was leaving the Capitolio, and the mob had tried to make him pay for the legal transfer of power to the Conservatives. By midnight most of the delegates to the Pan-American Conference were safe.
Among so many contradictory news reports, it was announced that Guillermo León Valencia, the son of the poet of the same name, had been stoned to death and his body hanged in the Plaza de Bolívar. But the idea that the government was controlling the situation began to take shape as soon as the army recovered the radio stations that were in the hands of the rebels. Instead of proclamations of war, the news reports attempted to calm the country with the consoling thought that the government was master of the situation, while high-ranking Liberals were negotiating with the president of the Republic for half the power.
In reality, the only ones who seemed to act with any political sense were the Communists, a minority of zealots, who could be seen in the midst of the disorder in the streets directing the crowd—like traffic police—toward the centers of power. Liberalism, on the other hand, showed itself to be divided into the two halves denounced by Gaitán in his campaign: the leaders who tried to negotiate a portion of power in the Palacio Presidencial, and their voters who resisted however they could and as far as they could from towers and roofs.
The first doubt that arose in connection with the death of Gaitán concerned the identity of his assassin. Even today there is no unanimous belief that it was Juan Roa Sierra, the solitary shooter who fired at him from the crowd on Carrera Séptima. What is not easy to understand is that he would have acted alone, since he did not seem to have the kind of background of autonomy that would allow him to decide by himself on that devastating death, on that day, at that time, in that place, in that manner. His mother, Encarnación Sierra, the Widow Roa, who was fifty-two years old, had learned on the radio about the assassination of Gaitán, her political hero, and was dyeing her best dress black in order to mourn him. She had not finished when she heard that the assassin was Juan Roa Sierra, the thirteenth of her fourteen children. None of them had gone past primary school, and four of them—two boys and two girls—had died.
She stated that for some eight months she had noticed strange changes in Juan’s behavior. He talked to himself and laughed for no reason, and at one point he confessed to the family that he believed he was the incarnation of General Francisco de Paula Santander, the hero of our independence, but they thought it was a bad drunken joke. Her son was never known to do harm to anyone, and he had succeeded in having people of a certain importance give him letters of recommendation for obtaining work. He was carrying one of them in his wallet when he killed Gaitán. Six months earlier he had written in his own hand to President Ospina Pérez requesting an interview in order to ask him for a job.
His mother told investigators tha
t her son had also outlined his problem in person to Gaitán, who had not offered him any hope. It was not known if he had ever fired a weapon in his life, but the manner in which he handled the one used in the crime was very far from being a novice’s. The revolver was a long .38, so battered it was astonishing that it had not misfired.
Some employees of the building believed they had seen him on the floor where Gaitán’s offices were located on the night before the assassination. The porter stated without any doubt that on the morning of April 9 he had seen him go up the stairs and come down afterward in the elevator with an unknown man. It seemed to him that both men waited for several hours near the entrance to the building, but Roa was by himself next to the door when Gaitán went up to his office.
Gabriel Restrepo, a reporter on Jornada—the newspaper of Gaitán’s campaign—inventoried the identity papers Roa Sierra was carrying with him when he committed the crime. They left no doubt regarding his identity and social status but gave no clue regarding his intentions. In his trouser pockets he had eighty-two centavos in mixed coins, when several important things in daily life cost only five. In an inner pocket of his jacket he carried a black leather wallet with a one-peso bill. He also had a certificate that guaranteed his honesty, another from the police according to which he had no criminal record, and a third with his address in a poor district: Calle Octava, number 30-73. According to the record of military service as a reservist second class that he carried in the same pocket, he was the son of Rafael Roa and Encarnación Sierra, born twenty-one years earlier on November 4, 1927.
Everything seemed in order, except for a man of such humble background and with no criminal record to have with him so many proofs of good conduct. But the only thing that left me with doubts I have never been able to overcome was the elegant, well-dressed man who had thrown him to the enraged hordes and then disappeared forever in a luxury automobile.
In the midst of the uproar over the tragedy, as they were embalming the corpse of the murdered apostle, the members of the Liberal leadership met in the dining room of the Clínica Central to decide on emergency measures. The most urgent was to go to the Palacio Presidencial without a prior appointment to discuss with the chief of state an emergency measure that would avert the cataclysm threatening the country. A little before nine that night the rain tapered off, and the first delegates made their difficult way along the streets wrecked by the popular uprising and past the corpses riddled by the blind bullets of snipers on balconies and roofs.
In the waiting room of the presidential office they met some Conservative functionaries and politicians, and the wife of the president, Doña Bertha Hernández de Ospina, very much in control of herself. She still had on the dress she wore when she accompanied her husband to the exposition in Engativá, and a regulation revolver was at her waist.
At the end of the afternoon the president had lost contact with the most critical sites, and behind closed doors he was trying to evaluate the state of the nation with military men and his ministers. The visit of the Liberal leaders a short while before ten at night took him by surprise, and he did not want to receive them all at once but two by two, but they decided that under those circumstances none of them would enter the office. The president gave in, but the Liberals still took this as a reason to be discouraged.
They found him seated at the head of a long conference table, in a faultless suit and showing no sign at all of uneasiness. The only thing that betrayed a certain tension was the constant, avid way he smoked, at times putting out a cigarette when it was half smoked and then lighting another one. One of the visitors told me years later how much he had been struck by the light from the fires on the silver head of the impassive president. Through the large windows of the presidential office, the embers in the debris under the burning sky could be seen all the way to the horizon.
What is known about that meeting we owe to the little recounted by the protagonists themselves, the rare breaches of faith of some and the many fantasies of others, and the reconstruction of those ominous days put together piecemeal by the poet and historian Arturo Alape, who to a large extent made it possible to sustain these memoirs.
The visitors were Don Luis Cano, publisher of the Liberal evening paper El Espectador, Plinio Mendoza Neira, who had encouraged the meeting, and three of the youngest and most active Liberal leaders: Carlos Lleras Restrepo, Darío Echandía, and Alfonso Araujo. In the course of the discussion, other prominent Liberals went in or came out.
According to the lucid recollections I heard years later from Plinio Mendoza Neira in his impatient exile in Caracas, none of them had prepared a plan. He was the only witness to the assassination of Gaitán, and he recounted it step by step with the artfulness of a born narrator and a chronic journalist. The president listened with solemn attention and then asked the visitors to express their ideas for a just and patriotic solution to the colossal emergency.
Mendoza, famous among friends and enemies for his unadorned frankness, replied that the most appropriate action would be for the government to delegate power to the Armed Forces because of the confidence the people had in them just then. He had been minister of war in the Liberal government of Alfonso López Pumarejo, he knew the military well from the inside, and he thought that only they could reopen the channels of normalcy. But the president did not agree with the realism of the plan, and the Liberals themselves did not support it.
The next intervention was from Don Luis Cano, well known for his brilliant prudence. He had almost paternal feelings for the president, and he would offer himself only for any rapid and just decision that Ospina decided with the backing of the majority. Ospina gave him assurances that he would find the indispensable means for a return to normalcy, but always adhering to the constitution. And pointing through the windows at the hell that was devouring the city, he reminded them with barely repressed irony that it was not the government that had caused the situation.
He was famous for his moderation and good breeding, in contrast to the obstreperousness of Laureano Gómez and the arrogance of other members of his party who were experts in arranged elections, but on that historic night he demonstrated that he was not prepared to be any less recalcitrant than they. And so the discussion went on until midnight, without any agreement, and with interruptions by Doña Bertha de Ospina bringing news that grew more and more frightening.
By this time the number of dead in the streets, of snipers in unassailable positions, of mobs crazed by grief, rage, and the expensive brands of alcohol looted from luxury stores, was incalculable. For the center of the city was devastated and still in flames, and exclusive shops, the Palacio de Justicia, the Gobernación, and many other historic buildings had been destroyed or set on fire. This was the reality that was narrowing without mercy the paths to a peaceful agreement by several men against one on the desert island of the presidential office.
Darío Echandía, who perhaps had the greatest authority, was the least expressive. He made two or three ironic comments about the president and again took refuge in his impassivity. He seemed to be the indispensable candidate to replace Ospina Pérez in the presidency, but that night he did nothing to deserve or to avoid it. The president, considered a moderate Conservative, seemed to resemble one less and less. He was the grandson and nephew of two presidents in one century, a paterfamilias, a retired engineer, a lifetime millionaire, and several other things that he engaged in without any noise at all, to the point where it was said, with no foundation, that the one who in fact gave the orders, at home and in the palace, was his resolute and aggressive wife. And even so—he concluded with acid sarcasm—he would not mind accepting the proposition, but he felt very comfortable heading the government from the chair where he was sitting by the will of the people.
As he spoke he was no doubt fortified by information the Liberals did not have: a certain and complete knowledge of the security forces in the country. He kept it up-to-date, for he had left his office several times to have thorough brief
ings. The garrison in Bogotá had fewer than a thousand men, and in every department the news was more or less grave, but in all of them the Armed Forces were loyal and had matters under control. In the neighboring department of Boyacá, famous for its historic Liberalism and its harsh Conservatism, the governor José María Villarreal—a hard-nosed Goth—not only had repressed local disturbances at the start but was dispatching better-armed troops to subdue the capital. So that all the president needed to do was to put off the Liberals with his well-measured moderation, speaking little and smoking without haste. At no moment did he look at his watch, but he must have calculated with care the hour when the city would be well supplied with fresh troops more than proven in official repression.
After a long exchange of tentative plans, Carlos Lleras Restrepo suggested what the Liberal leadership had agreed on at the Clínica Central and held in reserve as a last resort: proposing to the president that he delegate power to Darío Echandía for the sake of political harmony and social tranquility. The plan, no doubt, would be accepted without reservation by Eduardo Santos and Alfonso López Pumarejo, former presidents and men of high political standing, but on that day they were out of the country.
The president’s reply, spoken with the same circumspection he used when he smoked, was not what one might have expected. He did not miss the opportunity to display his true disposition, which few people had known until then. He said that for him and his family, the most comfortable thing would be to withdraw from power and live abroad with his personal fortune and no political worries, but he was troubled by what it could mean for the country if an elected president were to flee office. Civil war would be inevitable. And when Lleras Restrepo insisted again on his retirement, he allowed himself to recall his obligation to defend the constitution and the laws, which was a commitment not only to his country but to his conscience and God as well. That was when they say he said the historic sentence that it seems he never said, though it was regarded as his forever after: “A dead president is worth more to Colombian democracy than a fugitive one.”
Living to Tell the Tale Page 33
