Background
Gustavo Rojas was born in ancient Tunja, Colombia on March 12, 1900.
Gustavo Rojas was born in ancient Tunja, Colombia on March 12, 1900.
Rojas received his preuniversity education at Tunja Normal School. In 1927 he wrote a thesis at the Tri-State College of Engineering in Angola, Indiana, on the building of airfields in Colombia.
Rojas began his military career in 1917, specializingin building airports. During the next 20 years, as he rose from lieutenant to general, Rojas was an engineer, building roads and airports. By 1945 he had become the director of civil aeronautics.
The Bogotazo riots of April 8, 1948, marked a turning point in Rojas's life and the start of his political career. He suppressed the Cali rioters with such efficiency and brutality that he won the hatred of the Liberals and the approval of the Conservative dictator, Laureano Gomez, who promoted him in 1950 to commander in chief of the armed forces and sent him in 1952 to Washington to represent Colombia on the Inter-American Defense Board and to Korea to inspect Colombian troops there.
In 1953, threatened with demotion and removal by Gomez, Rojas led a coup against Laureano Gomez, which resulted in the close of civil war in Colombia. Colombians were so thankful to Rojas for peace that they elected him president, but by June 8, 1954, Rojas had started his own violence. Rojas used the army and police against all opposition in Colombia. Hundreds of thousands of Colombians fled burning villages for the comparative safety of mushrooming city slums. By the end of the Rojas regime, in 1957, over 300, 000 Colombians were dead, and Rojas, the peacemaker and builder, had acquired a different reputation.
The new military coup against Rojas came suddenly on May 9, 1957. After months of secret negotiations in Spain and Colombia, the Conservative and Liberal leaders jointly ousted Rojas and instituted their unique 16-year plan for "peace through alternation and parity. " By this plan, Liberals and Conservatives alternated the presidency every four years after 1958, dividing the government jobs equally and giving Colombia years of comparative peace.
After a brief period of disgrace and exile, Rojas founded ANAPO, who vowed to upset this "frozen democracy. " In 1970 they claimed to have won a third of the votes and the presidency. When the Conservative Misael Pastrana was officially declared the winner, Rojas promised revolution and was held under house arrest. Bogota was tense, but Pastrana became president. Rojas died in 1975.
In 1961 Rojas organized ANAPO (National Popular Alliance), a rapidly growing party of left and right extremists.
Vernon Lee Fluharty considered him a much-maligned reformer trying to modernize a semifeudal society which had been run for centuries by two small elite oligarchies. Fluharty saw these oligarchies as unwilling to give up their privileges or to "cope with long-smoldering social revolution. " Fluharty excused the violence but incorrectly predicted that the two rival oligarchies would never cooperate.
Quotes from others about the person
"sadist . .. one of the most savage and venal and altogether incompetent administrators in the history of the nation. " - Hubert Herring
He was married to Carola Correa Londoño. The couple had three children: Gustavo Emilio Rojas Correa, Maria Eugenia Rojas Correa, Carlos Rojas Correa.
