Fawkes in Bogot

Catholic, democratic Colombia last week rocked with a Guy Fawkes scandal. Almost on the eve of Congressional elections, police surrounded the impressive colonial Cathedral of Bogota. Before a party of Church and Government officials who sped to the scene, they respectfully uncovered 800 bombs in the organ loft.

Promptly, 42 suspects were seized. Three priests among them were released, but the police held fast to several retired military officers, two Cathedral sacristans, some lay brothers. All belonged to Colombia's small clerical fascist clique which drew the country's attention last summer when liberal President Alfonso Lopez was kidnapped.

Soon afterward, 400 more bombs were found in an apartment near the Presidential palace. Panicky plotters began to abandon their explosives in the streets. A bomb-filled suitcase was picked up outside the office of the National Comptroller. The bombs were all alike. Each consisted of a quarter-pound of dynamite and buckshot, tightly wrapped in cloth, with a detonator ingeniously arranged so that it would explode on impact.

Arrested as the suspected Guy was a young chemical technician, Rafael Velasquez. When he complained that the ordinary jail cells were cold, he was removed to detective headquarters. There he posed as a detective, escaped through the front door.

The police learned from the small son of a cook in the monastery adjoining the Cathedral that the choirmaster, a Christian Brother, had been storing bombs in his cell. Irrepressible Bogotanos, recalling how another of the Brothers had been blown up last February when a bomb exploded in his pocket, dubbed the order "Cuerpo de Bomberos" (a pun, meaning either Fire Department or Bombers' Corps).

One newspaper, El Siglo, property of Colombia's most choleric orator, Laureano Gomez (who went into self-imposed exile following the Presidential abduction last summer), roared that "arrests of clergymen violated the Concordat with the Vatican." But the rest of the press saved its condemnation for the plotters.

Cried Archbishop Ismael Perdomo: "Criminally sacrilegious!"

Cried Foreign Minister Alberto Lleras: "What insensateness!"

The election preparations proceeded quietly.

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