"The Horrible Night Is Over"

President Laureano Gomez, a harsh, angry, forbidding man, ruled.Colombia (pop.: 12,000,000) with a will so stern that other men instinctively cringed and obeyed him. More than any other Colombian of this century, he dominated his country's life. But one afternoon last week, ten of the Colombian army's tanks clanked up and took positions around his modest suburban house, and then--simply, surprisingly--Laureano Gomez, 64, slid like a wilted leaf down history's drainpipe.

That night Lieut. General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, 53, the chief of the armed forces who had sent the tanks, named himself Acting President. The Colombian army, almost unique in Latin America for its 87-year record of staying out of politics, had lost patience and taken over.

Inflammatory Statesman. The presidency Laureano Gomez lost had been the goal of his entire life. As far to the right as his friend, Spain's Franco, he led and symbolized Colombia's Conservative Party during its long years out of power. In 1945, when the Liberals split over presidential candidates, he pushed the Conservatives' silver-haired Mariano Ospina Perez into office. Ospina, under the willful thumb of Gomez, felt obliged to return the favor in 1949. Clamping on a state of siege, using military police to drive Liberals from the rural polls, Ospina dutifully engineered Laureano's election.

Gomez never lifted martial law, instead used it to press a bloody civil war with the hated Liberals out in the countryside. The war brought death to perhaps 20,000 people. Never relenting, Gomez drove the Liberals clear out of public life. Struck down by two heart attacks, he went into partial retirement, gave some administrative chores to Acting President Roberto Urdaneta Arbelaez, but kept the real power for himself.

Cool Officer. That is how matters stood late last year, when General Rojas Pinilla, a career officer of moderate Conservative sympathies, returned to Bogota from duty with the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington. What he saw shocked him. His friend Ospina, having announced new presidential ambitions for 1954, was being hounded out of public life by Gomez. The fighting with Liberal guerrillas was still going on, and Rojas' army was being forced to carry out the government's share of the butchery. Laureano was preparing an extremist constitution on the Spanish-Portuguese model, which would make the President all-powerful.

Big, straight-talking General Rojas, an engineer officer with a record of 33 years' service, must have looked to Gomez like one man who might stand up to him. He demanded that Acting President Urdaneta fire the army chief. Urdaneta made out a retirement order--to go into effect the minute Rojas left Bogota airport last April on an airline junket to Germany. Rojas' baggage was already on the plane when a loyal officer brought word of the order. He canceled the flight, and the firing was held off for the time being, to avoid trouble with the army.

Sunny Spain. Last week, though still in bad health, Laureano Gomez decided to force the issue. He stalked into the Presidential Palace and abruptly resumed the full presidency, ousting Urdaneta. Implacable as ever, he immediately fired Rojas. The general, weekending at a country town, got the word by telephone, flew back to Bogota, went to a battalion barracks in the heart of the city and waited. Soon the new Minister of War, named by Gomez that morning, arrived to take charge; Rojas quietly arrested him. Then the general sent tanks and troops into the city. In an hour, without a single killing or even much excitement, Rojas seized the government. Gomez, under house arrest, prepared to go into exile in Spain.

That night Rojas offered the presidency to Ospina, then Urdaneta. When both declined, he took the title for himself, pending new elections, and set up an all-Conservative cabinet including three brother officers. Over the radio from the palace, he promised "clean elections" and "no more bloodshed, no more quarrels among the sons of Colombia." He also pledged scrupulous observance of all international obligations and sent personal greetings to the Colombian battalion in Korea, the only Latin American contingent fighting with the United Nations forces.

Colombia threw off angry-eyed old Laureano Gomez with general rejoicing. This week 30,000 people gaily jammed narrow Seventh Avenue to cheer for the tall, ruddy general on the palace balcony. Liberals saw the hope of an end to Laureano's hinterlands slaughter. At Ospina's house, when the news came, drinks flowed and guests gathered, and the greeting they all used was a quotation from the national anthem: "The horrible night is over."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.