The Strongman Falters

Dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla's barefaced drive to re-elect himself President of Colombia piled up enough opposition last week to bring it to a shaky halt. Joined to thwart the strongman's second-term ambitions, the Roman Catholic Church under Crisanto Cardinal Luque, the newly united Liberal and Conservative Parties and the belligerent university students took direct action. Caught by surprise, the President hesitated. Then he moved what he said were 35,000 troops into Bogota to regain control.

Rojas himself touched off the show of opposition by a reckless move. His secret police arrested Guillermo Leon Valencia, the joint candidate of the united Liberals and Conservatives, in Cali, and ordered him to return to his home city of Popayan. When Valencia refused, soldiers quickly surrounded the private house where he was a guest.

"Dead or Tied Up." At midnight of the first day of his imprisonment, Valencia felt a need to consult with the church, which had already given him open support (TIME. May 6). He decided to visit Cali's Auxiliary Bishop Miguel Angel Medina. Friends tried to stop him, but fiery Valencia, his toothbrush mustache bristling, shouted "I am the boss," and stalked out. Marching up to the lieutenant in command, he demanded to be taken to the bishop's palace. The bold move worked; in the course of an hour-long conversation. Monsignor Medina offered asylum in the palace, but Valencia decided to return.

At 3 in the morning, Valencia, well-known as one of the best shots in Colombia, learned that the troops were preparing: to storm the house. Fingering a .32-cal. Smith & Wesson, he went to the window. "You will have to take me out dead or tied up," he called into the darkness. "You know the kind of fight I can put up." When news of the impending fight spread through the city, a group of leading citizens dashed to the bishop to protest. By telephone, Monsignor Medina routed Cardinal Luque out of bed. Nervously aware of the church's anger, the government hurriedly called off the attack.

Balky Assembly. The brash and impulsive attempt to eliminate Valencia brought Rojas' smooth-running re-election campaign to a stop. Rojas had hand-picked a new Constituent Assembly, and the assembly quickly drew up a bill to suspend the constitutional provisions that a President must be popularly elected and cannot succeed himself. But a dispute between Military Dictator Rojas and his non-military supporters as to whether the Vice President should be a soldier or a civilian slowed the process.

Colombia-wide reaction to Valencia's arrest heightened the threat against Rojas. At the news, university students throughout the country went on a strike. In Bogota police watched tensely for five hours one morning as National University students shouted anti-government slogans, tore down pictures of the President and smashed them. Three hours later students from all over Bogota were called together on the campus of the Jesuits' Javeriana University. Perched on rooftops and hanging from windows, the students jeered as the soldiers tried to break up the rally with tear gas and streams of clothes-staining pink dye. Rojas tried to quiet the disturbance by finally releasing Valencia and issuing an ambiguous statement that, if elected, he might not finish his second term (which would run from 1958 to 1962).

Tracer Bullets. But with students surging through downtown Bogota stopping cars and chalking anti-Rojas slogans on walls, the government decided to act more harshly. Army, navy and air force troops commanded by General Rafael Navas Pardo moved into the city. With his tanks planted in the Plaza Bolivar, General Navas Pardo ordered his troops to fire tracer bullets menacingly across the night sky. Early this week, behind closed doors along unnaturally quiet streets, Bogota's citizens checked supplies of canned goods and prepared for a crisis.

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