Policy - Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala

http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/g/gaitan.htm

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala (January 23, 1903 – April 9, 1948) was a politician, a leader of a populist movement in Colombia, a former Education Minister (1940) and Labor Minister (1943–1944), mayor of Bogotá (1936) and one of the most charismatic leaders of the Liberal Party.

He was assassinated during his second presidential campaign in 1948, setting off the Bogotazo and leading to a violent period of political unrest in Colombian history known as La Violencia (approx. 1948 to 1958).

Early political career

Gaitán was active in local politics as early as 1919, when he was part of a protest movement against president Marco Fidel Suárez.

Gaitán increased his nationwide popularity following a banana workers' strike in Magdalena in 1928, in which strikers were fired upon by the army (United Fruit Historical Society) on the orders of the United Fruit Company, resulting in numerous deaths. Gaitán used his skills as a lawyer and as an emerging politician in order to defend workers' rights and called for accountability to those involved in the Santa Marta Massacre.(United Fruit Historical Society) Public support soon shifted toward Gaitán, Gaitán's Liberal Party won the 1930 presidential election.(United Fruit Historical Society)

In 1933 he created the "Unión Nacional Izquierdista Revolucionaria" ("National Leftist Revolutionary Union"), or UNIR, as his own dissident political movement after breaking with the Liberal Party.

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Political discourse

It is said that Gaitán's main political asset was his profound and vibrant oratory, often classified as populist by contemporaries and by later analysts, which attracted hundreds of thousands of union members and low-income Colombians at the time.(Wolf)  When he was a student in Rome he was influenced by Benito Mussolini's techniques for mobilising the people. (Encyclopædia Britannica Online) (United Fruit Historical Society) Bernstein considered that the promises that he made to the people were as important to his appeal as his impressive public speaking skills, promises that Bernstein felt made him almost a demagogue, and which led Bernstein to compare him with Juan Perón of Argentina. (Bernstein 1960:138)

In particular, he repeatedly divided the country into the oligarchy and the people, calling the former corrupt and the latter admirable, worthy, and deserving of Colombia's moral restoration. He stirred the audience's emotions by aggressively denouncing social, moral and economical evils stemming both from the Liberal and Conservative political parties, promising his supporters that a better future was possible if they all worked together against such evils.

In 1946, Gaitán referred to the difference between what he called the "political country" and the "national country". Accordingly, the "political country" was controlled by the interests of the oligarchy and its internal struggles, therefore it did not properly respond to the real demands of the "national country"; that is, the country made up of citizens in need of better socioeconomic conditions and greater sociopolitical freedom.

He was criticized by the more orthodox sectors of the Colombian Liberal Party (who considered him too unruly), most of the Colombian Conservative Party, the leadership of the Colombian Communist Party (who saw him as a competitor for the political affections of the masses)(1960:137). Gaitán was warned by U.S. Ambassador Beaulac on March 24, 1948 that Communists were planning a disruption of the impending conference and that his Liberal Party would likely be blamed.(Weyl 1960)

Gaitán's view of the 'people' has been considered as profoundly ambivalent by some later analysts. It is argued that, while he claimed to champion their cause, he did not see them as a social or political force capable of governing. There are instances in which he referred to the masses in explicitly pathological terms (as 'syphilitics' and 'alcoholics'), while in others he praised their virtues. This ambivalence, according to some analysts, could partly explain the extreme acts of savagery perpetrated by the peasantry during La Violencia

The subject of future land reform was also prominent in some of his speeches.

Late political career

After formally rejoining the Liberal Party in 1935, he was selected as mayor of Bogotá in June 1936, a position he held for eight months. During his administration, he tried to implement a number of programs in areas such as education, health, urban development and housing. His attempted reforms were cut short by political pressure groups and conflicts due to some of his policies (for example, an attempt to provide uniforms to taxi and bus service drivers). In September 1937 his daughter Gloria Gaitán was born.

Gaitán was named Minister of Education in 1940 under the administration of the Liberal Party's Eduardo Santos (1938–1942), where he promoted an extensive literacy campaign as well as cultural activities.

At the conclusion of the Liberal Party's national convention in 1945 he was proclaimed as "the people's candidate" in a public square, an unusual setting under the political customs at the time.

The Liberal Party was defeated in the May 1946 elections by the Conservative's Mariano Ospina Pérez (565,939 votes, president from 1946 to 1950) due to its own internal divisions, evidenced by its presenting two different candidates, Gaitán (358,957 votes) and Gabriel Turbay (441,199 votes), in that year's race.

Gaitán became leaderof the Colombian Liberal Party in 1947, when his supporters gained the upperhand in the elections for seats in Congress.This would have allowed for the Liberal Party to present a single candidate forthe 1950 elections.