When Laureano Gómez returned to Colombia from exile in Spain, on June 24, 1949, he greeted the assembled Conservatives with the Fascist salute and the Falange cry of greeting, "Presente!"
Hispanidad by John D. Martz
MANY YEARS HAD GONE into the formation of Laureano Gómez' political philosophy, and by the time he achieved total power, the so-called "invulnerable Siegfried line of the Conservative Party" was totally committed to a strongly authoritarian traditionalism. Philosophically he was linked to the ideals of hispanidad and Catholicism, to a constitutional corporate state reminiscent of fascism. While such an orientation is not common in contemporary Latin America, it has been historically of considerable influence. Gómez' exposure through the years finally led him to extreme reactionary thought and a personal scorn of usual democratic traditions.
During the 1930's there were considerable incursions of Fascistic ideology in Latin America, reflecting to a degree the images of the Spanish Civil War in the Hispanic world. Although European fascism was perhaps too exotic a product to grow deep roots in the Western hemisphere, it had an appeal that struck sympathetic chords. Hispanidad, as embraced by General Franco, was narrowly partisan and strongly fascistic, and his falange was offensive to many Latin Americans. Yet there was an inevitable transfer of ideas across the Atlantic, and falange parties sprang up as byproducts of the Spanish conflict.
The ideology of falangismo was based upon an unholy trinity of hispanidad, military authoritarianism, and unchallenged Catholicism.
Appealing to national patriotism while attacking the twin "imperialisms" of capitalism and communism, falangismo in the late 1930's and early 1940's naturally took the form of support for the Axis colleagues of General Franco. In Colombia, this was agreeable to Laureano Gómez. He had publicly shown loyalty to the Franco regime as early as 1937. During a visit of Franco officials that year, the Conservatives arranged a banquet at which Dr. Gómez stated his approval: "Spain, marching forward as the sole defender of Christian civilization, leads the Western nations in the reconstruction of the empire of Hispanidad, and we inscribe our names in the roster of its phalanxes with unutterable satisfaction.... We bless God who has permitted us to live in this era of unforeseen transformations, and who has given it to us to utter, with a cry that springs from the very depths of our heart: 'Up Catholic, Imperial Spain!' "
By the start of the 1940's Dr. Gómez was, as we saw in Chapter 6, firmly pro-Axis in allegiance. John Gunther reported that Gómez' "ideas, his instincts, his sympathies are all bitterly anti-United States."' He allegedly organized a small military falange within the Conservative party, and his El Siglo rendered full support to both Hitler and Mussolini. In 1942 he declared in the paper that Axis control of the Panama Canal was preferable to that of the United States, and officials at the United States Embassy believed him to have received Nazi funds for the construction of a new, ultra-modern plant for his paper. In Spain, where the foreign minister was criticizing Latin American republics for supporting the Allies despite a heritage of the spirit and blood of Spain, there were only favorable comments regarding Laureano Gómez.
The shift of pro-Axis views was dictated by the exigencies of politics, and Gómez somehow escaped the taint that might have been attached to him once Colombia declared for the Allies and accepted the various resultant wartime shortages and restricted international trade. But Dr. Gómez held firmly to his basic beliefs, embodying as they did the values of discipline, order, and authority. Thus he turned with increasing ardor to the example of Spain and in time revealed through public pronouncements his concept as imposed upon Colombian life.
To Dr. Gómez the national system should embrace the unquestioned rule of a landed elite. Bolivarian rule by an elite would permit the elimination of elections, "the scourge of all republics." Gómez was not enamoured of universal suffrage and was perfectly willing to transcend the laws if necessary. "If the law is abnormal or inconvenient, push it to one side. . . . Retain elasticity . . . although the procedure may not always be strictly legal. The letter kills; the spirit gives life."
In a manner of speaking Gómez had slipped back four centuries in his search for an authentic hispanidad. Antonio García wrote that Gómez had not merely returned to the past, but was seeking the historical day before yesterday. From the Spanish Civil War he had learned "the methods, the use of violence, the technique of terror, the well-remembered Golden Age of the Spanish Colony. The counter-revolution refined its political objectives during the war: wipe out the Republic and force a return to things as they were in the 'imperial and Spanish era.' The Franco affiliation with Roman Catholicism also brought open involvement of the church itself, and Gómez believed that the two should be inseparable. He was perfectly willing to take refuge behind the church to maintain an essentially despotic hold upon the people.
The importance of the church connection cannot be over-emphasized. In mounting a counter-revolution casting him as the grand inquisitor of the era, Dr. Gómez became an hispanist morally and emotionally committed to the doctrine of the double sword -- church and state. "The political, social, moral, economic, and educational doctrine is that which flows from its natural fountainhead, the Roman Catholic apostolate religion. . . ." In opposing order and discipline against traditions of individualism and anarchy, his authoritarianism questioned the basic principles of democracy. As the Uruguayan Dardo Regules has written, " 'Francoism' acts under different forms, but certain aspects are always present.... It encourages strong-armed governments, especially military governments. It accentuates confusion between the Church and State, as a religious policy, and it seeks to coordinate one-man governments against democratic institutions. At heart, it is a movement of distrust in the forces of human relations and human liberties.' "
In May, 1953, Dr. Gómez wrote extensively and revealingly in the columns of El Siglo explaining his view of political society. This is perhaps the best single statement of Gómez' thought from his own pen.
Universal suffrage, inorganic and generalized in all social activities to define the direction of the State, contradicts the nature of society. The management of the State is by definition a product of the intelligence. An elemental observation shows that intelligence is not equally distributed among the members of the human species. In that aspect society resembles a pyramid whose vertex is occupied by . . . an individual of very outstanding position by his intellectual condition. Below are found those with lesser capacities, who are more numerous. Thus continues a kind of stratification of social capabilities . . . abundant in inverse proportion to the shine of intelligence, until arriving at the base . . . which supports the entire pyramid and is composed of the obscure and inept multitude, where rationality scarcely appears to differentiate between human beings and brutes. . . .
This generation must ensure that the anarchic factors encrusted in fundamental institutions be extinguished, else its subsistence will destroy now, as it did before, the greatness of the republic.
As Dr. Gómez' philosophical orientation won its outlet through his personal grip on the nation, he stood forth as an unyielding autocrat under whom Colombia approached the brink of anti-democratic, reactionary authoritarianism.
The Mechanics of OppressionWith the coils of dictatorship tightening about the body politic, coercion and controls became more open. Rural guerrilla warfare led to increasing repression, the open use of force spread, and press censorship became a significant tool of the regime. Violence was tinged with elements of religious persecution, and continued church-state cooperation made it appear even worse. These elements were all woven into the pattern that clothed but failed to hide the reactionary nature of the government.
Censorship, legally sanctioned under the existing state of siege, was slowly extended in scope and efficacy following the inauguration of Dr. Gómez in 1950. After he relinquished active control to Urdaneta Arbeláez, restrictions continued to increase in harshness, motivated in theory by the unending bloodshed in the countryside. Before Urdaneta Arbeláez stepped in, Gómez had issued an executive decree in April of 1951 denying radio newscasters the right to broadcast comments or oral editorials. They were limited to the mere reading of news items, which had to be presented a day in advance for possible revision by the censors.
Under Gómez the over-all censorship was largely a matter of inconvenience, particularly for the newspapers. Political information was submitted to the censors where it was accepted or infrequently rejected on a fluctuating standard that made the operation highly unpredictable.
The situation was brought to international attention on August 15, 1952, when the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) issued a report strongly denouncing the absence of press freedom in Colombia. In a report prepared by the Chicago Tribune's Jules Dubois, the redoubtable bête noire of hemispheric censorship systems, the IAPA declared that there was "no more arbitrary and politically capricious censorship exercised anywhere in the Western Hemisphere today." Pulling no punches, Dubois reported that government censorship in Colombia "is enforced by a faction of the Conservative Party with the sole purpose of perpetuating itself in power. The Government does not dare to lift censorship or to decentralize the state of siege, because it would topple in 24 hours."
The government reacted with predictable anger, and Dubois' attack failed to slow the increasing repression of the dictatorial mechanism. Virtual civil war, no closer to extermination than before, provided continuing opportunity for regulation. Furthermore, the regime continued to draw the church into national affairs. Although the clerical hierarchy had intended only to help, generally in national pacification, it found itself intimately affiliated with the Gomez-Urdaneta Arbeláez machinery.
When Laureano Gómez took office, the church tended to react similarly to the manner of the business class. It expected him to put down rural fighting and restore national amity while promoting the welfare of the church. Thus the Catholics were willing and even anxious to work with him. During the first six months of his administration the church extended its clerical control of education under government protection. The Colegio Nacional de San Bartolomé, previously operated on a secular basis, was handed over to the Jesuits. In Cundinamarca the local clergy were invited in writing to participate in government direction of the departmental public education. Local inspectors would be named in the municipalities because, said departmental Conservatives, "the Catholic Church needs, now more than ever, to regain its position of vigilance and control of the Catholic education of the Colombian people." Municipal boards of cinema censorship were reorganized, with clerical representatives passing on films as to their moral content.
Peasant unrest and the increasing Conservative-Liberal civil warfare inevitably fanned the flames of religious intolerance. Protestant missions in strongly Conservative regions drew increasing criticism for their aggressive proselytizing, and many uneducated countryfolk were willing to accept common rumors that the Protestants were in league with "Liberal bandits." In traditional strongholds of conservatism, violence began to recur in the name of religion. Local priests were upon occasion forthright in upholding the principle of religious freedom. This was not universally true, unfortunately, and the "diabolic confounding of religion with politics . . . one of the most sinister features of the situation," gradually heightened intemperate passions on both sides.
Attacks by government forces on rural Liberals sometimes included Protestant missionaries, and the situation was intensified while religious involvement grew. The line between political violence and religious persecution was in many cases indistinguishable, thus Protestant and Catholic partisans alike proclaimed respective innocence. Foreign observers found it just as difficult as native Colombians to reach a clear assessment of the rural religious situation.
The church, then, was proving in practice a bulwark of the Gómez regime. The civil strife in the countryside, conducted increasingly on the basis of Liberal versus Conservative, was appearing frequently as Protestant versus Catholic. While the coincidence of Liberal and Protestant sympathies exaggerated the picture of persecution, there is no real question that some persecution did in fact occur.
Two brief quotations reflect the blind hatred that was common. In early 1950 a Protestant missionary secretary wrote that "much of the present situation can be laid at the door of the Roman Catholic Church, whose leaders have taken full advantage of the situation to meddle in politics as never before, and to proclaim from their pulpits and through the press that a Liberal vote is a mortal sin." In opposition, Catholics wrote such things as "Protestantism, with its unavoidable and increased destruction, is a social disease, it is a senile debility which finds a way through the religious life of a nation. . . ."
Exerpts from Colombia: A Contemporary Political Survey by John D. Martz, University of North Carolina Press, 1962.