Aftermath

An uneasy peace, punctuated by occasional snipers' bullets, returned last week to battered Bogota. The Colombian Federation of Labor lifted its general strike. Trains ran again, bringing food into the city. Gangs of workers shoveled rubble in every street. While some plain citizens dug among the ruins for their belongings, others searched the cemeteries to find their dead. In the upheaval touched off by the assassination of Liberal Chieftain Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, at least 500 had been killed, 2,000 injured.

The International Conference of American States, whose sessions had been so rudely interrupted by the outbreak, moved to the suburb of Chapineros and resumed its meetings in a high-school library. Like the scene, the atmosphere had changed. Now the chief delegates met around a long table, with Colombia's new Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuleta Angel presiding at one end and two Colombian officers clutching Tommy guns at the other. At one side sat U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, his personal interpreter stage-whispering every word in translation, until the headphones system could be rigged up again.

The thorny economic issues (TIME, April 12) had been put aside for a special conference to be called later this year. But debate was as long-winded as ever. By eleven to ten, delegates finally chose "Organization of American States" as their hemispheric system's new name. This week, still talking, they prepared to move back to the largely undamaged Capitolio, to adopt the new organization's charter.

Widow's Might. In a cream-colored stucco house in suburban Teusaquillo, things had changed, too. There, beside the bier of her murdered husband, Senora Amparo Jaramillo de Gaitan, 35, sat with her daughter Gloria, 10. For days she refused to permit his burial unless Conservative President Mariano Ospina Perez first resigned. Even if she relented, the wobbly government could hardly risk a huge public funeral. Finally Dario Echandia, Liberal leader in Ospina's new cabinet, arranged a solution that Senora de Gaitan accepted: a private funeral this week at Gaitan's home, with burial of the body in the house which would then become a national shrine. The block in which it stands would be converted into a national park. In the center of the park the government would raise a statue of the martyred leader.

Not many new facts had come to light about Gaitan's death. On the killer's battered body were found the identification papers of a 25-year-old religious fanatic named Juan Roa Sierra, but there was serious doubt that they were the dead man's own papers. Everybody agreed that the Communists had had a hand--right up to the elbow--in the affair. Secretary Marshall had denounced "the same definite pattern which provoked strikes in Italy and France and is endeavoring to prejudice the situation in Italy's elections." In Washington, the Central Intelligence Agency released secret reports from Bogota that Communists had planned to sabotage the conference. But nobody had succeeded in proving that Communists had plotted the uprising.

Palace Revolution? One thing that was clear was that Gaitan's Liberals had tried to convert a spontaneous popular upsurge into a political revolution. The leader: Dario Echandia, now Interior Minister. When Echandia rode a tank to the presidential palace the first night of the rioting, he had gone to demand the President's resignation. Ospina refused, and through the night the Communist-led mob had killed and burned and looted. By next day, Echandia saw that only the Communists would gain by continued bloodshed, and agreed to head a coalition cabinet under Ospina. He went on the radio to call for order and peace. His appeal, along with the loyalty of the army, did the trick.

Sipping their tintos (black coffees) in bullet-chipped cafes this week, Bogotanos reviewed the tragic days and looked to the days ahead. One safe prediction: in the days to come, Dario Echandia would be the man to watch.

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