Ernest Loesser

   Authors

       Adam Pendelton
       Arthur

       Brian Belott
       Chad Faries
       Christopher Patton
       Christopher Stackhouse
       Dan Golden
       Elisabeth Kinsey
       Ernest Loesser
       Frank Fields
       Henry Williams
       Jayson Iwen
       Jenny Benjamin Smith
       Kathleen Eull
       Kevin Gallagher
       Matthew Chase
       Pearl Blauvelt
       Timothy Marvel Hull


La Violencia

 

The city rests at the base of twin peaks
Guadalupe and Monseratte
both capped with matching churches.
These are the emerald slopes
of the Cordillera Oriental.
Despite the occasional cathedral or palace
carved from imported marble
the city is built no taller than three stories
and predominantly of red brick.
Cafes, nightclubs, and department stores
line the city’s central boulevards.
There is industry beyond its borders:
mining, manufacturing, and agriculture.
The tobacco, plantain, and cotton crops
benefit from the mild climate
that lingers at 57 degrees Fahrenheit.
Towards the city’s southwest there is
a germinating patch of shanty towns,
whose inhabitants have abandoned the interior lands
for the sanctuary of the city.
At El Dorado International Airport
delegates arrive, the convene
at embassies and hotels in the city’s center.
This is Bogota, Colombia, April 1948.
Representatives from across Latin America
are attending the 9th Inter-American Conference
and are prepared to sign into effect
the Organization of American States.
Among the crowd is Jorge Eliecer Gaitan,
a lawyer, presidential candidate, and a
citizen of indigenous ancestry.
Gaitan’s facade is distinctly Colombian,
dark skinned, broad shouldered,
and persuasive.
He has rallied the farms, the ports,
the mines and factories
in the farthest reaches of the Republic.
“I am not a man, I am a people,” he says.
Gaitan had delivered to 40 million natives
the hope that Colombia can take its first steps
away from feudalism and avoid
another civil war.
Today Gaitan is scheduled for lunch with Fidel Castro,
a young student agitator from Cuba.
Outside his office Gaitan does not notice
Juan Roa waiting at the corner,
a disheveled, coughing, and hungry man.
The Latin Princip draws a pistol from his jacket
and delivers shots to Gaitan’s
head, chest, and lungs.
The state inquiry determined
Roa was a nobody,
a mentally unsound bum
with visions of grandeur
and a grudge against Gaitan.
The mob is restless now, the mob swells.
It releases El Bogotaza, a spasm of rioting
throughout the 400 year old city.
In the 19th Century Colombia experienced
a series of eight civil wars.
During the War of 1000 Days, a bandit named
Jose del Carmen Tejeiro was honored as
a new patron saint across the countryside.
Tejeiro secured his place in the prayers
of Colombia’s peasantry for his perfectionism
when humiliating and maiming the landed classes.
When Gaitan’s body fell, gun shots repulsed the crowd,
and the bandits returned to posses once again
the forested hills and unprotected plains.
The bandits take traditional names: Revenge,
Black beard, Sparks,
and Sure Shot.
There are few escape routes from the city now
and the bandits quickly perfect
the art of terrorism.