March, 1947

Bogotá, Colombia

In the 1946 elections, Mariano Ospina Pérez of the Conservative party won the presidency, largely because the Liberal votes were divided between two Liberal candidates who were incapable of creating a united front. The failure of the Liberal campaign came with its usual anti-establishment problems, scores of unemployed youth and disparaged workers protesting in the streets of Bogotá shouting slogans and committing vandalism. However, this time Colombia would not just sit and let cities across the nation be interrupted by ungrateful rabble-rousers. The Santa Rosa de Osos Bishop Miguel Ángel Builes spoke against the Liberal protestors and offered his support to the Conservative Party in a speech known as Lo que el cielo no perdona ("What heaven doesn't forgive"), a polemic claiming that to vote for the Liberals would send you to hell. He also spoke in support of 'removing' those sinners who voted for the crypto-communists, saying "I pray for the safety of all good people who live in Colombia, even Liberals, but we can't expect God to do all the work."

With the support of the Catholic Church and the Policía Nacional de Colombia, Mariano Ospina Pérez and the Conservative party Government used the police to repress the Liberal party protestors as much as possible. Hundreds of arrests were undertaken in the 'Protesting Period' from the 3rd to the 15th of March. Many of those arrested simply were not seen again. It was those who were seen again that was the most confronting, with a trickle of severely beaten and destitute citizens slowly emerging from the tugurios and the slums. Of course, the secret disappearances of Liberal-leaning citizens was not the only source of worry for the protestors. The Policía Nacional de Colombia also resorted to more traditional methods of violence to keep the protestors afraid. Slogans and chants were met with severe beatings, over-zealous arrests, and bullets. Of course when violence is responded to with violence, it will continue to escalate and become even more heated.

After the harrowing twelve days of protest it was said (by unofficial sources) that over four hundred citizens have gone missing, hundreds wounded, and an estimated fifty-six lives lost. The protestors could not keep up with the continual escalation of violence from the Policía and slowly but surely the protests lost their steam. Although this was considered a success by the Conservative Government and the Policía, the reality was that all they had achieved was fanning the flames of the anti-establishment movement and creating martyrs for the Liberal party. The Conservative Government did utilise the unrest to advance even more control over the cities by allowing a new Police Force section authorisation to conduct peace officer activities within the cities of Colombia.

Under a new Directive, the Carabineros Corps will be given powers of detainment, arrest, and search within the cities; a much larger zone of authority than previously held in rural areas. The newly formed division of urban Carabineros was given the name, 'Grupo de Acción Rápida', or the Rapid Reaction Group. They would be used in times of extreme unrest within the cities of Colombia and would have a dual role of public order response as well as crowd control.

It would not be long before Colombia once again broke out into protests and riots. How long though was the question and how prepared would the government be to handle an escalation of unrest...