Blood & Ballots

Rifle-toting, steel-helmeted police stood guard this week while Conservative voters dutifully queued up to mark their ballots at the polls. In an uncontested election, the Conservative government was applying the final constitutional touch to its relentless drive to elevate its arch-conservative leader, Laureano Gomez, into Colombia's presidency.

Election day passed in relative calm. Fumbling Liberals, who had already withdrawn their presidential candidate, Dario Echandia, in protest at government indifference to violence (TIME, Nov. 14), called for a three-day general strike. Though some railroads were affected in the provinces, the main results of the strike in Bogota were a shortage of taxicabs and the nonappearance of the Liberal newspapers. Electricity, telephone and water service continued under guard.

Bullfight. The sense of an approaching climax kept feelings high. Liberals flocked to Carrera Septima, Bogota's main street, and defied the government ban on demonstrations by gibing at the police and cheering for their party. One enthusiast amused the crowd by making bullfight passes with his coat at a clumsy young policeman charging him with a rifle butt. The cop finally fired from the hip into the air; the torero and his aficionados fled.

The most tragic occurrence of the campaign windup involved the Liberal Party's ex-candidate himself. Echandia had been making a point of strolling about downtown Bogota unguarded, in silent contrast to Laureano Gomez' self-imposed seclusion in his son-in-law's tightly barred home. On the first day of the general strike he set out accompanied by his brothers, Vicente and Domingo, and 19 Liberal politicians.

Gunfight. When the party reached the tiny, treeless Plaza San Martin, dominated by an equestrian statue of the Argentine hero, two military policemen rounded the corner. A shot was fired. More soldiers raced up, more bullets flew. Echandia and some of his followers dropped to the ground; others scrambled behind the statue. After five minutes, an army officer pulled up in a car and stopped the shooting.

Two minor Liberal politicians died where they fell in the plaza; one other Liberal and a policeman were slightly wounded. Echandia's brother Vicente was rushed to the Clinica del Sagrado Corazon. There, two hours later, Dario Echandia saw his brother die. The funeral was held on the day that triumphant Conservatives were electing Laureano Gomez President. Nearly 25,000 Liberals marched in the cortege, and there were excited shouts of "Down with the dictatorship!" and "To the Palace!" But nobody went to the Palace; troops and tanks had closed off the streets four blocks away.

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