78 years since the assassination of Gaitán: The day the oligarchy shot the hope of the Colombian people

Published at: 09/04/2026 08:38 AM

On April 9, 1948, the labor and peasant leader, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a jurist, writer and politician who decided to fight for the presidency of the New Granada nation, was assassinated in the city of Bogotá, raising the flags of struggle of the majorities against the Santanderian and Pitiyanqui oligarchy.

Born in the city that saw him die at the hands of a hit man, Gaitán built a reputation as a defender of popular causes, which he consolidated thanks to his interventions in the debate on the 1928 Banana Massacre.

This reputation as a popular leader earned him enemies within the Colombian ruling class, which, faced with the imminence of his victory in the elections of that year 48, decided to carry out his assassination, which took place on the afternoon of that Friday, April 9, when a man named Juan José Serra shot him with a revolver at the exit of the Agustín Nieto building, where the leader was staying.

His death provoked the anger of the Colombian people who saw how the murderous bullet of the oligarchic right killed their hope, so after lynching the murderer, thousands flocked to the doors of the Nariño Palace, to demand a response to this vile action, which, when denied, sparked the greatest rebellion that ever erupted in the history of the New Granada nation, which was called “El Bogotazo”.

This popular uprising became the spark of the uprising of an insurgency that has kept this country submerged in a long war between guerrillas and the State that has continued for more than seven decades, thus fulfilling the omen that one day Gaitán made when he said: “No hand of the people will rise against me and the oligarchy will not kill me, because it knows that if it does, the country will tip over and the waters will take fifty years to return to their normal level.”

Today, 78 years after this vile murder, which would mark a practice that became commonplace within the oligarchy that dominates Colombia by force of repression and death, in the throats of the humble of this land that lies dominated by imperialism, the rebellious voice of Gaitán reemerges to say: “For moral restoration, for the defeat of the oligarchy, for our victory, to the burden!”

Mazo News Team