Biography general gustavo rojas pinilla biografia

19th President of Colombia (1953–1957)

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Rojas and the second or maternal family name is Pinilla.

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (12 March 1900 – 17 January 1975) was a Colombian armygeneral, civil engineer and politician who ruled as 19thPresident of Colombia in a military dictatorship from June 1953 to May 1957.

Rojas Pinilla gained prominence as a colonel during La Violencia, the period of civil strife in Colombia during the late 1940s and early 1950s that saw infighting between the ruling Conservatives and Liberal guerillas, and was named to the cabinet of Conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez.

In 1953, he mounted a successful coup d'état against Ospina's successor as president, the extreme right-wing Laureano Gómez Castro, imposing martial law. Seeking to reduce political violence, he ruled the country as a military dictatorship, allying himself with trade unionists, implementing infr