Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo
Alfonso López Pumarejo (Honda, Tolima, January 31, 1886-London, November 20, 1959) was a Colombian businessman, politician, thinker, and diplomat. He served as president of the Republic of Colombia in two periods.
He never obtained a professional degree, although his training abroad allowed him to have a more contemporary vision of the world, of the economy and of politics; He returned to Bogotá in 1904, beginning to collaborate in his father's business (the prestigious Casa López), eventually undertaking the founding of the Banco Mercantil Americano in 1918, the Casa Mercantil de Ultramar and the Diario Nacional.
He was president of Colombia in two terms, first between 1934 and 1938, and then between 1942 and 1945, since he had to resign. In his first term he became known for his progressive measures, including a constitutional reform in 1936 that gave private property a social function, and in general for his government known as Revolución en Marcha.
During his second presidential term, the division of the Liberal Party and the tenacious conservative opposition challenged the president's ability to maneuver and increased general discontent, to the point that in 1944 he was imprisoned for two days in San Juan de Pasto by the rebel colonel Diógenes Gil, although this conspiracy failed. Despite this, he was forced to resign in 1945.
Several leaders from across the political spectrum have recognized the historical importance of the López Pumarejo governments for the country's development, beginning with the liberal apparatus as a whole. He is also considered one of the most important statesmen in the history of Colombia.
Biography
Alfonso López Pumarejo was born in the port municipality of Honda, in Tolima, on January 31, 1886, months before his country became a centralist state, present-day Colombia. He was the son of businessman Pedro Aquilino López and his wife Rosario Pumarejo Cotes.
Studies
He lived his childhood in Honda until 1894 when the family moved to Bogotá, where his mother died, when he was just 8 years old. His mother was educated at home and then his father was in charge of making renowned teachers such as Miguel Antonio Caro and Lorenzo María Lleras available to him at the San Luiz Gonzaga and Liceo Mercantil schools, schools of the children of businessmen at that time. His mother died prematurely in 1894, when Alfonso was 8 years old.
In early 1901, López traveled to England to continue his studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, focusing on financial education, without earning a degree. Later he traveled to the United States where he studied economics and business at the Packard School in New York, where he perfected the English language, which he mastered.
In 1904, when he was already 18 years old, López returned to Colombia to help his father in the administration of his businesses, becoming the director of the famous commercial house, Pedro A. López & Cía, from where the family controlled businesses in Honda, Manizales, Girardot and Bogotá. He later became director of his own business house, López & amp; Michelsen, in 1916, when he was 29 years old.
Political career
Along with his career as a businessman, López began to stand out as a leader of the Liberal Party, the same party that his grandfather Ambrosio had helped win its first presidential election in 1849. He first served as a deputy to the Assembly of the Lima in 1915.
In 1918 he founded and managed Banco Mercantil Americano, parent company of his companies Casa López & Samper and the Overseas Mercantile Company.
In the mid-1920s, López stood out as a political columnist for Diario Nacional and La República, from where he began to attract the attention of the ruling class, as well as among the common people, being recognized as a leader committed to the cause of his party, which was close to adjusting half a century in opposition to the "Conservative Hegemony".
Relationship with conservatism
At this time he met and became friends with the conservative leader Laureano Gómez, who was also recognized as a seasoned columnist, as well as being one of his party's parliamentary promises, despite the fact that in later years they became political rivals. López helped Gómez remove from power President Marco Fidel Suárez, who resigned in 1921.
In 1922, he held the Treasury Ministry for a few months in the government of conservative Pedro Nel Ospina. Despite being a state minister, López organized a series of conferences at the Municipal Theater of Bogotá, within which he criticized the government for abusing foreign credit and achieving what he called a "prosperity due";. That same year he was elected director of the Colombian Liberal Party in association with Generals Antonio Samper Uribe and Leandro Cuberos Niño, military veterans loyal to the Liberal Party and its leaders, the late Generals Rafael Uribe Uribe and Benjamín Herrera.
In 1925 he was elected as a representative to the chamber, remaining in office until 1930. In 1927 he was invited by the National University to give several lectures on economics and politics, but he could not continue with the lectures due to the violent repression that the The conservative government of Miguel Abadía Méndez exercised against him, since in his conferences he raised fierce criticisms of the management of the economy and the relations of the Church with the State.
Government of Enrique Olaya
In November 1929, López was elected as Director of the Liberal Party. For the 1930 presidential elections, the conservatism failed to gather around a candidacy, and its voters debated between General Alfredo Vázquez Cobo and the poet and former minister Guillermo Valencia. This fact was seen by López as the opportunity to recover the presidency for liberalism.
Knowing that his candidacy could provoke the conservative union (due to his frank belligerence against the regime), López promoted and coordinated the candidacy of the Colombian ambassador to the United States, Enrique Olaya Herrera, a prominent liberal who on several occasions he had served as a minister in the Conservative governments and did not generate much suspicion among the leaders of that party. The elections were won by Olaya. Olaya's victory led López to be re-elected director of liberalism in 1930.
During Olaya's government, López had an outstanding participation as a diplomat, although not from any specific position, but as the president's delegate for various transcendental issues, such as the peace negotiation with Peru after the 1932 war. López's success in handling the border situation led to his being profiled for a presidential candidacy in 1933.
Presidential candidacy
With the success achieved by Olaya during his government, and with López at the head of Liberalism, the party united around López's presidential candidacy, who had the support of the former president to continue his work. For its part, the Conservative Party, anticipating the overwhelming majority that the liberal candidate would obtain, decided to abstain from participating, by decision of Laureano Gómez.
Facing only the indigenous leader Eutiquio Timoté, a symbolic candidate of the Colombian Communist Party, López was elected by almost one million votes, which represented the largest number of votes recorded up to then in the country's history and which would only be beaten fifteen years later by Laureano Gómez, when at that time it was the liberals who abstained from participating.
First Presidency (1934-1938)
In his first presidency, López stimulated public finances through a tax reform, the creation of unions, fought to improve Colombian education (including his great contribution to the National University), promoted a controversial constitutional reform in agrarian matters in 1936, and expanded the country's international relations.
During his government, he conceived and carried out a set of reforms in the constitutional, agrarian, tax, judicial, university, labor and international policy spheres. His government received the name "Revolution on the Move", a concept given by López in his inauguration speech in 1934 as " the duty of the statesman to carry out by peaceful and constitutional means everything that a revolution ».
The four-year period from 1934 to 1938 was a controversy from start to finish. Each of the reforms proposed by the president aroused the alarmed reaction of a wealthy sector of the population that saw individual freedom violated. This is how the opposition to the government was concentrated, in addition to the Conservative Party, in the Church, the industrialists and the landowners.
Constitutional reform
In 1936 he partially reformed the Constitution of 1886, giving way to a new conception of the State, for which he had the leadership of his Minister of Government Darío Echandía, who as government spokesman was the great protagonist in Congress; Echandía would later also be President of the Republic. In the 1936 reform, the conception of the "gendarme State," typical of the 1886 Constitution, was changed to that of the State as an entity capable of forcing citizens to comply with their social duties. The reform was influenced by the Constitution of the Second Spanish Republic of 1931 and, for some, formulated the first statements of what later became known as the Social State of Law.
He applied the interventionist theory of the «New Deal» in economics, promoted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the United States and by the economist John Maynard Keynes from academia, thus making State interventionism constitutional: from now on, this would intervene in the country's economy, with the intention not only to rationalize it, but to give the worker protection, introducing a balance between worker-employer relations. Precisely the reform legally recognized the right to strike and the government actively promoted the formation of unions. It also established freedom of religion and the secularization of education.
The constitutional reform established the definition of property by its social function. Among the most notorious effects of this new norm is the right of the State to expropriate land, under the principle of public utility, especially in vacant or unworked land owned by landowners. Despite López's intentions to modify the structure of Colombian property, he gave in to pressure from land-owning groups, with the agrarian counter-reform in his second term.
In this context, the National Economic Patriotic Action (APEN), a political movement, was created. The movement brought together the libertarian interests of the national bipartisanship with a predominance of the liberal landowning sector, coming to be considered as the conjunction of the extreme right of both parties. The most prominent leaders of this organization were the conservative José Camacho Carreño and the liberal Juan Lozano y Lozano, and its main means of communication was the newspaper La Razón.
APEN defended private property and the economic initiative of individuals, which in their opinion, were threatened by the infiltration of socialist ideas exposed in the reforms promoted by the "Revolution on the Move".
Educational reform
During the government of López Pumarejo, Law 68 of 1935 was promoted, under the impulse of the Minister of Education and writer Jorge Zalamea. Through this reform, the land was purchased and construction began on the Ciudad Universitaria de Bogotá, to house in a single environment all the faculties and schools that made up the National University of Colombia and that were distributed throughout the city. Likewise, it promoted the integration of faculties and institutes, the endowment of sufficient financial resources, the democratization of its authorities (the rector was chosen by a higher council, in which professors and students participated), the establishment of academic freedoms, the relative autonomy, the participation of professors and students in the management of the faculty, the presence of women, the opening of new and more diverse careers, the encouragement of research, social services and the function of academic extension.
These reforms allowed the University to be at the educational vanguard of the time, under the policies of the first general secretary that López Pumarejo appointed for the campus, the intellectual Manuel Antonio Arboleda, who died in the Fúquene tragedy. In recognition, the Alfonso López Pumarejo Stadium and one of the most important auditoriums of the University bear the name of the former president.
Foreign Relations
Regarding relations with Peru, the government achieved, after almost two years of holding talks and having a debate in Congress, the approval of the Protocol of Rio de Janeiro, in 1935.
As for the United States, President López strengthened the relationship with this country, through President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom he visited in 1934, and with whom he would agree on the general aspects of the New Deal. One of the biggest challenges for López in this regard was to make national opinion understand the change in US foreign policy, previously characterized by direct military and economic intervention in Latin American countries, in the face of Roosevelt's policy, which was directed by the slogan of the "Good Neighbor".
Period between governments
After finishing his term in 1938, López traveled abroad. He remained out of the country until the beginning of 1942, when he decided to return to try a new presidential candidacy that would bring him to power for the second time.
Second nomination
The moderate sector of liberalism, led by outgoing president Eduardo Santos, did not back López, nominating prominent former minister Juan Lozano at the liberal convention, despite which López won the party's official candidacy.
The Conservative Party, headed by Gómez, considered itself incapable of winning by postulating its own candidate, so it offered support to the candidate proposed by the liberal dissidence; the name presented was that of former minister Carlos Arango Vélez. In a much closer election than the one eight years ago, López defeated Arango and obtained a second four-year term as head of the national government.
Second Presidency (1942-1943; 1944-1945)
During his second term, López was unable to muster enough strength to push through new reforms and, on the contrary, faced a landscape of very tough opposition. The generalized crisis situation caused by the Second World War created a very different environment in the country from that of its first administration; On this occasion, the impossibility of promoting medium and light industry severely slowed down the economy.
In the international field, it is worth noting the transition from neutrality in the face of World War II in the government of Eduardo Santos to the declaration of war on the Axis powers that Colombia carried out as soon as López came to power, while at the same time Colombia became one of the founders of the United Nations Organization (UN).
First resignation attempts
Dario Echandía, in his capacity as First Presidential Appointee, temporarily assumed power. President López had to request a license to accompany his wife María Michelsen to undergo cancer treatment in the United States. For this reason, Echandía, the first designated person, assumed the presidency between November 17, 1943 and May 16, 1944.
López began to offer his resignation to "provide a solution to the serious political crisis" and "as a contribution to public peace", but in March 1944 the National Liberal Directorate requested that he resume power. Then the president requested an extension of his license, and officially presented his resignation, arguing that his presence in the government was not necessary. However, the request was rejected by the Senate, so López resumed the presidency on May 16, 1944.
Failed coup
In 1942, the US ambassador to Colombia, Arthur Bliss Lane, found that President López was not popular with the military. According to the embassy's military attache, there were several reasons: his plans to reorganize the Army, his intention to reduce the number of troops to finance a nationalized and liberal police, the antipathy that his minister and cousin, Alberto López, had earned during his first term. For El Siglo, the government's policies only pursued the weakness of the National Army. By March 1943, there were already rumors of a rebellion by the National Army.
On July 10, 1944, President López was in Pasto, Nariño, being woken up in the morning by a lieutenant colonel who informed him of his arrest. Shortly after, he presented him with a paper where López would read his "voluntary resignation" and the assignment of command to Colonel Diógenes Gil. The President refused to sign it, citing his prisoner status and denying his supposed intention to resign. Then, López was taken to a hacienda where he was held incommunicado.
In view of these circumstances, Darío Echandía took control of the executive branch in his capacity as First Presidential Appointee, and decreed a state of siege, suspending the publication of El Siglo and imposing censorship, implanting dry law and curfew. He ensured the adhesion of the commanders of the Military Forces, being recognized by the troops based in Bogotá. Alberto Lleras informed the country and requested his presence in the streets. This action achieved that in several cities the citizens demonstrated for the freedom of López, who, however, was imprisoned all day, until he was released by a group of soldiers.
The highest officers had a reason for denying their support to Colonel Diógenes Gil: he was a second-level officer who had ignored the authority of his superiors. In addition, he had previously been court-martialled for cowardice during a Peruvian attack on a Colombian base in 1933.
According to Ambassador Arthur Lane, López knew about the plans for the attack. Lane found out about the plot through an officer and transferred the information to Echandía. In the opinion of the ambassador, López would have traveled to Pasto knowing the coup was being prepared, to face the situation, with the conviction that his government would come out stronger.
Lane also stated that Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, son of Laureano Gómez, had participated in the plot, preparing the leaders of the revolt on the Caribbean coast.
Labor reform
Despite all the inconveniences, López managed to implement a labor reform that he had outlined in his first administration; through its Minister of Labor, Hygiene and Social Welfare, Adán Arriaga Andrade, considered by many to be the father of Colombian labor law. In it, sections of the constitutional reform of 1936 were developed, understanding that in an economy in the process of capitalist updating, the employer-worker relationship had to be codified, since the workforce had to be organized with more stable contracting and legal systems.
Then, unionism was favored, in order to harmonize the working condition with the structural needs of industrialization, and the right to strike was guaranteed. Likewise, it established the recognition of the employment contract as an autonomous legal entity, gave the government powers to establish models that would serve as a presumptive contract and to set the minimum wage, decreed the nine-hour work day and the payment of overtime.
Constitutional reform of 1945
At the end of his term, he carried out a new constitutional reform that included the granting of citizenship to women, but without the right to vote; the prohibition for the military to vote and the decrease in the number of debates for the approval of laws, among other measures, that sought the modernization of the Colombian State.
Foreign Relations
His first international trip during his turbulent second term was to Venezuela, between October 9 and 19, 1942. López traveled to meet his counterpart, accompanied by a delegation of 9 government members. In his replacement, López left the first appointee, Carlos Lozano y Lozano, in charge, who held the presidency until López's return to Colombia.
As for the United States, it was the change in US foreign policy, previously characterized by direct military and economic intervention in Latin American countries, as opposed to Roosevelt's policy, which was directed by the slogan of «Good Neighbor".
López came to power during the Second World War, but until 1943 the country was neutral due to the peace policy of former President Santos. Neutrality ended on November 17, 1943, when the Nazis sank the schooners Resolute, Roarmar, and Ruby. The government then proceeded to declare war on the Axis powers on November 27, 1943, and German citizens were rounded up. in a hotel in Fusagasugá and in a house in Cachipay for the rest of the war.
Controversies
Mamatocus Case
Francisco A. Pérez 'Mamatoco', a former boxer who had also been a sports trainer at the service of the Colombian National Police and who published the weekly La Voz del Pueblo in Bogotá, He was assassinated on July 15, 1943 in the José Santos Chocano park in the Magdalena neighborhood, in Teusaquillo, with 19 stab wounds in the back.
In 1941, Pérez had been involved with General Eduardo Bonitto in an alleged coup attempt against then-President Eduardo Santos. The boxer was jailed for several months, In a report prior to Pérez's death, FBI Director John Edgar Hoover informed the Colombian government about a possible coup against Alfonso López. His reports referred to the preparation of an "imminent" "Argentine-style" coup, under the organization of the Conservative Party and the support of Nazi Germany. The statement contained names of soldiers, priests, and highlighted the "dangerous activities" of Perez.
The newspaper El Siglo stated that they had killed Pérez to silence the fact that he was uncovering the scandals of the regime and the presidential family. From this arose the interest of this newspaper, directed by Laureano Gómez, in affirming that such an execution was a state crime. And that is why Gómez arranged for the question: "Who killed Mamatoco?" to appear daily in his newspaper.
The courts concluded that the perpetrators of the crime were police second lieutenant Santiago Silva and agents Rubén Bohórquez and Oliverio Ayala, and that the mastermind was police major Luis Carlos Hernández Soler. According to the judge, the motive was the fear that Pérez would reveal the irregularities committed by Hernández to his subordinates.The material authors were convicted, but managed to escape from prison in 1948 during El Bogotazo.
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Although the real reasons for the death of 'Mamatoco' were officially clarified, various hypotheses blamed the crime on the López government. Sectors of the opposition claimed that Pérez was investigating the death of a policeman in the national park, which occurred when the officer surprised Pedro López, one of the president's sons, with a woman inside a car, for which he would have been assassinated for prevent him from divulging it. It was also speculated that 'Mamatoco' he planned to denounce internal anomalies of the government. For his part, Laureano Gómez affirmed that Pérez knew of the relationship of one of the president's sons with the wife of an ambassador and would have tried to blackmail the government not to reveal said information, for which the the president himself would have ordered his assassination.
Initially, renowned judge Enrique Vargas was assigned to the case, but he was later replaced by a new government-commissioned investigator. On January 31, 1944, Vargas had accepted new testimony from someone who witnessed the crime of & #39;Mamatoco' and requested the arrest of several senior police officers, and some officials of the Ministry of the Interior. The government then rescinded the judge's request and replaced him in the case, arguing that the new testimony was fabricated.
El Siglo accused Minister Alberto Lleras of having transferred the file on the murder of 'Mamatoco' a judge friend of his, which led the defendant to sue Gómez for slander. Consequently, Gómez was detained for several hours, on February 9, 1944, which caused disorders in Bogotá by followers of conservatism. When Gómez appeared before the judge, he refused to make statements arguing that, if the judge was being manipulated by the government, he could not wait for a fair trial, and that if the judge was independent, any statement from him would result in his replacement. Pérez's assassination shocked the country and was one of the reasons for the resignation of Alfonso López to the presidency in 1945.
Scandals of the López family
The difficulties for President López were largely made up of situations of family origin, since his wife, María Michelsen, was sick with cancer, which caused the president to travel abroad several times in search of medical attention, while his The eldest son, Alfonso, was involved in some scandals linked to his private businesses, for which he had taken advantage, according to Laureano Gómez and some members of the opposition, of his status as "Son of the Executive".
Except for his participation as a councilor for Engativá, in 1938, López Michelsen stayed away from politics while his father was president. However, in 1942, when German assets were seized under the Second World War, López Michelsen bought the Tolima Thresher from a German citizen. The president's son managed to get the Minister of Finance to issue a resolution in fifteen days through which the government authorized the sale of the company to Banco Comercial Antioqueño.
In September 1943, representative Silvio Villegas accused López Michelsen of benefiting from the transaction of the shares of the Dutch company Handel, the largest shareholder of the Bavaria brewery in Colombia, which had been frozen as a result of the Nazi occupation from the Netherlands. The accusations were disproved by the then minister Carlos Lleras Restrepo in the Senate.
Since 1938, López Michelsen represented the shareholders of Bavaria and therefore assumed the responsibility of selling the frozen shares. The matter began when Enrique Caballero Escobar and his partner, Luis Buendía, took the proposal to López Pumarejo for the purchase of Handel shares. López Michelsen was invited to the meeting that Escobar and Buendía held with his father. The idea was that once acquired they would be in control of Bavaria and then they could sell them at a good price on the market.
The impact of the scandal was decisive in the resignation of López Pumarejo as president. Another reason for the scandal was the López family summer house known as "Las Monjas", where the Minister of War invested public funds to build accommodation for members of the presidential guard.
Final resignation
On June 26, 1945, President López told Congress about the serious public order situation and the "disregard of liberal directives for solving national problems." For its part, conservatism demanded that the government present evidence of its alleged participation in the Pasto coup. In this context, a court revoked an arrest warrant against Laureano Gómez, which had been issued for his alleged participation in the Pasto affair. A short time later, Eduardo Santos resigned from the Liberal Directorate and publicly announced his disagreements with the president.
All these incidents led López to present his resignation from the presidential position in 1945. Thus, he offered his resignation as a "contribution to bring about the political agreement that my government has sought in vain", and he reiterated his request on July 19 indicating the same purpose, but this time attaching the resignation of those appointed. Under these circumstances, Congress accepted the executive's resignation, and elected Alberto Lleras to finish the term. The new Presidential Appointee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, took office on August 7, 1945.
Post-government
In 1946 the liberals lost power, when the candidates Gabriel Turbay and Jorge Eliecer Gaitán faced each other. That same year, and by designation of the conservative president Mariano Ospina Pérez, Alfonso López presided over the Colombian delegation at the United Nations; in this assembly and within the Security Council (of which he became president in 1948) he performed a constructive and outstanding role.
He withdrew from his diplomatic functions when Ospina closed Congress in November 1949, and returned to the country to support the liberal opposition. However, his former collaborator Darío Echandía did not run in the presidential elections of that year (advanced by the chaos of El Bogotazo) due to lack of guarantees for his life and safety, and Laureano Gómez was elected president of the country. From the beginning López opposed him.
On Saturday, September 6, 1952, his house was burned down and looted by conservative fanatics, after the death of a party activist at the hands of liberals, resulting in his house being burnt down in the fire, and leaving many of his documents destroyed. In the aftermath of the fires, López fled with his family to Mexico.
López supported the coup d'état by General Rojas Pinilla in 1953, as a measure to put an end to the right-wing extremism of Laureano Gómez, returning to the country to do so, but when the new president began to become authoritarian and dictatorial, he withdrew his support and launched the opposition, fighting several ideological battles in hiding. However, he had to go into exile again due to the persecution of the dictatorship, settling in the United Kingdom.
National Front
From exile, he promoted the union of the two great parties to recover democracy, which led to the Benidorm and Sitges pacts, which allowed the fall of Rojas, and the advent of the Military Junta; It should be noted that it was the first time in more than thirty years that López Pumarejo and Laureano Gómez worked politically together, which was crucial, being the most recognized political patriarchs of the country, to ward off the historic agreement that gave rise to the National Front.
López also participated in the joint committee that the Military Junta convened in 1957 to restore democracy to the country. Thanks to this, in 1958, his 1945 presidential designee, Alberto Lleras Camargo, became president of Colombia.
On May 5, 1959, López delivered what is remembered as his last speech, during an event in which the academic authorities of the National University of Colombia granted him the title of "Doctor Honoris Causa"; and the medal of merit. The speech was completely preserved in the archives of the National University, where López spoke about his career, from his birth to date.The event was attended by his old rival, former president Laureano Gómez, and the rector Mario Laserna Pinzón.
In those days, President Lleras Camargo appointed him ambassador to the United Kingdom, a position he resigned on November 1, 1959, due to the deterioration of his state of health, which had already worsened over the months. he settled in London with his second wife, whom he had married there in 1953.
Death
Alfonso López Pumarejo died at the age of 73 in his London residence, on the afternoon of Friday, November 20, 1959 at 6ː52 in the afternoon (1ː52 in the afternoon Colombia time) while he was sleeping in his room, afflicted with a cold that kept him in bed all day and in a drowsy state. The news was known in Colombia through the ambassador to the United Kingdom, Pablo Samper.
As was his last will, his body was repatriated to Colombia, as he intended to return to the country and settle in Medellín, when his health allowed it. On November 29, his remains arrived at the Techo Airport in Bogotá on board of the presidential plane, provided by President Lleras. The next day he was buried in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá. That day the Colombian workers' committees held a symbolic 15-minute strike to honor the remains of the former president, who was important in the union cause when he was alive.
Private life
Regarding his relationships in private life, López was close to important figures such as Enrique Olaya Herrera (his fellow student at the Liceo Mercantil), Eduardo Santos (who later became his biggest opponent), the liberal journalist from the home of El Espectador Luis Cano Villegas, and the diplomat Luis Eduardo Nieto Caballero. Among his hobbies was livestock, which he promoted during his government.
Relationship with Laureano Gómez
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He also established a solid friendship with the conservative leader Laureano Gómez, whom he had known since the 10s, and with whom he met to discuss politics. Years later, especially when Gómez was president, López withdrew his support.
During the government of the conservative president Marco Fidel Suárez, Gómez found himself in a sector contrary to this within the same party and found in López the ideal support to find a way to remove him from power; This is how in 1921, Gómez denounced in Congress that the president had sold his salary and accused him of indignity, while López showed the evidence in the media; in November of the same year they achieved their goal with the resignation of Suárez from the presidency.
His alliance with Gómez would not last long, because years later when each one became the maximum leader of his Party, they would be staunch contradictors.
Family
Alfonso was a member of two prestigious Colombian families, on the one hand the businessmen of the López family, and on the other wealthy landowners of the Pumarejo family.
His father was Pedro Aquilino López, a prominent businessman in the commerce and finance sectors, a native of Bogotá, who served as a congressman in the early years of the century XX. Pedro was the son of the artisan Ambrosio López, an influential tailor who managed to organize a trade association in 1840. His mother was Rosario Pumarejo, daughter of the wealthy businessman Sinforoso Pumarejo Quirós, an important political leader in his region and renowned folklorist, who held the position of prefect of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, where he also had land, under the presidency of the conservative Manuel María Mallarino. She was also the daughter of Josefa María Cotes, related to the Oñate family, an important musical clan from Valledupar.
Alfonso was the eldest of eight (8) children, his siblings being Eduardo, Miguel, Pedro Nel, Paulina, Rosario, Sofía and María López Pumarejo. His father was prematurely widowed in 1894, and he married the cousin of his late wife, Isabel Smith Pumarejo. From her come Alfonso's half-siblings, Santiago and Elisa López Smith.
Marriage and offspring
Alfonso married twiceː The first with the scientist María Michelsen Lombana, and the second with Olga Dávila Alzamora.
María Michelsen was the niece of banker Jaime Michelsen Uribe, founder of Grupo Grancolombiano, who would become popular in the 1980s due to a stock market scandal that landed him in prison. Jaime, in turn, was the son and grandson of bankers of Jewish descent. On the other hand, María Michelsen was also the niece of the liberal politician José María Lombana.
With María Michelsen, Alfonso had five (5) childrenː María, Alfonso, Mercedes, Pedro and Fernando López Michelsen. Alfonso López Michelsen became President of Colombia and for more than twenty years he came to exercise, like his father, a tutelary and guiding role over his Party and over the country's politics in general.
His grandchildren Alfonso and Juan Manuel López Caballero, and María Mercedes Cuéllar López have developed intense political careers that have kept the legacy of the former president alive. Also his great-niece, Clara López Obregón (daughter of her nephew Álvaro López Holguín and niece of Alejandro Obregón Roses) has excelled in Colombian politics, but on the left wing.
Other of his famous grandchildren are the journalist Felipe López Caballero, who was married to the dressmaker and journalist Pilar Castaño, a key man behind the magazine Semana.
López was widowed in 1949, he married Olga Dávila Alzamora, widow of Koppel (who was ancestor of the Michelsen family) in London in June 1953, and was married to her until her death in 1959. Olga was the daughter of older than businessman José Domingo Dávila Pumarejo, who was the nephew of his grandfather, Sinforoso Pumarejo Quirós, so Alfonso was a relative of Olga's.
Tributes
López Pumarejo has been the subject of various tributes since his death. In 1969, with the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of his death, President Carlos Lleras Restrepo issued Decree 1918 of 1969, to renew the tributes in his honor.
His birthplace, in Honda, has been turned into a museum in honor of his memory and is one of the main attractions in the sector. At his final residence (in London), there is also a plaque commemorating his life and work attached to one of the walls of the building. In Bogotá and Honda (Tolima) there are public schools named after him.
The National University of Colombia has dedicated itself to keeping his memory, and even named one of its auditoriums after him, as well as a convention center at the same institution. The conversations and publications they make to commemorate it are also frequent.
In 1967, the directors of the National University, and as a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the institution, commissioned a sculpture of López from the artist Feliza Bursztyn. The work could only be inaugurated until 2009. The inauguration of the work was delayed after several years of postponement and the artist's flight to Mexico due to the persecution she was subjected to by the president of the time Julio César Turbay.
Place names
The soccer stadium of the Ciudad Universitaria de Bogotá (of which the Nacional is a part) also bears the name of Alfonso López Pumarejo. The soccer stadium in the city of Bucaramanga was also baptized in his name. Valledupar's Plaza Mayor was renamed in his name, as was the city's airport. The Alfonso López square is famous for being the headquarters of the Vallenato Festival, founded by his son, Alfonso López Michelsen, in 1968, when he served as governor of the department of Cesar.
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