Luis Carlos Galan

Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento (Bucaramanga, Santander, September 29, 1943 - Soacha, Cundinamarca, August 18, 1989) was a Colombian lawyer, economist, journalist and politician.

He was a candidate for the presidency of Colombia in 1982 and 1986 for the New Liberalism (a movement founded by himself as a derivation of the Liberal Party), and in 1989 for the Colombian Liberal Party, for the 1990 elections. He was assassinated during a event of his last presidential campaign, on August 18, 1989, by hitmen under the orders of the Medellín Cartel.

Galán was influenced by the temper of the liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, whom he always admired for his transparency and direct way of saying things. It is considered that together with Gaitán and Rafael Uribe Uribe, he was one of the great politicians of the Liberal Party in the 20th century.

Biography

Beginnings

Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento was born on September 29, 1943, in the city of Bucaramanga.

He was the third child of Cecilia Sarmiento and Mario Galán Gómez. His father was a prominent liberal leader of Santander, who was persecuted after the murder of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, for which he decided to move his large family (made up of 12 children) to Bogotá; he would become comptroller general of the Republic.

In 1950 he began his studies at the American College of Bucaramanga. In 1952 he entered the Antonio Nariño Hermanos Corazonistas School in Bogotá.

A prominent student, in 1957 he actively participated in the student protest marches against the dictatorial regime of Lieutenant General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, which led to a police arrest that led to a night in prison.

In 1960, he graduated with honors as a bachelor. In 1961 he entered the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá to study Law and Economics, he founded the university magazine Vértice in 1963 and graduated in 1968. After being recognized by former President Eduardo Santos, he is hired to work in the newspaper El Tiempo. In his work as a reporter for French May 1968, he was one of the passengers on the hijacked plane that was going to Cuba.

Political life

Through journalism he became known among the country's ruling class, being "adopted" by former Liberal president Carlos Lleras Restrepo as his political and intellectual heir.While still president, he appointed Galán to his first public office as a member of the Colombian delegation to the World Conference on Trade and Development, in New Delhi in 1969.

The following year, the conservative president, Misael Pastrana, appointed him Minister of Education, being the youngest man to access a ministry, a position in which he remained until 1972, when he moved to the Colombian embassy in Italy for four years.

In 1976 he returned to the country to co-direct the Nueva Frontera publication of former President Lleras Restrepo and to support his re-election candidacy, being elected councilor of the municipality of Oiba, Santander, where he began his political career and became publicly known (in This town was born the founder of the Liberal Party of Colombia Vicente Azuero Plata).

In the 1978 elections he won a seat for the Senate representing Santander. At that time, Lleras announced his retirement from politics and his followers see in Galán the leader who can lead to success the renewal intentions that Lleras had for the Party and his political program for the country, and it is thus that in 1979 he founded the New Liberalism movement, as an internal dissidence of the Liberal Party.

In 1980 and under the slogan of "Bogotá belongs to all its inhabitants" he won an overwhelming vote for the capital council, becoming a leader of national stature. He remained in office until 1982, when he launched his candidacy for the presidency.

First presidential candidacy

In 1982 Galán participated in the Colombian presidential elections, after the liberal convention held a year earlier had closed the doors to the debate between Galán and the chosen candidate, former president Alfonso López Michelsen. Faced with this conflict, Galán declared himself a dissident and with the help of his collaborator Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, he founded the New Liberalism party.

At the height of the presidential campaign, Galán announced the expulsion from his political movement of the candidate for the House of Representatives for Antioquia, Jairo Ortega, and his candidate, the then-unknown Pablo Escobar, due to accusations that Escobar was a drug trafficker, in full public square, in Parque Berrío. Despite this, Escobar was elected representative as Ortega's deputy, and years later he would take revenge for the incident.

In the elections, Galán only reached third place, behind the conservative Belisario Betancur (who was eventually elected president) and former president López for the liberal ruling party. The results, however, benefited the New Liberalism, which ran as an independent party, in addition to the arrival of Lara to the government as already mentioned.

Post-candidate and second presidential candidacy

His defeat allowed him to enter the Congress of the Republic as a senator along with Lara Bonilla, who in 1983 was appointed Minister of Justice by President Betancur and later assassinated in 1984, after he denounced the ties of congressman Pablo Escobar with drug trafficking and the discovery of the Tranquilandia complex. With the death of Lara, Galán lost his partner in political struggle, being replaced by Enrique Parejo González, also a member of New Liberalism.

Galán remained in the Senate until he announced his intention to run for the Presidency of the Republic to succeed Betancur.

For the 1986 elections, Galán launched his second presidential candidacy for the presidency, but later decided to withdraw his candidacy to join that of Virgilio Barco, thus favoring the union of Liberalism at the national level. In the end, Barco was the winner with an overwhelming majority, over the conservative Álvaro Gómez Hurtado.

As an important detail, Galán and Gómez faced each other in a televised debate moderated by the journalist Juan Gossaín, and which is considered the first political debate broadcast on television in the history of Colombia.

Last years

In 1987, with the mediation of former President Julio César Turbay, Galán returned to the Colombian Liberal Party, from which he had declared himself a dissident at the beginning of the decade, to participate in a referendum (instead of the liberal conventions in which he the liberal caciques handpicked the candidate) who would define the party's candidate for the 1990 Elections.

Third presidential candidacy

Attempted murder

Monument to Galan in Bogotá.

After receiving several threats starting on July 23, one day after the Liberal convention in which it was agreed to apply the popular consultation mechanism to elect the presidential candidate for the Liberal Party, Galán emerged unharmed from an attack that did not It came to fruition in Medellín on August 4, 1989, when he was preparing to give a lecture at the University of Medellín.

The attack consisted of shooting with a missile launcher, which did not happen thanks to a complaint from a citizen who reported three suspicious men inside a vehicle. In the failed attack, police officer Valdemar Franklin Quintero stood out, who immediately took Galán back to the Olaya Herrera airport. Quintero would be assassinated by order of Escobar on the same day as Galán, August 18. The attack and death of him were to be scheduled days later in Ibagué, where he would promote his presidential campaign.

Murder

Galán was assassinated on August 18, 1989, shortly before he began his speech at a public electoral event in the municipality of Soacha, Cundinamarca.The candidate arrived at the municipality at 8:30 p.m. m. and then he prepared to go up to the platform where he would give his speech. The shooting began at 8ː45 p.m. m. and the politician would receive 5 shots, of which 3 were fatal, as established later.

Tomb of Galan in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá.

He was shot to death by Jaime Eduardo Rueda Rocha, Henry de Jesús Pérez (the material authors) under the orders of Pablo Escobar, Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and Alberto Santofimio Botero on August 18, 1989. Galán would receive the shots from the lower part of the platform from where he had climbed moments before, while raising his hands to greet the people, located in the main square of the municipality of Soacha.

He was taken alive and conscious to the Bosa hospital, and was later transferred to the Kennedy Hospital in Bogotá, half an hour from the municipality, where he died despite medical efforts.

In this assassination, Soacha councilor Julio César Peñaloza Sánchez also died, who was at Galán's right side at the time of the attack and who was shot in the head. Likewise, Santiago Cuervo died, who transferred the politician to a car to be taken to the hospital and a member of Galán's escort, the third to receive the bullet wounds, dying days later. Apart from the Medellín Cartel, perpetrators of the crime, the Cali Cartel was also investigated.

Plot

It was established that Galán was the victim of a perfectly elaborated plan in which many important figures in the country were involved. To begin with, the file showed that the politician underwent a change in his security scheme days before his arrival in the municipality. The informants state that the DAS commander, Miguel Maza Márquez, appointed Lieutenant (r) Jacobo Torregrosa Melo to replace Víctor Julio Cruz as head of Galán's security scheme. Torregrosa, barely a watchman of a building with dubious references and with warnings, dismantled Galán's scheme without any preparation and instead appointed rookie boys for the job, in addition to allowing the infiltration of the assassins of the attack. According to Maza Marquez; Galán had requested the change of head of security, citing Cruz's lack of seriousness in addition to being a gossip with his wife, an argument emphatically rejected by Gloria Pachón and her children.

A former escort stated that Torregrosa informed him and his companions that a team would go ahead to the municipality to reconnoitre the place and locate the security scheme. The witness stated that said scheme never existed, since the night of the facts there was no control of weapons or entry of people.

The candidate's car arrived at the Central Plaza of Soacha in the middle of a potentially risky crowd, with no barricades separating them from the crowd and no barriers in the back of the truck where the procession was coming, giving way to a potential attack from the vehicle. Two of the hitmen entered the same back of the truck, which could also facilitate the attack.

Galán received 5 bullet wounds from a light Mini Atlanta submachine gun for use reserved for special operations of the armed forces and known for penetrating bulletproof vests. Two impacts were lodged in the bulletproof vest he was wearing, which needs to be clarified It was not safe since it only covered the abdomen up to the navel, leaving it vulnerable to being attacked from below and Galán raised his bulletproof vest as he raised his arms. The assassins, about 70 hitmen (all with white hats and most of them camouflaged in the crowd with banners) were hiding under the stage where the politician was.

Once impacted, Galán fell to the stage and in the midst of the confusion he was dragged by his escorts to a vehicle behind the stage, from where he was taken to the Bosa Hospital, a town in Bogotá near Soacha, and later to the Kennedy Hospital (located in the town of the same name), where he would die at 10:00 p.m. m. It should be noted that the closest hospital, Yanguas, was only 200 meters from the scene, but due to lack of foresight and thinking that Galán could be finished off there, it was not considered taking him there.

Torregrosa was not on stage when the attack took place, which allowed Galán to be hit and killed, since if he had been there, he would have died instead of the politician. Months later, in mid-1990, he was he lost track and is missing to date, leaving many questions unanswered, despite the progress of the investigation.

Consequences

Galán's bust at the National Capitol of Colombia.

Galán's death caused great pain in the population. It also generated anger in the government, which the following day declared a State of Siege and promulgated Decree 1830 of August 19, 1989, which authorized extradition by means of without the need to request permission from the Supreme Court of Justice. In addition to creating an Elite Corps in the Police.

At the time of his death, all the polls registered a wide victory for Galán in the referendum in the 1990 presidential elections (more than 60% in his favor). César Gaviria, head of debate in Galán's campaign, was appointed his successor at Galán's funeral, his eldest son Juan Manuel being the one who presented him with the party and campaign flags, in a moving speech; Gaviria won the elections in 1990.

His funeral was attended by more than a million people, including ordinary people, members of the Liberal and Conservative Parties, the Colombian Communist Party and the Patriotic Union, journalists, student activists, unions, groups defending the human rights and more.

Judicial process

In 2016, the Council of State of Colombia declared the crime of Luis Carlos Galán a crime against humanity, so the Prosecutor's Office can continue prosecuting people involved in this murder; In fact, in November of that year, General (R) of the Police, Miguel Maza Márquez, who was serving as Director of the DAS at the time of the crime, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, because he deliberately weakened the scheme of safety of the presidential candidate, even knowing of the threats against him.

Alberto Hazbún

Initially, the chemist and diplomat from Barranquilla, of Lebanese descent, Alberto Júbiz Hazbún and four other people were accused of this assassination. However, they were acquitted by the courts and released after spending 42 months in jail. Hazbún died in 1998 and his family received partial compensation from the Colombian State for his unjust deprivation of liberty. He was arrested on the 22nd. August 1989, and then released on May 5, 1993.

Alberto Santofimio

Following statements made by the confessed drug trafficker Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, alias "Popeye", the Prosecutor's Office investigated the also politician Alberto Santofimio Botero, who in a first instance sentence that was appealed, was declared the mastermind and sentenced to 24 years in prison for the assassination.

On June 18, 2006, a trial began against Santofimio Botero, who was found guilty of being the mastermind of his murder. In October 2008, Santofimio was released after spending three years and four months in prison, as no compelling evidence was found to link him to the murder, as determined by the Superior Court of Cundinamarca. However, on August 31, In 2011, the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia ordered his recapture by revoking the ruling that had annulled the original conviction; Finally, Santofimio received a sentence of 24 years in prison for the intellectual co-authorship of Galán's murder. To date he pays his sentence in the modality of house for jail.

State agents

The courts also investigated the participation of police officers and non-commissioned officers.

Drug Cartels

On April 28, 2015, Noticias Caracol reported that the Attorney General's Office had indications that the Cali Cartel participated in the death of the presidential candidate for the 1990-1994 elections and that there was a truce in the war with the Medellín Cartel that lasted from 1988 to 1993.

At the same time, in 2016, statements by former paramilitaries Alonso de Jesús Vaquero "Vladimir" and Iván Roberto Duque "Ernesto Báez" incriminated congressmen César Pérez García, representative of the chamber for the department of Antioquía, and Tiberio Villareal, representative of the chamber for the department of Santander, of meeting with the heads of the Cartel (Escobar and Rodríguez Gacha) in order to incite the assassination due to fearing that Galán would ascend to the presidency and put into practice political and economic reforms related to mining and cattle ranching that would have affected their interests. Both parliamentarians are accused by the same witnesses of being promoters of paramilitarism in their departments and of being the masterminds of two respective massacres that occurred months before the Galán crime (Pérez García is accused of being the mastermind of the Segovia massacre, and Villarreal for devising the La Rochela Massacre).

Family

Her brother Antonio was a councilor and candidate for mayor of Bogotá; Augusto, another of his brothers, was Minister of Health and ambassador to Unesco; his cousin Alfonso Valdivieso was Attorney General of the Nation; his sister-in-law, Maruja Pachón, was Minister of Education; and her husband, Alberto Villamizar, was a senator for the New Liberalism.

Marriage

Galán had a son before his marriage, who was born in 1965, Luis Alfonso Galán Corredor, with whom he was his domestic service employee when he was a university student. This son, hidden for many decades, had to grow up in the fields, later work as a messenger to pay for his studies and only received his last name at the age of 33 after a long and complicated process of paternity identification.

Later, Luis Carlos Galán married Gloria Pachón in 1971, with whom he had three children: Juan Manuel (1972), who was a senator for the Liberal Party and president of the First Commission and Territorial Planning of the Senate, Carlos Fernando (1977), journalist, also a senator of the Republic, was a Bogotá councilor for Cambio Radical, a party of which he is the national director, and Claudio Mario (1974), political analyst and Colombian consul general in Paris, France.

Legacy

Bust of Galan in the homonymous park of Barranquilla.

Galan Sculpture in Bogotá.

Galan Statue at the Bogota Council.

Its importance in Colombian politics is evident. His party, Nuevo Liberalismo, was a key record for the end of the Era Pablo Escobar, since its members, especially Galán and Lara Bonilla, both killed by the drug trafficker denounced the corruption in which some members of Colombian society were involved. He also promoted the sincerity of politicians, was clear that it was necessary to denounce clientelism and corruption within the communities in addition to reforming the parties.

Monuments and Toponymy

There are several cities in Colombia that have tributes to the missing politician in infrastructure and entities:

• Airports: El Dorado Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento in Bogotá.
• Auditors: At the Universidad Industrial de Santander de Bucaramanga and Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá.
• Avenues: Bogotá (Calle 24), Sincelejo, Rionegro and Soacha (Calle 13).
• Barrios: Manizales, Armenia, Cartagena, Girardot, Cundinamarca, Neiva, Ibagué, Palmira and Soacha.
• Library: at the Autonomous University of Bucaramanga.
• Chair Galan from Javeriana University, Bogotá.
• Colleges: in Cartagena, Ibagué, Villagarzón, Cali, Bogotá, Girón, Piedecuesta, Villavicencio, Chinácota, Acacías, Armenia, Bucaramanga, Orocué, Plato, Carepa, Cúcuta, Dosquebradas, Soacha, and Yopal.
• Cycling competition Santander Classic Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento Award in Santander.
• Decoration Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento de lucha contra lacorruption, bestowed by the Senate of the Republic of Colombia.
• Legal consultant Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento in Bogotá.
• Emissora Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento in Bucaramanga, Santander.
• State Social Enterprise Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento (in liquidation).
• Sculptures: In Bogotá (Avenida La Esperanza y Concejo de Bogotá) and in Soacha (Plaza de Soacha).
• Foundation Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento.
• Hospitals in Soacha and Charalá.
• Organization Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento for the Rights of Man.
• Parks in Cajicá, Cota and Barranquilla.
• Squares Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento, in Bucaramanga and San Juan de Pasto.
• Sports sites: Estadio Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento en Soacha, el Velódromo Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento, en Bogotá y Polideportivo Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento, en La Mesa (Cundinamarca).

Popular Culture

There are several Colombian television actors who played their person:

• In 1999 by José Luis Paniagua Investigative Unit.
• In 2012 by Nicolás Montero in Escobar, the pattern of evil.
• In 2013 by Walter Luengas in Three Cains.
• In 2013 by Alberto Palacio in Alias el Mexicano.
• In 2015 by Juan Pablo Espinosa Narcos.
• In 2019 by Jorge Melo in General Orange.