Gustavo Rojas Pinilla

President of Colombia from 1953 to 1957

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (12 March 1900 – 17 January 1975) was a Colombian army general, civil engineer and politician who ruled as President 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.

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