Álvaro Gómez Hurtado: 25 years of an assassination attributed to the FARC today

On November 2, 1995, the journalist and conservative leader Álvaro Gómez Hurtado left the classrooms of the Sergio Arboleda University, where he was teaching a class on Colombian culture, never to return. Nor did he return home. When the hands of the clock marked 10:20 in the morning of that Thursday, he was shot in his car by two people who were never identified.

Along with his bodyguard, José del Cristo Huertas, Gómez Hurtado died at the El Country Clinic, in the north of Bogotá, just 10 blocks from where he was killed. Today, 25 years after the assassination, one of the acts of violence that marked the country’s 90s and for which even the former president of the Republic, Ernesto Samper, was investigated, the crime remains unpunished.

The assassination hypotheses

Less than a month ago, specifically on October 3, the defunct FARC guerrilla, today a political party Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común, acknowledged through a letter addressed to the Special Justice for Peace (JEP) its responsibility in the Assassination of Álvaro Gómez Hurtado.

Said confession, however, aroused mistrust not only among the victim’s family, but also by figures of national politics, such as President Iván Duque, who after the FARC statement stated that it raised doubts that the crime was adjudicated when they know that they will not pay jail for signing the Peace Accords.

“May justice fulfill its task, but also that it is not going to allow one way to try to obstruct the true responsibility behind that murder “said the country’s president.

The doubt about the FARC’s confession is that for 25 years they were never considered as alleged perpetrators of assassination. During this quarter of a century, the Prosecutor’s Office raised three hypotheses about the murder of Gómez Hurtado, declared a Crime Against Humanity in 2017:

1. One of the most powerful hypotheses in the case was that of the participation of the Norte del Valle cartel. The organization, dedicated to drug trafficking, had a “policy” of extermination against those who opposed the illicit drug business and those who defended the extradition of the country’s “capos”. In this line of investigation, former President Ernesto Samper was linked, after the 8,000 Process scandal, which revealed the cartel’s financing of his 1994 presidential campaign, a fact that Gómez Hurtado publicly denounced through the newspaper El Nuevo Siglo. However, Samper always denied his participation in the assassination and the Attorney General’s Office could not prove any relationship.

2. The alliance between the extreme right-wing military and alleged paramilitaries from the department of Sucre, for which the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation managed to file charges, was another of the theories raised around the assassination.

3. The authorities also contemplated the participation of men from the Army’s 20th Brigade in the crime and an alleged retaliation because Gómez Hurtado had not lent himself to support an attempted coup against the Samper government.

Who was Álvaro Gómez Hurtado?

The political leader who was assassinated at the age of 76 was the son of former conservative president Laureano Gómez, who was president of the country between 1950 and 1951, when due to his health, he gave power to Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez.

Álvaro Gómez Hurtado was also a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic on three occasions (1974, 1986 and 1990); In his last candidacy, the campaign slogan was: “Don’t kill people.” In addition, he was the president of the 1991 Constituent Assembly, in which the defunct M-19 guerrilla participated, kidnapping him on May 29, 1988 to set him free on July 20 of that same year.

He is also recognized for having been one of the most critical voices against the government of Ernesto Samper (1994 – 1998), for receiving funding from drug trafficking. Through his editorials in the newspaper El Nuevo Siglo, he stated: “President Samper does not fall, nobody is knocking him down. But he can’t stay either ”.

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