Today, November 2, marks the 25th anniversary of the assassination of the conservative leader Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, an assassination that due to the historical significance of its victim and the political and legal implications that it still has could be considered as the meeting point of the stories and mysteries about a crime that impacted national life in the last three decades.
When Álvaro Gómez was assassinated, he was a symbol of the past and of power and he was also one of the figures with the greatest political authority in Colombia.
Son of Laureano Gómez and heir to his cause, candidate for the presidency on three occasions (1974, 1986 and 1990), president of the 1991 Constituent Assembly, long-standing journalist, professor, ideologist, Gómez was the personification of the country’s history during the 20th century.
The confession of those allegedly responsible for the murder of former presidential candidate Álvaro Gómez Hurtado in 1995 has reopened the controversy over one of the most important assassinations in the contemporary history of Colombia.
Last week, the former secretariat of the former FARC guerrilla sent a letter to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the transitional justice body created from the Havana accords, in which they assume their responsibility for the Gomez’s death , among five other cases.
“We recognize that it was a mistake to have assassinated a politician of the stature of Álvaro Gómez Hurtado. We have read his biographies and today we know that his contribution to the peace of the country would have been fundamental. But the war clouds the vision of the future and only allows us to see reality in black and white to divide it into friends and enemies, “they later wrote in a statement released over the weekend.
