Gustavo Rojas Pinilla - Military Career

Military Career

In 1946, already a colonel, Rojas was nominated as commander of the First Brigade in Tunja and in 1948 was named commander of the Third Brigade in Cali. There, he gained major recognition in the country for having managed to appease the rebellion that happened in this region as a consequence of the assassination of the popular leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948, for which he was honored by the incumbent Conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez. On October 11, 1949, he was promoted to General and on October 19 assigned to the Central Command of the Army.

In 1951, he was nominated as a delegate for Colombia to the United Nations in Washington, and as such he inspected the battalion Colombia that was fighting against communism during the Korean War. In 1952, he was ascended to General of the Army and appointed as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Colombia by President Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez.

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