Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (12 March 1900 – 17 January 1975) was a Colombian army general, civil engineer and politician who ruled as 19th President of Colombia in a military dictatorship from June 1953 to May 1957.

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.

Seeking to reduce political violence, he ruled the country as a military dictatorship, allying himself with trade unionists, implementing infrastructure programs, and extending female suffrage.

He continued his education at Tri-State College in the United States, where he obtained a degree in civil engineering in 1927 while working the assembly line at a Ford factory.

In 1936, he became the lead engineer of the army's ammunition factory; that same year, he was sent as an envoy to Nazi Germany, in order to obtain necessary machinery for munitions production in Bogotá.

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 honoured by the incumbent Conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez.

[4] In 1952, he was ascended to General of the Army and appointed as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Colombia by Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, who was serving as interim president while Gómez took a leave of ill health.

Rojas, who had been waiting for the situation to erupt, took the Caldas Battalion to the Casa de Nariño and, with Gómez nowhere to be found, offered power to interim president Urdaneta.

[4] The testimony of Minister of War Pabón, corroborated by Urbaneta, described the confusion of the next few minutes: I told Rojas... "there is no choice but for you to assume power, otherwise anarchy will reign."

[10]Shortly after the bloodless coup was consolidated, it emerged that Gómez had fled with his family to New York City, solidifying Rojas' assumption of power.

Nevertheless, he earned the confidence of many Liberals when he announced amnesty for political prisoners and guerillas, and promised to lift censorship restrictions that had been imposed on the press.

He was also a strong supporter of public works and infrastructure, promoting and conducting projects such as the Atlantic railway, the hydroelectric dam of Lebrija, and the oil refinery of Barrancabermeja.

[14] He also allied himself with organized labor, forming the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, or CNT, as an independent alternative to the two Liberal and Conservative-dominated unions.

[15] The government's development programs alienated certain members of the industrial and mercantile sectors, who were especially displeased with the higher taxes that were imposed to fund the president's projects.

[18] From 1955, the Colombian economy began to struggle, as the price of coffee fell on the international market and the country entered a balance of payments crisis, forcing a loan from the IMF.

[4] The Rojas government was also embroiled in scandal after the Colombian Navy was accused of negligence, in an episode chronicled by Gabriel García Márquez in El Espectador.

As opposition to his regime deepened, Liberal leader Alberto Lleras Camargo met with the exiled Conservative Laureano Gómez in the Spanish city of Benidorm in July 1956, signing a memorandum committing both their factions to "a return to juridical normalcy."

Over the course of several months, figures like Ospina, Urdaneta, and Guillermo León Valencia all joined the "Pact of Benidorm," pledging to oppose Rojas' intended reelection by the Constituent Assembly.

His grandson through María Eugenia, Samuel Moreno Rojas, would go on to serve as Mayor of Bogotá as part of the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole, a successor party to ANAPO and M-19.

However, once in power, he forged his own program (the Third Force) of Peronist inspiration, causing the Liberal and Conservative oligarchies to unite to overthrow him and establish the National Front.

With ANAPO, he emphasized the social dimension [of his policies], attracting various left-wing groups — yet his attitude towards electoral fraud was rather timid and the birth of M-19 was more than anything a reaction to his passivity.