Laureano Eleuterio Gómez Castro (20 February 1889 – 13 July 1965) was a Colombian politician and civil engineer who served as the 18th President of Colombia from 1950 to 1953.

During the three decades prior to being elected president, Gómez was a radical leader of the Conservative Party and is widely considered to be one of the most brilliant and potent orators of the Congress of Colombia.

[3] On 1 February 1936 Gómez founded El Siglo with Jose de la Vega, an old school friend, fellow Conservative, and senator.

While other structures associated with Gómez, such as his house, a restaurant he built, and the Palacio de San Carlos, were burnt to the ground, El Siglo's building was first set on fire, and then dynamited.

[8] In September 1953, while in exile in Spain, Gómez published letters in El Siglo denouncing the military regime then in power in Colombia.

As this defied censorship policies which outlawed criticism of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla or the military government, the newspaper was closed and prohibited from publishing.

[9] While the country was amidst the period of unrest called La Violencia, Gómez gained the presidency in 1950 in an election in which the Liberals refused to participate.

The party was already experiencing growing factionalism and Gomez's decision to send troops to Korea further galvanized increasing internal opposition to his rule.

He explicitly demonstrated his disdain for majoritarian democracy in 1942, when he criticized Congress for being too beholden to the popular will and vowed to give up his Senate seat at the end of the year.

Three events in the late 1940s strengthened his commitment to blunting majoritarian democracy in Colombia: the mass uprising known as the Bogotazo following the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, Congress' failed attempt to impeach Conservative president Mariano Ospina Pérez in 1949, and Ospina Perez's subsequent suspension of Congress in retaliation.

In early 1952, Urdaneta convened a National Constitutional Assembly; Liberals boycotted it, as did dissident factions of the Conservative Party, led alternately by Gilberto Alzáte Avedaño and Mariano Ospina Pérez.

[14] When the Constitutional Assembly finished its work, Gómez praised the document, claiming that enhanced executive power would prevent Moscow from asserting communist rule in Colombia and end what he described as communist-inspired violence in the countryside.

His successor, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, eventually convened a hand-picked assembly, which was to continue the process of constitutional reform begun by Gómez.

With public order collapsing, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla seized power in 1953 and Gómez fled to Spain.

He was instrumental in a 1956 agreement, the Pact of Benidorm, between the two main parties, negotiated with Liberal leader Alberto Lleras Carmago to counter the military regime.