Laureano Eleuterio Gómez Castro (1889-1965) was leader of the Colombian Conservative party and spokesman of its right wing. He was the fiercest partisan in recent Colombian history and symbolized clerical and authoritarian values.

Born in Bogotá on Feb. 20, 1889, Laureano Gómez attended the National University and received an engineering degree in 1909. Turning immediately to a public career, he founded the periodical La Unidad and served as its director from 1909 to 1916. Joining the Conservative party, he was first elected a national representative in 1911, serving until 1918 and again from 1921 to 1923. Subsequently a cabinet minister on various occasions in the 1920s and 1930s, Gómez assumed the leadership of the Conservative party in 1932 and remained its dominant figure until his death. Running the party with iron discipline and intellectual force, he became an admirer of Hitler and of Franco, criticized the United States relentlessly, and attacked...