Abstract EN:

The research subject of this manuscript is the description and interpretation of the political trial, of wich Rojas Pinilla (Colombian military president, 1953-1957) was subject at the Republican Congress (1958-1959). On a first basis, the idea is to narrate the events in the three scenarios that it occured (the Congress, the newspapers, and the streets) and to chronically reconstruct the debates in the parliament and the newspapers. Secondly, this manuscript tries to interpret the way in wich the trial is developed under the circumstances imposed by the Violencia era of the 50's and under the institutional legitimacy crisis that existed since 1949. The trial occurs at a moment where, after the failure of a military solution for the social and institutional crisis, the political elites are trying to find through the Frente Nacional, a second solution to the crisis. The idea consists to interpret the role of the trial in such a crucial moment of the Colombian history of the second half of the 20th century. On a third basis, the manuscript tries to show the way in wich the trial can contribute with elements that allow to understand how an era called La Violencia, on the 50's was "solved either on a formal or informal, institutional or not, way. The trial constitutes an unexpected space that opens a discussion on the sense of Colombian life and it causes an open public discussion on the responsabilities of the events of the previous years, marked by the fights between liberales y conservadores. The material associated to the trial also permits to understand the way in wich the different ways on that time's collective memory were built up.