5: "The Bogotázo” in Colombia

President Truman had accepted Pawley’s resignation from his Ambassadorship in Brazil reluctantly contingent upon him completing preparation for the Ninth Conference of the Inter-American States in Bogotá. It proved to be one of the most dangerous and disastrous events of his career even though he was aware of widespread animosity towards the U.S. The assessment of Latin America that Pawley gave to Secretary of State Marshall was reported in Time magazine. “Bluntly, the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil told his boss that things were going badly in Latin America. The latinos were sore because they felt that the U.S. was neglecting them in favor of Europe, and something ought to be done to straighten things out before next month’s Pan American Conference in Bogotá.” Marshall told him to get to work, and Pawley soon was documenting how the European Recovery Program would benefit South America.1

On March 8, 1948, Pawley wrote Marshall to recommend an overhaul of the Foreign Service Act to create Career Ambassadors “such as George F. Kennan, Charles E. Bohlen and Walton Butterworth.” Pawley envisioned that the title could add prestige and improve “the financial position of career men.” Pawley specifically mentioned Paul C. Daniels, Director of American Republics Affairs, as someone who could benefit. And touted his belief that “there is a place for political appointees in the Foreign Service.”2

Pawley then arranged an April trip to Medellin, Colombia, believing that Secretary of State Marshall could use a change from the high altitude of Bogotá. The plane got a flat tire when it landed on the bumpy runway, which caused much excitement among the crowds waiting to welcome Marshall, but according to Edna Pawley, “No one was ever in danger.” While in Colombia they lunched with local officials and visited one of Columbia’s largest orchid farms.

While waiting for the cars to take them, Marshall realized a newsboy was holding a copy of the April 3, 1948 Semana (Colombia’s version of Time) which featured a cover story of the upcoming Bogotá Conference complete with a caricature of Marshall.3

Three days later, Marshall sent a note from Bogotá to Pawley in the same city on the letterhead of the Delegation of the United States of America thanking him for a case of champagne while adding, “I might say you are making it extremely difficult for me to live up to my self-imposed pledge on this trip. I can hardly wait to get back to the States and put a bottle on ice.”4 

Vernon Walters, who assisted Pawley during his Ambassadorship, later wrote an autobiography, Silent Missions, in which he describes his “good friend” Pawley as a “truly great and patriotic” man who spoke Spanish flawlessly, a major compliment from Walters who was revered for knowing a half-dozen languages. The two men, as well as Edna Pawley, were together in Bogotá when the economic conference that Pawley had organized at the request of President Truman and Secretary of State Marshall was disrupted with violent riots resulting in thousands of deaths. 

The April 9, 1948 “Black Friday” attack became known as the “Bogotázo” and it would have a lasting impact on Pawley, the delegates of the Organization of American States, Secretary of State Marshall, Averill Harriman and other U.S. leaders in attendance.

As the riots unfolded in Bogotá, Pawley told Walters to find and bring back Grady Matthews, the pilot of Pawley’s private DC-3. Pawley then handed Matthews $5,000 and ordered him to fly to Panama to buy turkey, ham, caviar and foie gras so that the Southern Hemisphere delegates, who had been eating Army rations, could be convinced to remain for the conference. The psychological ploy worked and impressed General Marshall as well as Walters who also was amazed that Pawley never sought reimbursement from the U.S. government.5

In a three-page typed letter to her friend, Celeste, Edna Pawley gave a “blow-by-blow” description of “life in Bogotá during a revolution” from her perspective. “At least everything is calm today so perhaps I can write without too much disturbance. What a week this has been! Anita (Bill’s niece who does some of his secretarial work) and I were not outside the house for three days and when we did venture out it was to move to quieter and more comfortable place. Of course Bill was out the second day as our Delegates met at the Secretary’s house to discuss the situation. I can now appreciate to the fullest extent the expression ‘Then came the Revolution’!! Mr. Armour who was in two revolutions in Russia said this is much worse.”

Edna Pawley then described the Friday morning of April 9, 1948, during which she had “planned to go to the Plaza Bolivar to do some shopping and have lunch at hotel Granada.” She was delayed, however. “Fortunately, Secretary Marshall drove by the house for a visit before going on to his house for lunch, so that detained us and we decided to go after lunch; otherwise we would have been in the midst of all the rioting which broke out at the moment Gaitan was murdered. The first we heard about the disturbance was when the pilot came breathlessly to the house, asking if we wanted to fly to Panama. Walter Donnelly (formerly our Counselor in Lima, now Amb. to Venezuela and a delegate here) had had lunch with us and he and Bill had just left but were back in a half an hour. They had gotten far enough into the city to see crowds of agitators tearing down flags along the street and stopping cars. Walter—having lived in Colombia and being married to a Colombian girl—was terribly upset and said then he was afraid it would be very serious. He wanted us to go to his brother-in-law’s house which was on a quieter street but we decided to stay where we were.”

They huddled around the radio that afternoon and realized that the local stations had been seized “by the Communist agitators almost immediately after Gaitan’s death.” The airwaves “were filled with rabble-rousing speeches in which they incited the masses and called on them to go out with machetes and guns and take over all the strategic points of the city. None of which they were able to do, fortunately and we had electric power and telephone service without any break. Their broadcasts grew more and more inciting as the day wore on and their stories took on fantastic proportions. We were told that President Ispino Perez had been killed; that the Capitolio was completely destroyed and that the Liberales had full control of the Government.”

The Pawleys and their friends “stayed with the radio hoping to find a station that would give us a calmer view of the situation but that didn’t happen until the next day. It was very reassuring to see late in the afternoon tanks and jeeps and trucks filled with soldiers going at a terrific speed toward the City. (The fact that it was all U.S. Lend-lease equipment added to our reassurance.)”

At the bottom of page one of her letter is a handwritten parenthetical note that states “At Gen Marshall’s request his aid, Major (now Maj Gen) Vernon Walters telephoned to ask if I would be home around 11:30 as the General wanted to stop for a short visit before going on to home for lunch. Of course I said I would be at home and would be delighted to see him. If Gen. Marshall had not left his office early and I had not known he was coming by both of us would have been downtown in the most dangerous area of the rioting, shooting and killing.”

As the Bogotázo increased in intensity, Edna Pawley recognized that fear was gripping the police. “All policemen were on the side of the Conservatives and our police guard was frightened to death! We looked outside and saw him hiding behind one of the posts of the garden walk and we invited him into the house. We had heard on the radio just what they were doing to the police and we felt much safer guarding him! He spent the night there and servants said he left early the next morning. Our cook left the first night and never did come back and so did the chauffeur. He not only left but took the car with him—the rascal. We were fortunate enough to have some tinned goods I had bought at the commissary in Rio to supplement Bill’s diet—so with the rice and potatoes on hand and the tinned goods from Rio we fared very well indeed for three days. I did feel compelled to go to the kitchen and make soup to relieve the monotonous diet—which, strangely enough, even Bill enjoyed. On one of the days when Bill was not there for lunch Anita and I were reduced to Champagne and pate de foi gras. We had a wonderful time until sleep overcame us!”

On Monday, April 12th, they changed locations “and Bill sent the plane to Panama for supplies” for the Pawleys, their guards and conference guests. “It seems now that I spend most of my time rationing food for four soldiers who guard our house night and day, the five servants and ourselves. I feel exactly like a French pension keeper with her chatelaine hanging securely at her side! We have distributed the supplies to various delegates who had mentioned that they were getting down to rock bottom. We also sent a large box to the households of Secretary Marshall, Averill Harriman and Norman Armour. Our household is running very smoothly now and almost every day Bill brings various Delegates home for tea (and I mean Tea). And do they enjoy a cup of hot tea beside a cheerful fire? If one has never been to Bogotá it is difficult to appreciate just what that means. We can’t have anyone for dinner as the curfew is still on and no one is permitted out after seven. I certainly wouldn’t want to take a chance on being caught out—with all the “trigger-happy” soldiers around!”

It becomes obvious in the next paragraph that William Pawley had chosen for his second wife, a woman who was not only attractive and adventuresome, but also had his voracious appetite for following and analyzing news. “It is still difficult to know the whole story or to be able to analyze just what happened. Perhaps we are still too close to it and there are so many conflicting stories. It will be most interesting to know how the newspapers at home handled the story. On Saturday night we heard Dubois of the Chicago Tribune give his broadcast to the States from Capitolio where he had been caught and had had to stay for two days. His broadcast seemed to be a very accurate account of what happened. On Sunday night about ten o’clock the representative of the Christian Science Monitor, whom we had known in Rio and later in Boston, telephoned and as Bill was out at a meeting of the delegates, I answered the phone—in spite of the fact that it had happened to be just at a time when the shooting was so close to the house that I was going through my first real apprehension about the whole situation. I tried to talk to him very calmly and did not mention the barrage going on just outside my window. He was very anxious to get his story of what the newspaper boys were going through—there was shooting and looting and burning going on next door; they were getting very short on food; there were no guards at their building and—saddest of all—they could not get out of their stories. He said ‘The Ambassador had always been so cooperative that they felt impelled to call on him and felt that he could not get out their stories.’ I listened to his story—trying very hard to be patient and sympathetically—and promised to do everything in ‘Bill’s’ power to help him! The moment after we had said ‘Buenos Noches’ the telephone rang again and it was Maria Helena Donnelly who wanted to assure me that she had just had word that the ‘hoodlums’ had left our street and that Bill and Walter were on their way home. She had received a call from friends of her who lived near us and they had told her how serious the shooting had been. I learned the next day when all was ‘peace and quiet’ just how worried she had been when she called!”

In a parenthetical note on the bottom of page 2, Edna Pawley wrote: “After we were back in the States, on several occasions Gen. Marshall would say to a group of friends—‘Mrs. Pawley saved my life in Bogotá’. You can imagine how quickly that statement got everyone’s attention. Usually I would reply “If what you say is true Gen. Marshall, then you also saved my life.” A strong and lasting bond had been formed between them. Before concluding her letter to Celeste, Mrs. Pawley turned backed to describing the activities that had been disrupted by the communist agitators in Bogotá. She and Maria Helena Donnelly were hoping to go to Quito, Ecuador with friends including Averill Harriman “but he left for home today.”

Despite her harrowing experience, Edna had some favorable comments. “Actually, Bogotá under normal conditions is much more attractive than I had anticipated. The day of our arrival was sunny and when we had left the mountains and circled the green and fertile Savannah or ‘Sabana’ as they call it, I was pleasantly surprised to find it similar to the Vale of Kashmir— with a few exceptions of course, such as snow-capped mountains and an abundance of lakes and rivers!” She also had “a very excellent library and we have enjoyed it so much during our cloistered life. Fortunately many of them were in English.”

Edna Pawley was not optimistic about the outcome of the Conference, but she was about her future. “I believe the Conference may end sooner than it would have if this fiasco had not occurred; however it is still difficult to know when it will be over. We are making bets on a week from Wednesday. We plan on returning via Guatemala, Mexico City and Los Angeles to visit Bill’s mother. Then we expect to be at Belvoir for a while. We have no immediate plans after that but I know we will be in New York and I hope we can have some unrushed evenings with you and Tom. Bill is feeling remarkably well considering all that he does. We had two very busy weeks in Rio just prior to our coming here. The Foreign Minister had asked Bill to return to Rio to settle some pending matters and that gave us an opportunity to say goodbuy [sic] to our friends. The Brazilian Government gave Bill their highest decoration—one that is usually only given to Chiefs of State. We are FREE people now though and that is a wonderful feeling.” She signed off. “Bill joins me in sending our best to you and Tom and hope to see you soon. Edna ECP”6

In the United States, Congressmen labeled the Bogotázo “The Pearl Harbor of Latin America” and Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Director of Central Intelligence, was called before Congress to answer why his newly formed agency had not seen it coming. Hillenkoetter tried to imply that the fault lay with State’s failures to pass on intelligence information quickly enough. A CIA review of the incident, nearly 50 years later, observed that the infighting between State and CIA had been quelled by Marshall. “When Secretary Marshall heard of the rousing events in Washington he ordered an end to the public dispute between State and CIA, and to the airing of classified documents. His authority was sufficient to have his will prevail, though he probably was aided by growing embarrassment among senior White House advisers and leaders of Congress.”7

Despite the Bogotázo disruption, the Charter for the Organization of American States was signed on April 30, 1948, by representatives from 21 countries including Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and other South and Central American and Caribbean nations. Signing for the United States were Assistant Secretary of State Norman Armour, Ambassador to Colombia Willard L. Beaulac, Ambassador to Venezuela Walter J. Donnelly, former Ambassador to Honduras Paul C. Daniels and retiring Ambassador William D. Pawley.8

On May 3, The New York Times ran the page one headline “Success in Bogotá Held Exaggerated: 21-Nation Agreement Is Viewed as Clouding Basic Inequality of Hemisphere ‘Partners’” and led with an opening paragraph that implied that some diplomats privately “challenge former Ambassador William D. Pawley on his assertion that the ninth Conference of the Inter-American States was a ‘magnificent success.’”9

Whether a success or not, the conference triggered a new passion to fight communism. As he wrote in his autobiography, Pawley got the name of the young man he believed was responsible for the Bogotázo and six months later he had the evidence to make him his arch-nemesis for the rest of Pawley’s life. “By October, 1948, reports had been filed by Army G-2, office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and a combined intelligence evaluation all of which identified comrade [Fidel] Castro by name as a communist.”10 Their worlds would again collide a decade later.

In the midst of the aftermath of the Bogotázo, Pawley’s former wife, Annie Hahr Pawley, asked the Florida courts to rule on the legitimacy of their five-year-old Cuban divorce. The Florida judge “dismissed Annie’s suit for maintenance and delivered 1) a ringing tribute to Pawley as a valuable citizen, 2) a ringing rebuke to Annie for ‘relentlessly poisoning the minds of his superiors . . . with the purpose of ruining him.’”11

FOOTNOTES:

1 “Customer’s Man,” Time, February 16, 1948.

If Congress approves the European Recovery Plan “program of buying in Latin America, the latinos will be invited to ship something like $11⁄2 billion of foodstuffs and raw materials to Europe by July 1, 1949. Bill Pawley could point to this breakdown:

¶ $282,100,000 for 1,585,000 tons of bread grains, mainly from Argentina ... Argentina had to have such a price, he explained, because half its wheat went as a gift to countries (e.g., France, Italy and Spain) that cannot pay. Argentina’s net return was thus more like half the $5 price.

¶ $1,151,100,000 for other grains, meat fats and oils, mainly from Argentina and Uruguay.

¶ $136,600,000 for coffee. 

¶ $40,600,000 for rice.

¶ $26,400,000 for nitrates.

¶ $74,000,000 for beans, fresh fruit and cocoa. 

¶ $267,900,000 for sugar.

... [Latin Americans] also want dollars to help them build industry. In preparation for Bogotá, therefore, Bill Pawley hoped to sell the U.S. State Department the Colombian scheme for a U.S.-financed Inter- American bank to make hemispheric-development loans.

That was a big program to sell to Washington in the six weeks before Bogotá. Bill Pawley thought he could do it.

2 3/8/1948 Correspondence. From: Pawley. To: Marshall. Marshall Library, Pawley Papers, Box #1, folders 1-5.

“The Oral History Interview with Paul C. Daniels” Harry S. Truman Library & Museum. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/danielsp.htm

>> This identifies Daniels as a “U.S. Foreign Service officer, 1928-53, with service as counselor of the Embassy, Bogotá, Colombia, 1943-45; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1945-47; Ambassador to Honduras, 1947; U.S. rep. Inter-Am. Economic and Social Council, 1947-48; director American Republic Affairs, U.S. Dept. of State, 1947-49; U.S. delegate to the 9th International Conference of American States, Bogotá, 1948; Ambassador to the Council of Organization of American States, 1948-50; and as U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador, 1951-53. Also served later as a special adviser on Antarctica, U.S. Dept. of State, 1957-59.” 

>> In the oral history, Daniels states: “Incidentally, here’s an interesting thing, parenthetically, which I did in Brazil. This was at the time when Juan Peron was in Argentina. Spruille Braden was then Assistant Secretary, and they didn’t like each other, of course. He brought out the ‘bluebook,’ telling how bad Peron was and sending copies all around the continent. I had to take one to the Brazilian Foreign Office. That began to worry me a little bit, and so I wrote a dispatch. I was then Charge. I was Charge there about six months between Adolf Berle and Bill [William] Pawley, who came later. I was delighted to have the opportunity to write this dispatch, but I didn’t want to call it ‘American-Argentine Relations,’ because that would seem out of place coming from the Charge d’Affaires in Rio. So, I called it, I think, ‘Brazilian, Argentine, and American relations’—something like that.”

3 4/1948 Letter. From: Edna C. Pawley. Marshall Library, Pawley Papers, Box #1, folder 1.

4 4/6/1948 Note. From: George C. Marshall. To: William Pawley. Marshall Library, Pawley Papers, Box #1, folders 1-5.

5 Vernon Walters. Silent Missions (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1978). Pages 143-4 and 165-6.

Nathaniel Weyl, Red Star Over Cuba: The Russian Assault on the Western Hemisphere (New York: The Devin- Adair Company, 1960). Page 34.

“Executive session testimony of William D. Pawley September 2 and 8, 1960.” Committee of the Judiciary’s Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws, Report. December 20, 1960. Page 723.

6 4/17/1948 Three-page typed letter with handwritten additions. From: Edna Pawley, Bogotá, Colombia on Letterhead of The Foreign Service of the United States of America. To: Celeste. Marshall Library, Pawley Papers, Box #1, folders 1-5.

>> Celeste, in all likelihood, is Celeste Morgan, wife of William Pawley’s longtime business associate, Thomas Alfred Morgan, former president and chairman of the board of Sperry Corp. who also had headed Eastern Airlines and North American Aviation. Celeste’s name appears as his widow in his obituary: “Industrialist Morgan Dies At Age of 80.” The High Point (NC) Enterprise, October 30, 1967. Page 17.

7 The Bogotázo, Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Release 1994. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v13i4a07p_0007.htm

8 Charter of the Organization of American States signed April 30, 1948.

9 “Success in Bogotá Held Exaggerated: 21-Nation Agreement Is Viewed as Clouding Basic Inequality of Hemisphere ‘Partners.’” By Milton Bracker, The New York Times. May 3, 1948. Page 1. 

10 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Page 213.

11 “Travel,” Time, June 14, 1948.

Florida Case Law, Pawley v. Pawley, 160 Fla. 903 (1948) October 22, 1948.