did not complete due to political pressure against him from various forces which forced him to resign. Then in 1946 the Conservatives came to power when the popular Jorge Eliécer Gaitán failed in his bid to become the Liberal Party candidate, and ran instead as an independent, thereby splitting the Liberal vote and giving the victory to Conservative candidate Mariano Ospina Perez (Mariano Ospina Perez 565,939 votes, Gabriel Turbay 441,199 votes, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán 358,957 votes). El Bogotazo (1948) After taking state power from Liberals in 1946, the Conservatives began to overturn Liberal reforms. The popular Colombian Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán led the National Left-wing Revolutionary Union or UNIR (Unión de Izquierda Revolucionaria), and they organized protest movements against the Conservative policies which started tension between the two parties. Gaitan was shot and killed about 1:15 p.m. on April 9, 1948 near the corner of Carrera Séptima and Jimenez de Quesada in Central Bogotá during the 9th Pan-American Conference. After the death of Gaitán, riots erupted in Bogotá. The angry mob killed his murderer Juan Roa Sierra and dragged his body in the streets to the front of the presidential palace where they hanged it publicly. The rioters took control of all national radio stations in the city of Bogotá, and announcements were delivered against the Conservative government of Mariano Ospina Pérez. Bridges were blown up, and this caused a lack of food in the city. The airfields at Honda, Cartago, Barrancabermeja and Turbo were also taken by the people. The rioters' slogan was Yankee imperialism wants to convert us into military and economic colonies, and we must fight in defense of Colombian society.'' La Violencia Following the events of "El Bogotazo", a decade long civil war broke out among the Conservative and Liberal factions of Colombian politics. The conflict, which would claim the lives of over 200,000 people, was known as "La Violencia". While directly resulting from the assassination of liberal politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the rising tensions that resulted in "El Bogotazo" and "La Violencia" can be attributed to the return to power of the Conservative party in 1946 and its encouragement of seizing back territories held by liberal officials and supporters. As a result, conflict broke out among the politically polarized lower classes in the countryside of Colombia, leading to a Liberal-Conservative Civil war. By the end of the conflict, the majority of the casualties