Álvaro Cepeda Samudio’s La Casa Grande containing fictional versions of the banana massacre. Colombia had been dominated since the turn of the century by the Conservative party, but the government's loss of prestige following its violent suppression of strikers helped bring them out of office by the end of the decade, ushering in a new decade and a half-long era of Liberal rule, which was characterized by a government more sympathetic to labor. The number of unionized workers doubled under this new Liberal administration. It is during this time period that the first major union confederation, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Colombia (CTC), was established, the confederation not coincidentally having been aligned with the Liberal Party ever since. The Liberals also funded many of their public works projects via an increased tax on foreign firms such as New Jersey Standard Oil and United Fruit, punishment in part because of their recent mistreatment of their workers, and in part because of their close cooperation with the Conservative Party just a decade ago. Liberal support of labor waned towards the end of their tenure as the party in power, as the foreign affairs of the 1940s overshadowed the domestic. In the end, the split between the centrist and more radical reformist wing of the party, as headed by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, allowed for a Conservative win in 1946, the uneasy transfer of power coupled with Gaitán's assassination shortly thereafter beginning the era of Colombian history known as La Violencia. 1946-1958: The Era of La Violencia & Rojas Pinilla The centrist-radical divide within the Liberal party was mirrored in the CTC, where, in the increasingly hostile environment of the burgeoning cold war and new Conservative government, centrists in the CTC carried out a purge of its communist members. As the Liberal-led CTC was in this weakened state, the Unión de Trabajadores Colombianos (UTC) was founded by Jesuit elements of the Roman Catholic Church. The UTC was based on Catholic social doctrine, and while not having any direct ties with the Conservative party, was certainly favored by the party over the CTC. A core sector of the newly founded UTC were the Catholic trade unions in the textile factories of Medellín, capital of the generally conservative department of Antioquia. Conservative rule would not last long, as general Gustavo Rojas Pinilla held a coup d'état in 1953 after then president Laureano Gómez tried to have