The last, short-lived rebel-league experiment 70 years ago in Colombia tells us much about why breakaways happen
Bogotá, Colombia: 9 April 1948. Before the 2pm meeting he had scheduled with a young Cuban lawyer called Fidel Castro, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, leader of the Liberal Party, decided to go for lunch at the Hotel Continental, five minutes’ walk from his office on Carrera Séptima. He never got to the restaurant. An assassin walked up to him, shot him four times and, five minutes before he had been due to meet Castro, Gaitán was pronounced dead in a local hospital.
Violence was inevitable. The Colombian government knew what was coming and desperately sought a way to calm tensions. What could they do to distract the population, to head off civil war? The president, Mariano Ospina Pérez, gave his support to plans to create a professional football league. Four months later the first game was played. “Gaitán’s murder was what triggered professional football in Colombia,” said Alfonso Senior, the president of Millonarios, one of the biggest clubs.
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