Bateman, Jaime

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Name
Bateman, Jaime Gender: M
Jaime Bateman Cayón
born on 23 April 1940 at 02:00 (= 02:00 AM )
Place Santa Marta, Colombia, 11n15, 74w13
Timezone -05 h5w (is standard time)
Data source
Bio/autobiography
Rodden Rating B
Collector: Scholfield
Astrology data s_su.18.gif s_taucol.18.gif 02°58' s_mo.18.gif s_scocol.18.gif 18°05 Asc.s_aqucol.18.gif 27°14'



Biography

Colombian guerrilla leader and both founder and commander of the 19th of April guerrilla movement. He was also known as el flaco ("Skinny") or Pablo by his fellow guerrilleros.

Bateman grew up in an environment of social movements, his mother Clementina Cayón was an advocate of political prisoner and militant in the Liberal Revolutionary Movement (MRL) a dissident group from the Colombian Liberal Party. Bateman was raised mostly by his stepfather Jorge Olarte.

At the age of eight Bateman was run over by an automobile while crossing a street in the neighbouring city of Barranquilla fracturing his tibia and fibula. He almost lost his leg in this incident which left him with a defect in his leg. He swam for therapy.

In his youth he met Carlos Romero who was arriving from Argentina, where he had been an active militant in the Communist Party of Argentina during the presidency of Juan Domingo Perón. Romero influenced Bateman and convinced him to join the Communist Youth (Juventudes Comunistas, JUCO) and form the first group of communists in the Colombian state of Magdalena.

In 1957, while a student at the Liceo Celedón, civic strikes broke out throughout Colombia to protest the dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. These strikes were organized by the two main political parties, the Liberal and Conservative parties. Bateman participated in the marches and became a student activist.

Carlos Romero then married Bateman's sister, Matilde, and Bateman travelled with them to the capital city Bogotá. In Bogotá he went to high school at the Colegio Panamericano while still participating in the JUCO.

In 1963 Bateman was arrested for a month for distributing subversive propaganda and was later arrested again for participating in a protest related to the high cost of living. He became political secretary of the National Secretariat of the Young Communists and participated in 1963 as a delegate for the organization in the 16th Komsomol Congress in Moscow where he received a course in social sciences and criticized the dogmatic study that characterized the school of squares.

Influenced by the Cuban Revolution and Maoism, communists in Colombia began to conceive armed struggle as the only way to seize power. In 1966 Communist party followers split after following different communist tendencies. Some of these joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which the communist party supported. Because he was a communist, Bateman began being persecuted by Colombian government forces. He became the personal secretary of Manuel Marulanda Vélez, Jacobo Arenas and Ciro Trujillo performing political duties for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) until he left in 1970. The FARC wanted to achieve power through political struggle and by empowering the peasants while Bateman and his followers wanted to take the cities and believed that the armed and political struggle should be focused on nationalism, Bolivarianism and American-centrist.

After coming to these beliefs Bateman developed an urban political and military movement in 1970 along with Carlos Toledo Plata, the main leader of the Socialist ANAPO. After the dubious elections of 19 April 1970 in which conservative candidate Misael Pastrana Borrero won over the ANAPO candidate and former dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, Bateman launched the 19th of April Movement with the banner: "With the arms, with the people, with María Eugenia Rojas to the power", however the Directorate of the ANAPO denied such support for armed groups.

The group recruited numerous guerrilla fighters and began targeting government and military objectives. In 1974 the M-19 stole from the Quinta de Bolívar the sword of Simón Bolívar, threatening not to return it until peace was achieved in Colombia. Bateman also ordered the robbery of some five thousand weapons from a military garrison in Bogotá known as the Canton Norte on 6 January 1981.

He also ordered the Dominican embassy siege during which he proposed an amnesty for political prisoners held in La Picota prison and dialogues to start formal peace talks. Then Senator Germán Bula Hoyos who proposed the law to give amnesty to political prisoners was the first government official to meet him in person.

In December 1981, Bateman demanded to be put on the presidential ballot, but President Turbay rejected the proposal. Bateman announced that "if there are no elections for everyone, there will be no elections for anyone." This prompted the government to send troops into the cities during the 1982 presidential election.

Bateman died on 28 April 1983 in a plane crash while en route to Panama at age 43. His body was not found for nine months.

Link to Wikipedia biography

Events

Source Notes

Sy Scholfield quotes from Jaime Bateman: biografía de un revolucionario by Darío Villamizar Herrera (Editorial Planeta Colombiana, 2002), pages 33-34:

"Era el martes 23 de abril de 1940 , día de los santos Jorge , Adalberto y Aquiles... A eso de las dos de la madrugada se fue nuevamente la luz . Las contracciones ahora se presentaban continuamente . Elena , la hermana mayor , corrió a la cocina a encender unos periódicos en tanto que Acela ayudaba con el parto y alguien más iba en busca de una lámpara . En ese preciso momento nació Jaime Bateman Cayón."

(Translation: It was Tuesday, 23 April 1940, the day of Saints George, Adalbert and Achilles... Around two in the morning the power went out again. The contractions were now coming on continuously. Elena , the older sister , ran to the kitchen to light some newspapers while Acela helped with the delivery and someone else went to find a lamp . At that precise moment, Jaime Bateman Cayón was born.)

Categories

  • Diagnoses : Body Part Problems : Accident/Injury (Car accident)
  • Passions : Criminal Perpetrator : Civil/ Political
  • Personal : Death : Accidental (Plane crash)
  • Vocation : Business : Clerical/ Secretarial (Political)
  • Vocation : Military : Military career (Guerrilla)
  • Vocation : Politics : Activist/ political
  • Vocation : Politics : Party Affiliation (Communist)
  • Notable : Famous : Historic figure (Founder and leader of 19th of April guerrilla movement)