National Popular Alliance (ANAPO)

The National Popular Alliance (Alianza Nacional Popular—ANAPO) was founded in 1961 by former President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of Colombia to help him stage a political comeback. It was initially a movement sponsoring candidates under Conservative and Liberal factional labels, which were the only ones permitted under the National Front (1958–1974). In 1970, Rojas Pinilla ran for the presidency as a Conservative and was narrowly defeated. Many claimed that he was fraudulently deprived of victory by political elites alarmed by his antiestablishment, populist rhetoric. In 1974, a newly formed guerrilla group, the 19th of April Movement (M-19), derived its name from the date of 1970 presidential election. ANAPO refused to endorse the guerrillas but M-19 went on to become the largest guerrilla movement in Colombia in the 1980s.

In 1974, ANAPO, by now constituted as a party, chose Rojas's daughter, María Eugenia Rojas de Moreno, as its presidential candidate, but she ran a poor third behind the Liberal and Conservative contenders. Thereafter the party declined, partly because of internal divisions and the death of the elder Rojas in 1975. In 1982, ANAPO endorsed the victorious Conservative candidate, Belisario Betancur, who appointed María Eugenia Rojas director of an important housing agency.

See alsoRojas Pinilla, Gustavo .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Albert Berry et al., eds., Politics of Compromise: Coalition Government in Colombia (1980), pp. 31-179.

Additional Bibliography

Ayala Diago, César Augusto. Resistencia y oposición al esta-blecimiento del Frente Nacional: Los orígenes de la Alianza Nacional Popular, ANAPO: Colombia, 1953–1964. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Historia, 1996.

Serpa Erazo, Jorge. Rojas Pinilla: Una historia del siglo XX. Bogotá: Planeta, 1999.

                                       Helen Delpar