Operation Pantomime ( Spanish: Operación Pantomima), according to a documentary elaborated by the

Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry Cuban may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Cuba, a country in the Caribbean * Cubans, people from Cuba, or of Cuban descent ** Cuban exile, a person who left Cuba for political reasons, or a descendant thereof * Cuban citizen, a perso ...

, was an operation undertaken by the government of the United States with the intention of assassinating

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

n presidential candidate

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala (23 January 1903 – 9 April 1948) was a left-wing Colombian politician and charismatic leader of the Liberal Party. He served as the mayor of Bogotá from 1936–37, the national Education Minister from 1940 ...

in 1948 as a way to curb

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

and leftwing influence in the region. The documentary included taped excerpts of the interrogation of a man identified as John Mepples Espirito, who is presented as a former

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

agent captured in Cuba during the 1960s. During his interrogation, Espirito claims that the US had tried and failed at either bribing or blackmailing Gaitán. Espirito says that he then traveled to Colombia as part of a team of US agents, who eventually contacted and used Colombian Juan Roa Sierra to assassinate Gaitán on April 9, 1948.

References

Conspiracy theories History of South America {{US-gov-stub