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The United States and the Guatemalan Revolution

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Feb 1st, 2017
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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. “It wasn’t a great conspiracy, and it wasn’t a child’s game. We were just a group of young men searching for our destiny.” So said Alfredo Guerra Borges one evening in January 1973, quoted in Gleijeses’ Shattered Hope (Gleijeses 1991, p. 3; cited under the 1944–1954 Guatemalan Revolution: Accounts by Scholars and Journalists of the Presidencies of Arévalo and Arbenz). Guerra Borges had been a leader of the Communist Party of Guatemala (PGT) in the early 1950s. He spoke of Jacobo Arbenz—the Red Jacobo—who had been president of Guatemala in 1951–1954. He spoke of himself and of his Communist friends, of—what they accomplished, and of what they failed to achieve. He spoke of Washington and of Ambassador John Peurifoy, whom he had ridiculed in the columns of the PGT’s Tribuna Popular. And he spoke, as in wonder, of the fall of Arbenz. The Eisenhower administration had engineered the coup that brought down Arbenz and ended the 1944–1954 Guatemalan Revolution—a revolution that had seen the PGT bask in Arbenz’s favor while Communists were persecuted everywhere else in Latin America. It was a revolution that had seen the first true agrarian reform of Central America: half a million people (one-sixth of Guatemala’s population) received the land they desperately needed. Juan José Arévalo (1945–1951) and Jacobo Arbenz had presided over Guatemala during those ten “years of spring in the land of eternal tyranny” (Luis Cardoza y Aragón, La Revolución Guatemalteca, Mexico City: Cuadernos Americanos, 1955, p. 9). Arévalo—eloquent and charismatic—was a prominent intellectual. Arbenz—introverted and, even by CIA accounts, brilliant—was an unusual young colonel who cared passionately about social reform. According to American observers, the virus of Communism had infected them both, especially Arbenz. A few months before the fall of Arbenz, the New York Times delivered its indictment: Arbenz had become “a prisoner of the embrace he so long ago gave the communists” (6 November 1953, p. 3). More than fifty years have passed. Very few scholars now disparage Arévalo: he is considered a democrat whom Washington had misunderstood. But Arbenz is still controversial. Many believe that he, too, was misjudged and that the CIA plotted his overthrow because he had expropriated the land of the United Fruit Company. Others disagree. The former secretary general of the PGT, Arbenz’s closest friend, observes drily, “They would have overthrown us even if we had grown no bananas” (José Manuel Fortuny, quoted in Gleijeses 1991, p. 4).
  4.  
  5. Introductory Works on Guatemala
  6.  
  7. Guatemala is a country of rich soil and abject poverty. Until the end of World War II, land was the main source of wealth and prestige, and the landed elite was a close-knit group of a few hundred families. This elite has now branched out into industry, commerce, and banking, and the middle class has grown, though it remains fragile. Many of the poor live in urban slums, but most still eke out a living from the land, from their own tiny plots and from tilling the great estates of the rich. Guatemala, however, is rent by more than profound class differences; it also suffers from the fissure between the indigenous population and the Ladinos. More than half of its fourteen million inhabitants are Indians—the descendants of the vanquished Maya. The Ladinos look down on the Indians, but “Ladino” is an ambiguous, catchall category that ranges from upper-class whites, who boast of their European lineage, to landless Indians who have renounced the culture of their people. From independence in 1821 until 1944, Guatemala had known civil war and dictatorship; democracy was fleeting. But in 1944, a democratic parenthesis began—the Guatemalan Revolution. It lasted ten years, until, that is, the United States overthrew President Jacobo Arbenz. The fall of Arbenz ushered authoritarian governments that fervently opposed any social reform. For more than three decades—from 1962 to 1994—the guerrillas fought against the status quo and the army responded with a bloodbath that killed 200,000 Guatemalans. Armed struggle ended in 1994, but social reform remains taboo. Handy 1984 and Luján Muñoz 1998 review the history of Guatemala. Asturias 1985, Gleijeses 1988, and Grandin 2000 offer a snapshot of Guatemalan society. Bulmer-Thomas 1987 reviews the economy of Central America and Cohen Orantes 1972 the birth of Central American integration. Coatsworth 1994 surveys US policy toward Central America.
  8.  
  9. Asturias, Miguel Angel. El señor presidente. San José, Costa Rica: EDUCA, 1985.
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  11. Originally published in 1946, this novel by Guatemala’s foremost author portrays a society in which fear of the dictator is the only cohesive force. It grips every strata of the population. This was Guatemala under the dictatorships of Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920) and Jorge Ubico (1931–1944). This was also Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s, as the armed forces wreaked havoc to defeat the guerrillas. Fear is the keynote of Guatemalan history.
  12. Find this resource:
  13. Bulmer-Thomas, Victor. The Political Economy of Central America since 1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
  14. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511572029Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. A solid overview of the economy of Central America from the 1920s through the 1970s.
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  17. Coatsworth, John. Central America and the United States: The Clients and the Colossus. New York: Twayne, 1994.
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  19. A good overview based on a thorough knowledge of the literature in English and Spanish.
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  21. Cohen Orantes, Isaac. Regional Integration in Central America. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1972.
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  23. An incisive analysis of the origins of Central American economic integration and its impact on the development of the five Central American countries.
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  25. Gleijeses, Piero. Politics and Culture in Guatemala. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1988.
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  27. Argues that through the cacophony of the many Guatemalan cultures—the Indian and the Ladino, the elite few and the miserable many, the town dweller and the peasant, the civilian and the military—cuts one keynote: the culture of fear. Violence, torture, and death are the final arbiters of Guatemalan society, the gods that determine behavior.
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  29. Grandin, Greg. The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
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  31. Examines the evolution of the Quiché community of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second city, from the mid-18th century through the fall of President Arbenz. Well written and insightful, it offers a penetrating snapshot of the Maya population of Guatemala.
  32. Find this resource:
  33. Handy, Jim. Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala. Boston: South End, 1984.
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  35. The best one-volume history of Guatemala based on a mastery of the secondary sources and, for some periods, of the primary sources.
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  37. Luján Muñoz, Jorge. Breve historia contemporánea de Guatemala. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998.
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  39. Well-written history of Guatemala from the Spanish invasion in the early 16th century through the 1980s. The author has a good grasp of the key secondary sources.
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  41. Guatemala before 1944
  42.  
  43. Lacking gold and spices, Guatemala had been a poor and neglected colony throughout the three centuries of Spanish rule. Even after independence, it remained an impoverished backwater. Coffee changed this. In the last decades of the 19th century, the rising demand for coffee led to the creation of great coffee estates. Agrarian reforms that dispossessed the Indians of their land and labor codes that legalized forced labor ensured that the Indian would supply the workforce. Rare was the Ladino who felt no contempt for the Indian and who was not haunted by the fear that the Indians might one day rise up in fury. “For the Indian there is only one law—the lash,” a US scholar noted in 1940 (Jones 1940, p. 106). While the Indian tilled the land, the foreigner built the railroad that brought the coffee to the coast. By 1912, the American-owned International Railway of Central America controlled Guatemala’s railroads. Over the next two decades the United Fruit Company acquired immense tracts of state land, offering in return paltry sums of money. In 1920, Guatemala entered a period of limited political democracy. Its Congress and press were relatively free. Repression remained, but less than in the past, at least in the cities. The urban population demanded concessions and dared to stage strikes. Wages did increase and several labor unions were legalized. In the countryside, however, no unions were allowed and no reforms were introduced. With the crash of 1929, the coffee market collapsed, the Guatemalan economy went bankrupt, and unemployment spread through the land. The Guatemalan upper class knew that the times demanded a strong leader. That man was General Jorge Ubico. As governor of one of the country’s provinces, he had earned a reputation for efficiency and cruelty. The US embassy gave him its hearty endorsement. In February 1931, Ubico triumphed in a presidential election in which he was the sole candidate. The Ubico dictatorship had begun. It would last thirteen years, until 1944. MacLeod 1973, Castellanos Cambranes 1985, McCreery 1994, and Taracena Arriola 2002 focus on the socioeconomic development of Guatemala. Taracena Arriola 1982 describes the origins of the Guatemalan labor movement. Jones 1940 offers a snapshot of the country in the interwar years. Pitti 1975 provides a brilliant portrait of Guatemala in the 1920s.
  44.  
  45. Castellanos Cambranes, Julio. Café y campesinos en Guatemala, 1853–1897. Guatemala City: Universidad de San Carlos, 1985.
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  47. An excellent study of the development of the coffee culture in Guatemala and its impact on the country’s socioeconomic structure.
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  49. Jones, Chester. Guatemala: Past and Present. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1940.
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  51. A very good study of Guatemala, from the Spanish conquest to the mid-1930s.
  52. Find this resource:
  53. MacLeod, Murdo. Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
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  55. This monumental study is essential to understanding the colonial background of Central American socioeconomic development. It remains the definitive work of the period.
  56. Find this resource:
  57. McCreery, David. Rural Guatemala 1760–1940. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.
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  59. A superb study based on a mastery of Guatemalan primary sources.
  60. Find this resource:
  61. Pitti, Joseph. “Jorge Ubico and Guatemalan Politics in the 1920s.” PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 1975.
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  63. This brilliant study of Ubico in the 1920s illuminates the society that surrounded him. Combines excellent research with profound analysis.
  64. Find this resource:
  65. Taracena Arriola, Arturo. “Les origines du mouvement ouvrier au Guatemala, 1878–1932.” PhD diss., École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1982.
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  67. An impressive study of the early years of the Guatemalan labor movement, based on a wealth of primary sources.
  68. Find this resource:
  69. Taracena Arriola, Arturo. Etnicidad, estado y nacion en Guatemala, 1808–1944. Antigua, Guatemala: CIRMA, 2002.
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  71. An interesting and well-argued analysis of the development of Guatemalan society from 1808 to 1944.
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  73. The 1944–1954 Guatemalan Revolution
  74.  
  75. The Guatemalan Revolution can be divided into two periods: the presidency of Juan José Arévalo, from March 1945 to March 1951, and that of his successor, Jacobo Arbenz, overthrown by the United States in June 1954. Arévalo’s term was marked by an unprecedented multiparty system and the development of urban trade unions. In the cities, labor laws brought significant benefits to the lower and middle classes. But these laws were not enforced in the countryside, home to 80 percent of the Guatemalan people. There, the government’s failure to launch, or even plan, an agrarian reform overshadowed its timid efforts to improve the peasants’ plight. By contrast, agrarian reform was the keynote of the Arbenz administration. In eighteen months—from January 1953 to June 1954—500,000 people (one-sixth of Guatemala’s population) received the land they desperately needed. For the first time in the history of Guatemala, the Indians were offered land, rather than being robbed of it. Under Arévalo, the Communist Party had been proscribed; under Arbenz, it basked in the president’s favor. The Communists were, with Arbenz, the true sponsors of the agrarian reform. The Guatemalan upper class responded with pain and anger. It inveighed against the agrarian reform—“the most monstrous act of robbery perpetrated by any ruler in our history” (La Hora, p. 10, 18 June 1952). But the reform, the CIA reported, “was popular with the masses.” The upper class was “divided and squabbling,” the US State Department lamented; it had “no positive program” (both quotations from Gleijeses 1988, p. 7, cited under Introductory Works on Guatemala). Even the army was largely loyal to Arbenz, a respected officer. For the upper class, then, there was only one road to salvation: US intervention. The Eisenhower administration obliged: Arbenz was overthrown, the Communists were persecuted, the army was purged, and the Indians were thrown off the land they had received. As the culture of fear once again tightened its grip over the great many, the elite few strengthened their resolve. Never had they felt as threatened as under Arbenz; never before had they lost land to the Indians. They intended to make sure that it would never happen again. For them, the 1944–1954 interlude had confirmed that democracy was dangerous, that reformers were Communists, and that concession was surrender.
  76.  
  77. Guatemalan Documents
  78.  
  79. The Guatemalan government has not declassified documents from 1944 to 1954. A very rich trove of Guatemalan documents—the Guatemalan Transcripts—is, however, available in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The CIA seized these ninety-four boxes of documents in Guatemala after the overthrow of Arbenz. A mishmash, they include some detritus among a mass of important documents. They are indispensable to the study of the Guatemala Revolution. Arévalo 1987 is a collection of speeches and other public documents. Guatemala 1954 includes valuable documents on the US-sponsored plot to overthrow Arbenz.
  80.  
  81. Arévalo, Juan José. Seis a s de gobierno: Informes, discursos, mensajes. 2 vols. Guatemala City: Ministerio de Educaci, 1987.
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  83. The speeches of Arévalo during his presidency and the reports he sent to the Guatemalan congress.
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  85. Guatemala Secretaría de Divulgación, Cultura y Turismo. La democracia amenazada: El caso de Guatemala. Guatemala City: Tipograf Nacional, 1954.
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  87. Includes several letters and other documents that reveal the existence of a plot led by Colonel Castillo Armas and backed by the Eisenhower administration to overthrow Arbenz.
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  89. Guatemalan Transcripts. 94 boxes. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
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  91. Ninety-four boxes of documents seized by the CIA in Guatemala after the overthrow of Arbenz.
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  93. Accounts by Presidents Arévalo and Arbenz
  94.  
  95. President Juan José Arévalo (1945–1951) wrote lengthy memoirs, but he was never candid: see especially Arévalo 1984 and Arévalo 1998. His successor, Jacobo Arbenz (1951–1954), gave very few interviews in his sixteen years of exile and was always hermetic. The most important of these interviews is Arbenz 1974, but see also Arbenz 1954.
  96.  
  97. Arbenz, Jacobo. “Tiene la palabra Jacobo Arbenz.” Bohemia, 14 November 1954: 48–50.
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  99. Arbenz’s first interview in exile, conducted by Raúl Roa. The most interesting part of the interview deals with the betrayal of the Guatemalan army in June 1954.
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  101. Arbenz, Jacobo. “Habla Arbenz.” Alero 8 (September–October 1974): 116–124.
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  103. The summary of a very long interview with Arbenz conducted over two days in 1968 by a knowledgeable American researcher, Marta Cehelsky. Arbenz reveals little.
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  105. Arévalo, Juan José. El candidato blanco y el huracán 1944–1945. Guatemala City: EDUCA, 1984.
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  107. This memoir covers the critical months from September 1944, when Arévalo returned to Guatemala, to March 1945, when he was inaugurated as president of the republic.
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  109. Arévalo, Juan José. Despacho presidencial: Obra póstuma. Guatemala City: Oscar de León Palacios, 1998.
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  111. Arévalo’s last book of memoirs, published posthumously. Covers his presidency (1945–1951). Many Guatemalans had hoped that Arévalo would finally provide a candid account of his presidency. They had to settle for this cautious tome.
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  113. Progovernment Accounts by Other Guatemalan Participants
  114.  
  115. Vilanova de Arbenz 2000 is the memoir of Arbenz’s widow. Bauer Paiz and Alfaro 1996, Díaz Rozzotto 1958, Galich 1956, and Toriello 1955 are the memoirs of noncommunist political leaders. Fortuny 2002 is the memoir of the Guatemalan Communist Party’s secretary general.
  116.  
  117. Bauer Paiz, Alfonso, and Iván Carpio Alfaro. Memorias de Alfonso Bauer Paiz: Historia no oficial de Guatemala. Guatemala City: Rusticatio Ediciones, 1996.
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  119. Bauer Paiz was unusual among noncommunist politicians for his professionalism and his honesty, as he proved as director of the National Agrarian Bank from 1953 to 1954. His memoirs, opinionated and forcefully argued, are worth reading.
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  121. Díaz Rozzotto, Jaime. El carácter de la Revolución Guatemalteca. Mexico City: Ediciones Revista “Horizonte” 1958.
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  123. A history of the Guatemalan Revolution by a prominent politician. Includes useful information.
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  125. Fortuny, José Manuel. Memorias de José Manuel Fortuny. Guatemala City: Oscar de León Palacios, 2002.
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  127. The head of the Guatemalan Communist Party, Fortuny was a key protagonist of the Guatemalan Revolution. Intelligent and articulate, he was also an excellent writer. Unfortunately this autobiography is superficial, but it includes interesting details.
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  129. Galich, Manuel. Por qué lucha Guatemala? Arévalo y Arbenz, dos hombres contra el imperio. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Elmer, 1956.
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  131. A defense of the Guatemalan Revolution and a bitter attack on the United States by an important noncommunist political leader. Includes valuable information.
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  133. Toriello, Guillermo. La batalla de Guatemala. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1955.
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  135. In the Arbenz years, Toriello was ambassador to the United States and foreign minister. His memoir mixes fact and fiction.
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  137. Vilanova de Arbenz, María. Mi esposo, el presidente Arbenz. Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 2000.
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  139. This slim volume offers the reminiscences of Arbenz’s widow, written very late in her life, when she had abandoned the radical ideas of her youth. Argues—unconvincingly—that she was never a Communist, but is silent about her husband’s political views.
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  141. Antigovernment Accounts by Guatemalan Participants
  142.  
  143. Pinto Recinos 1985 gives a very good account of the revolt of the supporters of Colonel Francisco Arana in July 1949. Calderón Salazar 1955 conveys the mindset of the Guatemalan upper class at the time of the Guatemalan Revolution. Sierra Roldán 1958 is the lamentations of a disgruntled plotter whom Washington discarded in favor of Colonel Castillo Armas.
  144.  
  145. Calderón Salazar, José. Letras de la Liberación. 2 vols. Guatemala City, Guatemala: n.p., 1955.
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  147. Rewrites history with utter disregard for the facts. It is valuable, however, as a window on the rhetoric, arguments, and worldview of Arbenz’s upper-class foes.
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  149. Pinto Recinos, Ricardo. “La rebelión de la Guardia de Honor, el 18 de julio de 1949.” La Hora, 18 June 1985–4 July 1985.
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  151. An excellent series of fifteen articles by a supporter of Colonel Francisco Arana about the military revolt that followed Arana’s death on 18 July 1949. This was a decisive moment in the history of the Guatemalan Revolution.
  152. Find this resource:
  153. Sierra Roldán, Tomás. Diálogos con el coronel Monzón: Historia viva de la Revolución Guatemalteca 1944–1954. Guatemala City: Editorial San Antonio, 1958.
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  155. The bitter lamentations of an army colonel who had hoped that the United States would chose him, instead of Castillo Armas, to be Arbenz’s successor. Rewrites the history of the Guatemalan Revolution, and his own role, with real creativity.
  156. Find this resource:
  157. Biographies of Guatemalan Participants
  158.  
  159. There were many Guatemalan participants but only one, Paz Tejada, is the subject of a worthwhile biography: Figueroa Ibarra 2001. Also noteworthy is Avila Ayala 1954. Biographies of Arbenz are very superficial: see Aguilar de León 1996 and García Añoveros 1987. Equally superficial is Flores 1994. De la Guardia 1957 is both superficial and misleading. Hoessli 1995 is a documentary about President Arbenz.
  160.  
  161. Aguilar de León, Juan de Dios. Vida cívica, política y militar del coronel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Guatemala City: Lit. Arte, Color y Texto, 1996.
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  163. Poorly written and superficial. Includes some useful interviews.
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  165. Avila Ayala, Manuel María. “La muerte del coronel Arana.” La Hora, 27 July 1954–13 August 1954.
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  167. Fourteen articles. A well-informed, if partisan, portrait of Colonel Arana by one of his friends.
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  169. de la Guardia, Manuel César. Castillo Armas, libertador y mártir. Lima, Peru: Editorial Indoamérica, 1957.
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  171. An apology for Colonel Castillo Armas, the man chosen by the CIA to replace Arbenz. Pays no attention to the facts. Its only—not insignificant—value is that it reflects perfectly the mindset of the Guatemalan upper class at the time.
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  173. Figueroa Ibarra, Carlos. Paz Tejada: Militar y revolucionario. Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 2001.
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  175. More than a biography, this is really the autobiography of Colonel Paz Tejada, a key figure of the Guatemalan Revolution, written with the assistance of a good historian, the Guatemalan Figueroa Ibarra. The result is the most important memoir by a protagonist.
  176. Find this resource:
  177. Flores, Marco Antonio. Fortuny: Un comunista guatemalteco. Guatemala City: Oscar de León Palacios, 1994.
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  179. This is Fortuny’s account of his life, as told to Flores. Fortuny was a fascinating person and a key protagonist of the Guatemalan Revolution, but what he told Flores is, unfortunately, superficial.
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  181. García Añoveros, Jesús. Jacobo Arbenz. Madrid, Spain: Historia 16 Quorum, 1987.
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  183. This biography of Arbenz is disappointing and perfunctory, but includes some useful material.
  184. Find this resource:
  185. Hoessli, Andreas, dir. Devils Don’t Dream! VHS. New York: Icarus Films, 1995.
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  187. A documentary about President Arbenz. Uses archival footage and interviews with protagonists, including Arbenz’s widow.
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  189. Guatemalan Society and Economy
  190.  
  191. The World Bank noted in 1951 that Guatemala had enormous agricultural potential: “In soils and climate few countries are better equipped for agricultural development” (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, p. 5). The land tenure system, however, stifled Guatemala’s progress: 2 percent of landowners owned 72 percent of agricultural land, while half of those who owned land were crowded onto parcels too small to sustain a family. Arévalo left the country’s oppressive land tenure system intact, but Arbenz moved, decisively, to uproot it. In secret, with his kitchen cabinet of Communist leaders, he planned an agrarian reform bill that he presented to an unsuspecting cabinet in late April 1952. Agrarian reform had become, as a Guatemalan political leader noted, “an obsession” for Arbenz, spurred by his deep desire for social justice. Under intense presidential pressure, Congress approved the bill on 17 June 1952. Guatemala finally had a comprehensive agrarian reform law. Arbenz placed the Communist Party of Guatemala (PGT) in effective control of the implementation of the reform. In Guatemala, the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US embassy in the Arbenz years noted: “Those who could work, had a sense of direction, ideas, knew where they wanted to go, were Fortuny [the PGT Secretary General] and his PGT friends; they were very honest, very committed. This was the tragedy: the only people who were committed to hard work were those who were, by definition, our worst enemies.” By the time Arbenz was overthrown in June 1954, 500,000 people (one-sixth of Guatemala’s population) had received the land they desperately needed. Contrary to the hopes of the government’s detractors, the reform did not paralyze agricultural output. The US embassy, which closely monitored the country’s economy, noted in the spring of 1954 that agricultural production was increasing and that the economy was “basically prosperous” (all quotations from Gleijeses 1991, pp. 146, 193, 167, cited under the 1944–1954 Guatemalan Revolution: Accounts by Scholars and Journalists of the Presidencies of Arévalo and Arbenz). International Bank for Reconstruction and Development portrays the socioeconomics of Guatemala in the late 1940s. Bishop 1959 and Bush 1950 analyze the labor movement. Newbold 1957, Comité Interamericano de Desarrollo Agrícola, Handy 1994, Paredes Moreira 1964, and Pearson 1969 focus on the agrarian reform and its impact on the peasantry.
  192.  
  193. Bishop, Edwin. “The Guatemalan Labor Movement, 1944–1959.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1959.
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  195. This well-researched study by an avowedly anticommunist scholar contrasts “the opportunistic, corruptible anticommunist leaders” in the Guatemalan labor movement with “the dedicated, incorruptible Communist leaders” (p. 148).
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  197. Bush, Archer. “Organized Labor in Guatemala, 1944–1949.” MA diss., Colgate University, 1950.
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  199. A careful, path-breaking analysis based on an exhaustive study of the Guatemalan press, government publications, and available secondary sources.
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  201. Comité Interamericano de Desarrollo Agrícola. Tenencia de la tierra y desarrollo socio-económico del sector agrícola. Washington, DC: Unión Panamericana, 1965.
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  203. An authoritative study of Arbenz’s agrarian reform.
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  205. Handy, Jim. Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944–1954. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
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  207. The most comprehensive study of Arbenz’s agrarian reform, based on an impressive array of sources that include US government reports and Guatemalan documents. Particularly important are the records of the Departamento Agrario Nacional.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The Economic Development of Guatemala. Washington, DC: World Bank, 1951.
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  211. An excellent analysis of the socioeconomics of Guatemala in the late 1940s.
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  213. Newbold, Stokes [Richard Adams]. “Receptivity to Communist Fomented Agitation in Rural Guatemala.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 5.4 (July 1957): 338–361.
  214. DOI: 10.1086/449744Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  215. Written by Richard Adams under his pseudonym, Stokes Newbold. Based on interviews with 264 of the thousands of peasants jailed by Castillo Armas’s Liberation Army in the wake of the overthrow of Arbenz. The peasants were interviewed in jail. The study concluded that as a result of the policies of the Arbenz government, “an awakening of profound import did take place for many of the members of this sample” (p. 361).
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Paredes Moreira, José Luis. Aplicación del Decreto 900. Guatemala City: Universidad de San Carlos, 1964.
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  219. Includes valuable statistical data about the implementation of Arbenz’s agrarian reform.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Pearson, Neale. “Guatemala: The Peasant Union Movement, 1944–1954.” In Latin American Peasant Movements. Edited by Henry Landsberger, 323–373. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969.
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  223. A very good analysis of the Guatemalan peasant movement during the Guatemalan Revolution, based on a careful study of the Guatemalan documents seized by the CIA after the fall of Arbenz (see Guatemalan Transcripts, cited under Guatemalan Documents).
  224. Find this resource:
  225. The United Fruit Company
  226.  
  227. Dosal 1993 describes the growth of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala before 1944. Bauer Paiz 1956 and Stanley 2000 offer opposite views of the role of United Fruit in Guatemala, with a particular focus on the 1944–1954 period. Schlesinger and Kinzer 1982 argues that the company played a key role in the US decision to overthrow President Arbenz.
  228.  
  229. Bauer Paiz, Alfonso. Como opera el capital yanqui en Centroamérica: El caso de Guatemala. Mexico City: Editora Ibero-Mexicana, 1956.
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  231. A blistering critique of the United Fruit Company. Highly partisan, but interesting.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Dosal, Paul. Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala 1899–1944. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1993.
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  235. A good study of the growth of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala until the beginning of the Guatemalan Revolution. Unfortunately Dosal, like all those who have written on United Fruit, was unable to gain access to the company’s archives.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982.
  238. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  239. Argues that United Fruit played the key role in shaping US policy toward Guatemala in the 1944–1954 period
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Stanley, Diane. For the Record: The United Fruit Company’s Sixty-Six Years in Guatemala. 2d ed. Guatemala City: Editorial Antigua, 2000.
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  243. The best defense of the company’s record that has been published. Highly partisan, but interesting. Unfortunately Stanley, like all those who have written on United Fruit, was unable to gain access to the company’s archives.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. The Antidictatorial Struggle of 1944
  246.  
  247. During his thirteen-year dictatorship (1931–1944), General Jorge Ubico maintained an iron grip over the country. Throughout Latin America, the Depression had spawned strongmen. However, by the mid-1940s the economic crisis had eased, and the Allied victory over Hitler spread antidictatorial feelings among even the upper class. In the Caribbean, dictators faltered and fell. Ubico was one of them, resigning in July 1944, after facing a massive wave of urban unrest. The provisional president, General Federico Ponce, tried to establish his rule, but he was overthrown on 20 October 1944 by a military revolt supported by the urban populace. The Guatemalan Revolution had begun. A triumvirate of two military officers—Jacobo Arbenz and Francisco Arana—and one civilian led the country to elections that were won by Juan José Arévalo. Grieb 1979 and Karlen 1991 are biographies of General Ubico; Galich 1977, Silva Girón 1981, and Zamora Álvarez 1975 discuss moments of the antidictatorial struggle of 1944.
  248.  
  249. Galich, Manuel. Del pánico al ataque. Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 1977.
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  251. First published in 1949. A well-written account of the antidictatorial struggle of 1944 by a student leader who played a very important role.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Grieb, Kenneth. Guatemalan Caudillo: The Regime of Jorge Ubico. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1979.
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  255. The better of the only two scholarly studies of the Ubico dictatorship (the other is Karlen 1991). It is less penetrating, however, than Pitti’s magisterial “Ubico,” which ends, unfortunately, with Ubico’s accession to the presidency.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Karlen, Stefan. “Paz, Progreso, Justicia, y Honradez”: Das Ubico-Regime in Guatemala, 1931–1944. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991.
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  259. One of the only two scholarly studies of the Ubico dictatorship. Much more detailed than Grieb 1979, but less incisive.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Silva Girón, César Augusto. 12 horas de combate: Relato histórico de la batalla del 20 de octubre de 1944. Guatemala City: Oscar de León Palacios, 1981.
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  263. The style is turgid, but the author offers valuable information on the military conspiracy that led to the overthrow of the would-be dictator, General Federico Ponce, on 20 October 1944 and ushered in the Guatemalan Revolution.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Zamora Álvarez, José. Las memorias de Andrés: Relato de un soldado ex combatiente del 20 de octubre de 1944. Guatemala City: Editorial del Ejército, 1975.
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  267. The literary value of this novel is negligible, but its description of the events of October 1944 is accurate. Herein lies its value.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Accounts by Scholars and Journalists of the Presidencies of Arévalo and Arbenz
  270.  
  271. Adams 1970 offers a snapshot of Guatemalan society. Gleijeses 1991 and Velasquez Carrera 1994 are sympathetic to the Guatemalan Revolution. Sabino 2007 and Villagrán Kramer 1993 are useful overviews. Del Valle Matheu 1956 and Martz 1956 are bitterly critical. Schneider 1959 assesses Communist influence under Arbenz.
  272.  
  273. Adams, Richard. Crucifixion by Power: Essays on the Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944–1966. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970.
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  275. An x-ray of Guatemalan society. Perceptive and knowledgeable.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. del Valle Matheu, Jorge. La verdad sobre “El caso de Guatemala.” Guatemala City: n.p., 1956.
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  279. This slim volume presents the Guatemalan upper class’s bill of indictment against the Guatemalan Revolution and, especially, against Jacobo Arbenz. Herein lies its value. For the facts, an interested reader will have to look elsewhere.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
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  283. Sympathetic to the Guatemalan Revolution and to Arbenz and his kitchen cabinet of Communist leaders. Based on US and Guatemalan documents, the Guatemalan press, and interviews with the key Guatemalan participants.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Martz, John. Communist Infiltration in Guatemala. New York: Vantage, 1956.
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  287. This diatribe against the Guatemalan Revolution by a US academic relentlessly distorts the facts, but faithfully conveys the viewpoint of a great many US intellectuals at the time.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Sabino, Carlos. Guatemala, la historia silenciada (1944–1989). Vol. 1, Revolución y Liberación. Guatemala City: Fondo de Cultura Económica de Guatemala, 2007.
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  291. Based on a wealth of secondary sources, it presents a comprehensive and well-grounded account of the period.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Schneider, Ronald. Communism in Guatemala: 1944–1954. New York: Praeger, 1959.
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  295. A dispassionate, authoritative, and thorough study of Communist influence in Guatemala. Based on the Guatemalan documents seized by the CIA after the fall of Arbenz (see Guatemalan Transcripts, cited under Guatemalan Documents).
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Velasquez Carrera, Eduardo Antonio, ed. La Revolución de Octubre: Diez años de lucha por la democracia en Guatemala 1944–1954. 2 vols. Guatemala City: Universidad de San Carlos, 1994.
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  299. A collection of short essays by scholars and protagonists sympathetic to the Guatemalan Revolution. Particularly valuable are the essays by José Manuel Fortuny and Carlos Figueroa Ibarra.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Villagrán Kramer, Francisco. Biografía política de Guatemala: Los pactos políticos de 1944 a 1970. Guatemala City: FLACSO, 1993.
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  303. A political history of Guatemala centered on key moments analyzed with intelligence and knowledge. The author was at times a participant, more often a keen observer, of the events he describes.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. The Guatemalan Press
  306.  
  307. During the Arbenz years, the Guatemalan press was the freest in Latin America (under Arévalo, Communist publications were illegal). Unlike tabloids of the Far Right, the more established conservative newspapers, like El Imparcial and La Hora, did not openly call for the overthrow of Arbenz. They simply warned that the United States would not long tolerate Arbenz’s Communist government and would invade Guatemala—a clear signal to the Guatemalan army that the only way to avoid a US invasion was to get rid of Arbenz. Diario de Centro América, which was owned by the government, sought to hide its sympathies for the Soviet Union, but at times it veered to a warm procommunist stance. Two conservative journalists, Contreras Velez 1952 and Marroquín Rojas 1954c, lamented the weakness of the anticommunist opposition. Marroquín Rojas 1954a and Marroquín Rojas 1954b pointed out that the United States would invade Guatemala to get rid of the Communist government. Diario de Centro América and Boletín Agrario embraced the Soviet position on the Korean War. Castro Saavedra 1953 sang the praise of Communist Czechoslovakia in the pages of Diario de Centro América.
  308.  
  309. Castro Saavedra, Carlos. “El mundo nuevo.” Diario de Centro América, 21 May 1953, 2.
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  311. Writing in the major government newspaper, Castro Saavedra warmly praises Communist Czechoslovakia. “Here man begins to be man, he begins to rise from the swamp into which he has been thrown by . . . the kings, the bankers, the businessmen.”
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Contreras Velez, Alvaro. “Cacto.” Prensa Libre, 2 October 1952, 3.
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  315. The author, a fervent anticommunist, complains bitterly that “the [Guatemalan] communists are prominent because of their intellectual abilities,” whereas the anticommunist leaders lack “guts . . . and the will to sacrifice.”
  316. Find this resource:
  317. “La guerra en Corea.” Boletín Agrario, August 1953, 2.
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  319. Praises “the iron will” of the people of North Korea “who proved the greatness of their ideals in their struggle to create a truly democratic government” and lambasts “the cynicism of the arms merchants.” Boletin Agrario was the organ of the Departamento Agrario Nacional, a government agency.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. “La Paz en Corea.” Diario de Centro América, 27 July 1953, 3.
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  323. In welcoming the armistice at Panmunjon, Diario de Centro América—the major government newspaper—revealed its sympathies: “We have learned that for Big Business war is profit, but we also learned that the [pro-Soviet] World Peace Movement is not a futile and weak movement. It is strong and heroic.”
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Marroquín Rojas, Clemente. “Y usted: ¿Qué deduce, señor ministro?” La Hora, 14 January 1954a, 1.
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  327. “How could the leaders of Guatemala imagine that the United States would tolerate a nest of enemies on its very doorstep? . . . Germany, powerful even though defeated, is still occupied, and so is Japan—and we will be too, we poor fools who don’t even produce fireworks, much less the ammunition for a token resistance.”
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Marroquín Rojas, Clemente. “Pues ni la realidad los convence.” La Hora, 19 January 1954b, 3.
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  331. Argues that the principle of nonintervention would not inhibit the United States; the Americans did not hesitate to intervene militarily when they deemed it necessary. Legal niceties would not restrain them.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Marroquín Rojas, Clemente. “El caso del diputado José Luis Arenas R.” La Hora, 27 February 1954c, 3.
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  335. Marroquín Rojas, the maverick of the Guatemalan right, frankly acknowledged that “the peasants support the government. . . It is the rich—the landowners and the landlords—who would have to fight in the streets, and they will never do it.”
  336. Find this resource:
  337. The Overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz
  338.  
  339. On 17 June 1954, the “Liberation Army” of Colonel Castillo Armas—approximately 250 strong—invaded Guatemala from Honduras. On 27 June 1954, the Guatemalan army forced Arbenz to resign and rallied to Castillo Armas. The rebels did not win on the battlefield. In the two skirmishes they fought, at Gualán and at Puerto Barrios, they were soundly defeated. They won because the Eisenhower administration used intense psychological warfare to convince the Guatemalan officers that either they get rid of Arbenz or the United States would—in other words, if they defeated Castillo Armas they would face the US army next. This psychological warfare was the heart of PBSUCCESS, the CIA covert operation to overthrow Arbenz. It persuaded the Guatemalan officers to betray their president. The weakness of Castillo Armas’s troops was exposed a few weeks later when, on 2 August 1954, the cadets at the military academy rose against them and they surrendered abjectly within a few hours. The US ambassador intervened, and the victorious cadets surrendered the next day. Asturias 2003 is a novelistic portrayal of the invasion. Hurtado Aguilar 1956, Putzeys Rojas 1976, and Santa Cruz Morales 1978 include valuable information about the “Liberation Army.” López Villatoro 1956 offers information about the CIA radio station that broadcast to Guatemala during the invasion. Silva Girón 1977 describes the battle of Gualán. La derrota de una batalla demolishes the myth that the rebel air force disrupted the army’s operations. Pinto Recinos 1988 describes the revolt of the cadets of 2–3 August 1954 (see also Gleijeses 1991, (cited under Accounts by Scholars and Journalists), which includes a lengthy discussion of the invasion of Guatemala and the fall of Arbenz, based on US and Guatemalan primary sources.
  340.  
  341. Asturias, Miguel Anger. Week-end en Guatemala. Guatemala City: Piedra Santa, 2003.
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  343. Originally published in 1956. This novel by Guatemala’s foremost writer, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, portrays the terrible days of the US-sponsored invasion that brought about the fall of Arbenz and the end of the Guatemalan Revolution.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Hurtado Aguilar, Luis Alberto. Así se gestó la Liberación. Guatemala City: Secretaría de Divulgación, Cultura y Turismo de la Presidencia de la República, 1956.
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  347. Accounts of the invasion by supporters of Castillo Armas are rare and unreliable. This is one of the two that include useful information (the other is Putzeys Rojas 1976).
  348. Find this resource:
  349. López Villatoro, Mario. Por los fueros de la verdad histórica, una voz de la patria escarnecida. Guatemala City: n.p., 1956.
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  351. The author was one of the Guatemalan broadcasters in the radio station created by the CIA in Honduras as part of the covert operation to overthrow Arbenz. His account mixes facts and fiction.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Marroquín Rojas, Clemente. La derrota de una batalla. Guatemala City: n.p., n.d.
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  355. Marroquín Rojas, the maverick of the Guatemalan Right, demolishes the myth that the rebel air force disrupted the operations of the Guatemalan army during the invasion.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Pinto Recinos, Ricardo. “Sublevación de los caballeros cadetes.” La Hora, 22 July 1988–8 August 1988.
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  359. Fourteen articles. The best available account of the 23 August 1954 revolt of the cadets.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Putzeys Rojas, Guillermo. Así se hizo la Liberación. Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1976.
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  363. Accounts of the invasion by supporters of Castillo Armas are rare and unreliable. This is one of the two that include useful information (the other is Hurtado Aguilar 1956).
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Santa Cruz Morales, Raúl. “El Ejército de Liberación.” La Hora Dominical, 20 August 1978, 5–16.
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  367. Includes valuable information on the “Liberation Army.”
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Silva Girón, César Augusto. La batalla de Gualán. Guatemala City: n.p., 1977.
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  371. At Gualán, on 20 June 1954, the invaders fought their first battle and after a few hours withdrew in disarray. Gualán, a small town fifteen miles west of the Honduran border, was defended by Lieutenant Silva Girón and thirty soldiers. La batalla de Gualán provides a turgid but accurate account of the battle.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. US Policy Toward the Guatemalan Revolution
  374.  
  375. The quality of US government reports about the Guatemalan Revolution improved as Washington grew increasingly concerned about developments in the country. By 1952, the reporting it was thorough and accurate. US intelligence said that Communist influence in the Arbenz government was very strong; that Arbenz was either a Communist or a fellow traveler; that his closest advisers were the Communists, and that they were the architects of the agrarian reform program and the driving force in its implementation. This assessment was right—if anything, US officials underestimated Arbenz’s commitment to Communism and the centrality of the Communists’ role in the agrarian reform. US intelligence clearly stated that there was no Communist infiltration in the Guatemalan armed forces and that no officers were sympathetic to the party. This assessment, too, was right. Therefore, the picture presented by US intelligence was nuanced: on the one hand, there was a very strong Communist influence in the government, and, on the other hand, there was no Communist influence whatsoever in the armed forces. This should have raised the question: Was a Communist takeover in Guatemala possible? There is no indication, however, that the Eisenhower administration ever asked this question. Why tolerate an unfriendly government in Guatemala, a government that praised the Soviet Union and seized the land of the United Fruit Company, when it would be so easy to overthrow it? Why tolerate a government that threatened America’s friends in Central America? “Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador,” a US official noted in December 1953. “Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail” (Gleijeses 1991, p. 365, cited under The 1944–1954 Guatemalan Revolution: Accounts by Scholars and Journalists of the Presidencies of Arévalo and Arbenz). The fact that Arbenz’s agrarian reform was successful made it all the more dangerous. Arbenz had to go.
  376.  
  377. US Documents
  378.  
  379. PBSUCCESS, the operation to overthrow Arbenz, is one of the two CIA paramilitary operations about which the US government has declassified the most documents (the other is the Bay of Pigs). This occurred after an uproar about US Department of State 1983, which in its section on US relations with Guatemala in the Arbenz years said not one word about PBSUCCESS. It provided, as the State Department later admitted, “an incomplete and distorted history” (US Department of State 2003, p. IV). In 2003 the State Department published a new volume (US Department of State 2003), entirely devoted to PBSUCCESS, which included very rich documentation. Another miracle occurred at the CIA. Often, when a major covert operation began, the CIA Inspector General would assign officers to write a secret history of the operation. This did not happen in the case of PBSUCCESS. In the words of Lyman Kirkpatrick, then the Inspector General of the CIA, “After I got wind of the operation I wrote a memo to [CIA Director] Allen Dulles. I wanted him to let two men from my office observe PBSUCCESS. That memo got the fastest turnaround I’ve ever seen. Within an hour the thing was back on my desk. ‘Permission refused,’ signed AWD” (Gleijeses 1991, p. 372, cited under the 1944–1954 Guatemalan Revolution: Accounts by Scholars and Journalists of the Presidencies of Arévalo and Arbenz). Therefore, there was no secret history of PBSUCCESS. But in 1992 the CIA hired a young historian, Nick Cullather, to write the history of the operation and gave him access to the relevant documents. The manuscript was completed in 1993. Four years later, the CIA declassified it. US Department of State 1983 and US Department of State 2003 complement each other to tell the story of US relations with the Arbenz government. Cullather 1999 is the CIA secret history of PBSUCCESS.
  380.  
  381. Cullather, Nick. Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala 1952–1954. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.
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  383. This excellent narrative account is the CIA history of PBSUCCESS.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954. Vol. 4, American Republics. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983.
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  387. Includes documents on US relations with Guatemala that do not refer to the covert operation (pp. 1027–1239). It is, as the Office of the Historian of the State Department later wrote, “incomplete and flawed” (US Department of State 2003, p. IV). But it complements US Department of State 2003, which focuses exclusively on PBSUCCESS.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954: Guatemala. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2003.
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  391. Documents step by step the covert operation to overthrow the Guatemalan government. The historians of the State Department must be congratulated on a superb job. There is no comparable volume in the entire series of the Foreign Relations of the United States.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Accounts by US Participants
  394.  
  395. Few US officials have written accounts of the US role in the overthrow of Arbenz, and those who have are less than candid. This is the case for Eisenhower 1963, Hunt 1974, and Phillips 1977. Bissell, et al. 1996 is a welcome exception.
  396.  
  397. Bissell, Richard, Jonathan Lewis, and Frances Pudlo. Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
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  399. Includes an interesting and sober discussion of PBSUCCESS by this senior CIA official who participated in the operation. Unlike the other accounts listed in this section, it has no fabrications or self-serving tales (pp. 80–91).
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Eisenhower, Dwight. Mandate for Change, 1953–1956. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963.
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  403. President Eisenhower gives his account of the US role in the overthrow of Arbenz (pp. 421–427). What he writes is in stark contrast with the evidence conveyed by the declassified US documents.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Hunt, Howard. Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent. New York: Putnam, 1974.
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  407. The account of a CIA officer who participated in PBSUCCESS. Entertaining but highly unreliable.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Phillips, David Attlee. The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service. New York: Atheneum, 1977.
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  411. The memoirs of a CIA officer who participated in PBSUCCESS. Phillips’s account of the operation (pp. 30–54) includes some useful information, but must be read with extreme caution: accuracy is not his strong suit.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Accounts by Scholars and Journalists
  414.  
  415. Rabe 2012 offers a good synopsis of US policy toward the Guatemalan Revolution. Immerman 1982, Schlesinger and Kinzer 1982, and Gleijeses 1991 are more detailed accounts from diverse perspectives that reach contrasting conclusions. Grose 1994 and Thomas 1995 focus on PBSUCCESS. Urquhart 1973 and Young 1986 explore how the United States ran roughshod over, respectively, the United Nations and the United Kingdom in its attempt to overthrow Arbenz.
  416.  
  417. Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. Uses both US and Guatemalan primary sources.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Grose, Peter. Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
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  423. Includes a good synopsis of PBSUCCESS (pp. 368–388).
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Immerman, Richard. The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
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  427. One of the first two books to use a significant number of US documents (the other is Schlesinger and Kinzer 1982). This is its signal contribution. Unfortunately, the author does not use Guatemalan sources.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Rabe, Stephen. The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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  431. Includes a good synopsis of US policy toward the Guatemalan Revolution (pp. 36–58).
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982.
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  435. The view that the Eisenhower administration overthrew Arbenz to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company has its legion of ardent followers. Schlesinger and Kinzer provide its most compelling presentation. This is one of the first two books to use a significant number of US documents. The other is Immerman 1982. Like Immerman, Schlesinger and Kinzer do not use Guatemalan sources.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Thomas, Evan. The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared; The Early Years of the CIA. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. Based on unprecedented documentation, thanks to the author’s privileged access to the CIA archives, this is the best account of the early years of the CIA and includes valuable information on PBSUCCESS.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Urquhart, Brian. Hammarskjöld. New York: Knopf, 1973.
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  443. On 18 June 1954, the Guatemalan government appealed to the UN Security Council to take “whatever steps are necessary” to staunch the flow of foreign assistance to the invaders. Under very heavy US pressure, the Security Council refused to consider the Guatemalan matter. Washington’s heavy-handed lobbying, UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld lamented, “was the most serious blow so far aimed at the Organization [the United Nations]” (p. 92).
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Young, John. “Great Britain’s Latin America Dilemma: The Foreign Office and the Overthrow of ‘Communist’ Guatemala, June 1954.” International History Review 8.4 (November 1986): 573–592.
  446. DOI: 10.1080/07075332.1986.9640425Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. A good account of Anglo-American tensions about Guatemala, focusing on the US decision not to allow the UN Security Council to consider the Guatemalan case in June 1954. London strongly disagreed but bowed to US pressure.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. The US Press and the Overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz
  450.  
  451. In late June 1954, a CIA study indicated that the foreign press was virtually unanimous in concluding that the CIA had engineered Arbenz’s downfall. This was hardly surprising. In the words of the CIA Inspector General, “the fig leaf was very transparent, threadbare” (Gleijeses 1991, p. 368, cited under the 1944–1954 Guatemalan Revolution: Accounts by Scholars and Journalists of the Presidencies of Arévalo and Arbenz). Not transparent enough, however, for the US press to see through it. When it came to exploring the US role in the fall of Arbenz, US newspapers failed to report what was obvious to the rest of the world. Some rejected out of hand any insinuation that the US government might have assisted the rebels; others simply ignored this issue. This was not due to gullibility, but to what John Kennedy called “the duty of self-restraint” (Gleijeses 1991, p. 368). Six years had to pass before a mainstream US newspaper lifted—ever so slightly—the veil of deceit over the overthrow of Arbenz. This occurred toward the end of the 1960 presidential campaign. In his 21 October 1960 debate with John Kennedy, Vice President Richard Nixon said: “We quarantined Mr. Arbenz. The result was that the Guatemalan people themselves eventually rose up and they threw Arbenz out” (New York Times, 22 October 1960, p. 8). This led columnist James Reston to wryly comment, “This is the joke of the weekend in the Latin American embassies. For every official who knows anything about the fall of the Arbenz government knows that the United States government, through the Central Intelligence Agency, worked actively with, and financed, and made available the arms with which the anti-Arbenz forces finally ‘threw him out’” (Reston 1960). But the joke was on the American people—Reston’s remark was the first clear statement in the mainstream press that the US government had played a role in the overthrow of Arbenz. When Arbenz was overthrown, most mainstream US papers vigorously denied that the US government had aided the rebels: see for instance Bracker 1954, New Republic, Newsweek, and New York Times. The Nation was silent. Only the Communist press told the truth: see Pitman 1954. In Paris, Le Monde decried American hypocrisy. Reston 1960 lifted the veil of deceit.
  452.  
  453. Bracker, Milton. “The Lessons of the Guatemalan Struggle.” New York Times, 11 July 1954, 39.
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  455. Asserts that “there is no evidence that the United States provided material aid or guidance” to the rebels.
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  457. “Guatemala: Out Leftists.” New York Times, 4 July 1954, D2.
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  459. Castillo Armas, this editorial explained, had enjoyed merely “the moral support of the United States,” just as Arbenz had “the moral support of the Soviet Union.”
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  461. “Guatemala: The Price of Prestige.” Newsweek, 26 July 1954: 40.
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  463. Arbenz had been overthrown “in the best possible way: by the Guatemalans.”
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  465. Kirchwey, Freda. “Guatemala Guinea Pig.” The Nation, 10 July 1954: 21–23.
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  467. The Nation had urged the Eisenhower administration to seek a modus vivendi with Arbenz. But it drew back at the moment of truth, and refused to state the obvious—that the United States was involved in the overthrow of Arbenz—with “we simply do not know the facts.”
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  469. “M. Foster Dulles célèbre le succès de la vertu.” Le Monde, 2 July 1954, 4.
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  471. Addressing US policy in Guatemala, criticizes “the hypocrisy with which some Americans condemn the colonialism and subversive plots of others, but never reflect on the modern forms of economic colonialism or on the methods they themselves use to get rid of governments that they do not like.”
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  473. Pitman, John. “Who Will Call Hand of U.S. in Guatemala?” Daily Worker, 21 June 1954, 5.
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  475. This article states flatly—and correctly—that the US government was instrumental in the overthrow of Arbenz.
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  477. Reston, James. “Allies Deplore Positions Taken by 2 Candidates.” New York Times, 24 October 1960, 18.
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  479. This column includes the first clear statement in a mainstream American newspaper that the US government had participated in the plot to overthrow Arbenz—six years after the fact.
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  481. “We Won’t Turn the Clock Back—Maybe.” New Republic, 19 July 1954: 10.
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  483. This account of the overthrow of Arbenz airbrushes out the role of the United States. It glibly concludes, “It was just our luck that Castillo Armas did come by some second-hand lethal weapons from Heaven knows where.” In fact, the US government supplied the arms.
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  485. Aftermath
  486.  
  487. Since the overthrow of Arbenz, the Guatemalan upper class has ruled the country in cahoots with the military. Their battle cry has been intransigent opposition to all social reform. Therefore, violence alone could maintain the status quo. Journalists, university professors, priests, and men and women of the political center lost their lives to feed this culture of fear. They died alongside members of rural cooperatives, grassroots organizers, labor leaders, left-wing students, and armed guerrillas. “Torture and murder are part of a deliberate and long-standing program of the Guatemalan government,” Amnesty International stated in 1981 (Gleijeses 1988, p. 8, cited under Introductory Works on Guatemala). Periods of selective repression alternated with waves of great violence. The particular characteristics of the man sitting in the Presidential Palace were not decisive: the intensity of the repression depended on the intensity of the fear felt by the upper class and the military. In the early 1980s, a whirlwind of death swirled through the Indian highlands of Guatemala. Left-wing guerrillas had mounted an unprecedented challenge and the government’s repression was “pitiless” (Bishop Juan Gerardi, quoted in Piero Gleijeses, “The Guatemalan Silence,” New Republic, 10 June 1985, p. 20). The mountains and the valleys were littered with corpses of men, women, and children. Terror proved effective, the population was cowed into submission. Approximately 200,000 Guatemalans died at the hands of the army and paramilitary squads in the forty years that followed the overthrow of Arbenz. Finally, in 1994, a peace accord between the Guatemalan government and a much-weakened guerrilla movement ended the armed conflict. Multiparty elections are held every four years, but no social reforms have been instituted—in a country that desperately needs them. Dunkerley 1988, Sabino 2008, and Villagrán Kramer 2004 review the history of Guatemala after 1954. On the armed struggle that convulsed the country, see Aguilera Peralta 1997 and Schirmer 1998. On the plight of the population, see Guatemala: Never Again!, El clamor por la tierra, and Falla 1994.
  488.  
  489. Aguilera Peralta, Gabriel. “La guerra interna (1960–1994).” In Epoca contemporánea: De 1945 a la Actualidad. Vol. 6 of Historia General de Guatemala. Edited by Jorge Luján Muñoz, 135–150. Guatemala City: Asociación de Amigos del País, 1997.
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  491. An excellent overview of thirty-five years of armed struggle in Guatemala—from 1960 to 1994—by one of the country’s foremost experts on this subject.
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  493. Archdiocese of Guatemala, Human Rights Office. Guatemala: Never Again! REMHI; Recovery of Historical Memory Project. New York: Orbis, 1999.
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  495. Abridged translation of Guatemala: Nunca Más (4 vols.), which addresses three main issues: (1) the suffering of the population during the armed conflict that began in the early 1960s, (2) the modalities of the repression, and (3) the consequences of the repression. It assigns blame for 89.7 percent of the atrocities to the government forces and 4.8 percent to the guerrillas.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala. El clamor por la tierra. Guatemala City: n.p., 1988.
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  499. This 1988 pastoral of the Guatemalan bishops paid homage to the man their predecessors had reviled: Jacobo Arbenz. His agrarian reform program, they asserted, was the only serious attempt to reform this situation of profound injustice (p. 3). This remains true today.
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  501. Dunkerley, James. Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central America. London: Verso, 1988.
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  503. Includes a good survey of Guatemala after 1954, focusing on the first three decades after the fall of Arbenz. Based on a well-chosen array of secondary sources (pp. 425–515).
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Falla, Ricardo. Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975–1982. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994.
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  507. Examines the army’s repression and the behavior of the population in northern Quiché from 1975 to 1982. A Guatemalan Jesuit, Falla brings to his study an extraordinary degree of knowledge based on the years he spent with the survivors. He uses his first-hand knowledge to x-ray the massacres—how they were carried out, how the butchers behaved, and how the victims reacted. This is a haunting study of the culture of fear.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Sabino, Carlos. Guatemala, la historia silenciada (1944–1989). Vol. 2, El dominó que no cayó. Guatemala City: Fondo de Cultura Económica de Guatemala, 2008.
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  511. A sober, well-written overview of the forty-five years that followed the overthrow of Arbenz. While mainly based on secondary sources, it uses a few documents.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Schirmer, Jennifer. The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
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  515. A pathbreaking study of the Guatemalan army in the 1980s as it battled against the guerrillas. Based on the author’s impressive array of in-depth interviews with Guatemalan military officers.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Villagrán Kramer, Francisco. Biografia politica de Guatemala: Años de guerra y años de paz. Guatemala City: FLACSO, 2004.
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  519. Covers the period from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. The author is a Guatemalan who was at times a participant in his country’s political process, at other times a keen observer. The book is biased but informative and insightful.
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