Jacobo Arbenz

Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán (Quetzaltenango, September 14, 1913 - Mexico City, January 27, 1971) was a Guatemalan military and politician of Swiss descent who served as the twenty-fifth president of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954 and who had been Minister of National Defense from 1945 to 1950.

He belonged to the group of soldiers who led the Revolution of 1944. He was known as the "soldier of the people". He was elected president of Guatemala in the 1950 presidential elections and took office on March 15, 1951. Árbenz explained in his inaugural speech that his government plan was based on three fundamental objectives, the first being to convert Guatemala from a dependent country with a semi-colonial economy into an economically self-sufficient country; and transform it from a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a modern country with a market economy. On June 27, 1954, he was overthrown by a coup led by the United States Government, sponsored by the United Fruit Company and executed by the CIA through operation PBSUCCESS, which replaced him with a military Junta that finally handed over the power to Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. He was accused of being a communist and attacking the interests of the US fruit monopolies and national agricultural oligopolies, mainly with agrarian reform, and for allowing members of the Guatemalan Party among his intimate circle of advisers After the coup, he had to escape to a torturous exile in Uruguay and Mexico, where he was separated from his wife and children, suffered a fierce smear campaign orchestrated by the CIA, and his daughter Arabella committed suicide in Bogotá, Colombia, in October 1965.

Finally, Jacobo Árbenz died in exile in Mexico City in 1971.

Biography

Jacobo Arbenz with his wife in 1955.

Her parents were Hans Jakob Arbenz Gröbli, a Swiss-German immigrant from Andelfingen, canton of Zürich, and Octavia Guzmán Caballeros, a Guatemalan from the Quetzalten society. Her father arrived in Guatemala in 1901 and ran a pharmacy business in the city from Quetzaltenango. His family belonged to the upper class and was relatively wealthy; he had an older sister, Anna Arabella, and a younger sister, Octavia Silvia, and her childhood was described as "well-to-do", but the family business collapsed due to his father's addiction to morphine. Hans Arbenz had to work as the administrator of a small farm, owned by a German immigrant who lived in the area, and ended up committing suicide.

Árbenz studied high school in Quetzaltenango, at the María Bennett de Rölz school. He wanted to be an economist or an engineer, but since the family no longer had money, he could not afford to study at a university. The availability of a scholarship for military cadets opened up the possibility of studying at the Polytechnic School, where he entered as a cadet in 1932 after passing the admission exams.

Árbenz excelled at the military academy and was considered "an exceptional student." He held the position of "first sergeant" of the Company of Knights Cadet, which was considered a great honor that, between 1924 and 1944, only six cadets had achieved. His abilities earned him an unusual level of respect among school officials, including Major John Considine, the then American director of the Polytechnic School. Árbenz graduated in 1935.

In 1937, he was called to serve at the Polytechnic School as an instructor. Regarding his destiny as an officer of the Guatemalan Army, he served mostly in the San José Buena Vista Fort, in Guatemala City and in San Juan Sacatepéquez. There he learned about the harsh living conditions of the indigenous population and the ways in which forced labor operated, with the indigenous being the subjects. He not only had to take care of indigenous gangs destined for forced labor on some farms, but also the care of political prisoners dedicated to this type of work.

It was in 1938 when he met María Cristina Vilanova, a woman belonging to El Salvador's high society. A year later, when he was 26 and she was 24 years old, they got married despite the opposition of the bride's parents, as they thought that the young officer could not give her the same quality of life as other suitors. marriage had three children, Arabella, Leonora and Jacobo. In 1943 Árbenz rose to the rank of captain and commanded the Company of Cavalier Cadet. He was then a distinguished officer and was described as a born leader.

Árbenz acted as triumvirate of the Government Junta, later he was Minister of Defense during the government of Juan José Arévalo and, finally, he was president of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954.

Participation in the Governing Board

Members of the Board of Government in 1944.

After the Revolution of October 1944, with the overthrow of Federico Ponce Vaides, successor to Jorge Ubico Castañeda, Captain Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, Jorge Toriello Garrido and Major Francisco Javier Arana formed the Governing Board.

The board legislated through decrees that sought to modernize the state. One of the most important measures that they took in the legal and political field was the convocation of a constituent assembly to elaborate a new Constitution, for which free elections were held. The new Political Constitution in 1945 which included:

• Separation of powers within the State
• The autonomy of the University of San Carlos de Guatemala
• End of forced labour and debt prison
• The recognition of women as citizens
• The granting of the right to vote to women. The illiterate woman could not vote.
• The recognition of constitutional guarantees.

These changes went directly against the policies that liberal governments had had. The triumvirate called elections to choose the president of the Republic. The elections were held in December 1944, with Dr. Juan José Arévalo winning. The Arévalo government was consolidated and directed the destinies of the nation with some attempts at insurgency that were beginning to occur.

Government of Juan José Arévalo

Judicial branch

The government of Arévalo tried to change the archaic judicial structures, consolidated by the maintenance of the old practices of manipulation, submission and formalism. The rapid incorporation of new rights, the appearance of a legitimate Parliament and the revolutionary dynamics generated tension in a judicial system, perhaps willing to accompany the process, but which was trapped in the vices of its colonial structure. The creation of the Labor Code was an obvious achievement, but it also showed that the judicial system was having trouble adjusting to the rapidity of change.

Army

Among the reforms that were put in place after the fall of the government of Ponce Vaides and that they tried to consolidate with the Constitution of 1945, the restructuring of the army had great importance: the suspension of the generalate, decreed from the first moments of the triumph of the revolutionary movement, symbolized this transformation, which was completed with a concern to modernize, professionalize and institutionalize the Army. For the first time in the country's history, a Constitution granted an entire chapter and thirteen articles to the subject of the army, establishing a model that would be taken up in subsequent constitutions. The constitutional norm established a reorganization of the army that turned out to be complex and not always operative: it sought to confirm the functional autonomy that was conferred on it for the first time. He created the Superior Council of National Defense, a consultative and collegiate body, made up of 15 members, some by election and within which the President of the Republic was not included, despite being considered Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

The senior and operational positions in the army were:

• Chief of Staff of the Army: appointed by the Congress of the Republic on the proposal of the Higher Council of National Defence
• Minister of National Defense: Arbenz served as Minister of Defence during the Arévalo government. He was the prime minister of this portfolio, as the same was formerly called "Ministry of War".

There were many rivalries between the two leaders during the ten years that the 1945 Constitution was in force, such as those between Major Francisco Javier Arana, head of the army and leader of the right until his assassination in 1949, and Colonel Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, Minister of Defense at the time, and leader of the left. On the other hand, according to some interpretations, the legal status and the organizational structure that the 1945 Constitution recognized the army were precisely the factors that determined that the officers entered fully into the political game. In this sense, the votes to integrate the Superior Council of National Defense and the very nature of this body, promoted the discussion for decision-making on the military policy that the Guatemalan Army should adopt and turned it into a deliberative body. In any case, according to the Commission for Historical Clarification that evaluated the situation in Guatemala at the end of the 1990s, "even though the new regulation could have contributed to the increase in the political weight of the army in the country, the changes that occurred in Guatemalan society and in the international context during those years generated among many officers the feeling of their political weight in the face of the weakness of the State and other partisan and social organizations".

Initial meeting with José Manuel Fortuny

In the fall of 1947, Árbenz's opposition as Minister of Defense to the deportation of several workers accused of communism intrigued the former member of the Popular Liberation Front, José Manuel Fortuny, due to the unexpectedness of such behavior, and he decided to visit him, discovering in that interview "a man different from the stereotype of the Central American military". That first meeting was followed by others until Árbenz himself invited Fortuny to his house, where discussions and conversations became common, usually lasting for hours. Like Árbenz, Fortuny was inspired by a fierce nationalism and a burning desire to improve the lot of the Guatemalan people; like Árbenz, he looked for answers in Marxist theory. It was a relationship only comparable to the one he would have with María Vilanova; José Manuel Fortuny would be his closest friend.

Death of Colonel Arana

This was what the Central Park and the Guatemalan National Palace looked like during the government of Colonel Árbenz.

Background

The prerogatives and economic benefits that the military commanders received from the revolutionary governments, as well as the flattery and interest of certain political leaders to bring them closer to their positions, increased the ambitions of some to get closer to political power or the power economy, which produced divisions and conflicts within the army. In 1947 Dr. Arévalo, in the company of a friend and two Russian dancers who were visiting Guatemala, had a car accident on the highway to Panajachel: he fell into the ravine and was seriously injured, while all his companions died. The leaders of the official party signed a pact with Lieutenant Colonel Arana, in which he promised not to attempt any coup against the convalescent president in exchange for that the revolutionary parties support Arana as their official candidate in the following elections; this was the famous "Pact of the Barranco". However, the recovery of the robust president was almost miraculous and he was soon able to take over the government again. Arana had accepted this pact because he wanted to be known as a "democratic hero" of the uprising against Ponce and believed that the "Pacto del Barranco" would guarantee his position when the time came for the presidential elections.

Arana was a very influential person in the Arévalo government, and had managed to be nominated as the next candidate for the presidency, ahead of Captain Árbenz, who was told that due to his young age —barely 36 years old at that time time—would have no problem waiting their turn for the following elections.

Facts

The death of Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Javier Arana is of critical importance in the country's history, as it was a major event in the history of the Guatemalan revolution: his death not only opened the doors to the election of Colonel Jacobo Árbenz as president of the republic in 1950, but also caused an acute crisis in the government of Dr. Arévalo Bermejo, who found himself faced with an army that had been loyal to Major Arana, and right-wing civilian groups that took advantage of the occasion to strongly protest against his government.

On Monday morning, July 18, Arana appeared at the presidential palace and told Arévalo in an insolent and sarcastic tone that he was going to El Morlón, the presidential residence on the shores of Lake Amatitlán, to confiscate a batch of weapons that Arévalo had hidden there after the Mexican authorities confiscated them from a group of Dominican exiles, including General Miguel Ángel Ramírez Alcántara, to whom the Guatemalan government had given them as gifts to overthrow Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. stolen from the military base in Puerto de San José and now he was going to confiscate them at the presidential residence. Historian Piero Gleijeses considers that Arana's visit to Arévalo was "that of an impulsive man whose patience was exhausted and who went to the palace to show off his power and to urge the humiliated president to comply with his ultimatum quickly." To exile; Arévalo skilfully suggested that he take Colonel Felipe Antonio Girón—head of the presidential guard—with him, which confirmed to Arana his apparent triumph and that Arévalo and Árbenz would never confront him.

Arévalo called Árbenz to take charge of the situation, and he sent several armed men, who left the capital in two cars and were under the orders of the police chief, lieutenant colonel Enrique Blanco, and by the PAR deputy Alfonso Martínez, a retired officer and friend of Árbenz. When Arana reached the La Gloria bridge, a gray Dodge was parked there, blocking his path. After the short shooting, three died: Arana, his assistant, Major Absalón Peralta, and Lieutenant Colonel Blanco.Eywitnesses never confirmed what triggered the shots and whether the intention had been to capture Arana as planned.

Consequences

When the news of his death was known, the Guard of Honor took up arms and the fighting began in the city, which lasted for twenty-four hours while the rest of the country awaited the result. Although it seemed that the Aranistas were going to triumph that July 18, they did not achieve their objective because they lacked a leader to lead them against the few forces loyal to the president led by Árbenz, who demonstrated great cold blood and military skill. Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, one of Arana's main collaborators, was in Mazatenango observing the CSD elections and did not dare to return, while the commander of the Honor Guard, Colonel Juan Francisco Oliva, was detained at the Ministry of Defense., where Árbenz had called him less than an hour after Arana's death.

By dawn on July 19, the government had seized the initiative: Colonel Cosenza had arrested Altolaguirre Ubico in the Air Force and numerous civilians had seized weapons from the warehouses of the Matamoros fort and from a small barracks that Árbenz had taken over during the night. Government loyalists besieged the Honor Guard, which was also attacked by the air force, with obsolete bombs that often failed to explode; finally, the barracks surrendered and the fight was concluded with a balance of one hundred and fifty dead and more than two hundred wounded. The official version —proposed by Arévalo and imposed by him on his ministers, including Árbenz— was that the members Reactionaries from Guatemalan society had been to blame for the death of Colonel Arana, something that many Guatemalans viewed with disbelief from the beginning, since it was known that Martínez was wounded and that he was a supporter of Árbenz; This gave rise to rumors of a plot to assassinate Colonel Arana, which have persisted to the present day and which directly accuse Árbenz of being responsible for the death of a rival who would have been "stealing prominence from him". According to Ricardo Barrios Peña assured in an interview with Piero Gleijeses, it would have been done on purpose by Arévalo to transfer all the blame to Árbenz.

The Minister of Education, Carlos Manuel Pellecer (who was discovered to be a CIA agent in 1992), in a demonstration in support of the government, rejected the official version and mentioned the coup that Arana had attempted; Immediately, the Arevalista government rejected Pellecer's statements and dismissed him from his official position.

1950 Elections

Árbenz came to power after winning the 1950 elections; he was supported by the National Renovation and Revolutionary Action parties of the Capital and the National Integration party of Quetzaltenango. The workers, peasants, teachers and students gave him their full support. For the 1950 electoral campaign, Árbenz asked Fortuny to write some speeches; their central theme was agrarian reform. One of the opposition candidates was General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes. After the comfortable victory of the official party, the opposition alleged that there were numerous manipulations by the government of Juan José Arévalo, which made considerable resources available to the official candidate, but he could not reverse the result. Ydígoras Fuentes, dissatisfied with the defeat, left for the United States embassy in El Salvador on January 10, 1951 and appeared before the secretary for affairs of said embassy, William Wieland, telling him that Arévalo was communist; Wieland interrupted him at that moment and closed the meeting by saying: "Thank you, General, for this pleasant and informative visit." A few weeks later, some Ydígoras collaborators visited Anastasio Somoza, the president of Nicaragua, who was told that they already had the military and the necessary weapons to overthrow Arévalo on February 28, 1951, but that they needed money. Somoza told them to greet Ydígoras on his behalf, but he did not give them anything, since he did not believe that at that time the Guatemalan army was willing to support a coup.

For their part, Árbenz and Fortuny shared the comfortable victory in the elections at the end of 1950 and, from then on, the tasks of government. While many of the leaders of the ruling coalition disputed his proximity to the president, the leaders of the Guatemalan Labor Party, and especially Fortuny, were Árbenz's closest advisers and made up his private cabinet.

Government of Jacobo Árbenz

He took possession of Colonel Árbenz Guzmán as President of Guatemala at the "State of the Revolution (now the Doroteo Stadium Guamuch Flores) in 1951.

As a sign of the rejection of the concessions made by the government of Manuel Estrada Cabrera to the United Fruit Company, in 1953 the Arbencist government ordered to dynamize the Temple of Minerva that Estrada Cabrera had built at the North Hippodrome to celebrate its Minervalias Feasts in honor of the Study Youth.

In 1950, 76% of the inhabitants owned less than 10% of the land; while 22% controlled 70%. The United Fruit Company (UFCO) owned more than 50% of the country's arable land, of which it only cultivated 2.6%; and the peasants had miserable salaries. On the other hand, since the government of Manuel Estrada Cabrera, there were US monopolies of subsidiaries of the UFCO and that were dedicated to the transport of cargo by rail and steamships, which left Puerto Barrios, Izabal, a port controlled by the fruit company. They also controlled the generation of electricity, telephones and telegraphs in the country. These companies did not pay any type of tax for the use of national resources, thanks to the generous concessions granted by Estrada Cabrera, and ratified by the governments of José María Orellana and Jorge Ubico. Ubico even promulgated laws that allowed landowners severely punish and even execute their colonists.

Takes possession of Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, greetings from former president Juan José Arévalo Bermejo

In accordance with his government plan, Árbenz took the following measures:

1. He presented to Congress the Agrarian Reform Law initiative, which was promulgated by the Congress of the Republic, through Decree 900, to expropriate the idle land of the UFCO.
2. He began the construction of the road that leads from Guatemala City to the Atlantic, which has been named since 2012, by decree of President Alvaro Colom.
3. It began the construction of the port Santo Tomás de Castilla, where was the port Matías de Gálvez, to compete with Puerto Barrios, port controlled by the UFCO.
4. He began studies for the generation plant Jurún Marinalá, to compete with the electric company Electric Bond and Share Company, owned by UFCO.

However, political tensions and ideological polarization were exacerbated during his tenure. The reforms that his government carried out, fundamentally the agrarian reform, increased the ideological polarization and the internal political struggle, in an international framework that was increasingly charged by the tensions of the East-West confrontation (see: the Cold War). In this context, the division and radicalization of the revolutionaries also increased, stimulated by their political-social heterogeneity. On the other hand, the judicial system already had problems adjusting to the speed of change initiated by the Arévalo reforms, which It became more evident and serious as a result of the conflicts generated by the agrarian reform promoted by Árbenz, since this affected economic, social and political interests of great importance, to the extent that twenty-two percent of the population owned the land. seventy percent of arable land.

Cabinet

United Fruit Company's "White Fleet" route map, which had a monopoly on the transport of cargo and passengers to and from Puerto Barrios in Guatemala.

The members of his cabinet were:

• Minister of Agriculture: Nicolás Brol, a rich landlord of Quetzaltenango and personal friend of the president. His appointment was celebrated by the Guatemalan elite who saw his representative in it; however, Brol was loyal to the reformist policies of the government because he considered that they favored the development of capitalism in the country.
• Minister of Economy: Roberto Fanjul, a prosperous Quetzalteco merchant. It was said by the officials of the United States embassy that it was successful and a well-known anti-communist, who had raised the hope of improving relations between the government and the elite. But Fanjul, like Brol, remained loyal to the president; Fanjul, even, was the one who forwarded the Decree 900 of agrarian reform to the congress in 1952, which left him in a precarious position with the Guatemalan elite, who began to treat him as “traitor” and “imbecil”.
• Minister of Public Health: Julio Domingo Bianchi Smout, a well-known Guatemalan doctor who had been part of the Unionist Party directive that defeated President Manuel Estrada Cabrera in 1920 and was also one of the signatories of the 311 Charter with which President Jorge Ubico was forced to take the decision to resign from the presidency in 1944.
• Minister of Foreign Affairs: Luis Cardoza and Aragón.

Education

In 1944, there were thirteen official secondary and normal education centers, attended by 1,861 students. In 1954, the number of schools had risen to twenty-two and the number of students rose to 7,098, an increase of 281%. This increase led to a considerable expansion of teacher training, and the number of applicants to enter the University also rose to an unprecedented number.

During the presidential term of Jacobo Árbenz, the same educational trend was followed as in the Arévalo government. During his government, rural education and literacy and secondary education increased greatly. The initial plan of the Rural Normal School was extended with the regionalization of rural schools, of which six were founded in different parts of the country. The pedagogical postulates of the revolution remained in force for ten years and education was given a democratic character from kindergartens to the University; school journalism and self-government emerged, and student associations became widespread in all high schools. The draft of the Organic Law of 1952 installed a modern educational system in accordance with the pedagogical reality of the country, but this statute was not fully enforced.

Education remained secular, free and compulsory until reaching a minimum of schooling. Childcare centers proliferated and orphaned and destitute children were cared for with modern systems. Teachers were allowed to organize unions, founding the STEG —Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educación en Guatemala—. The STEG had as its counterpart the Colegio de Maestros, which was totally opposed to the unionization of the national teachers. The top leader of the STEG was Professor Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez Garvín —a member of the then legalized communist-oriented Guatemalan Labor Party, although he he was not from the pro-Soviet Stalinist line of the PGT leadership. The leadership capacity of his managers made it possible for the STEG to become the most powerful trade union organization of the period and that its approaches were essentially political.

In 1953, four hundred and forty teachers from urban primary education and twenty-seven from rural education graduated, figures that if compared with the one hundred and seventy teachers who graduated in 1944 represent an increase of 259%. Both the Arévalo and Árbenz governments sought a gradual solution to the lack of teachers in the country, and had begun to emphasize the training of rural teachers.

Starting in 1953, pre-vocational schools were created, of an experimental nature, whose level was prior to university preparatory, normal and technical-vocational careers.

When the Counterrevolution came to power in June 1954, almost all union organizations were banned, according to Decree No. 21 of July 16, 1954 of the liberationist Government Junta. Several departmental teachers' leaders were imprisoned, others were expelled from the country, and more than three thousand teachers were dismissed from their posts. Thus, the STEG disappears, although its legal status remained in force since the Release did not render it without effect.

The Guatemalan Ballet

Between 1949 and 1954, the Ballet Guatemala was directed by the Russian teacher Leonide Katchourowsky, who was also in charge of the National School of Dance. Katchourowsky, his wife Marie Tchernova and the teacher Marcelle Bonge did not receive any salary, but they were authorized to exploit the ballet for their own benefit according to the contract signed with the Ministry of Education. Marie Tchernova was prima ballerina at the Paris Opera and Star dancer at the Royal Mint Theater in Brussels, born in Russia and nationalized Belgian, like her husband.

With the overthrow of the Árbenz government, Ballet Guatemala was suppressed because the government Liberationist Junta accused the Russian directors of being "communists" and of being the ones who translated for President Árbenz everything that came to Guatemala from the Union Soviet; on August 16, 1954, their contracts were canceled and the teachers Katchourowsky and Tchernova returned to Belgium in 1957.

Agrarian reform

Map of railway branches in Guatemala and El Salvador, which were owned by the International Railways of Central America, the UFCO subsidiary that controlled the railway in both countries, while the only port in the Atlantic was controlled by the Great White Fleet, a merchant marine also owned by the UFCO.

Promotional poster of the Guatemalan agrarian reform.

On May 31, 1952, upon learning of the provisions of the Agrarian Reform, the influential journalist Clemente Marroquín Rojas wrote in his editorial that many of the members of the upper classes who were arbencistas in the November elections, among them Asturias and Beltranena, were because they were sure that Árbenz was a man of the right and that he could not be a Marxist because he was a soldier, was married to a society lady associated with capitalism and liked the "good life"; Marroquín Rojas explained in that editorial that he had met the real Árbenz at the meetings of the council of ministers of President Juan José Arévalo: a man who inspired him with great personal appreciation, but who was firm in his extremist convictions and would not abandon them. sideways until he was overthrown. Finally, he indicated that there was no longer any possibility of compromise between the arbencista government and the Guatemalan elites.In the editorial by Marroquín Rojas the position of the elite was defined, since it understood that it could not gain power through democratic means.

On June 17, 1952, the Árbenz government approved Decree 900, or "Agrarian Reform Law".

Farms smaller than ninety hectares were not affected by the law, nor were farms smaller than two hundred hectares that were cultivated, at least two thirds of them. Neither are the large properties in production, whatever their size; but when colonato and sharecropping were prohibited, an attempt was made to force landowners to invest in wages. During the 18 months of application of the agrarian reform, between 603 and 615 hectares of private lands were distributed, which represented 10% of the total of said properties; 280,000 hectares of national lands; and credits were granted to support production. The banana company United Fruit Company, which kept 85% of its 220,000 hectares uncultivated, had 156,000 hectares expropriated; that is to say, 64% of its surface. The affected landowners received a payment in State bonds, according to the fiscal value of the property reported during the previous three years —in general figures drastically undervalued by themselves to reduce the payment of taxes to the treasury. — with an annual interest rate of 3%. By 1954, more than 138,000 peasant families had benefited, of which the vast majority were indigenous, which could translate into half a million people, for a country with three million inhabitants. More than half of the beneficiaries also obtained agricultural credits.

The application of the aforementioned program represented a strong challenge to the traditional power structure in the countryside, not only because of the restructuring of land tenure, but also because the Agrarian Reform Law promoted the organization of Local Agrarian Committees in each farm, favoring the creation of alternative local power structures. The reform was channeled through these committees, whose number up to December 1953 was 1,496. Many were influenced by the communist Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT), although they acquired their own dynamics at local levels. Some became active forums for democratic participation at a time characterized by great political ferment; others were derived in spaces of conflict and corruption.

However, there were numerous problems with the Agrarian Reform: Despite the intention of the promoters to alienate only the idle lands of the large farms, in many regions the communities tried to resolve old local conflicts through it. Likewise, there were complaints and occupations of non-affected land, as well as cases of irregularities in the distribution of plots. Episodes of this nature were the consequence, among other reasons, of the deficient information that existed on the law, its erroneous understanding or interpretation by the peasantry, the lack of experience of the incipient peasant organization and the politicization of the process in its set. In addition to the tensions unleashed by the Agrarian Reform, we must add the problems arising from a judicial system incapable of applying the law and resolving conflicts arising from its application: the conflicts between the different sectors reached their culminating point in a confrontation between the Executive and the Supreme Court of Justice; the confrontation occurred due to an appeal for amparo that was finally accepted by the Supreme Court of Justice and that led to its dismissal by Congress.

Finally, the opposition, made up mainly of Guatemalan landowners and executives of the United Fruit Company, was completely against the Revolution and the reforms promoted by the governments of Juan José Arévalo and Árbenz. After the election of Árbenz In 1950, the Guatemalan elite had hoped that he would reverse the measures imposed by President Arévalo, whom they branded as a communist; the image of Árbenz had convinced them of this: the Guatemalan colonel was married to María Cristina Vilanova, a lady from the highest Salvadoran society, was an army officer, lived in a mansion in zone 10 of Guatemala City and had aristocratic physiognomy. But his hopes were frustrated when Árbenz supported the organization of the communist Guatemalan Labor Party and later promoted Decree 900. Faced with this situation, the only clear motivation of the opponents was the implacable defense of the privileges they had enjoyed until then in Guatemala and raised the flag of anti-communism to justify their fight and began an intense smear campaign against the arbencista government; American journalists and intellectuals of the time, apart from supporting anti-communism in Guatemala, indicated that it was very easy determine what the opposition disliked, but never what it was proposing since the opposition groups did not have a constructive or positive program for the country.

Decree 900 created the possibility of earning crops for field workers who did not previously have land. Likewise, the effect that this law had on the market for factors of production is similar to what occurred in Europe after the bubonic plague: after the plague, in which one third of the population of Europe died, the number of Landowners decreased, which freed up much of the land and increased the supply of land, lowered its price and made acquisition more accessible to peasants. At the same time, many of the peasants also died from the plague, so the labor force dwindled. This displacement of the supply of workers increased their wages. The economic effects after the plague in Europe are very similar to those caused by the agrarian reform in Guatemala: during the first harvest after the implementation of the law, income peasant average increased from Q225.00 per year to Q700.00 per year. Some analysts say that conditions in Guatemala improved after the reform and that there was a "fundamental transformation of agricultural technology as a result of the decline in the labor supply." Rising living standards also happened in Europe in the 15th century, and at the same time there were massive technological advances. The lack of workforce after the plague was "the mother of inventions". The benefits were not limited solely to the working class in the fields, they found themselves for the first time since the government of Captain General Rafael Carrera in a position in which they were treated with respect and dignity. There were also increases in consumption, production and internal private investment; for its part, the middle class enjoyed benefits that allowed it to progress and was loyal to the Árbenz government.

Construction of the Highway to the Atlantic and the Santo Tomás de Castilla Port

In order to establish the essential physical infrastructure to make national and «independent» capitalist development viable, which would make it possible to get rid of extreme dependence on the United States of America and break the US monopolies that operated in the country, basically those of the economy of the banana enclave, the planning and start of the construction of the highway to the Atlantic began, the purpose of which was to compete in the market with the monopoly in land transport exercised by the "frutera", through another of its subsidiaries, the International Railways of Central America (IRCA) and that they had the concession since 1904, when it was granted by Manuel Estrada Cabrera. The construction of the highway to the Atlantic began by the Department of Roads of the Ministry of Communications and Public Works, with the collaboration of the army engineer battalion. The planned way was to build it parallel to the railway line, as far as possible. The same competitive function would be exercised by the construction and subsequent operation of a National Port on the Atlantic, Santo Tomás de Castilla, with Puerto Barrios also owned by the New Orleans monopoly.

The modus operandi of the UFCO in Guatemala was exposed in a conversation that appears in the play The Yellow Train by the Guatemalan author —and former Minister of Education and ambassador of the revolutionary governments of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán—Manuel Galich.

Jurún Marinalá National Hydroelectric Plant

Afiche published by the Arbenz government to promote the construction of the Jurún Marinalá hydroelectric plant.

The central Jurún Marinalá was planned during the Arbenz government to compete with the generation of the Guatemalan Electrical Company, which at that time was US capital and used foreign oil instead of Guatemala's natural resources. It was concluded during the government of Julio César Méndez Montenegro and is located in the village Agua Blanca, interior of the farm El Salto, department of Escuintla, classified as a daily regulation center.

The Jurún Marinalá hydroelectric plant was planned as the first national hydroelectric plant to compete with the energy monopoly of Empresa Eléctrica, a subsidiary of Electric Bond and Share (EBASCO), which, regardless of national needs, did not use the country's hydraulic resources, but instead generated energy with plants powered by imported fuels, creating a drain on foreign currency. For the agricultural, agro-industrial and industrial development of the country and in general for all productive activities it was essential, in the context of a capitalist development project, an increase in energy production, increasing generation capacity, at lower costs.

Mining

The Huehuetenango Mining Company had been extracting lead in mines in San Miguel Acatán since the late 1940s. The company was part of the Hoover Mining Group, headed by Allan Hoover, son of former United States President Herbert Hoover. Allan Hoover was also president of Minera de Guatemala, which extracted lead in the Caquipec mines, in the municipality of San Juan Chamelco, Alta Verapaz. William Jolly Hill, vice president of Minera de Huehuetenango between 1949-1950, signed the contract between the mining company and the Ministry of Economy, giving rise to Decree of the Congress of the Republic 0760, published on October 5, 1950, which served to regulate the exploitation of mines in Guatemala. Among the Guatemalan capitalists linked to Minera de Huehuetenango was Alejandro Arenales, a lawyer for the elite coffee-growing families of the 19th century, who had a close relationship with the Skinner Klees, another family of lawyers and Guatemalan coffee growers and diplomats. Lead exploitation became vital to the Americans, who announced a contract with Minera de Huehuetenango for an additional 26,250 tons of lead ingots for five-year delivery, beginning in 1954; The contract established financing of four hundred thousand dollars to expand the mining facilities at the same time that it represented a million-dollar entry, since the price of a pound of lead was set between 17 and 20 cents per pound.

In early 1954 the mine facilities caught fire and the company had to lay off 700 employees; Powerful US interests intervened to rescue the mine: following Árbenz's ouster, the US Embassy in Guatemala and the State Department pressured a private bank to provide a $314,000 loan to the mine, approved on 10 February 1955.

Election of mayors of Guatemala City

Mayors of Guatemala City had historically been appointed by the president of the republic, but this changed with the 1945 Constitution, which granted autonomy to building corporations and created democratic mayoral elections. During the government of Colonel Árbenz, the two elected mayors were not from the official party, but from the opposition: Martín Prado Vélez, postulated by the Association of Civil Engineers, and Juan Luis Lizarralde, supported by the Anti-Communist Unification Party (PUA), the Committee of Anti-Communist University Students (CEUA), the Patriotic Union and the Nationalist Youth.

The engineer Martín Prado Vélez took office in 1949 and ended in 1951. Under his mandate, important infrastructure works were built or started: the El Incienso Bridge, the construction of the Roosevelt road, the main road axis from east to west of the City, the town hall itself, and numerous road works that meant the expansion of the colonial city, its ordering in cardinal points and the generation of a peripheral ring with the first cloverleaf in the main city of Central America. One of his main collaborators was his friend, the engineer Raúl Aguilar Batres, who was the head of planning for the municipality in that administration and in subsequent ones. For his part, Juan Luis Lizarralde, who took office in 1952, had clashes with the government de Árbenz, despite which the government, through public works —that is: schools, hospitals, nurseries and children's canteens and road infrastructure— intervened in the production of new spaces in the city and, in some cases, in the valorization of the land that was incorporated into the city through the new road axes, such as the Inter-American Highway, which was built from the Roosevelt Hospital.

Anti-communist campaign and overthrow

Analysis of the arbencista government by US intelligence

In 2003, the United States Department of State declassified a large number of documents related to the arbencista government. In one of the documents, the report that the CIA made of the Guatemalan government in March 1952 is presented. Here are the main conclusions of that document:

1. Communists already had a strong influence in Guatemala, much greater than what could be expected by their small number of members. This political situation in Guatemala affected US interests in the country and constituted a potential threat to the territory of the United States.
2. The Communists had been politically successful because they had identified themselves with the principles of the Revolution of 1944; thus they had been able to infiltrate the political parties and take control of the trade unions, of which the government depended more and more.
3. The political alliance between the government and its communist advisers was very strong, and the U.S. agents did not perceive an effective opposition.
4. The U.S. agents considered in 1952 that the events of the coming years would depend directly on how the conflict between Guatemala and the United Fruit Company was resolved, a natural consequence of the 1944 Revolution and that the Communists had exaggerated for their own purposes.
5. If the UFCO had yielded to the demands of the arbencist government, it would have been greatly reinforced. Even, it would have been possible to reach a situation in which the government and trade unions, under communist influence and supported by a nationalist sentiment, began to pressure other American companies, mainly the railroad.
6. If the UFCO had withdrawn from Guatemala, the country ' s economic situation would have worsened. However, U.S. agents considered that this would not have been sufficient for political instability in 1952, unless a fall in coffee market prices had also been made.
7. Any weakening of the country's economy or political situation would have served to increase the dependence of the trade union government, with the consequent increase in communist influence. However, it was considered unlikely that the Communists would take power in 1952, even in the event that President Árbenz could not continue in the government, his successor, Julio Estrada de la Hoz — president of the Guatemalan Congress — was favorable to the Communists.
8. The army was loyal to the Guatemalan president, although he was increasingly upset by communist influence. If the communists had wanted to take the power of the country, the army would have prevented it.

The same report reported that the main anti-communist strongholds in Guatemala were:

• The Catholic hierarchy: implacable anti-communist. Although their influence was considerable, the church was maniated by the low presence of priests and the lack of a social program.
• The landlords and owners of large businesses: these were enjoying a period of prosperity at that time, although they were upset by increased taxes and the cost of labour. However, until the date of the report—before Decree 900—its interests had not been directly attacked.
• The strong railway workers' union: this union did not want to join the communist-led workers' federation.
• A considerable number of university students and members of the Guatemalan teachers.
• The army.

Finally, the report presents the crisis that the United Fruit Company had in 1952, which, with large operations in nine Latin American countries, dominated banana production in Guatemala at that time, and the only effective system of internal transport: the railway. Also, through its merchant fleet, it had a virtual monopoly on the maritime transport of Guatemalan exports. It owned or rented large pieces of land in Guatemala and was the second largest employer in the country, behind only the State. For these reasons, the company's presence was a thorn in the side of Guatemalan nationalists, despite the fact that it paid the best wages in the country. According to US agents, when the 1944 Revolution liberated Guatemala from the liberal government of Ponce Vaides, it had in mind getting rid of the economic colonialism of the UFCO; the government relied on nationalist support against the greengrocer.

Mural Glorious victory Diego Rivera (1954) shows General Castillo Armas agreeing with members of the U.S. government at that time, such as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, being the face of the alusive bomb to President Eisenhower. At the bottom is a United Fruit Company ship exporting bananas, as well as the figure of Archbishop Mariano Rossell and Arellano offering a mass on the slaughtered bodies of the workers. Castillo Armas would lead the overthrow of Arbenz.

In 1952, the fruit company was in crisis due to the destruction of its main plantations by tropical storms in September 1951. Due to labor problems, the company asked the government to assure it that there would be no future increases in the cost of labor before beginning the recovery of their plantations; but the Guatemalan government refused. So, the UFCO suspended four thousand of its seven thousand workers; but with government support, the communist-led union demanded that the workers be reinstated in their jobs with pay for the months they did not work. The labor court ruled in favor of the union, but the company refused to comply with the union's decision and as a result of its defiance, the government seized part of its land to pay the employees; this situation was resolved out of court shortly thereafter.

National Catholic pilgrimage campaign against communism

The Catholic Church, which possessed a high share of power in the Central American region during the Colonial Era, gradually lost it after the emancipation from Spain. First, it was the struggle of the liberals to seize the power that the Guatemalan conservatives (including the Senior Clergy of the Church) held; the conservatives and the Church thus lost much power in the Central American provinces, but Guatemala remained their last bastion. After the Liberal Revolution, attacks against the senior clergy of the Catholic Church —the main landowner of the Conservative Party— intensified in Guatemala and secular education, freedom of worship, the expulsion of most religious orders, the elimination of the mandatory tithe that had been imposed in 1854 through the Guatemala Concordat of 1854 and the expropriation of numerous Church assets. This situation continued during the liberal governments that followed, until the October Revolution arrived in 1944, in which which the situation of the religious worsened, because the thought was no longer only economic against the Church, but also religious, since many revolutionaries began to declare themselves opposed to any type of religion.

Guatemalan Archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano who had initially supported Árbenz, because like members of the Guatemalan elite, imagined that he was going to purge the communists from the government, but after the promulgation of Decree 900 he was convinced otherwise, beginning to attack the government along with members of the Guatemalan Farmers Association, (AGA). Through their publications Verbum and Catholic Social Action, as well as Sunday sermons and even Cristo Negro de Esquipulas himself dedicated himself to attacking the atheist communism of the arbencista regime. By 1951, Archbishop Mariano Rossell Arellano found that it was urgent to recover the position of the Catholic Church in Guatemala and for that reason he allied himself with the interests of the United Fruit Company and the Guatemalan elite to overthrow the revolutionary governments. whom he branded as atheists and communists. After the consecration of the Sanctuary of Esquipulas (1950), as part of the smear campaign against the Árbenz government, he ordered the sculptor Julio Urruela Vásquez to carve a replica of the Christ of Esquipulas, which was transferred to bronze in 1952 and converted, the following year, into a symbol and banner of the national pilgrimage campaign against communism. This Christ was later named "commander-in-chief" of the forces of the National Liberation Movement during the June 1954 invasion.

On April 4, 1954, Rossell Arellano issued a pastoral letter in which he criticized the advances of communism in the country, and called on Guatemalans to rise up and fight against "the common enemy of God and the country ». This pastoral was distributed throughout the country.

Arrival of John Peurifoy in Guatemala

John Peurifoy, an anti-communist agent of the U.S. Department of State, sent to Guatemala as an ambassador in November 1954, after carrying out anti-communist work in Greece. After the coup d'etat of June 1954, he was sent to Thailand, where he died in a car accident shortly afterwards.

Between 1950 and 1955, during the government of General Eisenhower in the United States, a communist witch hunt was carried out, known as McCarthyism, which was characterized by persecuting individuals on simple suspicions, with unfounded accusations, interrogations, job loss and passport denial to those suspected of communism, or imprisoned. These mechanisms of social control and repression in the United States dangerously bordered on totalitarianism and fascist methods.

One of the main characters of McCarthyism was John Peurifoy, who was sent as ambassador of the United States to Guatemala, since this was the first country in the American sphere of influence after World War II that included openly communist elements in his government. He arrived from Greece, where he had already carried out considerable anti-communist activity, and was installed as Ambassador in November 1953; by then, Carlos Castillo Armas was already organizing his small anti-revolutionary army. After a long meeting, Peurifoy made it clear to President Árbenz that the United States was only concerned with removing communist elements from his government, and later reported to the US State Department that "the Guatemalan leader is not a communist, but a communist leader will surely come after him." »,

In January 1954, Time magazine published an interview with John Peurifoy, in which the US official said that US public opinion could force the US government to take steps to prevent Guatemala from falling held by international communism because the US could not allow a Soviet republic between Texas and the Panama Canal. This publication was taken in Guatemala as confirmation that Peurifoy was at the forefront of a targeted plan to overthrow the government de Árbenz, and in this regard Marroquín Rojas wrote: «our Minister of Foreign Relations has officially accepted the explanations of Ambassador Peurifoy in Time magazine. But Mr. Osegueda knows that a magazine like Time , published in a country where lies are severely punished, would not falsify the words he so emphatically put into the mouth of Ambassador Peurifoy. There is no question that Peurifoy said what Time printed, and there is no question that he was expressing the opinion of the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon. How could Guatemalan leaders think that the United States was going to tolerate a nest of enemies at their doorstep? It would be absurd. Talking about our sovereignty at this point is childish, naive. Germany, powerful even though defeated, is still occupied, and the same is true of Japan - and we are going to be too, we poor fools who do not produce even pyrotechnic rockets, much less the ammunition necessary for a decent defense."

Coup d'état

The PGT, founded by José Manuel Fortuny in 1949, reached a great preponderance during the Arbenz government

The fruit company had reported a low value of its properties to the Guatemalan tax authorities, so when the agrarian reform was implemented, the compensation offered was based on this information and not on the real value of the properties; the government of President Dwight Eisenhower considered it an outrage that the Guatemalan government relied on the information that the UFCO had provided to the Guatemalan government to offer compensation, and made it known to Árbenz through Ambassador Peurifoy. John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State and member of the board of directors of the UFCO, demanded twenty-five times more than the reported value —which was what the lands were really worth, but that the Guatemalan government had not been informed to pay only twenty-fifth of the corresponding taxes. Paradoxically, Jacobo Árbenz, accused of communist conspiracy, had not been inspired by Lenin's work but by Abraham Lincoln's to promote agrarian reform through Decree 900, which proposed to modernize capitalism in Guatemala and was more moderate than the American rural laws of the 19th century. However, the directors of the United Fruit Company (UFCO) had worked intensely in the government circles of Harry S. Truman and General Dwight Eisenhower to make them believe that Colonel Árbenz was trying to align Guatemala with the Soviet Bloc. What happened was that the UFCO saw its economic interests threatened by Árbenz's agrarian reform, which took away significant amounts of idle land, and the new Guatemalan Labor Code, which no longer allowed it to use Guatemalan military forces to counter the demands of her workers. As Guatemala's largest landowner and employer, Decree 900 resulted in the expropriation of 40% of her land. U.S. government officials had little evidence of the growing communist threat in Guatemala, but he did have a strong relationship with the representatives of the UFCO, demonstrating the strong influence that corporate interests had on US foreign policy:

• U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a declared enemy of communism and a strong Macedonian, and his law firm Sullivan and Cromwell had already represented the interests of the United Fruit and made negotiations with Guatemalan governments;
• For his part, his brother Allen Dulles was the director of the CIA and also a member of the UFCO board of directors. Along with his brother, he was on the UFCO grid for 38 years.
• The brother of the Undersecretary of State for Inter-American Affairs John Moors Cabot had been president of the friutera.
• Ed Whitman, who was the main lobbyist of the United Fruit to the government, was married to President Eisenhower's personal secretary, Ann C. Whitman.

The US government accused Árbenz of being a communist for the following:

1. He attacked the interests of U.S. monopolies in Guatemala, moving away from the government line to which these monopolies were accustomed since 1901, that is, the governments of Manuel Estrada Cabrera, José María Orellana, Lázaro Chacón and Jorge Ubico, and that was to use the Guatemalan army to defend their interests, and to resort to bribes to maintain their privileges.
2. The members of their private circle were leaders of the Guatemalan Labour Party (PGT), which was the Guatemalan Communist Party, including José Manuel Fortuny,
3. On the day the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin died, the Congress of the Republic of Guatemala observed a minute of silence,
4. The Macedonian atmosphere that lived in the United States after World War II,
5. The work of the anti-communist person of the State Department, John Peurifoy, who was appointed as US ambassador. in Guatemala between November 1953 and July 1954, and coordinated the CIA's support for the Castillo Armas movement,
6. After his departure from Guatemala, Arbenz was exiled in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, all of them communist countries, since no other country dared to receive him.

On February 19, 1954, the CIA begins Operation WASHTUB, a plan to plant fake Soviet weapons in Nicaragua that would demonstrate Guatemala's ties to Moscow.

With the support of the United States, under the command of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas who was in exile in Honduras, Juan Córdova Cerna, director of the CIA in Central America, and El Cristo Negro de Esquipulas as Captain General of the Crusade Liberationist, the invasion began.

Invasion

At 8:00 p.m. on June 18, the forces of coup leader Colonel Castillo Armas crossed the border. Divided into four groups of about 480 soldiers, they entered through five points along the Honduran and Salvadoran border to simulate a larger number of soldiers from a broad front and to reduce the possibility of the entire troop heading down one path. unfavorable. In addition to these regular troops, ten US-trained saboteurs went ahead, blowing up key bridges and cutting telegraph lines. All invasion forces were instructed to minimize actual encounters with the Guatemalan army, above all to avoid damaging the image of the national army against the invaders. The entire course of the invasion was expressly designed to sow panic, to give the impression of possessing insurmountable forces, and to attract the population and the military to their side, rather than defeat them.

During the invasion, radio propaganda broadcast by Lionel Sisniega Otero from the US embassy sent out false reports of huge forces joining the local population in a popular revolution. But almost immediately, Castillo Armas's forces failed miserably: moving on foot and hampered by his heavy equipment they gave no impression of being a powerful force. This weakened the psychological impact of the initial invasion, as the Guatemalans understood that there was no immediate danger; furthermore, one of the first groups to reach their objective—122 rebels who intended to capture the city of Zacapa—was crushed by a small contingent of thirty Guatemalan army soldiers, and only twenty-eight rebels were able to escape.

A major defeat befell the group of 170 rebels who set out to capture the sheltered coastal town of Puerto Barrios: after the police chief discovered the invaders, he quickly armed local dock workers and assigned them papers defensive; within hours almost all the rebels were killed or imprisoned, while the rest fled back to Honduras. After three days of the supposed invasion, two of the four Castillo coup groups were defeated. Trying to regain momentum, Castillo ordered an air raid on the capital the next day, which failed as only one plane managed to bomb a small oil tanker, creating a minor fire that was put out in twenty minutes.

Health brigades and communist youth brigades were formed that patrolled the streets at night, and unsuccessfully demanded that the government hand over weapons.

After the resounding rebel failures, President Árbenz ordered his military commander to allow the rebels into the country, as both he and his main commander did not fear the rebel army but were concerned that if they were crushed they would give a pretext for open US military intervention, as Ambassador Peurifoy had already threatened. The official class, fearful of the US attack, did not want to counterattack and defeat Castillo's decimated troops, Árbenz feared that his intimidated officers would make a pact with Castillo; This was confirmed when an entire garrison of the army surrendered to Castillo a few days later in the city of Chiquimula; Finally, on June 27, 1954, the chiefs of the Guatemalan Army decided to ignore Árbenz's authority and demand his resignation. Árbenz called his cabinet to explain that the army was in rebellion and then announced his resignation to the Guatemalan people.

Biggest plan of Jacobo Arbenz

During these events, Hilda Gadea was arrested and Ernesto Guevara took refuge in the Argentine embassy where he was included among the communist refugees.

Resignation

His unusual and sudden resignation is still under study. After all, several historians have shown that the Castillo Armas mercenary group (CIA code: "Calligeris") never presented a real danger, and that Árbenz even had an infiltrated spy who informed him of the smallest details about the mercenary military advances. At the same time, CIA agents in Guatemala had announced the ineffectiveness of their tactics and accepted the impossibility of defeating Árbenz. The Guatemalan army, on the other hand, was as divided as it had been since 1944; and the alleged ultimatum presented to Árbenz by the military, as mentioned by Gleijeses and Schlesinger and Kinzer, apparently never existed, so according to the testimony of Elfego Monzón, one of the alleged signatories of the document. In the words of E. Howard Hunt, Árbenz's resignation is something that will remain "between him, his wife, and God."

María Cristina Vilanova, in her memoirs, insinuates that the reason for Árbenz's resignation was because the United States army was preparing a military invasion of Guatemala. She mentions this after assuring that no one supported the Árbenz government during the crisis, and practically accuses all of Guatemala of passivity and complicity with the attempt to overthrow the democratic system. For his part, Árbenz's companion in exile, Carlos Manuel Pellecer —who with the declassification of CIA documents in 1992 was found to be a CIA agent with the pseudonym "Inluck" or "Linluck"—, argued that the Árbenz's resignation would have been due to the fact that in June 1954 he would have found out that his wife —who was the only great love of his life and the most reliable psychological support— had a lover, a fact that would have demoralized him. The president himself never published anything about it; José Manuel Fortuny was not clear about what happened; and other memoirs, such as those of Alfonso Bauer Paiz and Paz Tejada, do not explain the fall of the president.

Resignation speech

In his resignation speech —written by José Manuel Fortuny— Árbenz accused the liberationist forces and the UFCO of the following facts:

• To carry out punitive actions against peasant representatives and workers in the populations they had occupied, mainly in Bananera.
• Revenge against the workers' leaders of the United Fruit Company by the frutera managers.
• Attacks of American mercenaries on civilian and military targets, taking advantage of Guatemala ' s lack of adequate air force. Among the objectives was a British merchant ship that was carrying cotton in the Port of San José.
• Using the excuse of communism to attack Guatemala, when it was actually about protecting the financial interests of the United Fruit Company and other US monopolies in Latin America.
• Destroy Guatemala in international circles by accusing it of a communist.
• The liberating army of being mercenary, weak and cowardly, demonstrated by the overwhelming defeats it suffered in the battles it held against the Guatemalan Army; it also indicated that it succeeded in gaining control in Chiquimula only after the attacks of mercenary aviation.

After setting out these reasons, he resigned and ceded power to Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz, head of the republic's armed forces, convinced that he was going to guarantee democracy in Guatemala and that all the social conquests of the revolution were going to be maintained. He hoped that when he left the presidency, the United States would tolerate a new left-leaning government like his own. But Díaz resigned the presidency a few days later, and power ended in the hands of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.. The fall of the "Second Government of the Revolution" was followed by days of political confusion during which government juntas succeeded each other in command.

In a televised communication to the American people, the government of that country said: “For the first time in ten years, the people of Guatemala breathe the sweet air of freedom. Only days after the resignation of the red president Arbenz, the leader of the rebels, Castillo Armas, has seized power. Thousands of communists and their acolytes are in jail. For United Fruit, everything normal; the lands that had been appropriated have been returned.” On television, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces the return of democracy to Guatemala: “The future of Guatemala is in the hands of the Guatemalan people; it is in the hands of leaders faithful to Guatemala, those who did not become agents of an alien despotism that tried to bring Guatemala to a bad end. These events are a glorious new chapter in the great tradition of the Americas."

CIA Memorandum

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This 1975 CIA memorandum, declassified by the U.S. government, describes the role of the CIA in the overthrow of Arbenz.

Accusations of murder and torture of opponents

Although the government of Árbenz took place in the midst of serious rising political tensions and with extreme manifestations of ideological polarization, there was no government violence except in a few clearly identified moments, such as the assault on Salamá by a political group on the 29th of March 1953. However, as part of the CIA's disinformation operations, the numbers of opponents killed during this period are variable and there is no reliable record. After the fall of Árbenz, the national press spoke of two hundred and fifty people and some texts published by organizations related to the National Liberation Movement (MLN) indicated a figure of five hundred, but only provided a list of one hundred and eight names. It is indisputable, however, that after the Salamá uprising, the persecution of anti-communists began, until reaching an outright repression in May 1954, when Operation PBSUCCESS was already underway and the fall of the arbencista regime was imminent.

Timeline of events leading to the overthrow of Árbenz

The following is a timeline of the main events that led to the overthrow of President Árbenz:

Humiliation, exile and ostracism

La Aurora International Airport Air Terminal in 1954. This is where Colonel Árbenz and his family left for exile in Mexico; before leaving, the liberating authorities humiliated him, compelling him to turn off in front of the reporters' chambers to verify that he did not carry a lot of jewels he had acquired for his wife in New York.

Death

Tomb of Jacobo Árbenz and Maria Vilanova in the General Cemetery of Guatemala City (2015).

Árbenz in literature and cinema

Cadet Knight Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Photograph by the Guatemalan Army.

Additional information

• The University of San Carlos de Guatemala granted him a «doctoral honoris causa».
• Jacobo Árbenz Vilanova, after living outside Guatemala for almost fifty years, returned to the country and tried to enter politics in 2003; he was to be proclaimed as a aspirant to the first Magistrate for the Guatemalan Christian Democracy (DCG) but this was no longer true.^{[chuckles]required]}
• During the bicentennial of Argentina's independence, Casa Rosada opened the Gallery of the Latin American Patriots of the Bicentennial. Only Arbenz and Juan José Arévalo Bermejo were included in the list of Guatemalan Patriots.^{[chuckles]required]}

References