Download Ch 18 – lesson 7 Guatemala - Reeths

Guatemala
Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán
Carlos Castillo Armas
A dictatorship led by General Jorge Ubico was overthrown in 1944 by a group of dissident military officers, students,
and professionals. Juan Jose Arevalo, a civilian, was popularly elected in democratic elections, became president in
1945 and began an extensive program of liberal social reforms. These reforms were continued by his successor,
Colonel Jacobo Arbenz, who took office in 1951 and also legalized the communist Guatemalan Labor Party. The Labor
Party began to control labor unions, peasant organizations, and the governing political party. American firms in
Guatemala such as the United Fruit Company became increasingly discontent with the Guatemalan government,
especially after the Arbenz government passed a law expropriating large estates, a law which greatly affected the
United Fruit Company's plantations. The United States itself also began to fear the increasingly communist nature of
the Arbenz government and coupled with pressure from the United Fruit Company and other firms, the CIA supported
a coup that invaded Guatemala from Honduras and quickly took control of the government, installing military dictator
Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. The coup and the resulting regime began an almost 50-year period of military dictators,
fraudulent elections, and civil wars that claimed 200,000 lives, many of them civilians.
While it is a commonly accepted fact that the CIA was instrumental in the planning and the execution of the coup, it is
unclear as to exactly how much involvement the CIA had in the coup. The operation, dubbed Operation PBSUCCESS,
broadcast propaganda from Honduras on "Liberation Radio," distributed arms, and helped Armas plan and stage his
coup. Some have also speculated that the CIA was also responsible for the military's failure to stop the advancing
troops. Recently declassified documents from the CIA's archives have shed some light on the matter. They show that
the Arevalo and Arbenz governments had long been a source of discontent for the US, with one memoranda referring
to Arbenz's reforms as "an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority
complex of the 'Banana Republic.'" There was an earlier attempt to overthrow the Guatemalan government under the
Truman administration in 1952, which of course was not successful. There was also a list made that compiled the
leaders and individuals that were to be assassinated or neutralized.
The legacy of the coup has been the source of considerable debate in both Guatemala and America. For many people
in both countries, the coup epitomizes the CIA's and America's tactic of overthrowing unfriendly, if democratic regimes,
in favor of regimes that were friendly, if dictatorial. There also those (both Americans and Guatemalans) who are
unapologetic about the coup, believing that communism was a serious threat and that the policies of Arbenz was
bringing Guatemala closer to the communist fold. While Guatemala did not pose a direct strategic threat to the United
States, there were concerns that it would establish a communist beachhead in America's own backyard (one has to
remember that the Arbenz government predated that of Castro's Cuba by about four years).
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/guatemalacoup.htm
In another victory in 1954, the CIA overthrew the elected Labor Party (socialist to communist ideologically)
government of Guatemala, through a combination of psychological warfare, paramilitary action by a small force, and
diplomatic pressure. Again the successor government was a military dictatorship.
Guatemala
In Guatemala the military government installed by the covert operation replaced a democratic tradition and handed
power to other military regimes or authoritarian oligarchies that maintained authority by high security. Beginning in
1968 the military inaugurated a war against the peasantry that endured into the late 1990s, leaving more than half the
population of the country displaced internally and with a death toll in excess of 60,000. Read more:
http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/A-D/Covert-Operations-Evolution-of-covertoperations.html#ixzz1DVJrIAZR
The New York Times
May 28, 1997
CIA in 1950's Drew Up List of Guatemalan Leaders to Be Assassinated by TIM WEINER
WASHINGTON -- The CIA, plotting to overthrow the Guatemalan government in the early 1950s, drew up
a "disposal list" of at least 58 key leaders, and it trained assassins to kill them, newly declassified documents
show.
The coup, code-named Operation Success, toppled the freely elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo
Arbenz Guzman, and installed the first of a series of right-wing leaders friendly to the United States.
The assassination plans were never carried out, according to an official CIA history of the coup. "Until the
day that Arbenz resigned in June 1954 the option of assassination was still being considered," the history
concludes…
The documents add at least three sets of important new information to the historical record: the existence of
the assassination plans of the agency, aspects of its propaganda campaign against Arbenz, and details of the
agency's early efforts to recruit members of the Guatemalan military.
The planning began in 1952, after the president of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, proposed to
President Harry Truman that they work together to overthrow Arbenz, who had been elected in 1950.
Arbenz's left-wing politics angered the United States.
Truman told the CIA to go forward. The agency launched a short-lived operation, shipping guns and
money to Guatemalan exiles. The operation's cover was blown within five weeks and it was abandoned in
October 1952. But the plan lived on.
In 1953, under President Eisenhower, the CIA drew up plans for assassinations, sabotage and propaganda
to overthrow Arbenz. The assassination list contained the names of at least 58 Guatemalan supporters of
Guzman who the CIA suspected were Communists. Late that year, the National Security Council gave
Operation Success the go-ahead. The State Department, now led by John Foster Dulles, the brother of the
director of central intelligence, Allen Dulles, worked closely with the CIA.
The coup went quickly, from June 16 through June 27, 1954, with radio propaganda and political
subversion proving to be the most effective weapons. Arbenz resigned, denounced the United States, and
took refuge in Mexico…
The 1954 coup was the first chapter in the CIA's long and continuing liaison with the Guatemalan military.
Those ties deepened over the decades during a scorched-earth campaign against a small Communist
insurgency. The civil war in Guatemala, touched off in part by the coup, ended only five months ago. More
than 100,000 civilians were killed.