Counterrevolution as a Way of Life
February 1982. A bright orange cartoon tank, piloted by a hybrid of Mickey Mouse and Mr. Magoo, rumbles across Guatemalan TVscreens. In its path appears a hammer and sickle, dripping red with...
...105-6...
...Drawing its initial social base from the recalcitrant coffee plantation owners, the liberacionista movement also built an intimidating network of local mayors, municipal bureaucrats, medium-sized peasant producers and "military commissioners"* in the eastern, mainly ladino departments of Jalapa, Zacapa, Jutiapa and Chiquimula...
...11...
...Liberal AID and State Department officials were appalled by right-wing intransigence and the excesses of counterinsurgency, but backed down when confronted by the hostility of the local U.S...
...25-26 (Spring and Summer 1980), pp...
...El Dia (Mexico City), March 6, 1982...
...military dictates...
...From 1950 to 1957, $17.8 million would go for Foreign Military Sales (FMS), $16.1 million for Military Assistance Programs (MAP) and $6.5 million for International Military Education and Training (IMET...
...foreign investment would be encouraged...
...Newly flourishing groups had sizeable investments in cotton, banking and industry...
...After 1963, a fast-growing guerrilla movement gained the upper hand over the Army and police, not yet prepared for unconventional warfare...
...1 The democratic interlude of 1944-45 came in response to a living anachronism-the primitive despotism of the Guatemalan coffee barons...
...dollar-as one of its stable reserve currencies...
...Ambassador, John E. Peurifoy.' 3 The proconsul immediately furnished lists of radical opponents to be eliminated, while the regime set up a CIA-sponsored National Committee for Defense Against Communism...
...in- tends to go in helping Guatemala-the first na- tion ever to return from Communism," com- mented one U.S...
...3. See SusanneJonas and David Tobis, eds., Guatemala (Berkeley: NACLA, 1974) pp...
...with them came the first stirrings of guerrilla resistance...
...In Guatemala, Ubico refused to broaden the social base of his regime or diversify production...
...Melville and Melville, Guatemala, p. 173...
...37-42...
...The Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT)-Guatemala's communist party-was legalized by Arbenz in 1951...
...Every nation in Latin America is watching to see how far the U.S...
...It didn't go so well for the State Department and the Pentagon at first...
...by October 20 a military uprising with worker and student backing had installed a three-man junta...
...But the military high command had finally shown its true colors in a secret memorandum to Arbenz: arming the peasants is out of the question...
...They were particularly incensed by Ydigoras' submission to U.S...
...a new ruling alliance would be forged...
...6 The hierarchy followed up by encouraging a flood of missionaries into the country to preach anti-communism, henceforth the *While this typically refers to those of mixed Indian and Spanish blood, Indians who have advanced their economic status or abandoned the visible symbols of their culture-costume, religious practices-may also consider themselves ladinos...
...Former U.S...
...Many peasants were nervous about the guerrilla advance, and the MLN's aggressive recruitment campaign, in which no neutrals were allowed, brought the party broad support and potential for a genuinely mass-based fascist movement...
...Any threatening opposition was constitutionally neutralized or openly outlawed: "The formation of parties or entities which adhere to the communist ideology is forbidden, as are those which through their doctrinal tendency, means of action or international links attack the sovereignty of the state...
...Washington concluded that this new popular opposition represented not only a breakdown of internal control in "showcase" Guatemala, but a menace of continental dimensions in the wake of the Cuban revolution...
...In the eastern mountains, operations under Col...
...3 5 Again, U.S...
...It had been a Pastoral Letter from the archbishop on April 4, 1954, denouncing communism, which had galvanized right-wing opposition to Arbenz...
...The military's initial intervention in politics only fueled right-wing tensions...
...46-7...
...influence at a crucial juncture was decisive...
...Expropriated lands were returned to their previous owners and the agrarian reform was reversed, crushing any ideas of expanding the domestic market...
...VI, no...
...The man who led their transformation was the Butcher of Zacapa...
...In 1966, three officially endorsed parties competed-the MLN, the Revolutionary Party (PR), and the Democratic Institutional Party (PID), formed a year earlier as the "party of the armed forces...
...Bolstering "Democracy" Central to the military's notion of "limited democracy" was a four-yearly ritual of elections...
...Central government revenues averaged a mere 9% of the gross domestic product...
...Today, their beleaguered rhetoric strikes a responsive chord among influential sectors of the Reagan Administration who have resurrected the assumptions of the Eisenhower-Dulles era--a simpler age when the United States snuffed out Latin American radicalism at will...
...With the new democratic freedoms, strong working class and peasant organizations mushroomed, their demands becoming increasingly radical...
...32...
...economic planners began to grasp the investment potential in integrating the small elite markets of the five Central American republics...
...and the utility company, Electric Bond and Share...
...A head-on collision with the U.S...
...Backed by perhaps half the officer corps, these officers attempted a nationalist coup on November 13, 1960-the first and last reformist outburst within the Guatemalan military...
...2 2 These antagonisms had to be dealt with, although broader consensus politics remained beyond the pale...
...But they were stripped of their nationalist content...
...In a social context of bitter counterrevolutionary extremes, the dynamic new sectors-committed to economic modernization and the "American Way of Life"--were as profoundly anti-communist as the seigneurial diehards of the coffee oligarchy, an attitude nurtured by U.S...
...Both groups were alarmed by mounting working class mobilization, new agrarian reform laws and the assertion of nationalist rights over the excesses of foreign enclave capital...
...balance of payments problems were negligible...
...Old-fashioned coffee conservatives clashed with assertive financiers and industrialists, import traders and emergent cotton millionaires in the search for clientelistic privileges from the transnational corporations.21 The murder of Castillo Armas in an obscure internecine squabble in 1957 was mourned by Eisenhower as "a great loss to Guatemala and the world...
...The tiny middle class itched for a share of state power and the chance to modernize the moribund economy...
...Two years later the Bank of Americalargest of Guatemala's foreign banks-opened its local operations...
...6. Debray, The Revolution on Trial, p. 272...
...On the Central American Common Market, see David Tobis, "The Central American Common Market -The Integration of Underdevelopment," NACLA Newsletter, Vol...
...If nothing else, it robbed the counterrevolution of its caudillo and exposed divergent ambitions within the private sector...
...The explicit goal of Arevalo and his successor, Jacobo Arbenz, was modem capitalist development with a strong dose of nationalism...
...But the Guatemalan economy too was shaped from the United States, and this meant that power depended on which group controlled relations with foreign capital...
...Military Assistance (Washington D.C., Institute for Policy Studies, 1981...
...Carlos Castillo Armas-hand-picked by the CIA for his malleability-flew into the capital on July 3, 1954, aboard the private aircraft of the abrasive U.S...
...As the invading army of self-styled liberacionistas inched its way into Guatemala from Honduran base camps, peasant supporters of the revolution stood ready to fight...
...The permanent suspension of agrarian reform and the free penetration of for5 3 891beFlnaJ6 NAIA Esport eign capital became articles of faith...
...Though his 1950 victory was convincing, the Revolutionary Party's share of the vote dropped to 63%, a hint of deepening resistance to reform from both traditional landed interests and the nouveaux riches capitalists with sugar, cotton, cattle and small industrial interests...
...As strongman of the coffee planters, he ran a personalized police state which suffocated both political activity and economic growth...
...2 6 Proclaiming the need to cleanse the political system, the coup-makers called it Operacion Honestidad...
...The Oligarchy Takes Revenge Guatemala's tragedy was that its internal crisis, and its clash with imperialism, came at a moment when U.S...
...5 (July-August 1981...
...From 1960 until the 1973 oil crisis, inflation was almost unknown, averaging less than 0.5% annually...
...Nor was the military united...
...Throughout Central America, old dictatorships were confronted with new challenges...
...Duly sanctified by the Church, the liberacionistas set about dismantling 10 years of reforms...
...6 NcACReportJan/Feb 1983 1960, U.S...
...government now meshed with internal class conflict...
...Pointing to a shipment of Czech arms to Arbenz as his anti-communist rationale, President Eisenhower attacked...
...Neither could reforms to the agroexporting and industrial economy be ignored...
...9 (January 1970...
...An additional $4.4 million in police training and supplies from 1957 to 1974 would beef up internal security under the Office of Public Safety program...
...only Nicaragua's Somoza regime stood firm...
...3 " Gert Rosenthal, Secretary for Economic Planning, 1970 as a distant dream, enthusiastically backed Arbenz' reform program...
...2 5 His crime...
...This retreat convinced the private sector that its intransigence could always count on Washington's blessings...
...But though the modernizing bourgeoisie had used working class and peasant support as a bulwark against the old-style landowners, it now proved more dedicated to its own advancement than to nationalist economic development...
...Though socialism was not necessarily imminent in 1954, the mass movement did threaten to overstep the limits of the revolution's populist consensus...
...power could be deployed unfettered against real or imagined enemies in its sphere of influence, whether in Iran, Greece or Central America...
...The Army declared that its aim was "to avoid an imminent civil war and the establishment of a communist regime...
...5 Seeing a U.S...
...government would devote $45 million to building Central America's most effective military machine...
...Contracting state revenues brought unemployment and mass discontent...
...On July 6th, the daily El Imparcial reported "a fight between 400 Communist Indians and anti-communist ladinos* of San Juan Sacatepequez, in which 17 Indians were killed and as many wounded.' 1 "We were born fighting against communism...
...Mendez invited U.S...
...Despite the obstacles strewn in his path by the armed forces, PR candidate Mendez Montenegro ran out winner, presenting himself demagogically as head of the "Third Government of the Revolution...
...See Mario Esteban Carranza, Fuerzas Armadas y estado de excepcion en America Latina (Mexico City, Siglo XXI, 1978) pp...
...Ibid., pp...
...While U.S...
...5. Perez Ruiz, Guatemala...
...The new strategy embodied many of Arbenz' modernizing ideas: agricultural export expan- sion, stimuli to private industrial investment, diminished state involvement in the economy, increased subsidies to the private sector, reined- in direct taxation...
...1 7 Anti-National Development Even so, political power could not be handed back wholesale to the coffee barons: Guatemala could no longer rely exclusively on their export earnings...
...III, no...
...The bloodletting began promptly, with racial as well as ideological overtones...
...On March 30, the conspirators struck, canceling the elections and installing former defense minister Gen...
...Edelberto Torres-Rivas, "Crisis y coyuntura critica: La caida de Arbenz y los contratiempos de la revolucion burguesa," Politica y Sociedad, no 4, July-December 1977) p. 66...
...9. Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, Guatemala en Lucha, no...
...To allow the return of ex-president Arevalo from Mexican exile to run in the 1963 elections, which he might plausibly have won...
...military training facilities...
...With a U.S.-mediated military-civilian pact in its pocket, Washington insisted that the armed forces respect the election results...
...If the big farmers were angry, the U.S...
...Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes...
...war economy and postwar boom gave the modernizers their chance...
...79-80...
...Aguilera, "Estado militar...
...155-7...
...7 What really panicked old and new cash-crop growers, however, were the radical methods of the reform, which rested less on legislation from above than mass mobilization from below...
...in Le Monde Diplomatique en Espanol, October 1979...
...Arevalo had already taken on the three major U.S...
...In return for *With both coercive and administrative powers, the mili- tary commissioners-often ex-soldiers--handle local army recruitment and enlistment of government spies...
...And the military kept the show on the road...
...Hardly...
...When, to his credit, Arbenz refused to capitulate to the latter demand, the military withdrew its support and watched the unarmed regime collapse...
...7. Thomas and Marjorie Melville, Guatemala: Another Vietnam...
...Arevalo stimulated private investment in industry, diversified agricultural production, devoted a third of his budget to social expenditure and placed the first restraints on foreign economic enclaves...
...Jonas and Tobis, Guatemala, p. .49...
...references COUNTERREVOLUTION AS A WAY OF LIFE 1. Speech to Latin American Youth Conference, Havana, 1960, cited in Regis Debray, The Revolution on Trial (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1974) p. 271...
...In o Sixth Avenue, Guatemala City's main shopping street, is a blur of transnational neon...
...By this time, the Army was in deep trouble against the guerrillas...
...On the changing nature of the Revolutionary Party in the 1960s, see Poitevin: Elproceso de industrializacion, p. 191...
...According to a Time correspondent, cited in Kinzer and Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit, p. 122...
...Susanne Jonas Bodenheimer, "Guatemala: The Politics of Violence," NACLA 's Latin America and Empire Report, Vol...
...3 0 Though the PR was a shell of its former self, its activists deeply compromised with the counterrevolution, the party of Arevalo and Arbenz still held shreds of legitimacy among the electorate, 43.7% of whom abstained 7NACLA Report anyway...
...Guatemala was to be a continental guinea-pig...
...military advisers into Guatemala the day after his inauguration, entrusting to them a counterinsurgency campaign crafted with the heady confidence of a pre-Tet offensive Vietnam...
...Operation Guatemala, with the pretext of saving electoral democracy from the guerrilla threat, allowed the police to dismember opposition newspapers, the university and political organizations-even Mendez' own party, which saw many of its activists murdered...
...9 When the crunch came, most of the new growers, urban industrialists and state bureaucrats were easily seduced into alliance with the United States and the revitalized oligarchs.'o Furthermore, the Arbenz regime had proved unable (or unwilling) to transform mass sympathy into a structured defense of the threatened democracy...
...The MLN, which had held power until now, was an exception, but its regressive fantasies left it ill-equipped to inherit the helm of U.S.-conceived development plans for a modern state...
...counterinsurgency experts on the scene chafed to import newly acquired Vietnam skills into Guatemala, Peralta Azurdia allowed no expansion of existing military aid programs...
...Having accepted subordination to the military, would Mendez' reformist inclinations hold out against the civilian Right...
...Incarnated in the dictatorships of Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898-1920) and Gen...
...Successive U.S...
...2 0 New infrastructure-highways, transport, communications, electrification-took pride of place in generating wealth, financed by the U.S...
...40 E ab official ideology of the state...
...The "revolution" brought a heady period of economic expansion and democratic organizing...
...Arevalo's focus (largely unsuccessful) was the companies' refusal to arbitrate wage disputes...
...I am a Fascist, and I have tried to model my party after the Spanish Falange...
...Arbenz' June 1952 agrarian reform law, designed to create an internal market as the basis for industrialization, was moderate in tone...
...Even so, expropriations benefited 100,000 peasant families, who were granted 1.5 million acres of farmland...
...Who but the armed forces could play this dual role, given the power vacuum at the level of effective political parties...
...Young officers were angered by Army corruption and ineptitude...
...Nor could Castillo Armas be blind to the ag- gressive new expansion of transnational capital...
...91-113...
...Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy (New York, Doubleday & Co., 1981) p. 289...
...Though Mendez looked a model Alliance for Progressstyle candidate, the Pentagon opposed his election...
...Popular organizations were outlawed, their main leaders killed or driven into exile, and the revolutionary Constitution was abrogated...
...Enrique Delgado, Evolucion del Mercado Comun Centroamericano y desarrollo equilibrado (San Jose, Costa Rica, EDUCA, 1981...
...The old coffee barons, formally displaced 2 ACl Report0 E 53 from government, maintained political leverage through continued control of the country's key export crop, but new industrialists and sugar and cotton growers emerged as competitors...
...Relying on the free market as well as outright expropriation, he built a state hydroelectric plant, a Caribbean coast highway and a new Atlantic seaport, all in competition with existing JanlFeb1983 3NACLAReport U.S...
...1 2 The defeat was a devastating psychological blow to the mass movement, abandoned by a state which they had trusted to the last...
...i and 25...
...corporate interests coincided with the peak of Cold War ideology...
...Jonas and Tobis, Guatemala, pp...
...purge the government of "communist and hostile elements" and we will support you...
...Under the IMET program, 3,073 cadets would pass through U.S...
...plan- ners now designed a development package for the counterrevolution...
...Having orchestrated the 1954 coup, U.S...
...The middle class grew...
...In the chaotic interlude following Castillo Armas' death, the military annuled the 1958 election results amid cries of fraud from the MLN, which considered itself the rightful winner...
...Carlos Arana Osorio, known as the "Butcher of Zacapa," virtually wiped out the guerrillas and claimed 8,000 peasant lives in two years.32 In that savagely polarized region, the MLN was the only established right-wing force...
...The revolution's Achilles' heels are clear enough...
...Melville and Melville, Guatemala, p. 102...
...The "revolution" became an incubating period for their later rise to power.' In the course of his five-year term, Arevalo had to dismantle 32 military conspiracies against his regime...
...Jorge Ubico (1931-1944), oligarchical rule had submerged Guatemala in an economic system utterly dependent on one crop-coffee-and on a market over which it had no control-the world market...
...advisers gained a foothold through civic action programs and Cuban exiles openly trained on Guatemalan soil for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion...
...Militarizing Guatemala From 1954 to the advent of the Carter Administration, the United States would train, finance and overhaul the Guatemalan Army and security forces, ever increasing their size, coercive power and role as rulers of the state...
...By 1948, bourgeois revolt had swept away archaic despots in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras...
...In 1955, Castillo Armas drew up Guatemala's first petroleum code to attract foreign oil companies...
...Aguilera, "Estado militar...
...On the founding principles and ideology of the MLN, see El Plan de Tegucigalpa, el alcance de todos los patriotas (Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 1953...
...A dozen new political parties blossomed, led by enthusiastic young professionals . In the first flush of euphoria, all anti-Ubico sectors united behind philosophy teacher Juan Jose Arevalo, who was elected president in 1945 with more than 80% of the vote...
...Kinzer and Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit, p. 243...
...monopolies were allowed to seize control of key infrastructure...
...business community, spearheaded by the luminaries of the American Chamber of Commerce...
...The PR," he stated, "has decided to support the Army...
...The Central American Common Market (CACM) accepted Guatemala as its base of operations, tied to the demands of world markets...
...Guatemala, with the region's largest economy and population and its best transport infrastructure, would be the key to their plans...
...8. Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), p. 124...
...Castillo Armas and Ambassador Peurifoy were blessed by the Papal Nuncio as they descended the aircraft steps at La Aurora airport, and the "liberator" named the Black Christ of EsquipulasGuatemala's most revered religious symbol-as "Supreme Commander of the Liberation Forces...
...its affiliate, International Railways of Central America...
...And he announced the decision to expropriate 387,000 acres of idle UFCo land, stipulating that compensation would be paid on declared taxable value...
...A direct threat to U.S...
...what need was there to create a domestic consumer market through reforms...
...It is a model held together with sustained and sophisticated counterinsurgency, necessarily thrusting the Guatemalan military into the epicenter of power...
...7-67...
...All told, the U.S...
...The next decade would see their metamorphosis from custodians of the wealth of others to an economic power in their own right...
...market...
...U.S...
...Brecha (Mexico City), no...
...Worker and student strikes and riots shook the country in March-April 1962...
...3 4 Bowing to private sector pressure, which denounced the fiscal proposals as "communist," Mendez sacked his progressive finance minister, Alberto Fuentes Mohr...
...United in anti-communism, the marriage of convenience between the old and new capitalist classes was not without friction...
...the rich got richer...
...Castillo Armas' replacement would have to be proficient both as arbitrator and repressor...
...Department of Defense, Defense Security Agency, Foreign Military Sales and Military Assistance Facts, 1980...
...For full details, see Delia Miller, Roland Seeman and Cynthia Arnson, Background Information on Guatemala, the Armed Forces and U.S...
...Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala, p. 200...
...facilities...
...The needs of the U.S...
...Only uncultivated portions of farms larger than 223 acres would be touched...
...The Armed Forces to Center Stage For the United States, the last element in the strategic equation now came into play...
...Constitucion de la Republica de Guatemala, 1965, Article 27...
...The assembled peasant forces wept openly on hearing of Arbenz' resignation...
...PGT congressional strength was limited-communists held 4 out of 56 deputies' seats-but its activists took up key positions in agrarian reform and played an energetic role in mobilizing the 300,000 people who took advantage of the 1947 Labor Code to form trade unions and peasant leagues...
...monopolies-the United Fruit Company (UFCo...
...administrations of both parties have vigorously promoted their model of economic growth without redistribution of wealth...
...Another problem was that many of the officers began to take on a lean and hungry look...
...Amid a wave of strikes in May-June 1944, particularly by government workers, Ubico resigned in favor of an obscure general...
...Already, however, seeds of polarization were sown...
...The dilemma between military imperatives and reformist rhetoric was swiftly resolved: Mendez would take office, but not real power-that would go to the military...
...Cited in Melville and Melville, Guatemala, p. 121...
...we live and we shall die fighting," declared Castillo Armas' National Liberation Movement (MLN).1 5 The party and its ferocious ideology received the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy...
...World Bank, Guatemala, pp...
...Growth was continuous and reliable, an average of 5.5% throughout the 1960s.3 6 Guatemala enjoyed one of the lowest foreign debts in Latin America...
...Ubico, a firm admirer of Hitler's Third Reich, took power as the global depression sent its worst shock waves through Guatemala's vulnerable economy...
...Department of Defense, Congressional Presentation Document: Security Assistance Fiscal Year 1982...
...The Democratic Experiment Che Guevara called it "the democracy that gave way...
...Precapitalist relations, including forced labor obligations, remained the norm in the predominantly Indian countryside...
...Agency for International Development (AID), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank...
...8 While one brother mounted a diplomatic offensive to isolate Arbenz, the other launched a covert action program...
...All four presidential candidates in the upcoming elections concurred with the view of this government-sponsored campaign ad...
...3, 1982...
...Rubber, sugar processing and cattle raising all responded to the new postwar needs of the U.S...
...2 (February 1972) p. 25...
...Arbenz pressed nationalist demands one notch higher...
...Furthermore, a series of laws between 1944 and 1954 granted the armed forces legal autonomy and increased their bargaining power within the state...
...2 3 Washington, for its part, was suspicious of Ydigoras' ties to the Ubico era, and the MLN distrusted the legal reforms which he instituted as the basis for industrialization...
...A deal was struck, as it was in El Salvador...
...hand behind many of the plots, he eventually declared Ambassador Richard C. Patterson persona non grata...
...The tank commander takes up position, aims, fires-exploding the target into a thousand pieces as a deep, sonorous voice intones the military's message: "Guatemalans, only byforce of arms will we destroy the threat of international communism...
...Ambassador to Mexico, William O'Dwyer, cited in Jonas and Tobis, Guatemala, p. 76...
...in order to maintain peace and tranquility, to strengthen our mutual relationship...
...See "Posicion del PSD respecto al proceso electoral en 1982," ALAI (Montreal, Canada), December 4, 1981...
...The PGT, seeing socialism "Agrarian reform is incompatible with the existence of a constitutional state...
...See interview with Manuel Colom Argueta, Latin America Political Report, April 6, 1979...
...In a fresh vote, the Army imposed its hand-picked candidate, former Ubico aide Gen...
...monopolies were outraged...
...Stephen Kinzer and Stephen Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982), pp...
...As Ydigoras antagonized Left and Right alike, his regime floundered...
...messianic interruptions of the political process whose agenda was the salvation of Western Civilization and whose stay in power was to be indefinite.27 Peralta Azurdia's consolidation of military power brought a 1965 Army-dictated Constitution, which shaped a "limited democracy" with restricted political party activity...
...The officer class, of largely petty-bourgeois origins, favored economic modernization while remaining immune to serious social reforms...
...Harmondsworth, Penguin Books Ltd., 1971) p. 61...
...Allan Nairn, "The Subsidization of Terror: The Bank of America in Guatemala," COHA Research Memorandum, February 8, 1982...
...It all added up to a boom, yet the ruling elite was so narrowly based that the routine conflicts facing any capitalist society were seen as a mortal challenge to the existing order, requiring the military as vigilant guardians...
...6 The Revolution Deepens Arevalo's elected successor was the young Army officer, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman...
...For 28 years, since CIA-sponsored invaders aborted a decade-longexperiment in reform, Guatemala's elite have equated any notions of change with communism...
...mass poverty worsened...
...Gabriel Aguilera, "Terror and Violence as Weapons of Counterinsurgency in Guatemala," Latin America Perspectives, nos...
...The MLN would eventually boast 10,000 active members from this base, outstripping any political party in Guatemalan history...
...Enrique Peralta Azurdia as head of a military regime...
...World Bank, Guatemala: Economic and Social Position and Prospects (Washington, D.C., 1978) p. 50...
...Inforpress (Guatemala City), December 3, 1981...
...2 8 The final clause restricted such "exotic ideologies" as social democracy and Christian Democracy.29 Yet Peralta Azurdia was perversely nationalistic, and his outmoded nepotistic handling of the Army caused more headaches for the Pentagon...
...Julio Carranza Valles, El Mercado Comun Centroamericano-un caso de integracion dependiente (Havana: Centro de Estudios sobre America, 1981...
...33 Eager to professionalize the armed forces, Mendez opened the Centro de Estudios Militares, where the officer corps attended highlevel courses on economic management and government...
...For the ruling elite, the show was profitabk...
...Today, only this virulent attitude binds together the otherwise savagely divided parties of the Right...
...and the IMF selected the quetzallong pegged to the U.S...
...The economy would expand and modernize...
...Mendez faced two coup attempts from the military right wing, yet endorsed the transfer of power from the National Palace to the barracks...
...During the Carter years, the wild excesses of the Guatemalan Right were shunned...
...It was not the reactionary general who opened the floodgates of military assistance, but his ostensibly progressive civilian successor, Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro...
...9 U.S...
...Office of Public Safety, Termination Phase-Out Study of the Public Safety Project: Guatemala, 1974...
...The Aborted Revolution Extraordinary in retrospect is that a handful of renegade soldiers, anti-communist fanatics and cowboy employees of the CIA's Flying Tigers should manage to topple a ten-year-old popular government with almost no bloodshed...
...MLN leader Mario Sandoval Alarc6n sharing the power they had once monopolized, the rural oligarchs received guarantees that their land would not be touched...
...A major debate hinged on the overhaul of Guatemala's tax system, one of the most regressive in the world...
...In its path appears a hammer and sickle, dripping red with blood...
...The very success of the economy, helped by Guatemala's favored position within the CACM, told them they were right...
...2. Miguel Perez Ruiz, Guatemala, un pais que se construye en la guerra...
...His hit-men were the Dulles brothers--Secretary of State John Foster and CIA Director Allen-both with long-standing links to United Fruit...
...Cold War rhetoric...
...strategic allies-local military men and exporters in partnership with unscrupulous Cuban exiles and Sunbelt investors who flooded into Guatemala in the 1960s-saw no political or economic logic in moderation...
...Designed to resolve contradictions within the ruling class and to destroy the challenge from below, the coup opened a new era in Guatemalan history, and set a precedent for the coups which swept through Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina from 1964 to 1976...
...Melville and Melville, Guatemala, p. 223...
...2 4 A secret meeting inJanuary 1963, chaired by President John E Kennedy, approved an Army plot to overthrow Ydigoras...
...Arbenz might well have used his "umbilical link" with the movement to consolidate a reform program and stave off socialist transformation...
...4. Gabriel Aguilera Peralta, "Estado militar y lucha revolucionaria en Guatemala," unpublished mimeo (Costa Rica, 1982...
...The "liberator" of Guatemala, Col...
...diplomat...
...Rene Poiteven, El proceso de industrializacion en Guatemala (Costa Rica, EDUCA, 1977) pp...
Vol. 17 • January 1983 • No. 1
