Showdown in Guatemala?

...Arbenz could declare a dictatorship, with the Reds remaining behind the scenes but no longer having to take public opinion or party politics seriously into account...

...Arbenz knows that...

...That would be tantamount to an attack, in the most profound sense, upon the peace and security of the hemisphere, which have already been strained by a Guatemala not yet entirely under Communist control...

...Those possibilities apparently no longer exist...

...The first assumption is that all is not yet lost in Guatemala...

...Aware of that, the Guatemalan Government, despite rumors that it would, has not yet renewed diplomatic relations with Venezuela so as to be able to attend the conference...

...What form will a showdown take, if and when it comes...

...Guatemala's attitude toward the Organization of American States could, of course, change overnight if the Communists decide that something is to be gained by going to Caracas...

...It could have taken power at any time—but didn't try...

...True, we would thus risk being alone or nearly so for some time, but the risk inherent in permitting a Red state to exist in our midst is infinitely greater...

...On the other hand, intervention in Guatemala would rally a considerable body of Latin American opinion behind Arbenz and intensify greatly the anti-U.S...

...In accusing them of plotting an invasion, the Communists, if one turns their words right-side up, may really be justifying a coming invasion of their own??from within...

...Experience shows that to remain passive under such circumstances is to court disaster, and intervention would be the only sensible course...

...The charge, in fact, was first made by Gutierrez, the night before the Government issued the official statement, at the opening of a nationwide conference of the Red-controlled General Confederation of Labor...

...With large numbers of peasants armed and organized into shock troops, with Arbenz inescapably in their clutches, with the Army either "neutral" or loyal to the Government, and with the anti-Communists all but hounded out of existence, the Reds have little to restrain them from advancing into the final stage of their march toward total power...

...In short, the agrarian drive committed Arbenz irrevocably to the Red line in domestic affairs as did the OCAS withdrawal in foreign...

...One of the most important of these, which should have been made a year ago, might be to invite President Arbenz to the White House, where, free of the pressures of Guatemalan politics, outstanding differences might be composed and a friendly atmosphere established...

...Incitation of the peasants by the Reds had forced the expropriation and created in the countryside what the Communists like to call a "revolutionary mood...

...The first of these should become the basis for immediate action, and the second for future action should the former meet with failure...

...it is the largest we have in Central America, and there seems to be no sense in letting it contribute a single iota more to the strengthening of an army which, in the last analysis, is pitted against us...

...By then it was a matter of weeks before all the American republics would assemble at Caracas, where the problem of Communism in the hemisphere — meaning, essentially, Guatemala—would come up...

...On the other hand, there is the precedent Guatemala established last April when she withdrew from the Organization of Central American States over exactly the same issue—Communism...

...We should, for example, withdraw our military mission from Guatemala...

...There has been talk in Congress of bringing Arbenz to heel by embargoing Guatemalan coffee...

...This means that we have concluded that the Reds are about to take over...

...The United Fruit expropriation not only led to a stepped-up Red campaign among the peasants but sealed Arbenz's loyalty to the Communists...

...hence the vague reference to "the government of the north...

...It was at first thought that the latter was the United States, but later it was realized that Mexico also was meant...

...It could have shown its disapproval of Communism in other ways—but, again, didn't try...

...Instead, it has now named Venezuela among the "plotters" against it, thus making highly unlikely its appearance at Caracas and delivering a blow to hemispheric unity...

...At a conference scheduled for Guatemala City on May 1, Foreign Minister Roberto Canessa of El Salvador intended to propose that the OCAS organize a Central American front against Communism...

...For another, Mexican President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines profoundly disapproves of the increasing Communist influence in Guatemala, which has seeped into Mexico, where "Societies of Friends of Guatemala" have already been organized...

...Daniel James, former Managing Editor of The New Leader, spent the greater part of 1953 in Latin America...

...Or that the independent Association of Journalists, after a special meeting to discuss the rising menace to press freedom, appealed to Arbenz for protection...

...Having regarded with growing concern the steady accretion of Communist strength in Guatemala, we could not tolerate the establishment of Communist hegemony over the nation...

...Worse, an embargo might boomerang twice over: by making Guatemalans feel it their patriotic duty to support their President, and by stimulating in other Latin countries another attack upon our "coffee nerves...

...Whatever happens next in Guatemala, this much is clear: The United States faces a major crisis in its relations with that country, and one that could lead to hemisphere-wide complications...

...Through these "soviets" they have since been waging guerrilla war against the Guatemalan equivalent of "kulaks," strengthening their hold over the fast-growing and party-led National Confederation of Peasants, and building Yenan-like strongholds, especially in the highlands...

...That was more than confirmed by the inclusion of the United Fruit Company among the "plotters," the expulsion from Guatemala of New York Times correspondent Sidney Gruson and NBC's Marshall Bannell soon thereafter, and, on February 4, a violent attack by Arbenz himself upon the State Department, the U. S. Senate and other "imperialist" agencies...

...Since Salama, too, the Arbenz-Communist campaign against the opposition has become a war of physical attrition...

...That policy is suggested by two assumptions...

...It had remained relatively free of Red influence during the whole time that the Communists were heavily infiltrating every other area of national life...

...The first big land expropriation under the Agrarian Reform Law, which took 234,000 acres of United Fruit Company property last February, initiated, it is now clear, a new stage in the Communist conquest of Guatemala...

...Countless anti-Communists are being terrorized, maimed, jailed or exiled and their possessions confiscated or threatened with confiscation...

...That is anybody's guess...

...He first visited Guatemala last spring and was one of the first American journalists to call attention to the Communist danger there...

...Flowing from this assumption, certain moves suggest themselves...

...if it fails, we shall have at least gone on record before all the nations of the hemisphere that we tried our best...

...It was Fortuny, head of the Guatemalan Communist party, who thereupon advised Arbenz to pull out of the OCAS—and Arbenz promptly did...

...The larger meaning of the Guatemalan crisis is that it mirrors situations in other Latin American republics which, if ignored much longer, will evolve into new Guatemalas...

...then it moved in so swiftly and dealt with the rebels so ruthlessly that, after Salama, there could be little doubt that the Army was Arbenz's loyal servant...

...Arbenz does not like that government any more than he likes ours, and has more immediate reason to fear it...

...Carlos Pellecer, Guatemala's Number Three Red, was elected to Congress from Escuintla in 1950 and has since become boss of the department...

...The big stumbling block to Red designs has been the Army...

...Nationalism is on the march in Latin America, and in its wake follow the vultures of Communism...

...The only real inhibiting forces exist outside the country??where they can do little...

...Arbenz's actions since have corroborated that fact...

...If we are to avoid in Latin America a repetition of the history of the past decade in Asia, the United States must set in motion, at once, such policies and practices as will generate a counter-trend...

...Since Interior Minister Augusto Charnaud Macdonald, Arbenz's private secretary and other Government dignitaries were present, one must infer that Gutierrez had at least tacit Government approval...

...It is almost a foregone conclusion that a rigid censorship will soon descend upon Guatemala...

...the more Arbenz relies upon the Communists, the more obligated he becomes to share power with them and the more power they demand...

...What is needed just now is not top-of-the-head notions that come during the making of speeches, but a comprehensive policy from which a series of coordinated moves would flow logically...

...After the expropriation, the Communists deemed it propitious, therefore, to capitalize upon that mood by intensifying their peasant activities many-fold...

...We might also withdraw our non-military missions in Guatemala...

...On January 29 occurred the most disturbing of a series of unfortunate events, when the regime of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman formally charged that a number of American republics were plotting an invasion of Guatemala...

...Apart from covering up whatever drastic moves are being planned internally, these unprecedented assaults upon the U.S...

...Named were four Latin American countries—the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Venezuela—and "the government of the north...

...That act has crippled the OCAS, and now, it seems, the Red-dominated Arbenz regime would like also to cripple the bigger OAS in accord with the major Soviet objective of undermining hemisphere solidarity...

...The largest and richest department (state) in Guatemala, Escuintla, is Red-governed and practically a miniature model of Mao Tse-tung's old "Soviet China...

...The Army remained a question mark until last April, when anti-Communists revolted at Salama, 100 miles from Guatemala City...

...A second but riskier course might be to give the Reds key Cabinet posts...

...He became as antagonistic toward United Fruit and other U. S. business concerns as the Reds (subsequently authorizing the expropriation of another 174,000 acres of United Fruit land and threatening U. S. businesses with nationalization), and ultimately found himself in direct conflict with the United States Government...

...If so, then we must choose between two extremely difficult alternatives: (1) to intervene, and thereby invite opposition and criticism from Latin America and other parts of the world...

...For one thing, Mexicans have been selling arms to Arbenz's opponents (as well as to Arbenz...

...They captured the local agrarian committees formed under the Agrarian Law and turned them into virtual soviets...

...Finally, but least likely, an outright Red coup is possible...

...Otherwise, the map of this hemisphere will be bloodied with its own Indo-China and Malaya...

...Was it coincidence that among those arrested recently in connection with the "invasion plot" were three anti-Communist radio broadcasters...

...Until the late spring of 1953, there was a possibility that the Guatemalan Communists would slow down their drive toward power, fearing that if they moved too quickly they might precipitate a crisis which would redound to their disadvantage...

...If that is assumed, then, in an eleventh-hour attempt to halt the Red tide and demonstrate anew our genuine sympathy with legitimate Guatemalan aspirations, we might make certain conciliatory moves...

...There is no doubt, however, that the phrase was directed primarily at the United States, for we are the main target of Arbenz and his Red associates...

...Unless the trend is suddenly reversed by unforeseen occurrences, Guatemala may shortly become the first American country to fall to Communism...

...Virtually unopposed Guatemalan Communists may soon capture total state power By Daniel James EVIDENCE is mounting that a showdown is imminent in Red-ridden Guatemala, and that we may soon face the first Asia-like crisis in the Western Hemisphere...

...Last December, the capital of Escuintla elected a Communist as mayor while he was en route to Moscow...

...Guatemala depends for 80 per cent of her income upon coffee exports to the U. S. But the scheme is badly-timed, for, with coffee prices rising due to other factors, no American consumer is likely to favor an act which might make coffee more scarce and send prices up still higher...

...This move could be followed by talks on lower levels to take up concrete ways and means of resolving some of Guatemala's basic problems...

...have an external purpose: to disrupt the Tenth Conference of the Organization of American States, which takes place in Caracas, Venezuela on March 1. The "invasion" charge followed by less than a month the return from Moscow of Guatemala's three top Communists: party General Secretary Jose Manuel Fortuny, labor boss Victor Manuel Gutierrez, and agrarian leader Carlos Manuel Pellecer...

...The Communist press??including that part which speaks officially for the Government but is in Red hands??has literally been calling for the blood of opposition leaders...

...It is a significant fact that, for months previous, the Communists had been howling about a "threatened invasion" but that no official stamp was laid upon their propaganda (indeed, the Chief of the Armed Forces, Colonel Carlos Enrique Diaz, denied rumors of plotting) until the Communist leaders got back from Moscow...

...sentiment rampant below the Rio Grande...

...There was also a possibility that Arbenz might decide to jettison the Communists, or that the Army might do so, and the Government might be reconstituted along moderate lines or a new one formed...

...The value of the conciliatory approach is that, if it succeeds, it could conceivably start a trend away from Communism...

...In a showdown, there would be no non-intervention policy (such as there is in our case) to inhibit Mexico from taking action...

...Since Salama, rumors of Communist infiltration of the Army have increased, and its chief, Colonel Diaz, is now reported to be a fellow-traveler...

...Recent events in Guatemala lead almost inescapably to the conclusion that the Communists have greatly accelerated their drive toward complete power...

...that is extremely doubtful, because it might provoke Army opposition or intervention from "the north...

...It is known that the U. S. and several Latin American nations would like to see the Caracas Conference pass a firm anti-Communist resolution and devise some form of implementing it...

...It has also been clamoring for the suppression of the independent press...

...2) to do nothing, and thereby permit Communism to make its first American conquest unchallenged...

...The justification is at hand: Foreign powers are planning an invasion and the nation must be put on an emergency footing...

...Any such move at Caracas would probably find Guatemala in the minority...

...The second assumption upon which a comprehensive and intelligent policy might be based is that all is lost in Guatemala...

...From a Guatemalan's geographic standpoint, Mexico, on his northern border, is "the government of the north...

...Certain it is that Diaz, who first denied Red propaganda about an "invasion plot," has apparently accepted the Government's "discovery" of one...