The Bloodless Coup in Guatemala
ALBA, VICTOR
Conflict over land distribution is key to difficulties The Bloodless Coup in Guatemala By Victor Alba Mexico City It is a tragic paradox that the military figures behind Latin American coups...
...Ortiz Passarelli, who has now been deprived of his election victory, had promised to accelerate matters...
...For a week, his followers—peasants sent into the capital at the expense of the big landowners, and produce merchants, who are a strong reactionary force in Guatemala—controlled Guatemala City...
...In this instance, the colonels wanted to block the gradual transformation of the Guatemalan landholding system, which is semi-feudal in character...
...Colonel Oliva, in this situation, seems prepared to take whatever stand will best advance his personal political ambitions...
...Arbenz had promulgated an agrarian-reform law which, while extremely moderate, enabled the Communists to win control of the peasants (and, incidentally, to crush the democratic Left, which might have played a constructive role in the recent crisis...
...while the Christian Democratic candidate, Miguel Asturias, finished weakly...
...The winner was Miguel Ortiz Passarelli, former President of the Guatemalan Supreme Court, who was backed by the four Government parties...
...The victorious junta has had to yield to Ydigoras's pressure, apparently robbing Oliva of the fruits of his victory...
...He played a secondary role so long as Castillo Armas was alive, but the revolutionary leader's assassination in July once more brought him to the fore...
...However, he will undoubtedly try to recover the lost ground in the next election, either by running for President himself or by backing someone else for the job...
...Finally, a group of three colonels took charge of the situation, ousted President Gonzalez and replaced him by Second Vice President Guillermo Flores Avendano, himself an Army colonel...
...It would be incorrect to see in all this merely the personal lust for power so characteristic of Latin American military men...
...Ambition was unquestionably a factor in this latest coup, the thirtieth in Guatemalan history...
...Thus, behind the events of recent weeks in Guatemala's capital—the milling crowds and the shuttered shops—lies a basic national problem: the land...
...First, however, the General will have to overcome the opposition of Colonel Francisco Oliva, who is regarded as Guatemala's "strong man...
...Castillo Armas presented a different program...
...Last July, Castillo Armas was assassinated by a pro-Communist youth...
...Conflict over land distribution is key to difficulties The Bloodless Coup in Guatemala By Victor Alba Mexico City It is a tragic paradox that the military figures behind Latin American coups d'etat are usually able to enlist the support of the peasant masses even though their concealed objective so often is to block any constructive agrarian reform...
...A good example is the recent coup in Guatemala, a country which in the past four years has repeatedly turned up on the front pages of newspapers...
...Actual implementation of the plan, however, had been proceeding slowly...
...Ydigoras, by contrast, as a former henchman of General Ubico, whose ultra-rightist regime was overthrown in 1944, is opposed to any land reform...
...General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes (the only general in an Army ruled by colonels) , for many years the spokesman of the country's most conservative groups, won a substantial number of votes...
...Flores, a friend of Ydigoras, will probably order new elections, and Ydigoras seems likely to be the victor this time...
...The so-called Revolutionary party, organized in order to take part in the elections, was barred on the grounds that it was infiltrated by Communists (which is probably true but was not proved...
...which is largely the result of American aid, cannot conceal...
...Army Chief of Staff under Arbenz, it was Oliva who personally told the latter to step down when Castillo Armas staged his revolt...
...The military organizers of these affairs, however, are usually in the service of other interests which seek to exploit the power of the Army...
...And now a three-man Army junta has nullified the recent Presidential election, which was won by a civilian candidate pledged to speed up the moderate agrarian-reform program initiated by Castillo Armas...
...Instead of giving the land to the peasants in usufruct, as Arbenz had done, he granted them outright ownership, thus liberating them not only from the big proprietors but from the state...
...Guatemala first achieved notoriety in June 1954, when the Communist-infiltrated government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz (now living happily in Czechoslovakia) was ousted by peasant forces led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas...
...It is a problem which the current "prosperity...
...On the death of Castillo Armas, First Vice President Luis Arturo Gonzalez Lopez took over the Presidency and called elections...
...Following his defeat, General Ydigoras charged that the election had been rigged...
...According to widespread rumors, Oliva was the secret organizer of the recent military coup...
...And until it is solved, Guatemala will find neither stability nor genuine democracy...
Vol. 40 • November 1957 • No. 45
