GUATEMALA: INVITATION TO REVOLUTION

...Equally daring, though not admirable by traditional standards, has been the kidnapping by FAR of seven rich men since late 1965...

...Yon Sosa's fortunes have since declined, particularly after Fidel Castro denounced him at the Tri-Continental Congress in Havana and gave his approval to Turcios...

...Remember," Turcios told a Mexican correspondent in the Sierra de las Minas, "The people of Guatemala are tired, tired of so much death, so much bloodshed, so much dictatorship...

...Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas and the U.S...

...At a model farm I visited near Antigua, a tourist mecca, the two hundred seasonal laborers earn about seventy cents a day for picking 100 pounds of coffee per man...

...Turcios has made considerable gains recently, and in the process has developed a charisma reminiscent of Castro himself when he was fighting in the Cuban mountains...

...Thus President Mendez' position is far from an enviable one—it is similar to that which faces every honest liberal in Latin America, but even more difficult...

...In the backlands conditions are far worse...

...The intellectuals also are sympathetic to less fortunate Guatemalans...

...The basic reason is that the Guatemalan economy provides an open invitation to revolution...

...Mendez is closer to the Arevalo strain of Guatemalan politics than to the rightist leaders the United States has supported in the futile years since 1954...

...Mendez defeated both the rightist candidate and the official contestant—the choice of the military...

...It would be false to say that the guerrillas were on the verge of seizing power...

...To make matters worse the few items such as salt or textiles that the peasant buys from the local store on credit—he seldom sees money—have gone up in price, while the commodities he sells to the city have stayed much the same...

...today, he says, that eighty per cent of income goes to only twenty per cent of the population—a measure of how regressive has been the redistribution of income...

...Thus, Turcios has more than adequate raw material from which to build his Armed Forces of the Rebellion (FAR...

...Wherever the road leads, Julio Cesar Mendez' path can only be rough...

...He also had to agree that promotions and demotions would be the province of the military chieftains themselves and that the budget for the armed services would be kept to at least current levels...

...Most of the ransom money goes for purchasing arms and ammunition...

...Even the police, according to U.S...

...On the ashes of the old regime, Castillo and Dulles promised to build a showcase of "democracy...

...Given an opportunity, he might cure some of Guatemala's ills...

...Official statistics— which cynics call "official fictitious statistics"—show a growth of 7.2 per cent in the gross national product for 1965...

...There is a law on the books taxing unused land as a means of forcing the landlord either to cultivate his holdings or sell them, but it has never been even partially enforced...

...The Peralta officers' coup was also accepted as necessary "stabilization" by the United States, this time by officials of the Kennedy regime...

...Probably even more dramatic than the seizures for ransom have been three political kidnappings...

...The trouble is that the military is not quite so "tolerant...

...The Dominican revolution of April, 1965, evidently convinced the U.S...

...While this falls short of the goals set by the Alliance for Progress, it is better than the results in other Latin American countries...

...GUATEMALA: Invitation to Revolution by SIDNEY LENS Guatemala City ^TThe installation of Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro as president of Guatemala on July 1, though warmly applauded by the United States, actually revealed the bankruptcy of American policy toward this Central American nation since 1954...

...Many of them are still angry that Peralta let such a "dangerous man" assume office...

...But Turcios and the man under whom he served for a time, Marco Antonio Yon Sosa—nicknamed El Chino because he has some Chinese ancestry—went to the hills to conduct guerrilla warfare...

...Everyone expects the Social Christians and their unions—a "third force" group that opposes both Washington and Moscow—to make substantial gains...

...Peralta's candidate got only thirty-two per cent of the vote, despite the fact that many farm owners lined up their peasants to give him their ballots...

...Under the terms of their agreement—made known to the public—Mendez had to select a minister of defense and a chief of staff from nominees provided by the armed forces...

...State Department that militarist and rightist forces are weak reeds on which to lean in some circumstances...

...The three rightist governments did virtually nothing to change the status of the peasants...

...Under Arbenz, 85,000 parcels of land had been distributed to landless peasants...

...The GNP, which has been evaluated on a new and more favorable basis since 1963, indicates an increase from about $700 million to $1.3 billion...

...This is important not only in itself but because fifty-six per cent of the population is under twenty years of age...

...Lens' books include "The Crisis of American Labor," "The Futile Crusade," and, just published, "Radicalism in America...

...Many professional men, most of whom voted for Mendez, are buying $1 and $5 "bonds" as a token of solidarity with the guerrilla leader...

...Between the two they reconciled Washington to the necessity for change—as long as it was not too much or came too quickly...

...Unfortunately, however, he has come to power with a mountain of troubles...

...By a successful combination of ambushes, kidnappings, and effective propaganda, he has commanded the serious attention of both the Guatemalan government and the U.S...

...FAR insists he was exchanged for one of their own prisoners in the capital...

...In addition, he has shown daring and imagination...

...The true growth, according to American experts, was five per cent in 1965 and the real GNP only $900 million...

...In effect, he was forced to give the military a club with which it could keep him in line...

...It would cost, they estimate, some $5,000 to $6,000 to settle a single family in remote areas such as Peten...

...They have paid somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000 in ransom money...

...Their goals then were those of an undefined nationalism, but in time they began to study Marxism and were soon converted to a broader course...

...For 20,000 families that would mean $100 million—almost equal to the total current annual budget for all purposes...

...The cheers were somewhat muted because military governments do not sit well with the American people...

...By that reckoning Guatemalan democracy is a dozen years off...

...Recently one of his leaflets promising revenge against those who have killed Guatemalan leftists, students, and labor leaders circulated hand-tohand at a large hospital...

...If he does provide adequate reforms, he will certainly confront rightist military plots to overthrow him...

...The only thing that bothers us is whether Julio Cesar Mendez will open the way to another Jacobo Arbenz and Communism in 1970...

...Next door, at the Margarita farm, the rate was ten cents a day less—sixty cents—and this was in the economic center of the country, only twenty-eight miles from Guatemala City...

...The "Communist menace" which the CIA "destroyed" in 1954 is today a threat...

...But today the United States hails Julio Cesar Mendez, who with his brother, Mario Mendez Montenegro (now dead), was an associate of Arevalo's in 1944 in overthrowing the vile dictatorship of Jorge Unico...

...The anti-Communist virus has made Guatemala a sick country...

...Whatever the truth, it was a testament to Turcios' effectiveness that Menendez departed for the United States shortly thereafter for a "vacation"—as have a number of other families fearful of being seized...

...Even so, this means that on the average the Guatemalan standard of living went up by almost two per cent last year— population grew by 3.1 per cent, the gross national product by five...

...By the time elections were scheduled in 1963 it was clear that almost anyone could defeat America's "safe" friend, Ydigoras...

...The peasant works on great farms where two-thirds or three-quarters of the land is unused while he himself is usually landless...

...A few weeks before the inauguration they are alleged to have thrown bombs in front of three Central American embassies as a means of alerting them to the danger from "Communist terrorists," and they may initiate a wave of their own kidnappings to force the army to take more stringent measures against Turcios...

...If he decides to become a squatter on some of this land he is frequently uprooted and sometimes thrown in jail...

...The answer lies in the Dominican Republic and in a young Guatemalan, twenty-four years old, named Luis Au-gusto Turcios Lima...

...tutelage at Fort Benning, Georgia, was one of the leaders of a revolt of young Guatemalan officers in November, 1960...

...The Guatemalan economist I interviewed estimates that a few years ago eighty per cent of the national income went to twenty-five per cent of the population...

...Twelve years ago Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sponsored the operation by SIDNEY LENS, writer and lecturer, is now making an intensive study of a number of Latin American countries...

...He is caught in the perennial vise of Latin American politics—what might be called the Juan Bosch syndrome...

...Superficially the signposts encourage optimism...

...It is understandable, therefore, that upwards of 3,000 city people drawn from various elements are either directly or indirectly involved with FAR and giving it money, time, and intelligence...

...They are still living at the barest of subsistence levels...

...These were humiliating concessions, but without them Mendez could not have come to power...

...The Guatemala that lives on a money economy—1.3 million people of about four and a half million total population—has certainly improved its plight...

...Senator Lyndon B. Johnson introduced a resolution in the Senate praising the great event...

...At the urging of the Social Christians ¦—who at the time were not yet certified as a legal party—at least thirteen per cent of the ballots were dropped into the box unmarked...

...Convoys of petroleum trucks were bombarded on the main highway for a number of days...

...The farm owners can rest easily, for Mendez promised not to seize their lands, either the acreage they now cultivate or the vast holdings they leave unused...

...There are twenty-two landowners who own fourteen per cent of the arable acreage, and 1,900 who hold three-fifths...

...This is the first of a series of special reports for The Progressive...

...If President Mendez goes a little too far the officers may take action to maintain the status quo...

...When Turcios was asked whether he was "worried" about the American "intervention such as in the Dominican Republic," he replied that "we are sure of it . . . But, like the heroic people of Vietnam, we are prepared to shed the last drop of our blood...

...In the key area of land reform he proposed only to settle landless families—about 20,000 in the first year, according to one of his party spokesmen—in unoccupied government lands...

...These elements have no great economic grievances of their own, but they are tired of dictatorship, "states of siege," and stagnation...

...Another leaflet, denying responsibility for one kidnapping and blaming it on the rightists, made the rounds at the university...

...That's why we voted for Mendez, and not in the hope that he would change things . . . Among the guerrillas there is not the slightest doubt about the road to follow, because there is only one road—not the electoral, but the armed road . . . Nobody can dream that a candidate of the Revolutionary Party [Mendez] would be named without making compromises, without making concessions...

...Guerrilla war being what it is, he may not survive long, but no one here dismisses Turcios as a joke, for a number of reasons...

...Another man, Hector Menendez de la Riva, first vice president of the congress, was captured but claims he escaped when his guards were not looking...

...One Guatemalan economist estimates that seventy-five per cent of the peasants work only thirteen per cent of the land...

...they themselves have pointed out they are in only "the first phase" of operations...

...Yet this recitation of statistics is highly deceptive, for there is not one Guatemala but two Guatemalas—a duality also found in other Latin American nations...

...authorities...

...It didn't work...

...It would have to abide fifteen years of moderate dictatorship, he said, before the way could be prepared for a liberal order...

...Even this mild platform may remain idle rhetoric because, according to American experts on the scene, it would take far more money than is now available to the Guatemalan government...

...Occasionally he engages in a, brief skirmish with the army—not long ago, for instance, he ambushed three trucks with fifteen soldiers, killing twelve, wounding two, and releasing one man whom he knew...

...How, then, does one explain the change in the attitude of the United States...

...It was even questionable whether Mendez would be installed at all on July 1. For weeks prior to the inauguration there were persistent rumors of an imminent coup d'etat by disaffected colonels...

...Support for Turcios among students is quite extensive and fairly open...

...Central Intelligence Agency which tossed President Jacobo Arbenz out of office and "ended the danger of Communism...

...While President Mendez tries to shore up his nation's economy and solve its many problems—a $30- or $40-million a year trade gap, $90 million in foreign debts, seventy-five per cent illiteracy (higher than it was three years ago), the delayed agrarian reform, the lack of storage and credit facilities for the rural areas—the neutralists and radicals will profit from them...

...A seventy-year old businessman who had supported all three rightist rulers exclaimed while listening to Peralta on television: "We can't take this sort of man any longer if we want to survive...

...Though there is a price of $25,000 on his head, he is often seen in the capital city...

...This adds luster to the Robin Hood image he is zealously cultivating...

...The president-elect actually had to sit down and negotiate an understanding with the military...

...But they are prepared to wait and are resigned not only to fighting the Guatemalan oligarchy but what they consider their main enemy, the United States...

...The labor organizations, though they will not likely return to the 106,000 peak membership they enjoyed twelve years ago when Arbenz openly encouraged them, will probably increase to double or triple their present number and display far more militancy...

...Guatemala's share, $34 million, presumably spurs internal manufacture, another factor on the plus side...

...Most of them do not own their own land but either share their crop with a landlord or work for pitifully low wages...

...Others—their number unknown, but estimated at twenty—have paid substantial sums on receipt of a letter from FAR threatening them with seizure if they do not pay...

...President Mendez' platform during the campaign was moderate enough...

...If he turns to the left he may win away some of Turcios' support, but he will simultaneously incur the wrath of businessmen, oligarchs, the United States—which has $150 million invested here—and the "militant" militarists...

...And young Turcios punctuated the point in dramatic fashion...

...Nor are these all of the troubles that face Mendez...

...Though 200 of the older members of this caste are expected to retire soon, there are still enough around to create a great deal of mischief...

...The three rightist regimes since 1954 promulgated "states of siege" —suspension of all civil rights—for about half to two-thirds the time, and one was in force even as the new president was inaugurated...

...Or the change in certain Guatemalan business circles which deserted the rightists in this recent election...

...Against this background of stagnation and popular restiveness it became increasingly obvious this year that change could be postponed only at the risk of a full-scale explosion...

...Agrarian "reform" has been a farce...

...sources, are heavily infiltrated with Turcios supporters, which would explain, at least in part, the success of his city escapades...

...They want a change to bring them peace...

...But the other two-thirds of the people—largely Indian— are no better off than they were last year or ten years ago, and perhaps even worse off...

...Peralta's ineptness was evidenced not only by his speaking performances but by the fact that he was so sure of the "good job" he had done that he agreed to hold an honest election...

...Though Mendez would undoubtedly prefer to deal with the guerrillas politically, the army may not permit him to do so...

...One of the things they can do, aside from attempting a coup, is to escalate the anti-guerrilla war to the point where it doubles or triples the military budget and curtails money needed for reform...

...The rightists, the MLN in particular, will keep the opposition active...

...Even FAR admits he is an honest man who would like to do something constructive...

...All of these men were seized within city limits, one of them only two blocks from a police station...

...The results are visible in new middle-class homes on the outskirts of the capital city and in some increases in minimum wages for workers...

...If he does not introduce sufficient reforms, he will be harried by the left, and above all by Turcios' guerrillas...

...Some of it, however, is translated into medicines and food which Turcios distributes to villages in the area he controls—about one-half of the small state of Zacapa and sections of two neighboring states...

...We are not worried about the next four years," one businessman said...

...Mendez' victory, therefore, was heartening to liberals both here and abroad...

...Young Turcios is apparently planning for the long pull, relying more on political activity than on military measures...

...When Castillo was assassinated in 1957, Dulles gave his blessings to another rightist, Miguel Ydigoras Fuerf tes, who also pledged to save the nation from the left and build the good society for the Guatemalan people...

...The poll of March 6 was something less than a truly representative mandate, since it excluded not only Arevalo—still in exile—and the Communists, but even the Social Christians and other groups left of center...

...But when I asked a high American diplomat in 1963 how he could endorse the Peralta government, he told me blandly that Guatemala was not yet ready for democratic rule...

...When the government refused to have these men shown publicly—they are all assumed to have been executed—Turcios' FAR kidnapped the president of the supreme court, Romeo Augusto de Leon, and the minister of information, Bal-tasar Morales Cruz...

...these were all returned to the farm owners by Castillo...

...The rich have srrown richer, the poor poorer...

...Just a few clays before the March 6 elections, the Peralta government, in a stroke of good fortune, was able to round up twenty-eight leftist leaders, including Victor Manuel Gutierrez, the head of the Soviet-line Communists...

...But the guerrilla leader places more stock on winning over the peasants and the intellectuals than on arms...

...Such men are confident that Mendez himself can do little in his four-year term to destroy their prerogatives...

...They see, for instance, the labor unions with fewer than one-fourth the members they had under Arbenz in 1954, making little headway, and banned from calling strikes since 1961...

...The polling itself, however, showed surprisingly little fraud, and Mendez scored his victory with 43.8 per cent of the vote...

...On the other hand, if the pace of reform is not quick enough, the FAR and its supporters at the university will grow more rapidly than in the past...

...Meanwhile, Turcios, and perhaps Yon Sosa also, wait in the background...

...When Juan Jose Arevalo, the democratic president who had served from 1945 to 1951, threatened to challenge him at the ballot box, the old anti-Communist colonels precipitated a coup d'etat and installed the Minister of Defense, Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia...

...Yet, such is the nature of Guatemala's political system after twelve years in which the army has had its own way, that even this limited program terrifies the officer caste...

...Leftist sentiment will inevitably grow as democracy returns...

...The guerrillas have deliberately slowed down their activities during the inauguration period, waiting for the masses and the intellectual class to become disenchanted...

...They feel they can maintain a working agreement with the new president, at least for a while...

...Tax reform, sponsored by the Alliance for Progress to remedy such situations, has been a dud ¦—only $8 million a year is collected in income taxes—and a considerable part of the taxes is evaded by the wealthy, particularly the landlords...

...Three years ago the two associates parted over ideology, Turcios drifting toward standard Communism—a mixture of Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban lines—and Yon Sosa toward Trotskyism...

...After the revolt sputtered, many of its men were coaxed back into the government fold by good jobs...

...During the campaign many of these men referred to Mendez as a "Communist," and from their narrow sights they undoubtedly believed it...

...In addition, the common market established for the five Central American nations seems to be working moderately well, accounting for $135 million in unrestricted trade among these pygmy countries...

...Peralta came to power a few years ago when the prices of cotton and coffee—the main exports—were going up...

...Turcios, a good-looking army lieutenant who took basic military courses under U.S...