The Last Word
Roettinger, Philip C.
THE LAST WORD Philip C. Roettinger The Company, Then and Now It is night and we are encamped in a remote area. A ragtag group rests around a fire. They are rebels, trading war stories and...
...The threat was land reform...
...They just want to overthrow the government...
...Just as the Eisenhower Administration misrepresented Guatemala, the Reagan Administration greatly exaggerates Nicaragua's ability to subvert its neighbors, picturing the country as a military juggernaut capable of squashing the isthmus...
...But communism was not the threat we were fighting...
...Uninterested in social reforms and untouched by ideological conviction, they haven't heard the President of the United States describe their mission as "preventing the establishment of a communist beachhead in the Western Hemisphere...
...The scene is Honduras...
...Our overthrow began thirty-one years of repressive military rule and the deaths of more than 100,000 Guatemalans...
...support for the rebels is to stop the spread of communism...
...Forewarned by a cable from Miami, we quickly broke camp and retreated to Nicaragua to avoid exposure...
...President is Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the rebels are Guatemalan, not Nicaraguan...
...The 1979 overthrow of Nicaraguan dictator Somoza shook the status quo, and now that nation thwarts the will of the U.S...
...It disenfranchised three-fourths of Guatemala's people...
...It hired influential lobbyists to urge Administration officials to get rid of Ar-benz...
...I only wish my Government would do the same...
...A tragic error is being played out—an error being repeated today...
...We should not ignore this residue of good will, which surely will not remain if we continue on our present course...
...Our plotting enjoyed great secrecy until its final stages, when rumors prompted the Organization of American States to dispatch a delegation to Honduras to investigate our activities...
...I now think my involvement in the overthrow of Arbenz was a terrible mistake...
...They are rebels, trading war stories and laughingly planning what they will do when they take over the capital...
...Their audience at CIA and the State Department was particularly receptive, since both Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, had business ties to United Fruit before entering the Government...
...So do our friends in Delhi, Lima, and Amman, but they don't excite the same concern...
...the consequences were disastrous...
...At their behest, Eisenhower authorized the CIA to oust Ar-benz and we complied, trumping up the same charge of "spreading subversion" that Ronald Reagan now levels at Nicaragua...
...It dismantled social and economic reforms such as land redistribution, social security, and trade-union rights...
...Government by governing with the support of most of its people...
...But the year is 1954, the U.S...
...I have grown up...
...Seated in front of us, resplendent in a tweed sport coat and puffing on his pipe, Dulles exhorted us to do our jobs well and told us the same lie Ronald Reagan is telling the American people today: The purpose of U.S...
...had taken over some unused land belonging to the United Fruit Company...
...Generals and colonels acted with impunity to wipe out dissent and amass wealth for themselves and their cronies...
...United Fruit assembled a team of public-relations men to lead press junkets to the Central American country and place stories in prominent magazines and newspapers...
...As a CIA case officer, I trained Guatemalan exiles in Honduras to invade their country and oust their democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz...
...To a person, the Nic-araguans I met also said they like Americans but not our Government...
...The Boston-based company, which considered its rights superior to those of Guatemalans, retaliated with a publicity campaign to paint Guatemala red...
...Done with skulduggery, I devote my time to painting the region's beautiful scenery...
...On a recent trip to northern Nicaragua, accompanied only by a driver, I toured the countryside and talked with people from all walks of life...
...A different version of this article appeared in The Los Angeles Times...
...It is painful to look on as my Government repeats the mistake in which it engaged me thirty-two years ago...
...I am seventy years old now...
...True, the Sandinista government has played host to some unsavory characters and receives arms from the Eastern Bloc...
...It was there, in the bar of a Managua hotel, that I received the news: Arbenz was out...
...Attacks and atrocities by contra rebels have only stiffened their resolve to prevail over what they regard as foreign intervention...
...The greatest threat to stability in Central America is not Managua but Washington, which refuses to recognize that the seven nations of the region are entitled to determine their own futures...
...The reasons the Eisenhower Administration gave were false...
...When I authorized Castillo Armas, then in a Tegucigalpa safe-house, to return to Guatemala and assume the presidency, I had no idea what the consequences of our meddling would be...
...In March 1954, three months before we toppled Arbenz and installed Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, our handpicked "liberator," CIA Director Allen Dulles convened his Guatemalan operatives at Opa-Locka Marine Air Base in Miami for a pep talk...
...I have lived and worked in Latin America for more than thirty years...
...Fulfilling a pledge to transform Guatemala into a "modern capitalist state," Arbenz Philip C. Roettinger, retired from the CIA and the Marine Corps, lives in Mexico...
...Anastasio Somoza, then the chief of the Nicaraguan armed forces, joined us to drink and celebrate...
...Operation Success" was a failure...
...The new regime burned books...
...The coup I helped engineer in 1954 inaugurated an unprecedented era of intransigent military rule in Central America...
Vol. 50 • July 1986 • No. 7
