Latin American Revolutions

Why did they start?

Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala

• historic socioeconomic conditions

• General Jorge Ubico (1932-45)

• coffee and bananas

• coerced labor and vagrancy laws

Power of UFCO

• aka “el pulpo”: land owner, electric company, sea port, int’l radio, RR and telegraph

• largest land owner and employer

• special U.S. friends and investors

Why did the U.S. support Ubico?

• protect U.S. global interests

• economic stability (1944 = $93,000,000 US)

• national security/anti-Communism

• paternalism/racism

“one of the world’s most flagrant tyrannies.”Time magazine

Inspiration behind the revolution• “Good Neighbor Policy”

• FDR’s Four Freedoms

• defeat of fascism in Europe

• U.S. Constitution; esp. Art. I, II & III

• 2% owned 72% (World Bank)

The Revolution Begins!

• teachers and students lead a strike!

• Ubico suspends the Constitution!

• U.S. opinion about Ubico changes

• first election in Guatemalan history! (1821-1944)

• Juan José Arevalo and the challenge of change

Arevalo’s Presidency• fan of FDR and the New Deal

• supported education for everyone

• political rights for everyone

• labor laws

• starts land reform

• opposed Soviet Communism

• corruption and communists?

• presidential election #2 and Jacobo Arbenz

Arbenz Presidency

• Accomplishments (Decree 900)

• problems with the U.S.

• Operation Success

• long-term impact

-f?fdfSd"y, March 1 i, 1 999 Washingtonpost.com: Clinton: Support for Guatemala WasWrong

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Clinton: Support for Guatemala Was WrongBy Chorles BabingtonWashington Post Stalf \VriierThursday, Iv{arch ll,1999,Page A1

GUATEMALA CITY, h{arch 10 - President Clintonexpressed regret todal' for the U.S. role in Guatemala's36-year cir,il war, saying that Washington "was wrong" tohave supported Guatemalan securitl'forces in a brutalcounterinsurgenc)' campai gn that slaughtered thousands ofciyilians.

Clinton's statements marked the first substantive commentfrom the administration since an independent commrssionconcluded last month that U.S.-backed security torcescommitted the vast majonty of human rights abuses duringthe war, inclqding torture, kidnapping and the murder ofthousands of rural Mayans.

"It is important that I state clearll'that support for militarl'f-orces or intelligence units rvhich engaged in violent andwrdespread repression of the kind described in the reportrvas \ryrong," Clinton said, reading carefully fromhandwritten notes. "And the United States must not repeat that mistake. We must, and weu"ill, instead continue to support the peace and reconciliation process in Guatenrala"

Gua,tenralan President Alvaro Arz,u sal next to Clinton when he made the remarks a[ a "peaceround tabte" in the ornate National Palace of Culture, but had no immediate response. Hispress aides said they' rvere unsure whether he would comment.

Clinton's aides said the president had thought for some time about hor,v to word hisnear-apolog.v. The Guatemalan military received training and other help from the U.S. militar,vin an era when the United States supported several Latin Anrerican rightist governmentsfighting leftist insurgents.

The record of the Guatemalan security forces was laid bare in a repoft released Feb. 25 by theHistorical Clarification Commission, which grew out of the U.N.-sponsored peace processthat ended the war in 1996. The commission said the Guatemalan militarr,,' had committed "actsof genocide" during the conflict, in which 200,000 people died.

Clinton's comments capped a busy, nation-hopping day that began in San Salvador, ElSalvador's capital. There, he told Central American leaders that their recently democratizedregion deserves to be a more equal partner with the United States, and he pledged to makeseveral trade and immigration changes they have sought.

In what aides billed in advance as the major address of his four-day Central American visit,Clinton praised the nations for ending their devastating civil wars and shifting to democraticsystems of government. All Central American countries, he noted in a speech in San Salvadorbefore the Salvadoran lrgislative Assembly, norv have freely elected leaders.

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October 20, 2011

An Apology for a Guatemalan Coup, 57Years LaterBy ELISABETH MALKIN

MEXICO CITY — More than a half-century after Guatemala’s elected president Jacobo

Arbenz Guzman was overthrown in a coup planned by the C.I.A. and forced into a

wandering exile, President Alvaro Colom apologized on Thursday for what he called a “great

crime.”

In a muted ceremony at the National Palace in Guatemala City, Mr. Colom turned to Mr.

Arbenz’s son Juan Jacobo and asked for forgiveness on behalf of the state.

“That day changed Guatemala and we have not recuperated from it yet,” he said. “It was a

crime to Guatemalan society and it was an act of aggression to a government starting its

democratic spring.”

The overthrow in 1954 of Mr. Arbenz, a former army colonel whose policies attempted to

narrow the chasm betwen the country’s tiny elite and its impoverished peasants, squashed a

10-year effort to build a democratic state.

Under a succession of military rulers who took power after the coup, Guatemala descended

into three decades of a brutal civil war in which as many as 200,000 people died, many of

them peasants killed by security forces.

The Eisenhower Administration painted the coup as an uprising that rid the hemisphere of

a Communist government backed by Moscow. But Mr. Arbenz’s real offense was to

confiscate unused land owned by the United Fruit Company to redistribute under a land

reform plan and to pay compensation for the vastly understated value the company had

claimed for its tax payments.

Mr. Arbenz “was not a dictator, he was was not a crypto-communist,” said Stephen

Schlesinger, an adjunct fellow at the Century Foundation and co-author of “Bitter Fruit: The

Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.”

“He was simply trying to create a middle class in a country riven by extremes of wealth and

An Apology for a Guatemalan Coup, 57 Years Later - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/americas/an-apolog...

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