Les anglonautes

About | Search | Grammar | Vocapedia | Learning | News podcasts | Videos | History | Arts | Science | Translate and listen

 Previous Home Up Next

 

History > 20th century > Cold War / холодная война

 

Guatemala coup    June 1954

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guatemala coup

 

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.”

 

(...)

 

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 poverty and racism,”

Mr. Schlesinger said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/
world/americas/an-apology-for-a-guatemalan-coup-57-years-later.html

 

 

 

Washington feared Arbenz

because he tried

to institute agrarian reforms

that would hand over fallow land

to dispossessed peasants,

thereby

creating a middle class

in a country

where 2 percent

of the population

owned 72 percent

of the land.

 

Unfortunately for him,

most of that territory

belonged to

the largest landowner

and most powerful body

in the state:

the American-owned

United Fruit Company.

 

Though Arbenz was willing

to compensate United Fruit

for its losses, it tried

to persuade Washington

that Arbenz

was a crypto-communist

who must be ousted.

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower,

along with Secretary of State

John Foster Dulles

and his brother, Allen,

the C.I.A.’s director,

were a receptive audience.

In the cold war

fervor of the times,

Eisenhower

and the Dulles brothers

believed a strike

against Arbenz

would roll back communism.

 

And the Dulleses

had their own

personal sympathies

for United Fruit:

they had done legal work

for the company,

and counted executives there

among their close friends.

 

It is true that Arbenz’s

supporters

in the Guatemalan Legislature

did include the Communist Party,

but it was the smallest part

of his coalition.

 

Arbenz had also appointed

a few communists

to lower-level jobs

in his administration.

 

But there was no evidence

that Arbenz himself

was anything more

than a European-style democratic

socialist.

 

And Arbenz’s

land reform program

was less generous to peasants

than a similar venture

pushed by

the Reagan administration

in El Salvador

several decades later.

 

Eisenhower’s

attack on Guatemala

was brilliantly executed.

 

A faux invasion force

consisting of a handful

of right-wing Guatemalans

used fake radio broadcasts

and a few bombing runs

flown by American pilots

to terrorize

the fledgling democracy

into surrender.

 

Arbenz stepped down

from the presidency

and left the country.

 

Soon afterward,

a Guatemalan colonel

named Carlos Castillo Armas

took power and handed back

United Fruit’s lands.

 

For three decades,

military strongmen

ruled Guatemala.

 

The covert American assault

destroyed any possibility

that Guatemala’s

fragile political

and civic institutions

might grow.

 

It permanently stunted

political life.

 

And the destruction

of Guatemala’s democracy

also set back

the cause of free elections

in Nicaragua,

El Salvador

and Honduras

— all of which drew the lesson

that Washington

was more interested

in unquestioning allies

than democratic ones.

 

It was only

after the cold war

and a United Nations-negotiated

peace deal

with leftist guerrillas in 1996

that genuine democracy

began to take hold

in Guatemala.

 

And even since then,

the cycle of violence

and lawlessness

unleashed

by the 1954 coup

has continued.

 

In 1998,

an assassin

bludgeoned to death

the Catholic bishop

Juan Gerardi

shortly after

he issued a damning report

blaming the army

for widespread massacres.

 

In 2007,

Guatemala had

the world’s

third-highest homicide rate,

according to

a United Nations-World

Bank study.

 

In 2009,

more civilians

were murdered in Guatemala

than were killed

in the war zones of Iraq.

 

Washington

took the first step

toward making amends

when President Bill Clinton

visited Guatemala in 1999

and offered a vague apology

for America’s support

of violent and repressive

forces there.

 

This year is an opportunity

for Washington

to fully own up

to its shameful role

in destabilizing Guatemala

and honor Arbenz

for having the courage

to lead one

of Central America’s

first democracies

— and send a signal

that America

has learned to stop placing

its ideological concerns

and business interests

ahead of its ideals.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/
opinion/04schlesinger.html

 

 

 

 

En 1954,

au Guatemala,

un coup d’État orchestré

par les États-Unis et la CIA

renverse

le gouvernement

de Jacobo Arbenz,

dont les projets de réforme

menaçaient les intérêts

de la United Fruit Company

et de l’oligarchie nationale.

 

250 000 civils

seront massacrés,

pour la plupart

des indigènes mayas

et des citadins

progressistes.

https://www.mediapart.fr/studio/portfolios/
au-guatemala-en-memoire-des-massacres-des-indigenes - 30 December 2020

 

 

https://www.mediapart.fr/studio/portfolios/
au-guatemala-en-memoire-des-massacres-des-indigenes - 30 December 2020

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/23/
guatemala-ex-military-officers-convicted-of-crimes-against-humanity

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/02/
gen-efrain-rios-montt-obituary

 

https://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/
234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/
world/americas/an-apology-for-a-guatemalan-coup-57-years-later.html

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/
opinion/04schlesinger.html

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/
world/americas/24guatemala.html

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/mar/12/
jeremylennard.martinkettle

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/
weekinreview/ideas-trends-iran-guatemala-1953-54-revisiting-cold-war-coups-finding-them.html

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/
weekinreview/word-for-word-coup-control-cia-s-cover-has-been-blown-
just-make-up-something.html

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/07/
us/role-of-cia-in-guatemala-told-in-files-of-publisher.html 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/28/
world/cia-plotted-killing-of-58-in-guatemala.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1940S

 

US medical experiments in Guatemala

 

(...)

 

The Guatemala experiments

are already considered one

of the darker episodes

of medical research in US history,

but panel members say

the new information

indicates that researchers

were unusually unethical,

even when placed

into the historical context

of a different era.

 

(...)

 

From 1946-48,

the US Public Health Service

and the Pan American

Sanitary Bureau

worked with several

Guatemalan government agencies

on medical research paid for

by the US government

that involved

deliberately exposing people

to sexually transmitted diseases.

 

The researchers

apparently were trying to see

if penicillin, then relatively new,

could prevent infections

in the 1,300 people exposed

to syphilis, gonorrhea

or chancroid.

 

Those infected included

soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners

and mental patients

with syphilis.

 

The commission

revealed on Monday

that only about 700

of those infected

received

some sort of treatment.

 

Eighty-three people died,

although it's not clear

if the deaths were directly due

to the experiments.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/30/
guatemala-experiments

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/31/
insult-guatemala-syphilitic-atrocity

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/30/
guatemala-experiments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anglonautes > History > 20th century

 

South America

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay

Operation Condor    1970s-1980s

 

 

Chile

Salvador Allende    1908-1973

 

 

Cold War > USA > Vietnam War    1962-1975

 

 

Cold War / холодная война

 

 

 

 

 

Anglonautes > Vocapedia

 

terrorism, war, conflict, coup, intelligence > USA > CIA

 

 

terrorism, global terrorism, militant groups,

intelligence, spies, surveillance

 

 

 

home Up