Guatemala: 1954-1996

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Guatemala 1954-1996            Human Rights
Violations U.S. Intervention MAP TIMELINE HISTO
RY OF GUATEMALA MEMORY OF SILENCE BISHOPS
ASSASSINATION WORKS CITED
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Works Cited   Guatemala A Human Rights History
of Guatemala. Amnesty International. 1 January
2003. ltwww.west.net/tmiller/gh/gt . Brown,
Cynthia. ed. With Friends Like These The
Americas Watch Report on Human Rights and U.S.
Policy in Latin America. New York Pantheon,
1985.  
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Carlos Castillo Armas
Before the coup of 1954, Castillo Armas was a
retired military officer working in Honduras as a
furniture salesman. He was chosen by the CIA to
lead the National Liberation Movement (MLN) into
Guatemala to overthrow the Arbenz regime. With
the resignation and flight of Arbenz, Castillo
Armas was flown into Guatemala on the personal
plane of U.S. Ambassador John Peurifoy. He was
installed as President and given some 80 million
from Eisenhower over the next three years to
boost his government. As president, he
re-instituted the mechanisms of repression,
including the MLN's Committee Against Communism,
which compiled lists of thousands of union
members and Arbenz supporters who were suspected
subversives. In 1957 Castillo Armas was
assassinated by military rivals.
John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles
Under the Republican Administration of
Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and his brother
Alan were placed in positions of great influence.
John Foster was the Secretary of State and Alan
sat as the head of the Central Intelligence
Agency. Both were essential Cold Warriors,
convinced of an international conspiracy to
increase the communist sphere of influence and
construct a beach-head in the Western Hemisphere.
This virulent anti-communism and their own
personal ties to United Fruit made them perfect
connections in the U.S. government to implement
an ouster of Jacobo Arbenz. Both Dulles brothers
had been principle lawyers for the New York law
firm that represented United Fruit Company. John
Foster Dulles had been involved in that law
firms international corporate accounts.


Jacobo Arbenz Guzman Jacobo Arbenz was a
nationalist military officer elected as president
in 1951. In addition to continuing the
progressive reforms begun under Arévalo, he set
out to challenge the monopoly held by United
Fruit in the Guatemalan economy. Though he was
not himself a communist, his wife was and he
accepted the support of other communist
intellectuals. Additionally, the newly legal
Communist Party won some 4 of the 50 seats in the
National Legislature. These facts, along with
limited land expropriations he enacted, were
enough to convince Washington that he was 100
"Red" and a threat to American hegemony in the
region.
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United Fruit Company
United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita) has
long exerted enormous influence throughout
Central America and within the United States
Government. It had grown to be the most important
corporation in Guatemala. United Fruit controlled
roughly 40 of the most fertile land, owned a
railroad, held a monopoly on electricity
production and ran the port facilities in Puerto
Barrios, Atlantic Coast. Though United Fruit
owned huge tracts of land, it paid little in the
way of property tax in Guatemala in part because
they claimed their land was only worth a fraction
of it's real value on tax receipts. When Arbenz
expropriated 400,000 of their 500,000 acres, he
offered them the 1.2 million they had claimed it
was worth. United Fruit demanded 16 million.
When Arbenz refused, they turned to their
friends in the United States Government to
assist. Some, like Assistant Secretary of State
for Inter-American Affairs John Moors Cabot had
family ties to the company. Others, such as U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, were
major stockholders. The Dulles Brothers had both
worked as lawyers for United Fruit's legal firm.
With connections such as these, it was not
difficult for UFCo. to convince the U.S.
Government of the need for action against Arbenz.

Model Villages In order to bring communities
in guerrilla territory under government control,
"model villages" were constructed, often on or
close to the ruins of villages destroyed by
military counter-insurgency. Though the
government promised water, electricity, a school,
a church and so on, these facilities and services
often went unprovided. Meanwhile, military
detachments kept a close eye on the activities of
everyone, as no person was above suspicion of
"subversion".
 
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Civil Defense Patrols The so-called Civil
Defense Patrols were an integral part of
military's counter-insurgency plans. All
able-bodied males in a given village were forced
to go on patrol for 24 hours, once each week.
Ostensibly, this was to protect the villages from
guerrilla attack. Often, civil patrollers were
forced to beat or kill neighbors, for fear of
themselves being branded a "subversive". Some of
the worst human rights violations, including
massacres of entire villages, were committed by
civil patrol members. Though the Guatemalan
Constitution of 1985 declared that un-paid,
forced military service is illegal, civil defense
patrols have persisted, even through the present
period.
A model village under military control
A civil patrol
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Works Cited Site 1 (MAP) lthttp//www.lib.utexas
.edu/Libs/PCL/ map_collection/americas/guatemala.
jpggt MA Site 2 (HISTORY OF WAR)
lthttp//www.west.net/tmiller/gh/gt Site 3
(MEMORY OF SILENCE) lthttp//shr.aaas.org/guatema
la/ceh/report/ english/gt
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Site 4 (BISHOP'S ASSASINATION)
lthttp//www.halcyon.com/blackbox/hw/ Bishopgt20Sl
ain20in20Guatemala. htmlgt Brown, Cynthia. With
Friends Like These The Americas Watch Report
on Human Rights U. S. Policy in Latin America.
New York Pantheon, 1985. Schlesinger,
Stephen and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit. New
York Doubleday, 1983. Fried, Johnathan L., et
al, eds. Guatemala in Rebellion Unfinished
History. New York Grove. 1983. Back to Title
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