Guatemala and the Forgotten Anniversary

[struggle4progress]

<snip>
Fifty years ago, in June of 1954, the government of the United States overthrew the legitimate and democratically elected government of Guatemala. It was the Central Intelligence Agency's first major covert action in Latin America, and by leading to the rise to a series of military regimes across the region, it changed the course of history.
<snip>

After throwing off dictatorial rule in the 1940's, Guatemala had several democratic elections that culminated in 1950 with the selection of Jacobo Arbenz as president with 65% of the popular vote. Arbenz was committed to modernizing the country. He pushed for more labor rights and higher wages, more spending on infrastructure and education, and land reform. The latter was a kind of Central American "trust busting" - an effort to break up large uncultivated land holdings to create thousands of family farms. President Arbenz himself lost 1700 acres to the reform program.
<snip>

United Fruit spent heavily on public relations, and alleged that Guatemala was under the control of communists. Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, and NBC News - among others - joined in hyping the red scare. But the truth was that, while the communist party was legal in Guatemala, its membership never exceeded 4,000 in a nation of nearly three million people. In Arbenz' governing coalition, only four of fifty-one deputies were communists, and none were cabinet members.

"Operation Success", as the CIA coup was called, removed by force the Arbenz government in June of 1954, and installed its hand-picked "Liberator", Castillo Armas, who promptly cancelled the land reform program, imposed press censorship, banned political parties, outlawed most labor union and leftist political activity, and re-hired the chief of the secret police from the old dictatorship. Book burnings soon followed. The U.S. ambassador presented to the new government a list of names of Guatemalans that had been marked for immediate assassination by the CIA.
<snip>

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0618-13.htm

[reprehensor]

1. Remember. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

2. We need as many truthful articles as we can find....

There's been a real information drought in the States concerning the operations of our own government in this hemisphere, although we've been funding without knowing what they were, whom they were harming, or what the effects were, or who was benefiting.

For a short time after the coup, U.S. officials seemed to be committed to improving the lot of the Guatemalan people. Visiting Guatemala in 1955, Vice President Richard Nixon declared that it was important for the new regime to "do more for the people in two years than the communists were able to do in ten years."

To say that Nixon's goal was not met would be an understatement. On the contrary, more than thirty years would pass before Guatemala would again have reasonably democratic elections. The CIA coup ushered in a long night of torture, repression and state terrorism that has taken the lives of close to two hundred thousand Guatemalans. Among the victims have been nuns, priests, teachers, students, labor unionists, indigenous Mayans, and others labeled as "subversives". Throughout the decades of repression, U.S. government officials supported the terror with arms, training, diplomatic cover, and intelligence. State terror escalated to genocide in the 1980s as entire Mayan communities were wiped off the earth with the active connivance of the Reagan administration. These were among the findings in 1999 of a United Nations sponsored truth commission.

Although President Clinton apologized to the Guatemalan people in 1998 for the U.S. government's earlier backing of abusive regimes, the legacy of the coup and the decades of violence continue. Amnesty International's 2004 report declared that "human rights abuses in Guatemala reached levels not seen for many years." The victims now are mostly journalists, legal and human rights workers, and campesinos involved in land disputes. Adult illiteracy is at 25%, poverty is rampant, and Guatemala is now one of the most unequal countries in the world. Washington seems satisfied.
(snip)

Thanks for the chance to read this. Wish people would force themselves to step outside their routines and take a good long look at what has been happening. It's not a pretty sight. Just being informed could help people from making unbelievable mistakes in the future by becoming advocates for change in the present.

[reprehensor]

3. Indeed.

In that regard, I recommend Gore Vidal's Imperial America trilogy:

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to be so Hated

Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta

Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia.