The 1954 Guatemalan Coup Part 2

United Fruit Company was Guatemala’s largest employer and largest single landowner when the October Revolution took place. It also controlled the railroad, the port and the utilities. And it feared that the new government threatened its business interests.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Hony Fry.
Welcome to our two part episode about the time the
US Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a coup to overthrow the

(00:24):
democratically elected president of Guatemala. In Part one, we gave
an overview of US policy as it related to Central America,
especially in particular, we talked about how it evolved in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We also talked
about United Fruit Company and how it came to be
a major player in Guatemala and elsewhere. And then we

(00:45):
took a very brief look at Guatemala's history up to
the presidency of Juan Jose are Below, who made just
sweeping reforms in Guatemala after being elected president after the
October Revolution. That was a lot to cover. I strongly
recommend listening to part one before listening to this episode,

(01:05):
because that recap is just the tip of the iceberg
for an episode that also is a tip slightly larger
tip of the iceberg. At this point, United Fruit Company
was Guatemala's largest employer and its largest single landowner, and
it had a monopoly on the banana industry. United Fruit
Company also controlled the railroad and the port and the utilities,

(01:28):
and the United Fruit Company thought all of these changes
that the Arrablow administration had made were threatening its business,
and as we'll talk about today, the CIA increasingly thought
they were evidence of a communist threat that needed to
be dealt with. As we mentioned in Part one, Juan
Jose Avalo's administration started to struggle in its later years.

(01:49):
He faced increasing criticism, especially from Guatemala's elite, and he
weathered multiple coup attempts. One of his most vocal critics
increasingly became Colonel Francisco Arena. Arana had served in the
military during the Ubiko administration and had been part of
the coup that overthrew his interim successor, General Frederico Pont.

(02:09):
He had also been part of the military junta that
had temporarily run Guatemala during part of the October Revolution.
From there, he had become Arrevalo's Chief of the armed Forces,
But Arana increasingly disagreed with a lot of Arravlo's labor reforms.
He finally resigned his position so that he could run
for president once Arrablo's term was up, and he also

(02:31):
threatens to launch a coup, telling the president that he
would be overthrown from office if he did not dismiss
his whole cabinet and replace them with men of Rana's choosing.
After he did this, Arrablow informed his advisers of this plot,
and they all agreed that Rana should be exiled. What
happened next is actually not entirely clear, but on July

(02:53):
eighteenth nine, Arana was ambushed and killed. Arravloh had given
the order that he be apprehended, and Arana's key rival
for the presidency, Colonel Hacobo our Ben's gooseman, also knew
about the order, but it is not clear whether Arrevalo
ordered Aaranna captured or killed, who fired the first shot,

(03:14):
when it happened, or exactly what our bends knew about
what was going on. Regardless, though this was an incredibly
fragile moment for Guatemala's new democracy, an uprising spread through
Guatemala City, which involved Arona's military supporters. About a hundred
and fifty people were killed and two hundred were wounded
before the government regained control. The United States also became

(03:37):
a lot more wary of Guatemala's government and of Jacoba
are Ben's. So did United Fruit Company, and the following May,
United Fruit Company lobbyist Thomas Corcoran held his first meeting
to discuss a US overthrow of the Arbla presidency. Carcron
later became United Fruit Companies liaison to the CIA. On

(03:58):
November eleventh, ninety Cobo Arben's was elected president of Guatemala.
He got sixty five percent of the vote. He took
office in nineteen fifty one, and he started trying to
build on Arrevalo's earlier work and to solidify the changes
that had already been made. His administration also started trying
to get out from under United Fruit Companies multiple monopolies

(04:20):
by building a newport and a new highway to it
and a new electric plant. Yeah. So, even though there
had been all of this questionable like possible assassination previously,
like the fact that there was supposed to be a
democratic election and that it did happen and there was
a peaceful transition of power, it was like still a

(04:40):
really important moment in Guamal in history. Our Ben's also
started trying to make the land reform that Arrablo had
started to go even further. Many of Arrablo's new policies
and programs had mostly affected the Guatemalan middle class, they
had not as much affected the lives of the country's
poorest agriculture role workers. Are Beans thought the key to

(05:03):
improving these people's circumstances was a land redistribution program, which
would put more of the country's uncultivated land directly into
the hands of people who could farm it themselves. At
this point, sev of the land in Guatemala was controlled
by two percent of the population. Of all the land
that was being controlled by major landowners, only one quarter

(05:25):
of it was actually being used to grow anything. United
Fruit Company was the largest single landowner in Guatemala, controlling
the arable land but only cultivating ten to fifteen percent
of it. On top of that, in retaliation for the
changes in the Guatemalan government, United Fruit Company had started
laying off workers and refusing to rebuild banana plantations that

(05:47):
had been damaged in storms unless the government restored its
earlier concessions. In addition to being Guatemala's single largest landowner,
it was also Guatemala's largest single employer. Two thirds of
Guatemala's population was involved in agriculture in some way as well.
So this whole pattern of landownership where huge landowners were

(06:09):
owning a lot of land but not growing anything on it,
was contributing to all kinds of problems, including poverty and malnutrition.
United Fruit Company and others claimed that they needed this
additional uncultivated land is basically a backup in case of
a major crop failure, but their critics claimed that this
uncultivated surplus was way more than they could possibly ever need.

(06:32):
Our Bendzes plan to fix this was Decree nine hundred,
which went into effect on June ninety two. Landowners who
had more than six hundred acres of uncultivated land were
required to sell it to the Guatemalan government in exchange
for twenty five year interest bearing bonds. The tax value
of the land as of May nineteen fifty two was

(06:54):
used to determine the selling price, so smaller farms under
two hundred twenty three acres were exempt from this, and
so were farms that were between two hundred twenty three
and six hundred seventy acres that were at least two
thirds cultivated. Farms that were fully cultivated were also unaffected,
no matter how large the farm was. The terms of

(07:15):
this law actually required our Bends to relinquish some of
his own land, and someone else affected was Guierramotorreo, who
became our Ben's as foreign minister. Government owned land used
to grow coffee was also completely redistributed during this program
as well. The relinquished land would then be distributed to
landless people in forty two point five acre plots, either

(07:37):
so they would own it outright or so that they
would hold it for their lifetime. In the latter case,
the land couldn't pass directly to their heirs, but their
descendants would get preferential treatment when decisions were made about
the land after their deaths. People who owned the land
outright would pay five percent of their annual crop value
to the government, and people who held it in a

(07:58):
lifetime tenure would pay threeper Since this law also established
committees that people who thought they were entitled to land
could petition and the committee would review their case and
make a decision. Every case had to be decided within
six weeks of submission, which was totally different from operating
under the more dictatorial government where you could ask for

(08:21):
something and then it would just never happen or be addressed.
A subsequent law also established a National Agrarian Bank to
issue fixed rate loans to land recipients to help them
get their farms started. While this program was in effect,
one point five million acres of land were distributed to
about one hundred thousand families in Guatemala. This was probably

(08:43):
between twenty and of the people who were eligible. The
National Agrarian Bank and its newly established credit agency had
approved more than eleven million dollars in loans, an average
of two hundred twenty five dollars per applicant. In the
fall of nineteen fifties three, the Guatemalan Embassy reported that
its corn production had increased by rice by seventy two

(09:07):
and wheat, with much of the increase attributed to the
small farms started thanks to Decree nine hundred hit. It's
harder to track actually how this affected overall domestic crops
and export crops because this this did not last very long.
This program didn't, so it does seem like that like

(09:29):
there were more crops that stayed in the country domestically
and fewer crops that were exported for that first year,
but some of that was also accounted for because of
weather that affected coffee production. Like it's really complicated, but overall,
it does seem like people were using this land for
what it was supposed to be for, which was growing
crops for themselves. In addition, more than half of Guatemala's

(09:53):
population was indigenous at this point, with most but not
all of them belonging to one of more than twenty
different Maya groups. Indigenous people made up the large majority
of landless rural people, so this program was returning land
to Guatemala's native people for the first time since the
Spanish conquest. As was the case with earlier new programs,

(10:16):
this wasn't perfect. There were cases of people who wanted
more land than they were allotted, or who had not
been allotted land, commandeering land they weren't entitled to. There
were also over zealous committees that seemed to want to
settle the score after decades of being exploited by large
landowners who allotted more land than was really allowed, And

(10:36):
it does appear that Guatemala's Ladino population received disproportionately more
land allotments than other ethnic groups overall, though this system
gave previously landless people the opportunity to try to become
self sufficient farmers, and in nineteen fifty four, the Guatemalan
government also rolled out a literacy program in these same
rural areas, hoping to help the people who had received

(10:58):
this land become better able to manage it themselves long term.
Two thirds of the land that was seized during all
this belonged to United Fruit Company, which felt like it
was being unfairly targeted by Decree nine hundred. On top
of that, the payment that was offered to United Fruit
was far less than the market value of the land.
Sources reported it as either six thirty thousand dollars or

(11:21):
about a million dollars. This was because the company had
been artificially undervaluing its land for tax purposes, and reported
tax value was what was being used to determine the payment. Nevertheless,
the US government, on behalf of United Fruit Company, demanded
a much higher payment of fifteen point nine million. Yes,

(11:41):
so basically United Fruit Company was mad about a problem
they made for themselves in this situation. Yeah, they finally
like their loophole finally got discovered and caught and exploited
by someone else. Not even exploited, but like applied in
another way and then and then it hurt. Yes, so
as had been the case with so many of the

(12:03):
array below administration's reforms. The United States and United Fruit
Company criticized this whole land distribution program as communism, and
to be clear, this policy was influenced by Guatemala's communist party,
which was called the Guatemalan Workers Party or PGT, which
lines up with how that translates into Spanish. One of

(12:24):
the advisors who had helped draft Decree nine hundred was
Jose Menuel Fortuny, who was our Ben's friend and also
the PGT general secretary. Decree nine hundred had also been
passed with the support of the Communist Party, which our
Ben's had legalized after becoming president. Our Bends maintained that
the communist presence in the Guatemalan government was small and

(12:44):
that he himself was dedicated to capitalism and democracy. One
of the stated goals of Decree nine hundred was to
allow previously landless people to become part of the capitalist
economy and to improve Guatemala's capitalist economy overall. And it
doesn't appeared that the PGT had connections to the Soviet Union.
Communism in Latin America at this point was more focused

(13:06):
on upending dictatorships and getting out from under foreign capitalist interests,
not on becoming Soviet allies. Yeah, the United States didn't
really care about this nuance regarding being a Soviet ally
versus being influenced by communism now and then also complicating
US perceptions of this law. In February of nineteen fifty three,

(13:28):
the Guatemalan Supreme Court found one of the laws provisions unconstitutional.
The law outlined a dispute resolution process that ended with
the President of the Republic instead of with the courts.
So when the Supreme Court ordered that the land redistributions
stop until lower courts could hear the cases of land
that had been allegedly expropriated illegally, Congress impeached the judges

(13:51):
that had made that ruling, and then their replacements reversed
the decision. Admittedly, this was squirrely. Critics in the United
States pointed to it is evidence that our benz Is
administration was really a totalitarian regime. Regardless. In the midst
of all of this, United Fruit Company had started advocating
for the US Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the urban's

(14:14):
government and replace it with an administration that would be
more sensitive to American influence and United Fruit Companies business.
We'll get to this whole CIA situation after a sponsor break.
Like we said back before the break, a huge motivator

(14:36):
for the CIA's que and Guatemala was the idea that
Guatemala was about to fall under a very sinister communist influence,
and a huge source of that idea was publicist and
propagandist Edward Burnet's folks have asked us to do an
episode on him. We might at some point. When folks
first started asking, one of our one of our other

(14:58):
shows on our network had just done a three partner
and that seemed a little excessive to have like that
much on the same network. But that was years ago now.
His relationship with the United Fruit Company went back to
about nineteen forty, and at first he had been focused
on trying to improve the company's image in the Latin
American countries where it was operating because outside of the
wealthy elite that were benefiting the most from United Fruit

(15:21):
Companies presence, people understandably did not have a very good
opinion of it and called it a variety of disparaging nicknames,
including the octopus. Vernees really wasn't all that successful at
shifting ordinary people's opinions of United Fruit Company in Central America,
but he was masterful at selling the idea that Guatemala
was under an immediate communist threat to the United States.

(15:44):
For example, he brought journalists to Guatemala to conduct interviews
with a handpicked selection of United Fruit Company officials who
talked all about how the country was about to collapse
under communism. He had arranged a whole press junket in
one with all of the interview us arranged through the
United Fruit Company. They did none of the people he

(16:04):
arranged to come in talk to anyone else. They got
all their opinions from United Fruit. The CIA's first attempts
to overthrow the Guatemalan government took place in nineteen fifty
two under the administration of President Harry Truman, who's Truman doctor,
and you might remember from part one. It was known
as Operation Fortune or Operation PB Fortune because of the

(16:25):
little prefix that goes in the beginnings of CIA code names.
This plan involved collaborating with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Samosa to
arm a rebellion led by disgruntled General Carlos Castillo Armas.
Castillo Armas had tried to lead a rebellion back in
nineteen fifty and after escaping from prison afterward he had

(16:45):
become something of a folk hero. The CIA wound up
abandoning this operation afterward of it became public. Dwight D.
Eisenhower was inaugurated as President of the United States on
January twentieth, nineteen fifties three, and the next day he
pointed John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State. If you don't
remember that name from part one. He was one of
the people who helped United Fruit Company negotiate multiple monopolies

(17:10):
and other concessions in Guatemala during the nineteen thirties while
working for the company's law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. This
was one of many connections between United Fruit Company and
high placed figures in the US government. Dulles's brother, Alan Dulles,
was the director of the CIA between nineteen fifty three
and nineteen sixty one, and he had previously served on

(17:32):
United Fruits Board of Directors during the years that we're
talking about today. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Was a senator
from Massachusetts and then an ambassador to the United Nations.
The Lodge family was a major investor in United Fruit Company,
and he was nicknamed the Senator from United Fruit. These
are just examples, so sometimes you'll see this whole thing

(17:53):
framed as United Fruit Company got the CIA to overthrow
the Guatemalan government, But really the United States was operating
under the idea that if one nation in a region
became communist, all of its neighbors would follow, something Eisenhower
described in terms of Southeast Asia in his Domino Theory
speech the same year as the coup in Guatemala. So

(18:15):
without the supposed threat of communism, the CIA might not
have gotten involved in Guatemala, and with the supposed threat
of communism, the CIA probably would have gotten involved even
if United Fruit Company had not been part of the equation.
It is totally fair to note that a lot of
the paranoia about communism in Guatemala was coming from public

(18:36):
relations operations paid for by United Fruit though, yeah, jose
Mn Wealth Fortuni later said they would have overthrown us
even if we had grown no bananas, which I think
is accurate. So the CIA operation to orchestrate a coup
in Guatemala was authorized in August of ninety three. It
was code named Operations Success their Operation PP Success, and

(18:59):
it was led by Colonel Albert Hainey. This time, the
idea was to create what looked like an uprising from
within Guatemala, but with the uprising really being organized and
directed by the CIA, with the fighting force that the
CIA recruited and trained mostly from Guatemalan's living in exile
in Nicaragua. The CIA established a dummy company to supply

(19:20):
weapons to this supposed liberation army. A dummy charitable foundation
was also established to donate aircraft for a liberation air force,
also organized by the CIA and flown by American pilots.
An anti government radio station called the Voice of Liberation
started broadcasting propaganda and disinformation, reinforcing the idea that there

(19:43):
was a huge popular uprising in the works from inside
of Guatemala. This is basically psychological warfare. The Voice of
Liberation broadcast claimed to be transmitting from a secret location
in Guatemala, but the only time it was actually doing that,
it was broadcasting from inside the US embassy. Most of
the time the signals were really coming from Nicaragua. And

(20:05):
occasionally from Dominican Republic or from Honduras. Several of these
other governments were also opposed to the Urban's administration, both
because of the reforms that he was rolling out, which
sort of threatened the elite elsewhere, and also because he
welcomed exiled revolutionaries from these other countries into Guatemala. The
CIA once again chose Carlos Castio Armas as the leader

(20:27):
of this uprising. They sneaked him into Florida to meet
with CIA Western Hemisphere chief J. C. King, where they
went over the plan and what they expected in return,
basically that Castio Armas returned all of the land that
United Fruit Company had surrendered and rolled back other policies
from the Urbans and Arrevalo administrations. In January of nineteen

(20:48):
fifty four, a Panamanian courier informed our bands of this plot,
including handing over a bunch of liberation army documents. On
January twenty nine, Guatemala newspapers sted publishing a lot of
this material, and at this point the United States denied
all involvement and called the reports ridiculous and untrue. But

(21:08):
in reality, the United States was just waiting for a
clear reason to start their invasion. That whole progression of
foreign policy that we talked about in Part one had
led up to the idea that members of the Organization
of American States could interfere in in other's affairs if
it was under the threat of quote communism or any
totalitarian doctrine. To cover its basis, the US needed evidence

(21:32):
of that threat. Meanwhile, the tenth Inter American Conference was
held in Caracas, Venezuela in March of nineteen fifty four.
On March twenty eight, the conference adopted the Caracas Declaration
of Solidarity, which condemned quote, activities of the International Communist
Movement as constituting intervention in American affairs. It also declared

(21:54):
quote that the domination or control of the political institutions
of any American state by the intern National Communist Movement
extending to this hemisphere the political system of an extra
continental power, would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and
political independence of the American States, endangering the piece of America,
and would call for a meeting of consultation to consider

(22:16):
the adoption of appropriate action in accordance with existing treaties.
This declaration was intended to single out Guatemala, but without
naming Guatemala, and of the nations in attendance, Guatemala was
the only one to vote against it. To the US,
this confirmed that communists had taken control of Guatemala, but

(22:36):
it still wasn't evidence of an actual threat. Then, on
May fifteenth, nineteen fifty four, a shipment of arms arrived
in Guatemala, including rifles, ammunition, artillery, and anti tank weaponry.
They had been purchased from Czechoslovakia, which was a communist
country and part of the Soviet Bloc. Guatemala had previously

(22:57):
tried to buy arms from the United States, which had
refused under the grounds that Guatemala had not signed the
Rio Security Pact of nineteen forty seven. From there, Guatemala
had tried to buy weapons from several other countries as well,
all of them had refused, some of which under heavy
pressure from the United States to do so. There were
figures in Guatemala who felt like the US didn't pressure

(23:20):
Czechoslovakia into saying no because they were hoping for this
kind of evidence. Basically, though Guatemala had gone to Czechoslovakia
as a last resort, US intelligence had learned about the
potential deal in nineteen fifties three, but allowed it to
go forward, hoping to intercept the shipment en route and
use it as evidence of Soviet collusion. Part of that

(23:41):
plan involved using the shipment as evidence that Our Bends
was arming a militia to fight against the Guatemalan Army.
Our Bends maintained that he was just resupplying the Guatemalan army,
but the United States cited this as proof that the
Soviet Union was propping up a communist regime. The US
did not successfully intercept this shipment on the way as

(24:02):
they had hoped it basically the last track of it.
But also these weapons weren't that useful once they arrived
in Guatemala. A lot of the rifles didn't work. There
were not any tanks in Central America. For these anti
tank weapons to be used against the artillery. Pieces needed
an extensive network of improved roads to really be useful,

(24:22):
and Guatemala didn't really have that at this point. None
of that really mattered. The fact that it had come
from Czechoslovakia was the evidence that the United States wanted
to justify this queue. And we're going to talk about
how all of this finally played out. After we pause
for another sponsor break. The United States stepped up this

(24:48):
operation on May seventeenth, with Eisenhower blockading Guatemala and the
Liberation Army organizing from Honduras. They used as one of
their base of operations. United Fruit Company Company Town Flyover
started on with planes dropping leaflets warning the Guatemalan public
of these supposed secret plans and encouraging the Guatemalan military

(25:10):
to turn on the president. The Voice of Liberation broadcast
false reports about an increasingly large army of rebels that
was taking on new recruits as it moved. Our Ben's
demanded that horn Duras put a stop to the Liberation
Army's organization within its borders, and the United States started
using the pretext of sending military aid to horn Duras

(25:31):
and Mexico to funnel weapons towards this manufactured uprising. By
early June, the CIA's ongoing efforts to destabilize the Guatemalan
government had led to increasing unrest, including plots against the
government from within. On June three, military officers tried to
convince our Bends that for the good of the country,

(25:51):
he should purge all communists from his administration, but he refused.
Five days later, our Bends suspended civil Liberties site the
National Emergency. Throughout all of this, government officials and the
media and the United States were warning of an insidious
communist threat in Guatemala, with John Foster Dulls calling the

(26:11):
Guatemalan government a quote communist type reign of terror. The
actual invasion began on June eighteenth, four after all the
ongoing propaganda efforts. The CIA was expecting the Guatemalan people
to rise up and side with the invasion, but that
didn't really happen. The Liberation Army faced repeated defeats. Three

(26:33):
additional aircraft were deployed to provide more air support, but
two of them were shot down. Arvins placed the army
and the police on alert, but he didn't actually deploy them.
He was afraid that if he did, it would just
look like the US propaganda was right about what was
happening in Guatemala. Foreign Minister Guerrero Torreo recommended that Guatemala

(26:54):
go through formal channels to address this. He met with
John Parafoy, who was the US ambassador to Guatemala, who
of course knew exactly what was going on. He also
contacted the U N Security Council and the Inter American
Peace Committee of the Organization of American States for support.
Torrieo denounced the accusations that Guatemala had become a communist

(27:17):
country and asked for a ceasefire and for Honduran and
Nicaraguan forces to be removed from Guatemala. On the US
planes flying over Guatemala progressed from dropping leaflets to also
strafing and dropping bombs on Guatemalan buildings, including gas and
oil storage depots. Guatemala didn't have much of an air

(27:38):
force that could respond. All of its planes had been
built before ninety six, and our Bends ultimately grounded them
out of concerns over whether the pilots were still loyal
to him. On that night of the nineteenth, are Bens
gave a radio address calling what was happening an armed invasion,
and he said, quote, our only crime consisted of decreeing

(28:00):
our own laws and applying them to all without exception.
Our crime is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected
the interests of the United Fruit Company. Our crime is
wanting to have our own route to the Atlantic, our
own electric power, and our own docs and ports. Our
crime is our patriotic wish to advance, to progress, to

(28:20):
win economic independence to match our political independence. We are
condemned because we have given our peasant population land and rights.
The air attacks continued and our bends declared martial law.
On June twenty, Guatemala continued appealing to the United Nations
for aid, where Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, whose family owned

(28:41):
stock in United Fruit, was head of the Security Council.
After a lengthy debate, the U n Security Council determined
that this was a matter for the Organization of American States, which,
as we noted earlier, was heavily influenced by the United States.
The Soviet Union voted against this, correctly concluding that the
US was involved in what was happening in Guatemala. After

(29:03):
days of bombings and attacks and ongoing propaganda both within
and outside of Guatemala, the United States started publicly supporting
Custio Armas and the Liberation Army. The Voice of Liberation
sorted broadcasting reports of all kinds of successful attacks by
the Liberation Army which weren't actually happening. It also reported
that Castile Armas's force was growing at an astounding rate,

(29:26):
even though he was in command of about four hundred
people at the most. The international news media also picked
up these stories and reported them as fact. In the
midst of all of this, an American plane bombed a
British freighter at the request of Nicaragua, which claimed it
was carrying gasoline to refuel our benz Is military. It
turned out to be carrying only bananas and cotton, and

(29:49):
the CIA paid off its insurer. As it became clear
that the United States was backing Caustio Armas and the
Liberation Army, a wave of anti American sentiment started to
row within and outside of Guatemala, including in numerous nations
in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Argentinean revolutionary
che Guvara had traveled to Guatemala to see the ongoing

(30:12):
reforms that were going on there, and he was actually
there when this que took place. His first wife, Hilda Gaya,
later said quote it was Guatemala which finally convinced him
of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the
initiative against imperialism. By June, our Ben's was losing the
support of the Guatemala military. He recognized that there was

(30:34):
no way he could go up against the United States directly.
He resigned on June, and his radio address announcing this,
our Ben's pointed out the roles of the United States
and the United Fruit Company and all of this, saying quote,
I took over the presidency with great faith in the
democratic system, in liberty, and in the possibility of achieving

(30:54):
economic independence for Guatemala. I continue to believe that this
program is just. I have not violated my faith in
democratic liberties and the independence of Guatemala, and in all
the good which is the future of humanity. One day,
the obscured forces which today oppressed the backward in colonial
world will be defeated. I will continue to be, despite everything,

(31:16):
a fighter for the liberty and progress of my country.
He took refuge in the Mexican embassy. From there he
was offered refuge in Czechoslovakia, and then he traveled to
several other countries before returning to Mexico and dying there
in nineteen seventy one. Arbenza's speech was a totally different
tone from the one that was delivered by U S
Secretary of State Dullest on June nineteen fifty four, and

(31:39):
that speech set in part quote, they exposed the evil
purpose of the Kremlin to destroy the inter American system,
and they test the ability of the American states to
maintain the peaceful integrity of this hemisphere. For several years now,
international communism has been probing here and there for nesting
places in the Americas. It finally chose Guatemala as a

(32:00):
spot which it could turn into an official base from
which to breed subversion which would extend to the other
American republics. This intrusion of Soviet despotism was, of course,
a direct challenge to the Monroe Doctrine, the first and
most fundamental of our foreign policies. Later in the same speech,
Dellis said, quote, it was not the power of the

(32:21):
Urbans government that concerned us, but the power behind it.
If world communism captured any American state, however small, a
new and periless front it established, which will increase the
dangers of the entire free world and require even greater
sacrifices from the American people. There is continued to be
debate about exactly what role communism played in the Outer

(32:41):
Bends administration. At the time, the Guatemalan Workers Party was
the nation's smallest political party, and the number of Communist
Party members in the Guatemalan government was also small. For example,
of the fifty six members of Congress, four of them
were Communists. At the same time, several of those positions
were particularly influential, including the President's personal secretary and the

(33:04):
President of Congress. There were also members of the party
in prominent positions outside of the government, including some of
Guatemala's largest labor unions. Regardless, though, what was happening in
Guatemala doesn't really align with the propaganda that became part
of the justification for this intervention. When he stepped down
our bends handed over power to Colonel Carlos Enrique Diaz,

(33:27):
who was chief of the Guatemalan Armed Forces of the Republic,
Diaz became part of a three man ruling junto, with
Diaz announcing that he was committed to continuing his predecessor's work,
so the CIA started trying to figure out how to
remove him from power as well. Ultimately, disputes arose among
the stunto, which was then replaced with a whole different

(33:48):
three man team. It was a very chaotic few days.
This team traveled to El Salvador to negotiate a piece
with Castillo Armas, who ultimately became the next president of Guatemala.
Castillo Armas denounced communism and promised that he would not
roll back the social gains of the previous administration. Then,
on October tenth, nineteen fifty four, he was elected president

(34:10):
while running unopposed. Once he was in power, he repealed
the nineteen constitution. He abolished the previous administration's land reforms,
returning all the expropriated land back to the United Fruit
Company and other landowners. He rolled back the earlier expansions
of voting rights, and he restored the Catholic Church's right

(34:31):
to own property and teach religion in public schools. Castillo
Armas also outlawed labor organizations and political parties, and restored
Jorgeo Bico's chief of secret police to his former position.
Seven prominent labor organizers were also murdered on July one,
at the United States request. Castillo Armas also established a

(34:52):
National Committee of Defense against Communism in Guatemala. In ninetifty eight,
Castio Armas was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards.
His successor was General Miguel Idiros Fuentes, a rebellion to
overthrow his dictatorial regime in nineteen sixty was the start
of the Guatemalan Civil War, which lasted for thirty six years.

(35:13):
In spite of the ongoing civil rights abuses of the
Fuentist regime and his predecessor, Castile or Masses, and the
abuses of the Guatemalan military, the United States backed the
military throughout this civil war through varying degrees through the
various presidential administrations that were in power during the thirty
six years that it went on. This all circles back

(35:35):
to the idea of it being acceptable to intervene in
another American nations affairs if there's a threat within or
without of communist or authoritarian influence. The United States made
it a policy for decades to back these kinds of
dictatorial regimes, regardless of their human or civil rights record,
as long as those regimes were anti communist. More than

(35:56):
two hundred thousand people were killed during the Guatemalan Civil War,
and is in a country with a population of only
about ten million at the end of the war. According
to a United Nations Historical Clarification Commission, three percent of
those killed were indigenous Maya killed at the hands of
the Guatemalan military or militia which were being supported, supplied,

(36:17):
and trained by the United States. Even though the war
officially ended in violence and instability continued to be issues
in Guatemala today. President Bill Clinton was in Guatemala not
long after this Historical Clarification Commission report was published and said, quote,
it is important that I state clearly that support for
military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and

(36:41):
widespread repression of the kind described and the report was wrong,
and the United States must not repeat that mistake. We
must and we will instead continue to support the peace
and reconciliation process in Guatemala. Guatemalan President Alvado Colombe offered
his own statement in twenty eleven, say quote, that day
changed Guatemala and we have not recuperated from it yet.

(37:05):
It was a crime to Guatemalan society, and it was
an act of aggression to a government starting its democratic spring.
The ongoing economic, social, and political issues affecting Guatemala today
are a direct result of all of this. And like
we said at various points on this show, this kind
of US intervention was not unique to Guatemala, especially during

(37:25):
the Cold War, when the US made numerous other interventions
in other Latin American countries as well, including providing weapons, training,
and other support to dictorial regimes. Uh And what was
unique though, to Guatemala was the directions, scope and overall
success of all these reforms before the US intervened. In

(37:45):
other words, the migrant crisis that is currently happening at
the United States southern border is directly connected to decades
of US interventions in Latin America, including this one. Also,
United Fruit Company went through an antitrust suit and ultimately
sold its land in Guatemala to Del Monte. After a
couple of corporate transitions, United Fruit Company is now Taquda

(38:08):
Brands International. The company's history page traces its roots back
to United Fruit Company, but the timeline of its history
on the company's website skips the nineteen fifties entirely. Yeah,
a few years ago, there was a Stuff You Should
Know live show that was about the history of not
the history was about how public relations work, I think
is what they called it. And I saw that live

(38:28):
show here, and when they mentioned Taquita, some people cheered.
Josh Clark was like, you're gonna want to take that
back if you don't know any of this history. Everybody
loves the banana, you know what I mean, Like everybody
loves a little cartoon banana lady. I understand that impulse,
but it is made without the full picture. Absolutely yeah,

(38:50):
because the next thing that they talked about was this
whole overthrow of the Guatemalan government at the hands of
the United States Central Intelligence Agency, not necessarily influenced but
definitely strongly advocated for by United Fruit Company, whose policies
were the start of the land reforms that got everybody's

(39:10):
attention in the first place. Anyway, that's a not the
most fun episode, though it is important information. But I'm
hoping you have maybe slightly more delightful listener mail. I
have listener mail that is from Lauren. It does not
hark back to a more fun episode, but it's content

(39:30):
is is interesting and and cool. So Lauren writes, Dear
Tracy and Holly, I just wanted to write and say
thank you for your awesome podcast. I love the quality
and variety of your shows and your excellent presentation style,
and I've recommended you to a lot of my friends.
I was really interested in your recent the Litamide shows.
I'm a medical historian and was previously a curator of

(39:51):
a medical museum where I cared for a large collection
of disability prosthetics. We were working with Leicester University to
discuss how we could better We're with the disabled community
to represent their stories, not just approach the collection from
a medical model of disability. As part of our project,
we hosted a performance of Cabinet of Curiosities, How Disability

(40:11):
Was Kept in a Box, which was developed by the
wonderful artist and actor Matt Fraser, who has the litamied
induced Folk Amelia. Matt worked with medical museums in the
UK to explore the disability histories which he brought out
in the performance. There's a performance available on the Museum
Association website. Lauren gives us a link and it's well

(40:32):
worth a watch. It is such a wonderful piece. But
the one part which struck me was the video mat
chaired of a child who was put in a pair
of gas powered prosthetic legs and arms. It's at about
fifty three minutes, and the performance and the vulnerability of
placing this young person in such a device, it really
caused me to question how I interpreted such prosthetic devices.

(40:52):
For audiences in the museum. Obviously, there are people who
thrive and rely on prosthetics. However, the medical model of
disability attempting to fix people can also create new problems.
This new state of course in your show, which is
great to hear. I just thought you guys might find
the show interesting. Thank you both again for such a
great podcast. I'll be continuing to listen and welcome any

(41:13):
future medical shows in the future with very best wishes. Lauren.
Thank you so much for this email. Lauren. I have
not had the chance to watch this whole video yet,
but we are going to put it into the show
notes for folks who may be interested to be able
to check it out. Thank you so much for sending
it and for sending this email. I love to hear

(41:33):
from museum curators and other people who whose work involves
similarly to what we do, attempting to put historical things
into context for the general public. Yes, I also uh
love Matt Freezer. I was introduced to him he was
on the season of American Horror Story that was called
Freak Show, and he was amazing, and then I was like,
I want to see everything he does because he's such

(41:55):
a good actor. Um, so I'm glad that he's getting
a little more love. I well watched that season of
American Horror Story, and I did not connect the person
in the name. Um. Even having started to watch the video,
I didn't put it all together. Uh, so, thank you, Lauren.
In spite of the various op eds that seem to

(42:15):
be written like every couple or three weeks and start
floating around Twitter, historians are doing a lot of work
engaging with the public everybody, historians and museum curators and
archivists and all kinds of folks. Uh, you're thinking about
writing an op ed about how historians aren't engaging with
the public, maybe like Google that they read the things

(42:37):
that people have already said about it, and then the
many responses about how that's not actually all that accurate.
I think some of that, too, is that people have
one idea of what a historian is in their head,
and they think if that person isn't somehow in the
public eye, that historians aren't out there doing the world. Uh.
We have an upcoming interview that I'm hoping will help
to spell some of this. Oh nice, I'm very happy

(42:59):
about that. Yeah, Holly's in my work is deeply reliant
on the work of historians who are putting things out
for the public all the time. Yes, so you would
like to write to us about this or any other
podcast or a history podcast at how Stuff Works dot com.
We're also all over social media Missed in History. You
will find us there at Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter,

(43:20):
and you can come to our website, which is Missed
in History dot com. The show notes for this episode
will include the link that we just talked about, as
well as all of the sources for this episode, which
include C I A D classified documents acknowledging all this stuff.
We did not make it up. You can also subscribe
to our show on Apple podcasts, the I heart Radio app,

(43:40):
and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed
in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.