The United States of America preaches freedom and democracy, but what does it actually practice? In the following example the democratically elected leader of Guatemala was removed by the CIA and the United Fruit Company in 1954 and the American public was lied to by the "father of public relations", Edward Bernays.

1. by Patrick Warren
the ideology and purpose of the propaganda campaign
In the case of the Guatemalan counterrevolution of 1954, the ideology was
pro-capitalist, anti-communist, and pro-American. The purpose of the U.S. government's
propaganda campaign was to remove Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz from power
using the least amount of direct intervention possible and replace him with a leader
sympathetic to U.S. economic and political interests and to keep communism out of the
Western Hemisphere. The purpose of the United Fruit Company's propaganda campaign
was to influence the American general public and lobby the U.S. government to act in its
defense against the expropriation of land which occurred under President Arbenz's
agrarian land reform bill, Decree 900.
the context in which the propaganda occurs
Around the mid-twentieth century, Guatemala was a nation dependent on the
exportation of coffee and bananas, a country with a wealthy minority, a poor majority, a
government which lacked the resources to develop the country, and foreign ownership
and control of vital infrastructure and the economy. With little industrialization and a
high rate of poverty and illiteracy, the country was a "banana republic", used for its
resources and neglected past anything that might turn out an immediate profit for foreign
investors.
Prior to the Revolution of 1944 in Guatemala, Guatemala had been a highly

2. militarized society under the rule of a strict military dictator, General Jorge Ubico, who
was also a prominent landowner. An ardent anticommunist, Ubico's Guatemalan
government had twenty-two departments, each department under the command of a
military general. Ubico's generals were notoriously ignorant and incompetent, but their
chief qualification was loyalty to the regime. The National Radio and the Department of
Radio were controlled by the military and even secondary education strongly resembled a
military academy with army officers serving as principals and disciplinarians. The
atmosphere was tense, and in the army officer corps anyone under the rank of Colonel
was treated brutally with death penalties for even minor offenses (Gleijeses 14-16).
When President Jorge Ubico's health eventually diminished in 1944 he gave control of
the government to a three-man military junta, of which General Ponce convinced
Congress to give him provisional authority as the sole President of Guatemala, which
lasted only three months (Gleijeses 26-27).
Fearing he would lose in a free election to the popular Juan Jose Arevalo, a
university professor, General Ponce brought trucks full of Indians from the countryside
with machetes to walk the streets to raise the fears of a possible Indian revolt (Gleijeses
27-28). Intimidated, Arevalo had appeared to withdraw from the race for president when
Jacobo Arbenz, a retired military officer aided by an armed civilian force, deposed Ponce.
Arbenz and a junta assumed power and promised to hold a free election for a Constituent
Assembly, a Congress, and a president (Gleijeses 29-30). Juan Jose Arevalo later would
run for president and capture 85% of the vote. His impressive appearance and skilled
oratory impressed Guatemalans. As for his politics, Arevalo did not consider an

3. increasingly popular redistribution of property to be the solution to Guatemala's
problems. He believed Guatemala's problem was a spiritual problem and coined his own
brand of "Spiritual Socialism", "Arevalismo" (Gleijeses 36,38). The Arevalo years
brought enfranchisement to many Guatemalans and an expansion of political freedoms,
but did not do much to solve the economic problems of the country. His biggest success
was the Labor Code of 1947 which allowed agricultural workers to unionize.
When Jacobo Arbenz was elected to be president in 1951, there was a serious land
problem in Guatemala. Land reform seemed to be a necessary task in order to make the
playing field more level for small farmers and peasants. In the 1940's Guatemala's land
was mostly uncultivated, and while farms larger than 1,100 acres made up 0.3% of all
farms, they comprised over half of the nation's farmland. The two main crops were
coffee and bananas, of which the majority profits went to the upper classes and to foreign
stockholders in the United Fruit Company. Guatemala was even importing some of its
basic foods. A few members of academia in the United States took notice. After
research and investigation they issued reports finding that most all Guatemalans were
without land, that the current large landowners feared a restructuring of the land system
which might have effects on the rates of wages for workers thereby altering the economy,
and that without a major economic restructuring and local recirculation of the current
profits an improvement was not likely to be seen in the condition of Guatemalans
(Schlesinger and Kinzer 40-41). According to dependency theory, Guatemala's
economic growth was being hindered by reliance on two non-essential major export
crops, coffee and bananas, in a foreign market where they had no control over the price

4. (LaFeber 17).
When Arbenz took office, the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, known today as World Bank, issued a 300-page analysis on Guatemalan
conditions. The report acknowledged inequalities in the country and proposed that the
government should regulate energy companies and establish an autonomous National
Power Authority, to regulate foreign companies, establish a capital gains tax, adjust
wages, and go to work in the area of revitalizing Guatemala's infrastructure (Schlesinger
and Kinzer 53).
At that time Guatemala's basic infrastructure was largely owned and operated by
foreigners. The electric company which provided about 80% of the country's power was
owned by Americans. Rates were said to be overpriced and the service was not reliable,
however with no competition and with outside ownership, a virtual monopoly existed.
All three major ports significant to foreign trade were owned by U.S. companies, a
practice which reflected the American ownership of ports throughout all of Central
America. The International Railways of Central America was partially owned (42.6%) by
the United Fruit Company, but without adequate roads a de facto monopoly existed over
transportation. The UFC also operated and controlled important international radio and
cable traffic after it incorporated the Tropical Radio Telegraph Company in1913
(Gleijeses 87-89).
The United Fruit Company's presence in Central America was enormous. By
1950, the UFC owned or leased three million acres of land, of which it cultivated 138,910
acres- only 5% of its total land holdings. The amount of land it held also constituted 85%

5. of the total land suitable for growing bananas in Guatemala. United Fruit owned or
chartered 36 ships and operated 1500 miles of railroad. The company brought in hefty
annual returns of 12.5% to its stockholders (Dosal 6). If Guatemala was a pie then United
Fruit definitely had the largest piece. Guatemalans faced having very little land, little to
no control over infrastructure, and no means by which to enlarge Guatemala's tax
revenue. Guatemala was stuck.
In the midst of these serious disparities, on June 27, 1952 President Jacobo
Arbenz's agrarian reform bill was finally enacted in order to get farmable land into
Guatemalan hands and weaken the grip of the United Fruit Company. Called Decree 900,
the bill's provisions held that farms which were completely utilized and used for
production were exempt from being selected for expropriation, farms under 223 acres
would not face expropriation as neither would farms between 223 and 670 acres which
were being at least 2/3 utilized for crop production. Decree 900 therefore was aimed at
large farms with large portions of uncultivated land. All lands expropriated by the
government were to be compensated in twenty five-year bonds with a 3% interest rate.
The land's value was taken from its declared taxable worth as of May 1952, which stood
as a major threat to the United Fruit Company which had consistently undervalued its
property to pay less taxes. Guatemala ended up paying United Fruit an average of $2.99
an acre of the 386,901 acres of land it expropriated. The U.S. State Department
demanded that Guatemala pay $75 an acre, but United Fruit paid only $1.48 per acre
when it purchased the land about twenty years earlier (Schlesinger and Kinzer 54, 76).
Riding on the heels of Decree 900, later the National Agrarian Bank was created to give

6. credit and monetary assistance to the beneficiaries of the agrarian reform bill and to small
farmers (Gleijeses 156). The expropriations had begun and eventually the United States
government decided to step in and put a stop to what was seen as the birth of communism
in Guatemala.
In August of 1953, the United States National Security Council approved covert
action in Guatemala. In December of 1953, Allen Dulles approved Operation
PBSUCCESS, a CIA plan to overthrow Arbenz, and gave it a budgetary allowance of
three million dollars. In late June of 1954, the candidate to replace Arbenz named
Castillo Armas crossed the border into Guatemala with his small force of rebels with
logistical and military assistance and advisement by the CIA. Armas's rebel force was
disorganized and not on schedule, and was easily defeated where ever it went. The CIA
sent out planes on light bombing runs and strafing missions, eventually flying over the
capital and buzzing Arbenz. Even though the Guatemalan army could have easily
defeated Armas, it surrendered and Arbenz stepped down nine days after PBSUCCESS
started out of the fear of a large U.S. military-led invasion.
There are many explanations for the United States' eventual use of force to
reestablish the position of the United Fruit Company and the governing class of
Guatemala. The main reason for intervention was the expropriation of land by the
Guatemalan government on United Fruit Company holdings. The UFC, an American
company, was a part of the American economic empire and with American shareholders
and investment firms expecting continual profits, the company's interests as a global
capitalist enterprise fell into the protective domain of the United States government by

7. default. The phrase "not in my backyard" seemed to be the operational motto during the
conflict as the U.S. government, concerned with maintaining the Monroe Doctrine into
the Cold War, vigorously attempted to deny major foreign governments power and
influence in the western hemisphere. All communism and in some cases socialism were
viewed as originating from the Kremlin, and that the threat of communism, real or
exaggerated, provided the impetus for the U.S. to serve the interests of the United Fruit
Company. In turn the United States used the United Fruit Company as a chess piece in
achieving its foreign policy objectives.
The United States was also concerned with the greater message that an ongoing
successful revolution in Guatemala under the supervision of Arevalo, then Arbenz, could
send to other nations in the developing world whose economy was similarly fashioned
after the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. A highly popular and diversely supported
revolution, the Revolution of 1944 was undertaken by the middle class, students and
young army officers. It established labor unions with government protection, made
efforts to acquire more means of production which would serve as a tax base for local
development and profit circulation, and caused a new relationship of disharmony with the
former governing class and the United Fruit Company, the multinational corporation
locally known as "the Octopus" for having its tentacles around Guatemala (Aybar
294-296).
One way to look at the hierarchy of nations in comparative politics is by
organizing and separating nations into metropolitan super powers and the subservient
nation-states that are below them which are somehow dependent upon them. Together

8. these states may form a bloc with a hierarchy. The subservient nation-states within the
bloc may hold a vital resource which the metropolitan superpower utilizes for its gain at
the expense of local profit circulation. The metropolitan superpower is most likely to
seek to maintain the status quo as long as the arrangement is profitable. Improving local
conditions may not be a top priority as profits can be acquired without investing too much
into the subservient nation-state. This results in a state of starvation for the subservient
nation-state. As the subservient nation-state takes actions to improve its condition by
demanding more share of the profits and resources, this causes a disturbance which the
metropolitan superpower is likely to resist. The metropolitan superpower can attribute
the behavior of the subservient nation-state on another outside metropolitan superpower
which it deems to be an agitator, as the United States did in accusing liberal progressive
Guatemalan reform policies as being a tool of the Soviet Union. The metropolitan
superpower may ultimately resort to a selective use of force in bringing the subservient
nation-state back into the prior politico-economic arrangement (Aybar 4-5). This was the
basis for much of the international political developments during the Cold War
throughout the world. This type of international push-pull between the major
superpowers and developing nations, once referred to as "third world" nations, often
stymied the development of stability and autonomy for developing nations as the United
States and the Soviet Union fought and supported proxy wars around the globe for
influence, access to resources, and opposing ideology.
identification of the propagandist

9. The propagandists were the United Fruit Company, the Central Intelligence
Agency, and the Eisenhower administration.
structure of the propaganda organization
The power structures of the propaganda organizations were top-down with mostly
vertical communication. The United Fruit Company was a corporation with powerful
decisions made by a small group of executives. President Eisenhower and his Cabinet
were responsible in formulating American foreign policy and making decisions about
what would be fair game in Guatemala for the CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency is a
federal para-military agency with top-down command structure and vertical
communication, highly secretive, with agents infiltrating organizations and countries
around the world.
target audience
The target audience of United Fruit Company propaganda was the United States
government and the U.S. general public. The target of CIA propaganda was the people of
Guatemala with a focus on women, workers, the army, and students.
media utilization techniques
Media utilization was extensive in the United Fruit Company and the Central

10. Intelligence Agency's bringing down of the Arbenz administration of the Guatemalan
Government. The propaganda was deliberate, systematic, and focused, with the
campaign spanning several years and relying on every possible resource. They used the
printed word, employing pamphlets, flyers, posters, and newspaper articles. Pro-United
Fruit Company movie shorts were made, the CIA set up a radio station to play
propaganda to Guatemalans, the United States Information Agency made movies to
influence Guatemalans, U.S. government officials spoke on national radio in the United
States, and rumors were spread by women of the Guatemalan marketplace. The United
Fruit company even hired a public relations expert to take measures on its behalf, Edward
Bernays, whose work history included being the adviser to the U.S. delegation to the
Paris peace conference after the first world war (Schlesinger and Kinzer 80).
When Edward Bernays was hired by United Fruit to solve their public relations
problem, he set out initially to influence Central American opinion by establishing
newspapers in and throughout the area. Employee newspapers were distributed in
Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, and Honduras and a weekly "Latin American Report"
was created. Bernays supplied facts and figures of his own making to Latin and
American journalists . In 1950 Bernays got the New York Herald Tribune to send a
reporter to Guatemala. The reporter did not veer far from United Fruit Company officials
in his search for a report when he wrote a piece called "Communism in the Caribbean"
which appeared on the front page of the paper for five days. Bernays also got a friend at
the New York Times to send a reporter to Guatemala, and this reporter returned with a
story which made unfounded claims of a vast communist infiltration in the country. In a

11. masterful stroke of omission, the American press barely reported on a press conference
held by Samuel Guy Inman, an American professor and writer, who had interviewed
President Arevalo of Guatemala in 1950. In the interview Arevelo expressed solidarity
with the major capitalist powers, proclaiming that Guatemala had no ties to Europe or
Asia, and that in the event of a major conflict, his country was completely on the side of
the United States (Schlesinger and Kinzer 82-85). Bernays's first wave had been
successful in spreading the UFC message and in eliminating opposing voices.
Bernays's second major propaganda offensive on United Fruit Company's behalf
began in 1951. In similar fashion of the year before, Bernays relied on the New York
Times to provide a reporter who would visit Guatemala and return with a message which
echoed that of Bernays's. The journalist, Crede H. Calhoun, used the term "Red" for
communist in his report of the ominous threat of communism in the banana republic, yet
Bernays praised Calhoun for his objectivity. The media's need for sensationalism became
larger and Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Time, and the Atlantic Monthly all
responded to Calhoun's report by sending their own journalists to Guatemala to cover the
growth of Marxism. Bernays in 1952 began to organize field trips for journalists of major
media agencies and newspapers. The United Fruit Company planned and carried out
two-week tours of Guatemala for journalists who would have all their expenses paid, be
shown around a beautiful country, and given an official line to tout by the local public
relations officer Ed Whitman. Journalists interviewed people whom the United Fruit
Company selected and they all returned to their agencies having been shown how United
Fruit was doing good things in Guatemala but was being attacked and pressured by

12. communist forces. Immediately after the land expropriations of the Arbenz government
which took place within the agrarian reform, Bernays dispatched another team of
journalists to cover what he claimed was proof that Guatemala had finally fallen to
Communism; he ultimately succeeded in saturating the American public with his
propaganda message (Schlesinger and Kinzer 86-88).
In 1952 the United Fruit Company commissioned John Clements to write a report
on Communist infiltration in the Guatemalan government. Clements was a vice-president
of the infamous Hearst newspaper corporation, an ex-marine, and an editor of The
American Mercury, a right-wing publication. He was paid $35,000 for the 235-page
study, and his report soon found its way into the hands of politically influential people
within American government. His work even became a reference and a resource for
official government business. In 1953 he came out with another report, which
complained that the U.S. needed to overthrow President Arbenz immediately. Clements
later went on to represent Castillo Armas's (the U.S.-chosen replacement president)
interests in the United States for $8,000 a month after Armas was put in power. When
Clements died in 1975 Hearst Corporation executives retrieved and burned his files to
avoid any potential lawsuits (Schlesinger and Kinzer 94-96). The United Fruit Company
had lobbied the government and controlled the press, capturing the hearts and minds of
the American public and enlisting the might of the U.S. federal government.
The United States Information Agency was also instrumental in creating and
publishing propaganda. Schlesinger and Kinzer (166-167) write:
"In June alone, USIA propagandists wrote more than 200 articles about
Guatemala based on information from CIA sources, and distributed them for
anonymous placement in scores of Latin newspapers. The agency shipped more

13. than 100,000 copies of a pamphlet called "Chronology of Communism in
Guatemala" throughout Latin America. Twenty-seven thousand copies of
anti-Communist cartoons and posters were also distributed. The USIA also
produced three special movies on Guatemala, including one on the Caracas OAS
meeting, as well as reels of news footage favorable to the United States for
showing free in movie houses in Latin America. The agency persuaded radio
stations in friendly countries like Cuba to run 'hard-hitting commentaries' on
Guatemala at peak listening hours as the Castillo Armas invasion neared. An
experienced USIA press officer was sent to the American Embassy in Honduras to
brief 'selected correspondents' on 'inside' accounts of events once the coup began
as a way of offsetting anticipated hostile foreign news reports about the invasion.
One internal State Department memo reported that 'the program of smearing
Guatemalan maneuvers in advance was proceeding satisfactorily."
The CIA also set up a radio station seven weeks before Operation PBSUCCESS
with the express purpose of broadcasting anti-Arbenz propaganda and to urge
Guatemalans to side with Castillo Armas. It was called La Voz de la Liberacion, or the
Voice of Liberation, and it claimed to be broadcasting "deep from within the jungle" of
Guatemala, although it was actually being broadcast from neighboring countries. The
radio station played popular music and had programming from a regionally famous
comedian. The target audience were women, soldiers, workers, and young people. The
CIA wanted to influence the soldiers to not defend Arbenz in the event of an armed
conflict, and the station reported that Arbenz's secret plan was to disband the armed
forces and form a peasant militia, a message which the CIA eventually printed onto
leaflets and airdropped into the country. The broad purpose of the radio station was to
intimidate Guatemalan listeners (Schlesinger and Kinzer 167-168). During the invasion
of Castillo Armas the radio station issued false reports of troop movements causing many
Guatemalans to flee to the countryside and at the same time wonder why there weren't
any invading forces to fight through (Schlesinger and Kinzer 192).

14. Article by Patrick Warren
special techniques to maximize effect
The Central Intelligence Agency went on the offensive searching for any
dissenting voices that might provide any formidable opposition. Their main target was
Sydney Gruson, a journalist for the New York Times. Assigned to Mexico City, Gruson's
circuit included the country of Guatemala. Gruson was fairly objective, and when
compared to the journalists who were being courted by the United Fruit Company, he was
the benchmark for objectivity. Gruson had been kicked out of Guatemala after writing a
piece that made President Arbenz out to be a communist sympathizer. Later he was
readmitted to Guatemala, but once again caught Guatemalan ire when he covered the
Alfhem incident, depicting Guatemalans and other Latins getting behind Arbenz to oppose
America. Gruson said that the major theme in Central America was not communist,
anti-communist, anti or pro-American, but that it was nationalism (Schlesinger and
Kinzer 154). This concept proved an obstacle for the CIA and United Fruit, whose
interest was much better served if they could cast all the events in Guatemala as being a
heinous plot by communist agents to sabotage the great fruit machine and subvert
democracy. Any other context might cause people to consider that the internal events of
Guatemala reflected a growing disgust with globalization and a strong desire to assert
political and economic independence.
The CIA contacted the New York Times and got publisher Arthur Hays
Sulzberger to keep Gruson in Mexico City and out of Guatemala. The CIA told
Sulzberger that Gruson had been at an event in Mexico City along with Czech diplomats

15. and that he might be a sympathizer. Sulzberger complied and kept Gruson out of
Guatemala, and Gruson never got to complete an investigation into Castillo Armas's
connection with a possible invasion of Guatemala (Schlesinger and Kinzer 154).
In 1949 the United States cut off military aid to Guatemala. Two years later it had
organized an international arms boycott against in Guatemala in 1951 and then continued
to take active measures in preventing the importation of arms into the country. When
President Arbenz sought weapons from Czechoslovakia, an eastern bloc country under
communist control, the United States used this "illegal" arms shipment from a communist
country as proof that the communists were gaining power in Guatemala (Streeter 27).
The CIA also made an effort to utilize the Catholic church in Guatemala in order
to raise awareness of a Communist threat. A Cardinal in New York was approached by
the CIA to arrange contact with the Guatemalan archbishop. In April of 1954, a pastoral
letter was read in all Guatemalan churches urging all Guatemalans to stand up against
"this enemy of God and country." The CIA then took this letter and made pamphlets
which it later airdropped over Guatemala (Schlesinger and Kinzer 155).
A man named Pepe, one of the Guatemalans with the CIA at the Voice of
Liberation radio station, approached a retired Air Force Colonel who had defected,
Mendoza Azurdia, on June 4, 1954 and proposed he create a taped message imploring
Guatemalan Air Force pilots to defect with their aircraft and to give instructions on how
to do it safely. The Colonel was against the idea and refused. However, as the two men
had drinks together, Pepe insured that the Colonel's glass was never empty and the
Colonel soon became drunk. Pepe asked the Colonel how he might speak if he were to

16. broadcast a message of the sort had he agreed to do so. The Colonel stood up and gave
an enthusiastic demonstration. Little did the Colonel know that Pepe was secretly
recording their cocktail party and that his performance would be edited and then
broadcast as the message the CIA had originally desired (Schlesinger and Kinzer
168-169).
During the invasion of Castillo Armas and his forces, President Jacobo Arbenz
chose to ward off the invasion delicately, fearing that a strong reaction might provide a
pretext for a U.S. invasion. Arbenz is quoted as saying "This invasion is a farce. We can
shoo them away with our hats. What I'm afraid of- and this is why I ordered Diaz to let
the mercenaries advance into our territory- what I'm afraid of is that if we defeat them
right on the border, the Honduran government will manufacture a border incident, declare
war on us, and the United States will invade. (Gleijeses 324)" Maybe the United States
did not realize it but by sending in a lackluster force it served to make any counterattack
by the trained Guatemalan army a potential massacre for the rebels, an event which might
only stir up more anti-Arbenz feelings.
During Operation PBSUCCESS, a P-47 aircraft flew over a Honduran town and
mistakenly bombed it. Secretary Dulles used the mistake against Arbenz, saying that it
was Guatemala which was attacking its neighbor. The government of Honduras believed
Dulles and threatened retaliation against Guatemala (Gleijeses 340).
John Foster Dulles went on national radio the day after the overthrow of Arbenz
with a great deal of enthusiasm, proclaiming that the Guatemalans had patriotically rose
to overthrow the Communist regime themselves. Not everyone around the world on the

17. allied side believed him, and he received criticism from Labour Party leader Clement
Attlee in Britain, who described the events in Guatemala as a "putsch" (Schlesinger and
Kinzer 216-217).
audience reaction to various techniques
The propaganda campaign undertaken by the CIA was effective in convincing the
officers of the Guatemalan army that if they fought back and defeated Castillo Armas,
then a U.S. invasion would inevitably follow (Gleijeses 341). While the Guatemalan
army was impressive by Central American standards, it was no match for the potential
military might of the United States.
United Fruit Company propaganda was successful in convincing the American
public to get on its side. The UFC also succeeded in lobbying the U.S. government to
take action which would be mutually beneficial.
counterpropaganda
One of the reasons the United Fruit Company was so successful in its propaganda
campaign was that Guatemala never had an organized effort in making a case for itself in
the U.S. press (Schlesinger and Kinzer 90). The U.S. considered Guatemalan agrarian
reform to be propaganda itself. In the U.S. it was thought that agrarian reform would
spread across Central America because it appealed to such a wide audience and because it
represented in some peoples' eyes an end to "colonialism" and "feudalism", two powerful
propagandistic terms used to describe the structures of the economy throughout the area

18. (Streeter 22).
Jacobo Arbenz had discovered plans for his overthrow six months prior to the
execution of Operation PBSUCCESS. When he disclosed documents related to the plan,
the press rejected it as being his own propaganda, and not much more. It was also
interpreted as Arbenz issuing his own propaganda as a pretext to seize dictatorial powers.
By this time there was very little belief that he was not somehow guilty of the charges of
communism (Cullather 55).
On the night Arbenz stepped down as President he addressed Guatemalans on
radio, however the transmission was partially jammed by the CIA and was largely ignored
as many tuned into the Voice of Liberation radio station, which would be shut down the
next day. Arbenz's speech was not allowed to be printed for over a month after it was
made. Arbenz talked to Guatemala:
"Workers, peasants, patriots, my friends: people of Guatemala: Guatemala is
enduring a most difficult trial. For fifteen days a cruel war against Guatemala has
been underway. The United Fruit Company, in collaboration with the governing
circles of the United States, is responsible for what is happening to us.... In whose
name have the carried out these barbaric acts? What is their banner? We know
very well. They have used the pretext of anti-communism. The truth is very
different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company
and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in
Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by
other Latin countries... I was elected by a majority of the people of Guatemala,
but I have had to fight under difficult conditions. The truth is that the sovereignty
of a people cannot be maintained without the material elements to defend it... I
took over the presidency with great faith in the democratic system, in liberty and
in the possibility of achieving economic independence for Guatemala. I continue
to believe that this program is just. I have not violated my faith in democratic
liberties, in the independence of Guatemala and in all the good which is the future
of humanity..."
In a nearly prophetic voice Arbenz went on to say:
"A government different from mine, but always inspired by our October

19. revolution, is preferable to twenty years of fascist bloody tyranny under the rule of
the bands which Castillo Armas has brought into the country...(Schlesinger and
Kinzer 199-200)"
events and evaluation
Castillo Armas returned all expropriated land to the United Fruit Company upon
taking power and returned their original contract.
The Department of Justice had its eye on the United Fruit Company for some time
and filed an antitrust suit right after Armas became President of Guatemala. John Dulles
did not mind as it served to distance the U.S. government from the UFC. The suit gave
an appearance of objectivity for the Eisenhower administration and did not end until
1958, despite heavy lobbying by United Fruit. United Fruit Company eventually had to
give land to locals and give them a share of the market by order of the Department of
Justice and in another suit had to relinquish their controlling interest in the IRCA
Railroad Company. Eventually United Fruit Company sold all remaining land holdings
to the Del Monte corporation (Schlesinger and Kinzer 220,229). Even the United Fruit
Company did not come out a winner in the years after the replacement of Arbenz.
In documents later found at United Fruit Company warehouses many years later,
correspondence of company lobbyists in Central America showed how the company
enjoyed access to generals, presidents, and labor inspectors. These letters joked of how
the company was lying about corporate profits to local officials, how they were able to get
taxes lowered and how they were able to change labor laws (Bourgois 107). It was this
far-reaching influence and advantage which eventually earned the United Fruit Company

20. the nickname "El Pulpo", which means "The Octopus".
Three years of Armas in office was less than stable, and he survived multiple
internal attempts to overthrow him. Armas endured a scandal from which he never
recovered regarding the importation of corn, corn which later turned out to be unfit for
consumption. Armas had received an amount of money from the importers and many
students in Guatemala interpreted it as bribery. Armas denied any foul play, claiming that
it was a repayment for a personal loan. Sometime later Armas's government officers were
treated with hostility in a public ceremony, and Arbas declared a state of siege, ordering
the military to suppress all strikes from labor groups because it was part of a larger
Communist plot. Armas was killed on July 27, 1957 in his official palace residence by a
lone gunman who then immediately killed himself (Schlesinger and Kinzer 235).
From 1955 to 1985 in Guatemala about 150,000 people died and another 40,000
went missing as a result of the unrest in the country. CIA agent Philip Roettinger, who
was involved in Operation PBSUCCESS, said "Our success (led to) repressive military
rule and the deaths of more than 100,000 Guatemalans. Furthermore, the
overthrow...destroyed vital social and economic reforms, including land distribution,
social security, and trade union rights. Thirty years later, Nicaraguans finally have such
benefits, Guatemalans and Hondurans are still waiting (LaFeber 361)."
by Patrick Warren
Works Cited

21. Aybar de Soto, J.M. (1978). Dependency and Intervention: The Case of Guatemala in
1954. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Bourgois, P. (2003). One Hundred Years of United Fruit Company Letters. In S. Striffler
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