President Dwight Eisenhower and Guatemala
excerpted from the book
Lying for Empire
How to Commit War Crimes With A Straight Face
by David Model
p79
In 1954, the American government successfully orchestrated the overthrow of the freely elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and replaced him with their hand-picked alternative.
p81
... nationalist ambitions in developing country where the government sought to become independent of Washington's influence were usually interpreted on the surface as communist subversion whereas the greater threat was a weakening of the American sphere of influence. As well, redistributing wealth or land was usually a sign that the government was apparently poisoned by communist subversion. Gabriel Kolko, in Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy 1945-1980, points out that:
Both privately and publicly, each [Eisenhower and Truman] attributed to the Russians a transcendent ability to shape events in the most remote countries, and even when they did not initiate them they almost invariably knew how to exploit them... Russia "seeks world rule through the domination of all governments by the International Communist Party" as John Foster Dulles typically put it in 1957. Such conspiracies included "extreme nationalism" as one of its tools. And he found their alleged ability "to get control of mass movements" uncanny.
According to a number of scholars, the hypothesis that international Communism infiltrated developing world political and economic structures for the purpose of establishing a communist government was inaccurate and missed the real motivations for American foreign policy which was to expand the American Empire.
One possible rationale for American anti-communist policies was their notion that a government which implemented a social and economic system fundamentally different from the U.S. system must be infiltrated with communist conspirators. Governments which attempted to construct an economic system which was not based on the market system threatened the sanctity of the United States social and economic system which, in fact, serves the interests of the wealthy. The fear was that an alternative system that was perceived as more fair and equitable might undermine faith in the American system. The fear was well founded since today the United States has one of the highest poverty rates, infant mortality rates, incarceration rates, and murder rates in the industrialized world. It also has some of the poorest educational, health-care, and welfare systems. So when freely elected governments in Nicaragua or Guatemala implemented progressive land reforms, labour laws, and welfare systems that benefited everyone, they evoked fear in American elites that such ideas might become infectious. To discredit governments that posed these threats, the U.S. government condemned them as having been infiltrated by Communists. The United States claim that Nicaragua and Guatemala were threats to the U.S. because of communist infiltration was ludicrous. When President Reagan warned that Nicaragua was only two days from Brownsville Texas, his administration's intention was not to warn of a real threat (a silly notion) to U.S. security, but to evoke fear in order to justify intervention. William Blum, in Killing Hope: US. Military and CIA Intervention Since World War II, points out that:
In cases such as the above-mentioned Grenada, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, even if the particular target of intervention does not present an immediate lucrative economic opportunity for American multinationals, the target's socialist-revolutionary program and rhetoric does present a threat and a challenge, which the United States has repeatedly felt obliged to stamp out, to maintain the principle, and as a warning to others; for what the US has always feared from the Third World is the emergence of a good example: a flourishing socialist society independent of Washington.
Noam Chomsky, in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, echoes the same theme when'-
Why do we have to get rid of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? In reality it's not because anybody really thinks that they're a communist power about to conquer the Hemisphere-it's because they were carrying out social programs that were beginning to succeed, and which would have appealed to other people in Latin America who want the same things.
p83
... Edward Herman, in Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in the Age of Propaganda, offers the same analysis that:
A basic feature of the MIC [Military-Industrial Complex] is that it keeps developing weapons that the contractors want to sell. The point is to command resources, maintain and enlarge profits, and produce jobs. Missions are needed to justify weapons acquisition, and they are usually couched in terms of some threat, some niche that has to be filled to protect our national security.
William Blum, in Killing Hope, suggests that:
... one must examine the role of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. The members of this network need enemies-the military and the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]-because enemies are their reason d'etre; industry, specifically the defense contractors, because enemies are to be fought with increasingly sophisticated weaponry and aircraft systems.. . The executives of these corporations... who continue to use their positions, their wealth, and their influence ... to nourish and to perpetuate the fear of communism, the enemy ...
p86
Seventy percent of the land [in Guatemala] was owned by only 2.2% of the population.
p86
... the United Fruit Company whose major crop was bananas. The United Fruit Company was originally the Boston Fruit Company founded by Minor C. Keith whose original project was to build railways in Central America. In order to finance his railway business he began to sell bananas and by 1883 owned three banana companies which became known as the United Fruit Company in 1899. It had become the largest producers of bananas in the world. Much of the cultivated land was providing food for the United States and not for the hungry people of Guatemala.
United Fruit Company's president persuaded other landowners to support Jorge Ubico for president in the mid-nineteen thirties. The United Fruit Company was then granted more land and a 99-year lease on all its land which now comprised half of the land in Guatemala. The Company was also relieved of virtually any taxation, import duties, and export taxes and was allowed to greatly undervalue the worth of its land for taxation purposes. By 1936, the Company paid virtually no taxes.
p91
Arbenz won the next election in 1951 with the support of everyone but the upper class receiving 60 percent of the vote. His intention was to expand the reforms and programs which were introduced by Arévalo. His objectives were to create an independent modern industrial economy in order to raise the living standards of Guatemalans and to reach out to the Mayan population in order to assess what they wanted.
While his programs were egalitarian, they were not communist in nature. He believed in capitalism with a heart.
p91
The large landowners constituted 2.2% of the population but owned 70% of the land.
p92
An example of the frustration of the Arbenz government over idle land was the fact that only 15% of the 550,000 acres of the United Fruit Company's land was under cultivation.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/Eisenhower_Guatemala_LFE.html
