Suchergebnisse

Argues that the 1961 US-backed invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles was approved because of a lack of communication between the president and the CIA; based on a review of recently declassified documents and interviews.

Sir, is there to be no limit to our benevolence for these People? There is a point, beyond which, even parental bounty and natural affection cease to impose an obligation. That point has been attained with the States of Spanish America.1Of course there was sympathy for the Spanish American rebels in the United States. How could it have been otherwise? The rebels were fighting Spain, long an object of hatred and contempt. This alone justified goodwill, as did the hope for increased trade and the prospect of a significant loss of European influence in the hemisphere.2But how deep did this sympathy run?In the Congressional debates of the period there was much more enthusiasm for the cause of the Greeks than that of the Spanish Americans.3Similarly, the press referred frequently to private collections of funds ('liberal donations') for the Greek fighters – not for the Spanish Americans. This is not surprising. The US public could feel a bond with the Greeks – 'it will become even quitefashionableto assist the descendants of those who were the bulwark of light and knowledge in old times, in rescuing themselves from the dominion of a barbarian race'.4Unlike the Greeks, however, the Spanish Americans were of dubious whiteness. Unlike the Greeks, they hailed not from a race of giants, but – when they were white – from degraded Spanish stock.5Some US citizens felt for them the kinship of a common struggle against European colonial rule; others agreed with John Quincy Adams: 'So far as they were contending for independence, I wished well to their cause; but I had seen and yet see no prospect that they would establish free or liberal institutions of government.

In the late morning of 18 July 1949, several armed men sped from Guatemala City in two cars. Near a small bridge, the Puente de la Gloria, they waited for Francisco Arana, Chief of the Armed Forces of Guatemala. They did not have to wait for long. As Arana and his three companions approached the Puente de la Gloria, 'there was, on the other side, a grey Dodge, because of which, seeing that it was impossible to cross the bridge, Col. Arana stopped the car'.1A brief shoot-out ensued. Arana lay dead. There was no investigation of his murder. His assassins were never apprehended.

On 18 July 1949, Francisco Arana, chief of the armed forces of Guatemala, was murdered. Arana played a decisive role in the overthrow of Federico Ponce, whose demise on 20 October 1944 marked the beginning of the Guatemalan revolution. The article inquires whether Arana was the victim of a power struggle among military factions, and whether he was defending Guatemala's democracy or plotting against it. How Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown by the USA in June 1954 is briefly outlined

The cry for land is, without any doubt, the loudest, the most dramatic and the most desperate sound in Guatemala.' So wrote the Guatemalan bishops in 1988. In their country's long history, the bishops stated, only one president – Jacobo Arbenz – had addressed the issue of land reform.1Inaugurated in 1951, Arbenz presided over the most successful agrarian reform in the history of Central America. The reports of the US embassy bear testimony to the fact that within eighteen months land was distributed to 100,000 peasant families, amid little violence and without adversely affecting production.2Praise for initiating the reform does not belong, however, solely to Arbenz. As his wife observed, 'Alone, he could not have done it'. Praise should also be given to the Communist party of Guatemala, whose leaders were Arbenz's closest personal and political friends.3

On 15 March 1945 Juan José Arévalo became president of Guatemala. His inauguration marked the beginning of an unprecedented democratic parenthesis – 'spring in the land of eternal tyranny '1– a spring that ended abruptly with the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954.Arévalo was an anti-communist, a nationalist, and a reformer. He was an anti-communist who believed that individual communists should not be persecuted unless they violated the law. He was a nationalist who accepted that Guatemala was in the US sphere of influence. He was a reformer who eschewed radical change.