UNITED FRUIT COUNTRY

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP75-00001R000100050030-9
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
November 11, 2016
Document Release Date: 
October 1, 1998
Sequence Number: 
30
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
July 8, 1968
Content Type: 
NSPR
File: 
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PDF icon CIA-RDP75-00001R000100050030-9.pdf90.89 KB
Body: 
S oe Sanitized NAA 2ION~ 8 July 1968 FOIAb3b FOIAb3b .CPYRGHT CPYRGHT CPYRGHT THE GUATEMALA TRAVELER: A Concise History and Guide. By Selden Rodman. ,'1errdirlt Presc, 127 pp. 55.95. WARREN SLOAT Mr. Slow, a ne.rapaper man who has puh- li.c/ied in Liberation. Ramparts, the Satur- day Review and other publications, is gathering material for a book on Gualr- rn a /a. .-,em year uatema a will ce e rate the fifteenth anniversary of its deliverance from what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles liked to call "the yoke of com- munism." If there is any cclchratior, it will he arranged where most of Guate- mala's affairs are arranged. in the United States. When the Central Intelligence Agency, tIte United Fruit Co., and Guatemalan rightists teamed up to overthrow the pro- gressive recimc of president Jacoho Arhenz Guzmen in 1954, it was hailed in the United States as the first cold-war , ictory. Lohhyists talked it up for inject- the lift:e Central American nation wi? -nnomic miracle juice. What more appro;,, - showcase for the cornucopia -of good rc inns with the United States ahan the cow that "came back from communism"I Yet despite considerable :std, includ- ing string pulling at the World Bank, Guatemala "has known little but stagnant dictatorship and corruption since 1954," as Dan Kurzman wrote in The Washing- ion Post in 1966. Two Maryknoll priests, expelled for aiding leftist guerrillas, have called it the next Vietnam. It has become trapped in what the Guatemalan revolu- tion. which ended with Arhenz's over- throw, sought to eliminate: political re- pression. illiteracy and landlessnecs, conomic im perm lism. One would; never now it, however, from reading the latest work of Sekien Rodman, former nemesis of nonrepresen- tational art and now an author of non- representational history. His factual er- rors (such as making a colonel of Jorge oriello, a civilian leader of the 1944 rev- lution) are evidences of his haste in urning out his series on Latin America. But more important is his blend of lih- ral cant ahout the need for reform and is attack on any authentic reform in a ok suffused with the anti-Communist enia:ity. From the election of Juan Jose Areva- o in 1945 until 1951, Guatemala under- ent a little New Deal. A new constitu- ion guaranteed civil liberties unprece- ented in most of Latin America: a labor 4LrIKIe was esiarimneu anu e orma ton of unions allowed; social security was begun; Arevalo, an educator, threw him- self into a flurry of school building and literacy programs. While paying the ohli ;- atory respects to these innovations, Rod- man comes tip with three points with which to quibble: Arevalo grew critical of the good old U.S.A., allowed Arbenz to become President, and acquiesced in the murder of armed forces chief, Fran- cisco Arana. In making his case, Rodman ignores the temper of U.S.-Guatemala relations through the period-exemplified by U.S. Ambassador Richard Patterson's chronic plotting to overthrow Arevalo-since to deal with it runs the risk that Arevalo's growing anti-Americanism might make sense. To examine the alternatives to Ar- henz, likewise, might be unnerving. To link the killing of Arana to a cluster of plots against the regime might damage the argument. Rodman accepts the tradition that links the Anccnz regime, through a care- ful selection of facts, to communism, There were no Communists in Arhenz's cabinet, as even the most rahid anti-Com- munist writers have admitted, nor was there anything remotely resembling com- munism in his program. Though political freedoms continued and though the gov- ernment concentrated on a restrained but effective agrarian reform program to ex- propriate idle land on large estates, Rod- man calls it a "Dictatorship of the Left." Meanwhile, according to Rodman's scenario, United Fruit officials traveled in sackcloth and ashes. "United Fruit's 'image' could not he lived down by pen- itence and good works." he writes, "not even by giving its employees unprece- dented social benefits" (which the "now all-'owerful unions" apparently had not thought to demand) nor "hy giving up its stock ownership in the International Rail- ways of Central America to bury the charge that it was a stockholder and pre- ferred customer at the same time." Rodman has a habit of reducing plain facts )q 'charges." That the railway was io'e'fect a subsidiary of the fruit com- pany is pivotal to an understanding of ne of Guatemala's central problems: in- erlocking foreign control of basic trans- ortation and communication. Though the author spares no pains in etailing the company's selfless devotion o the people of Guatemala. Guatema- ans enigmatically continue to hurl rocks hrough the United Fruit Co. windows. an we attribute this to ingratitude? Not otally. Though Rodman refuses to allow hat the Guatemalans may have a legiti- ate grievance, he explains it by "psy- hological" factors-the fruit company xecutives live in larger homes, etc. In the neatest trick of the book-, - -RDP75-00 1 6t(ldoftD-9 Continued