UNITED FRUIT COUNTRY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• 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
• Publication Date: July 8, 1968
• Content Type: NSPR

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8 July 1968
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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