Washington Unmakes Guatemala, 1954

by Matthew Ward, COHA Research Fellow

1. Introduction

 

On June 18, 1954, the roar of a C-47 transport plane broke the early morning tranquility in Guatemala City. [1] As the plane approached the capital, it swooped menacingly towards the presidential palace, before veering abruptly upward, leaving only a hail of fluttering paper in its wake. This visitation presaged even more momentous events for the tiny Central American republic. Demanding the immediate resignation of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, constitutional president of Guatemala, the leaflets dropped by the mysterious plane promised that it would later return – this time with bombs.

 

Later that evening, a “rather ramshackle army” [2] of exiles and mercenaries under the leadership of exiled Guatemalan military officer Carlos Castillo Armas crossed the border from Honduras into Guatemala and seized the frontier post at La Florida. Meanwhile, (The Voice of Liberation), a mysterious radio station from an undisclosed source that had suddenly appeared on the airwaves a month earlier, immediately began reporting Armas’ lightning advance. Confusion and fear reigned in the city of 500,000 people and over the next 10 days, uncertainty steadily increased. Some sources intimated the imminent arrival of a formidable rebel army to the capital, while others assured the frantic populace that the rebels had been driven into the sea. Meanwhile, the belligerent broadcasts of La Voz de la Liberación continued, punctuated by occasional air raids on the capital and a government-enforced blackout across the capital city.

 

Finally, on June 27, 1954, President Arbenz announced his resignation.  He quickly retreated to the safety of the Mexican Embassy, convinced that his administration stood no chance against an attack he believed was directed from Washington. The U.S. government firmly denied any role in the ousting of Arbenz, although they certainly expressed their satisfaction that a Communist threat in Central America had been quashed by an “indigenous revolution.”  Arbenz’s capitulation signaled the end of Guatemala’s short-lived experience of democracy and heralded the beginning of more than 40 years of brutal dictatorship, entailing constant civil warfare, government oppression and massive human rights abuses. It was not until the 1990s that the United States officially acknowledged its own role in the affair.

 

The release in 2003 of over 12,850 pages of intelligence documentation—the  majority of the documentation detailing the U.S.’s role in the 1954 coup in Guatemala—as part of the CIA’s “openness” initiative has provided researchers with an opportunity to re-evaluate the factors that compelled the United States to intervene in the domestic affairs of Guatemala. Previous scholarship on the subject has been extensive—Cullather refers to the event as “one of the best known and most analyzed covert operations.” [3] Yet there has been considerable disagreement over both the nature of the Arbenz regime and the reasons for the U.S.’s persistent opposition to his government. A number of scholars agree that the Arbenz regime was essentially nationalist in nature, but they disagree as to the reasons for U.S. belligerence. [4] Schlesinger and Kinzer considered Washington’s intervention to have been a manifestation of economic imperialism, while Immerman believed U.S. opposition was the result of misperceptions rooted in a Cold War ideology, which caused the United States mistakenly to believe they were dealing with a disguised Communist state. Other scholars, such as Schneider and Gleijeses, have presented evidence that Guatemala was, in fact, a nation heavily influenced by Communism, but they disagree about whether this was justification for U.S. intervention. [5] Gleijeses contends that the Guatemalan state was no threat to U.S. interests, and that the likelihood of a Communist takeover in the country was slim. Considering the awful results of the U.S. intervention, Gleijeses describes the act as one of “wanton criminal negligence.” [6]

 

This study will analyze the realities of Guatemalan social and political life and investigate the U.S. government’s attitude towards developments in the region.  Drawing on the CIA record declassified in 2003 and other sources, this paper attempts to evaluate the current debate among international relations scholars about whether the use of force by the U.S. government predominantly reflects a paradigm of economic imperialism or political imperialism.  It will go on to present a model for understanding the dynamics of the U.S. decision to overthrow Arbenz and the role of social groups in decision-making by applying Allison’s model of bureaucratic politics.  This model suggests that there were a number of national, organizational and personal factors in the 1950s that led to U.S. political domination of Guatemala, setting the tone for U.S. policy for years to come. [7]

 

[1] Schlesinger, S. and Kinzer, S. (1982), Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Sinclair Browne: London.

[2] Allen W. Dulles, My Answer to the Bay of Pigs, p. 16, AWD Papers, Box 138, ML.

[3] Cullather, N. (1999), Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954, Stanford University Press: Stanford, p. ix.

[4] Schlesinger, S. and Kinzer, S. (1982), Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Sinclair Browne: London. Immerman, R. H. (1982), The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, University of Texas Press: Austin.

[5] Gleijeses, P. (1991), Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954, Princeton University Press: Princeton. Schneider, R. (1958), Communism in Guatemala, 1944–1954, Praeger: New York.

[6] Gleijeses, P. (1999), “Afterword”, in Cullather, Secret History, p. xxix.

[7] Allison, G. T. (1971), Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Little, Brown and Company: Boston.

Return to Main Page of Matt Ward's piece.

© 2004. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs. All Rights Reserved.
1250 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 1C Washington, D.C. 20036, USA
Tel. (202) 223-4975 Fax (202) 223-6035
For contacts, suggestions and comments: coha@coha.org