THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR --- Episode 34

THE CIA OVERTHREW THE IRANIAN REGIME OF MOSSADEQ IN 1953 AND AMERICA WAS OFF AND 
RUNNING IN ITS QUEST TO BULLY EVERYBODY 

The American were also grateful. Previously frozen out of Iranian oil production, five U.S, oil companies now received 40 percent ownership of the new consortium established to develop Iranian oil. [ Market economics works even better when the CIA is helping. ] And the United States opened its coffers to the shah. Within two weeks of the coup, the United States granted Iran $68 million in emergency aid, with more than $100 million more soon to follow. The United States had gained an ally and access to an enormous supply of oil but in the process had outraged the citizens of a proud nation whose resentment at the overthrow of their popular prime minister and imposition of a repressive regime would later come back to haunt it. The shah continued to rule for more than twenty-five years, with strong U.S. backing, by fixing elections and relying on the repressive power of SAVAK, his newly created intelligence service.

The CIA, having toppled its first government, now saw itself as capable of replicating the feat elsewhere and would attempt to do so repeatedly in succeeding years. The Soviets, therefore, instead of seeing a softening of U.S. policy in the aftermath of Stalin's death, saw the United States impose another puppet government in a nation with which the Soviet Union shared a thousand-kilometer border as part of an ongoing strategy of enrichment. 

On the heels of this "success" in Iran, the Eisenhower administration targeted the small, impoverished Central American nation of Guatemala. Guatemalan had suffered under a brutal U.S.-backed dictator, Jorge Ubico, whom they overthrew in 1944. Before the reform government took power, 2 percent of the population owned 60 percent of the land, while 50 percent of the people eked out a living on only 3 percent of the land. The Indian half of Guatemala's population barely survived on less than 50 cents per day. In 1950, Guatemalans elected the handsome, charismatic thirty-eight-year-old Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman president in an election remarkable for its fairness. At his March 1951 inauguration, he declared his commitment to social justice and reform.

     All the riches of Guatemala are not as important as the life, the freedom, the dignity, the health and the happiness of the most humble of its people . . . we must distribute these riches so that those who have less ---and they are the immense majority ---- benefit more, while those who have more --- and they are few --- also benefit, but to a lesser extent. How could it be otherwise, given the poverty, the poor health, and the lack of education of our people. 

The U.S. media wasted little time in denouncing Guatemala's Communist "tyranny," beginning its assault long before Arbenz had time to start implementing his reform agendum. In June, the New York Times decried "The Guatemalan Cancer," registering "a sense of deep disappointment and disillusionment over the trend of Guatemalan politics in the two months since Colonel Arbenz became President." The editors took particular umbrage at the growth of Communist influence, complaining that "the Government's policy is either running parallel to,  or is a front for, Russian imperialism in Central America." The Washington Post carried an editorial a few months later titled "Red Cell in Guatemala" that branded the new president of Guatemala's Congress a "straight party liner" and denounced Arbenz as little more than a tool. 

Ignoring his critics, Arbenz set out to modernize Guatemala's industry and agriculture and develop its mineral resources. To do so meant challenging the power of the UNITED FRUIT COMPANY, which dominated the Guatemalan economy. Called "the octopus" by Guatemalans, United Fruit reached its tentacle-like arms deep into railroads, ports, shipping, and especially banana plantations. Arbenz announced plans for a massive land reform program beginning with the nationalization of 234,000 acres of United Fruit Company land, more than 90 percent of which the company as not using. In all, the company's 550,000 acres represented approximately one-fifth of Guatemala's arable land. Arbenz offered to compensate United Fruit in the amount of $600,000, based on the company's own greatly underpriced assessment of the land's value in previous tax returns. The company demanded more.  Arbenz took steps to appropriate another 173,000 acres. The public relations pioneer and master propagandist Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, had already launched a campaign to brand Arbenz a Communist. He found willing allies at the New York Times . Bernays paid a visit to Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Dutifully, the Times soon began publishing articles about the Communist threat in Guatemala. Leading congressmen, including Henry Cabot Lodge, WHOSE FAMILY HAD GORGED ON UNITED FRUIT FOR DECADES, decried this growing Communist menace.