THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR ---- Episode 35

   THE UNITED STATES OVERTHROWS REGIME IN 
  GUATEMALA IN THE MID--1950s

Truman took heed of the alleged Communist threat emanating from Guatemala. In April 1952, he hosted a state dinner for Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, who had long been persona non grata in Washington. Somoza assured State department officials that if the United States would provide the arms, he and exiled Guatemalan colonel Carlos Castillo Armas would get rid of Arbenz. The Truman administration decided to overthrow Arben in September 1952 but reversed course when US involvement was exposed. 

Eisenhower had no such compunctions. He appointed Jack Peurifoy as his ambassador to Guatemala. Peurifoy, who spoke no Spanish, had been serving in Greece, where his role in helping restore the monarchy to power had earned him the sobriquet "the butcher of Athens." A photo of the Greek royal family still adorned his desk. His penchant for wearing a gun in his belt led to his wife to nickname him "pistol packing Peurifoy." Before Greece, he had helped purge the State Department of liberals and leftists. Arbenz invited the new U.S. ambassador and his wife to dinner. They clashed for six hours over Communist influence in the Guatemalan government, land reform, and treatment of United Fruit. Peurifoy sent Secretary of State Dulles a long cable detailing their discussion that concluded,"I am definitely convinced that if the President is not a communist, he will certainly do until one comes along." 

In Peurifoy's mind, that equated to being a tool of Moscow :"Communism is directed by the Kremlin all over the world, and anyone who thinks differently doesn't know what he is talking about." In reality, Guatemalan communism was indigenous and the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo was independent of the Soviet Union. The Communists held only four of the fifty-six seats in Congress and no cabinet posts. The party had approximately 4,000 members in a population of 3.5 million. 

To suggest that United Fruit had friends among the high and mighty in the Eisenhower administration would be an understatement. The Dulles brothers ' law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, had written United Fruit's 1930 and 1936 agreements with Guatemala. Allen Dulles's predecessor at the CIA, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith, would become vice president of the company in 1955. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, John Moors Cabot was a major shareholder. His brother, Thomas Dudley Cabot, the director of international security affairs in the State Department, had been president of United Fruit. NSC head Robert Cutler had been chairman of the board. John J. McCloy was a former board member. And U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica Robert Hill would later join the board. 

Concerns about the United Fruit interests reinforced the Eisenhower administration's deep-seated anticommunism. In August 1953, administration officials decided to take Arbenz down through covert action. One U.S. official cautioned, "Were it to become known that the United States had tried a Czechoslovakia in Guatemala, the effect on our relations in this hemisphere, and probably in the world. . . could be . . . disastrous." Undeterred, Allen Dulles asked Iran coup instigator Kim Roosevelt to lead "Operation Success," but Roosevelt declined, not trusting that the operation's title reflected the prospects on the ground. Dulles then chose Colonel Albert Haney, a former South Korea station chief, as field commander with Tracy Barnes as chief of political warfare.  As Tim Weiner points out in his history of the CIA, Barnes had the classic CIA resume' of that era. Raised on Long Island's Whitney estate, replete with its own private golf course, he matriculated at Groton, Yale, and Harvard Law. Serving with the OSS in World War II, he captured a garrison, earning him a Silver Star. But because Barnes had a reputation as a bumbler, former CIA director Walter Bedell Smith, a Dulles' protege', was tasked with overseeing the operation.

In January 1954, word leaked out that the United States was collaborating with Colonel Castillo Armas to train the invading force. The Guatemalan government then turned to Czechoslovakia for a shipload of arms. The United States loudly decried Soviet penetration of the hemisphere. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Alexander Wiley, described the allegedly "massive" shipment as "part of the master plan of world communism." The Speaker of the House deemed it an atom bomb in America's backyard. 

In a surprising reversal, New York Times correspondent Sydney Gruson began providing coverage of the unfolding Guatemalan crisis that accurately captured that Nation's outrage over U.S bullying and accusations. Gruson had just been allowed back into the country after having been expelled by the government as "undesirable" in February. On May 21, he wrote that U.S. pressure had "boomeranged," inspiring "a greater degree of national unity than Guatemala has experienced in a long time." Even Guatemalan newspapers "that normally are in constant opposition," he reported, "have rallied to defend the Government's action." "Both newspapers, he noted, had "assailed what they termed the United States willingness to provide arms to right-wing dictators in the hemisphere while refusing to fulfill Guatemala's legitimate needs." In another front- page article the following day, Gruson recounted the Guatemalan foreign minister's charge that the U.S. State Department was aiding exiles abroad and domestic dissidents who were trying to overthrow the government. He reported that the State Department had pressured Guatemala to raise its compensation to United Fruit to $16 million and quoted the foreign minister's assertion that "Guatemala is not a colony of the United States nor an associated state that requires permission of the United States Government to acquire the things indispensable for its defense and security, and it repudiates the pretension of the United States to supervise the legitimate acts of a sovereign government." On the twenty-fourth, Gruson insisted that the United States had chosen the wrong issue to make a stand on and had only sparked a "great upsurge of nationalism" and anti-Americanism. GRUSON'S DAYS As A TIMES REPORTER IN GUATEMALA WERE NUMBERED.  Over dinner, Allen Dulles spoke to his friend Times business manager Julius Adler, who conveyed the administrations's complaints to publisher Sulzberger. GRUSON WAS SENT PACKING TO MEXICO CITY.