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Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
Bitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.
374 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
June 25, 2009
I learned that part of the reason we have a "so-called immigration" problem is due to the good old greed of American capitalism. We get involved in Latin America and train people for coups and put in dictators in order to keep the status quo and then people wonder why people flock to the States from Latin America! An amazing and eye-opening read!
April 14, 2020
This is another one of those works of histories that should be required reading for all American schoolchildren. Adults too. If you aren't already aware of the vicious and silly depths that your government or its subsidiary companies (here United Fruit) will go in the name of "democracy" and "freedom" to perpetuate anything but, then this would a good place to start.
The skinny: non-dictator doesn't do what he wants us too and dares start doing things for his people; but watch out! When you start nationalizing the holdings of a predatory, foreign company (United Fruit) because you want your people to benefit from the resources of the land they're standing, you're going to stir up trouble! Despite the fact that the Communist influence over Arbenz was minimal and that intelligence estimates were pooh-poohing the idea that Guatemala was about fall to Communism, guess what United Fruit did? Those assholes h ired a bunch of lobbyists and know-howers who swayed the Eisenhower administration slash CIA to oust the Arbenz government through a series of false threats, actual threats, pitiful bombings and lots of political pressure to create a fake "uprising".
Goes to show how fake threats to American "security" are little more than threats to the sovereignty of other peoples who don't do what we like. Shameful!
The skinny: non-dictator doesn't do what he wants us too and dares start doing things for his people; but watch out! When you start nationalizing the holdings of a predatory, foreign company (United Fruit) because you want your people to benefit from the resources of the land they're standing, you're going to stir up trouble! Despite the fact that the Communist influence over Arbenz was minimal and that intelligence estimates were pooh-poohing the idea that Guatemala was about fall to Communism, guess what United Fruit did? Those assholes h ired a bunch of lobbyists and know-howers who swayed the Eisenhower administration slash CIA to oust the Arbenz government through a series of false threats, actual threats, pitiful bombings and lots of political pressure to create a fake "uprising".
Goes to show how fake threats to American "security" are little more than threats to the sovereignty of other peoples who don't do what we like. Shameful!
October 31, 2012
I ordered this book because I had to give a conference in Guatemala and was confused about the beginning of the country's long armed conflict. I figured this was a good place to start, and it was. It helped me understand better not only the American role in Guatemala, but also a lot of the current attitudes and opinions in Latin America about work, big international companies and America.
Unlike some reviewers, I don't find it biased at all, in fact I read it without much knowledge of the conflict and understood clearly both sides of it. This isn't a story about good innocent guys suffering from the hands of bad gringos, it's a story about wrong incentives both among Guatemalans and owners of the United Fruit Company.
I currently work in a Mexican company started by one of the 150,000 Guatemalan immigrants of the 80s. I had never given much thought on this before, but now I can even relate better to the history of my own job and the nature of some cultural traits I find both in Mexicans and Guatemalans.
Unlike some reviewers, I don't find it biased at all, in fact I read it without much knowledge of the conflict and understood clearly both sides of it. This isn't a story about good innocent guys suffering from the hands of bad gringos, it's a story about wrong incentives both among Guatemalans and owners of the United Fruit Company.
I currently work in a Mexican company started by one of the 150,000 Guatemalan immigrants of the 80s. I had never given much thought on this before, but now I can even relate better to the history of my own job and the nature of some cultural traits I find both in Mexicans and Guatemalans.
May 15, 2013
This, like Kinzer's All the Shah's Men, is a very readable history designed for the non-specialist. Unlike some histories, the authors do not conceal their disdain for those Washington policy-makers, most particularly the Dulles brothers, who destroyed the fledgling Guatemalan democracy's attempts at moderate social reform and consigned the country to decades of civil war. Sadly, this is but a case study of the typically short-sighted and self-interested motives which inspire much of the foreign policy of the United States of America.
August 28, 2020
Damning historical expose probes the American coup d'etat against Jacobo Arbenz's left-leaning government in Guatemala. Kinzer and Schlesinger do a fine job sketching Guatemalan history and culture, showing that small nation slowly but inexorably moving from military rule towards fragile democracy...until America stepped in and squashed them. The book leaves no doubt about United Fruit's role in triggering the coup, warping a liberal nationalist government into "Communists" for the sake of corporate profits and American hegemony. The details of the coup, carried out by disgruntled Guatemalan rightists and foreign mercenaries, are bizarre yet fascinating; the consequences, a decades-long civil war which ravaged Guatemala until the 1990s, are horrifying to contemplate. As many places in the Cold War and beyond, America's intervention here neither made Guatemala safe for democracy nor rescued it from Communism; it merely turned an already-struggling Third World state into a nightmare.
August 10, 2016
Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, is an account on the US orchestrated plot to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala and replace it with a pliant dictator, in order to prop up a fruit company. As ridiculous as that sounds, it happened. Stephen Kinzer takes a journalistic approach to this story, mixing hard bitten backroom dealing in both Washington and Guatemala City with history and corporate affairs. Dulles and Eisenhower are two of the American instigators, as well as the US ambassador to Guatemala and the US representative to the United Nations, to name just a few. Many of the coup backers state-side eventually wound up working for the United Fruit company a few years after the fact.
The Guatemalan government had only been a successful democracy for 10 years before the 1954 coup d'etat. Guatemala in 1944 was impoverished, and mostly controlled by United Fruit, so the democratic coup sought land reform, and a greater slice of the economic pie for Guatemalans, things which the US was able to label as "communist." The President of Guatemala at the time of the coup, Jacobo Arbenz, began to nationalize unused tracts of land owned by United Fruit (back-up land with no crops growing on it) and compensating the company for the lands declared value (which was ironically deflated so United Fruit could dodge taxes). This did not sit well with the United Fruit board of directors, who were also struggling with modernizing labour laws and racial equality, things they also did not like. With a large and powerful corporate lobbying group in D.C., United Fruit was easily able to convince the top dogs in the US that a coup was necessary.
Justification of the coup required a pliant individual to take power. After much deliberating, the CIA settled on Carlos Castillo Armas, a disgruntled former solider turned rebel. He was backed by the US's Flying Tiger squadron and the governments of Honduras and Nicaragua, both ruled by US-puppet dictators. All of this was supported by covert propaganda campaigns, including setting up a rebel radio station, using the US embassy in Guatemala City as a covert operations base, and fudging the press back in the US. The coup, carried out in 1954, was almost a failure, but was eventually successful, with Arbenez fleeing to Mexico in exile. Armas took power for three years, before he was assassinated, and replaced by a string of dictators in the short run. Armas' time in office was marked by corruption, authoritarianism, and the use of death squads on labour and peasant interests within the country.
Kinzer's book is a blow by blow account of the coup, and the key players involved in setting it up, as well as the reasons why it happened, in theory to combat communism, in reality, to help United Fruit avoid paying taxes or having to help build the Guatemalan economy. The Guatemalan coup was Machiavellian politics in action, and the disreputable backroom shenanigans that went on to plan it is mind boggling. This coup disrupted democracy in Guatemala for decades, and was directly responsible for countless deaths and disappearances during Guatemala's authoritarian period. The principle characters and their motivations and nuances is interesting, as is the planning, execution and aftermath of the coup itself. Kinzer's book is frankly biased, of course, as it is wholly against the coup, but the book is well written and nuanced, offering some perspective from the United Fruit/United States. Even so, the account is interesting and well written, and the history of the coup is one of a big bully picking on a small fry. Recommended for those interested in US foreign policy, Cold War history and the like.
The Guatemalan government had only been a successful democracy for 10 years before the 1954 coup d'etat. Guatemala in 1944 was impoverished, and mostly controlled by United Fruit, so the democratic coup sought land reform, and a greater slice of the economic pie for Guatemalans, things which the US was able to label as "communist." The President of Guatemala at the time of the coup, Jacobo Arbenz, began to nationalize unused tracts of land owned by United Fruit (back-up land with no crops growing on it) and compensating the company for the lands declared value (which was ironically deflated so United Fruit could dodge taxes). This did not sit well with the United Fruit board of directors, who were also struggling with modernizing labour laws and racial equality, things they also did not like. With a large and powerful corporate lobbying group in D.C., United Fruit was easily able to convince the top dogs in the US that a coup was necessary.
Justification of the coup required a pliant individual to take power. After much deliberating, the CIA settled on Carlos Castillo Armas, a disgruntled former solider turned rebel. He was backed by the US's Flying Tiger squadron and the governments of Honduras and Nicaragua, both ruled by US-puppet dictators. All of this was supported by covert propaganda campaigns, including setting up a rebel radio station, using the US embassy in Guatemala City as a covert operations base, and fudging the press back in the US. The coup, carried out in 1954, was almost a failure, but was eventually successful, with Arbenez fleeing to Mexico in exile. Armas took power for three years, before he was assassinated, and replaced by a string of dictators in the short run. Armas' time in office was marked by corruption, authoritarianism, and the use of death squads on labour and peasant interests within the country.
Kinzer's book is a blow by blow account of the coup, and the key players involved in setting it up, as well as the reasons why it happened, in theory to combat communism, in reality, to help United Fruit avoid paying taxes or having to help build the Guatemalan economy. The Guatemalan coup was Machiavellian politics in action, and the disreputable backroom shenanigans that went on to plan it is mind boggling. This coup disrupted democracy in Guatemala for decades, and was directly responsible for countless deaths and disappearances during Guatemala's authoritarian period. The principle characters and their motivations and nuances is interesting, as is the planning, execution and aftermath of the coup itself. Kinzer's book is frankly biased, of course, as it is wholly against the coup, but the book is well written and nuanced, offering some perspective from the United Fruit/United States. Even so, the account is interesting and well written, and the history of the coup is one of a big bully picking on a small fry. Recommended for those interested in US foreign policy, Cold War history and the like.
December 18, 2021
Bitter Fruit: The American Coup in Guatemala, Stephen Schlesinger & Stephen Kinzer, 2005 (This is a 1982 book plus 36 pages of 2005 front matter and a 10-page 2005 afterword), 330pp., ISBN 067401930X, Dewey 972.81052
Focused on 1954, with enough before & after to be a good overview of what happened and why.
In short chapters, the authors take us through
-the 1954 Eisenhower/Dulles attack on the Arbenz government
-the FDR-inspired 1944 inauguration of Guatemala's first democratic, human-rights-oriented, government
-the enemy: United Fruit company (UFCO, now Chiquita), treated Guatemala as its fiefdom, and Guatemalans as its serfs
-United Fruit's successful propaganda war against Guatemala
-Eisenhower and his anti-Communist administration and CIA
-Guatemala's pre-1945 despot Ubico, democratic presidents Arévalo and Arbenz, and CIA- and United-Fruit-picked "liberator" Castillo Armas (192-193), and successive U.S.-approved despots
ix This book is about events in 1954: how the Eisenhower-Dulles administration, in service of United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) overthrew the Arbenz government.
x In 1982-1983, the Guatemalan army, aided and abetted by the Reagan administration, killed 50,000 to 75,000 mostly unarmed indigenous farmers and their families, destroyed 400 towns and villages, and violently displaced over a million people. 150,000 fled to Mexico.
xiii, 106-107 Except for Eisenhower, every U.S. official involved in the 1954 decision to overthrow Guatemala's government, had a family or business connection to United Fruit. The Cold War was a pretext.
xiv-xv The Guatemalan elite nearly unanimously opposed the Arbenz government. They enabled the U.S. coup to succeed, while U.S. coup attempts in Cuba and Nicaragua failed.
xvi The Guatemalan-elite-backed 1954 U.S. coup condemned Guatemala to 40 years of unremitting brutality and violence. xvii Supported always by the CIA.
xxviii The CIA murdered Guatemalans, hired Guatemalans to murder American citizens, and lied to the State Department, Congress, and the president to protect its secrets. When the truth came out, the Guatemalan generals the CIA had supported were fired; Guatemala's 42-year civil war ended in December 1996. xxxii, 265 200,000 deaths, the military responsible for 93% of them.
11-12, 54, 76 Arbenz had expropriated some of United Fruit's unused land. United Fruit monopolized the banana export, administered Guatemala's only important Atlantic harbor, owned almost all rail, and all telephone and telegraph in Guatemala. 15, 76, 269 United Fruit had paid $1.48/acre for the land. It demanded $15,854,849 = $75.56/acre for the unused land; Guatemala offered United Fruit's own declared value for tax purposes: $627,572 = $2.99/acre. [This disagreement led to 42 years of violence, with 200,000 dead and millions of people displaced.] 12 United Fruit's investments in Guatemala were valued at $60 million in 1954. 76 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a United Fruit investor. 75 The company had 550,000 acres of Guatemala farmland. In 1953, 209,842 acres of fallow land were expropriated. 164 Neither the company nor the U.S. Government were interested in negotiating: they overthrew Guatemala instead.
100-146 Eisenhower had called Truman, "soft on Communism." The Joseph-McCarthy-led right-wingers had helped elect Eisenhower. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a "bull who carries his china shop with him."--Winston Churchill. Dulles hired a McCarthy associate to check the "loyalty" of all U.S. ambassadors. Eisenhower approved the CIA-directed overthrow of the Arbenz government. The CIA spent an estimated $20 million to overthrow Arbenz. [So United Fruit wouldn't lose a claimed $15 million on a land deal. And mark the sequel: read on.] Allen Dulles assured UFCO that Arbenz's replacement would not be allowed to nationalize or disrupt company operations (120).
194 The CIA paid Lloyd's of London $1.5 million for a British transport ship the CIA bombed, mistakenly thinking it carried fuel for the Guatemalan army. It carried only coffee and cotton. The enormity of this act convinced Guatemala to surrender.
232-233 The U.S. gave the Castillo Armas regime $45 million per year. U.S. aid to Guatemala in 1944-1954 had totaled $600,000 all together.
55 During the 18 months the land reform was in operation, the government rented fallow land to 100,000 families, an average of 15 acres each. The government bought, at declared tax value, 16% of Guatemala's privately-owned fallow land. Land reform could have eroded the political power of the landed oligarchs, and economically and politically uplifted the common people. But its extent never seriously affected the holdings of the landed aristocracy (198).
10-11, 19, 146-157 The U.S. refused to sell arms to Guatemala, then used Guatemala's purchase of arms from Czechoslovakia as a pretext to attack Guatemala. Most of the single shipment of Czech arms was useless.
26 Guatemalans thought FDR was being sincere in his 1941 "four freedoms" speech, saying all people everywhere were entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These were among the freedoms Americans largely did have, and Guatemalans did not. Guatemalans did not know that FDR was merely engaging in doublespeak, to try to justify taking his nation to war with Japan. What FDR did not say was that the real reason he wanted to fight Japan was to win control of the crumbling European empires in the Pacific for U.S. corporations. FDR's use of the Pacific fleet to keep fuel out of Japan, to force Japan to go to war against us, had nothing to do with freedom of speech or freedom of religion. As for fear and want, FDR's speech was an attempt to create fear in his own people, so they would tighten their belts and create enough fear and want in the Japanese that they would abandon their plans for empire and cede the prize to Wall Street. The United States would not have gone to war merely to win freedoms for downtrodden foreign people. FDR's "four freedoms" speech: https://www.fdrlibrary.org/documents/...
But Guatemalans said, "Yes. We deserve those freedoms." They expelled their pro-landowner strongman government, and established their first democratic, human-rights-oriented government in 1944. It lasted until Eisenhower and Dulles overthrew it in 1954; 42 years of brutality ensued.
40, 54 Much of Guatemala's fertile land lay uncultivated. Plantations larger than 1,100 acres--0.3% of the farms--contained more than half of Guatemala's farmland. Despite abundant rich land, its inefficient use forced Guatemala to import basic foods. Large landowners feared that if indigenous people had land, cheap labor would no longer be available. 47 Three hundred families, heirs of the colonial elite (largely coffee barons), and United Fruit Company, controlled Guatemala.
47-49 "The world is moved by the ideas on which Hitler rose to power." --Juan José Arévalo, exit speech as Guatemala's president, 1951.03.15. Arévalo only barely managed to serve out his 6-year term, having survived 25+ plots. Arévalo was supported by groups bound together only by opposition to the oligarchy of large landowners, rightist officers, conservative clergymen and foreign companies.
47-54 But his successor Arbenz, still trying for democracy and rights for ordinary Guatemalans, would provoke the Nazilike forces (led by Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers, at United Fruit's request) to crush his country.
50 Under Arévalo, urban workers' wages were up 80% from the starvation level of his murderous predecessor. But rural Guatemalans owned no land; yearly per-capita income of agricultural workers was $87; 2.2% of landowners owned 70% of the arable land, in 1950. Less than one-fourth of large-plantation acreage was being farmed. United Fruit and other U.S. companies owned the largest part of the economy, $120 million.
60 Under Arbenz, press freedom thrived. Pro-American newspapers attacked the government without reprisal.
65-70 What became United Fruit began in 1870, selling Jamaican bananas in Jersey City and Boston. In 1885, it added Cuba and Santo Domingo, growing and shipping bananas. By 1898, the import was 16 million bunches a year. Demand exceeded supply. The fruit company partnered with the Central American rail baron, becoming United Fruit in 1899. Tropical lowland was nearly free: local rulers didn't use it. By 1930, United Fruit owned vast acreages in Guatemala and other Central American and Caribbean countries. Sam "the Banana Man" Zemurray bought a surplus navy ship, arms and ammunition, and sent adventurers to take over Honduras, which then granted Sam every concession. United Fruit bought out Zemurray in 1930. In 1932, Zemurray became managing director. Guatemalan despot Ubico granted United Fruit 99-year leases, tax-free, duty-free status, and guaranteed low wages: no more than 50¢/day. The company owned the only railroad, and the only town and port serving the Atlantic: United Fruit controlled Guatemala's international commerce. Only United Fruit freighters could access Guatemala's east coast.
71-73. In the 1920s the company forcibly put down a strike over a new 7-day workweek. United Fruit plundered Guatemala and Guatemalans. "At the time United Fruit entered Central America, Guatemala's government was the region's weakest, most corrupt and most pliable. So we made Guatemala our headquarters." --ThomasMcCann
75 United Fruit's railroad was charging the highest rates in the world.
77-97 United Fruit unleashed lobbyists and publicists, beginning in 1950 when he took office, to persuade the U.S. Government and the American people that Arbenz must be deposed. Zemurray hired Edward Bernays, propaganda master: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country … it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically" --/Propaganda/, 1928.
84-90 Bernays persuaded newspapers to run articles like, "Communism in the Caribbean," 1950, New York Herald Tribune. UFCO gave newsmen royal treatment and wrote its own articles for journalists to publish. Bernays lobbied Congress to overthrow Guatemala. Bernays outmaneuvered, outplanned and outspent Guatemala in his publicity war. Guatemala never organized an effort to present its side of the story in the U.S. press.
90-97 Zemurray hired Thomas Corcoran, one of FDR's original brain trusters, as a lobbyist. Corcoran recruited ex-senator Robert LaFollette to convince Washington liberals that Arbenz was a dangerous radical. UFCO appointed ex-CIA director and Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith to its board of directors. The CIA began planning to overthrow Arbenz for United Fruit. Zemurray hired right-wing-connected lobbyist John Clements after Eisenhower was elected (they already had the liberals on board). Clements sent an anonymous 235-page "report" of "facts" about Guatemala to congressmen and "decision-makers." The Eisenhower administration and CIA ran with it. Clements boosted "liberator" Castillo Armas, who after the coup hired Clements as his U.S. public relations representative at $8,000/month. (When Clements died in 1975, Hearst Corporation executives seized and burned all his files, to protect themselves from lawsuits.) United Fruit with $500,000/year through top public relations operatives, bent the Eisenhower administration to its will. The CIA also persuaded editors to suppress the truth and spread lies (154, 163, 167-170, 184-193). The Catholic Church, including the papal nuncio, also preached anti-Communism and against Arbenz. (155, 192-193). 228 After the coup, Dulles reassigned Guatemalan embassy officials to posts across the globe: so nobody would be there to tell the story.
184 Argentinean physician Che Guevara was in Guatemala in 1954. The coup persuaded him to fight imperialism. He then met and joined Fidel Castro.
198 The relentless attacks by the U.S. and others such as the Catholic Church, finally lost Arbenz the support of all but the poor. But among the poor, the tradition of political passivity always dictated that they sit back and await events rather than try to influence them.
191-200 Arbenz stepped down 1954.06.27. He thought he was turning power over to his friend Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz. Guatemalans didn't know that the Americans would make sure fascist butcher Castillo Armas had control. 207 CIA operatives accosted Díaz and told him he had to go.
202-203 U.S postwar governments propped up fascist dictatorships throughout the global South.
203 If Arbenz had survived his term in office, it would have strengthened democracy in the Americas, and isolated dictator Somoza in Nicaragua. Arbenz' downfall fortified despots and provoked more anti-American future movements.
214, 219-222, 233, 235 Ten years of reformist government were over. The armed forces, the landed aristocracy, the Catholic Church, and, especially, United Fruit Company, were back in control. The peasants were expelled from their new land; UFCo got all expropriated land back; low tax; eradication of labor unions; murder of union leaders; imprisonment of former officials of the Arbenz government and of suspected "Communists," or "sympathizers," few if any of whom knew anything about Communism; disenfranchising three-quarters of the population; outlawing political parties and peasant organizations; press censorship; banishment of critics; burning books; granting petroleum to foreign companies; kleptocracy.
220, 229 Far too late, the U.S. Justice Department concluded United Fruit's banana monopoly was a violation of American antitrust laws. In 1972, United Fruit sold its Guatemalan land to Del Monte.
continued in comment 1
Focused on 1954, with enough before & after to be a good overview of what happened and why.
In short chapters, the authors take us through
-the 1954 Eisenhower/Dulles attack on the Arbenz government
-the FDR-inspired 1944 inauguration of Guatemala's first democratic, human-rights-oriented, government
-the enemy: United Fruit company (UFCO, now Chiquita), treated Guatemala as its fiefdom, and Guatemalans as its serfs
-United Fruit's successful propaganda war against Guatemala
-Eisenhower and his anti-Communist administration and CIA
-Guatemala's pre-1945 despot Ubico, democratic presidents Arévalo and Arbenz, and CIA- and United-Fruit-picked "liberator" Castillo Armas (192-193), and successive U.S.-approved despots
ix This book is about events in 1954: how the Eisenhower-Dulles administration, in service of United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) overthrew the Arbenz government.
x In 1982-1983, the Guatemalan army, aided and abetted by the Reagan administration, killed 50,000 to 75,000 mostly unarmed indigenous farmers and their families, destroyed 400 towns and villages, and violently displaced over a million people. 150,000 fled to Mexico.
xiii, 106-107 Except for Eisenhower, every U.S. official involved in the 1954 decision to overthrow Guatemala's government, had a family or business connection to United Fruit. The Cold War was a pretext.
xiv-xv The Guatemalan elite nearly unanimously opposed the Arbenz government. They enabled the U.S. coup to succeed, while U.S. coup attempts in Cuba and Nicaragua failed.
xvi The Guatemalan-elite-backed 1954 U.S. coup condemned Guatemala to 40 years of unremitting brutality and violence. xvii Supported always by the CIA.
xxviii The CIA murdered Guatemalans, hired Guatemalans to murder American citizens, and lied to the State Department, Congress, and the president to protect its secrets. When the truth came out, the Guatemalan generals the CIA had supported were fired; Guatemala's 42-year civil war ended in December 1996. xxxii, 265 200,000 deaths, the military responsible for 93% of them.
11-12, 54, 76 Arbenz had expropriated some of United Fruit's unused land. United Fruit monopolized the banana export, administered Guatemala's only important Atlantic harbor, owned almost all rail, and all telephone and telegraph in Guatemala. 15, 76, 269 United Fruit had paid $1.48/acre for the land. It demanded $15,854,849 = $75.56/acre for the unused land; Guatemala offered United Fruit's own declared value for tax purposes: $627,572 = $2.99/acre. [This disagreement led to 42 years of violence, with 200,000 dead and millions of people displaced.] 12 United Fruit's investments in Guatemala were valued at $60 million in 1954. 76 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a United Fruit investor. 75 The company had 550,000 acres of Guatemala farmland. In 1953, 209,842 acres of fallow land were expropriated. 164 Neither the company nor the U.S. Government were interested in negotiating: they overthrew Guatemala instead.
100-146 Eisenhower had called Truman, "soft on Communism." The Joseph-McCarthy-led right-wingers had helped elect Eisenhower. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a "bull who carries his china shop with him."--Winston Churchill. Dulles hired a McCarthy associate to check the "loyalty" of all U.S. ambassadors. Eisenhower approved the CIA-directed overthrow of the Arbenz government. The CIA spent an estimated $20 million to overthrow Arbenz. [So United Fruit wouldn't lose a claimed $15 million on a land deal. And mark the sequel: read on.] Allen Dulles assured UFCO that Arbenz's replacement would not be allowed to nationalize or disrupt company operations (120).
194 The CIA paid Lloyd's of London $1.5 million for a British transport ship the CIA bombed, mistakenly thinking it carried fuel for the Guatemalan army. It carried only coffee and cotton. The enormity of this act convinced Guatemala to surrender.
232-233 The U.S. gave the Castillo Armas regime $45 million per year. U.S. aid to Guatemala in 1944-1954 had totaled $600,000 all together.
55 During the 18 months the land reform was in operation, the government rented fallow land to 100,000 families, an average of 15 acres each. The government bought, at declared tax value, 16% of Guatemala's privately-owned fallow land. Land reform could have eroded the political power of the landed oligarchs, and economically and politically uplifted the common people. But its extent never seriously affected the holdings of the landed aristocracy (198).
10-11, 19, 146-157 The U.S. refused to sell arms to Guatemala, then used Guatemala's purchase of arms from Czechoslovakia as a pretext to attack Guatemala. Most of the single shipment of Czech arms was useless.
26 Guatemalans thought FDR was being sincere in his 1941 "four freedoms" speech, saying all people everywhere were entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These were among the freedoms Americans largely did have, and Guatemalans did not. Guatemalans did not know that FDR was merely engaging in doublespeak, to try to justify taking his nation to war with Japan. What FDR did not say was that the real reason he wanted to fight Japan was to win control of the crumbling European empires in the Pacific for U.S. corporations. FDR's use of the Pacific fleet to keep fuel out of Japan, to force Japan to go to war against us, had nothing to do with freedom of speech or freedom of religion. As for fear and want, FDR's speech was an attempt to create fear in his own people, so they would tighten their belts and create enough fear and want in the Japanese that they would abandon their plans for empire and cede the prize to Wall Street. The United States would not have gone to war merely to win freedoms for downtrodden foreign people. FDR's "four freedoms" speech: https://www.fdrlibrary.org/documents/...
But Guatemalans said, "Yes. We deserve those freedoms." They expelled their pro-landowner strongman government, and established their first democratic, human-rights-oriented government in 1944. It lasted until Eisenhower and Dulles overthrew it in 1954; 42 years of brutality ensued.
40, 54 Much of Guatemala's fertile land lay uncultivated. Plantations larger than 1,100 acres--0.3% of the farms--contained more than half of Guatemala's farmland. Despite abundant rich land, its inefficient use forced Guatemala to import basic foods. Large landowners feared that if indigenous people had land, cheap labor would no longer be available. 47 Three hundred families, heirs of the colonial elite (largely coffee barons), and United Fruit Company, controlled Guatemala.
47-49 "The world is moved by the ideas on which Hitler rose to power." --Juan José Arévalo, exit speech as Guatemala's president, 1951.03.15. Arévalo only barely managed to serve out his 6-year term, having survived 25+ plots. Arévalo was supported by groups bound together only by opposition to the oligarchy of large landowners, rightist officers, conservative clergymen and foreign companies.
47-54 But his successor Arbenz, still trying for democracy and rights for ordinary Guatemalans, would provoke the Nazilike forces (led by Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers, at United Fruit's request) to crush his country.
50 Under Arévalo, urban workers' wages were up 80% from the starvation level of his murderous predecessor. But rural Guatemalans owned no land; yearly per-capita income of agricultural workers was $87; 2.2% of landowners owned 70% of the arable land, in 1950. Less than one-fourth of large-plantation acreage was being farmed. United Fruit and other U.S. companies owned the largest part of the economy, $120 million.
60 Under Arbenz, press freedom thrived. Pro-American newspapers attacked the government without reprisal.
65-70 What became United Fruit began in 1870, selling Jamaican bananas in Jersey City and Boston. In 1885, it added Cuba and Santo Domingo, growing and shipping bananas. By 1898, the import was 16 million bunches a year. Demand exceeded supply. The fruit company partnered with the Central American rail baron, becoming United Fruit in 1899. Tropical lowland was nearly free: local rulers didn't use it. By 1930, United Fruit owned vast acreages in Guatemala and other Central American and Caribbean countries. Sam "the Banana Man" Zemurray bought a surplus navy ship, arms and ammunition, and sent adventurers to take over Honduras, which then granted Sam every concession. United Fruit bought out Zemurray in 1930. In 1932, Zemurray became managing director. Guatemalan despot Ubico granted United Fruit 99-year leases, tax-free, duty-free status, and guaranteed low wages: no more than 50¢/day. The company owned the only railroad, and the only town and port serving the Atlantic: United Fruit controlled Guatemala's international commerce. Only United Fruit freighters could access Guatemala's east coast.
71-73. In the 1920s the company forcibly put down a strike over a new 7-day workweek. United Fruit plundered Guatemala and Guatemalans. "At the time United Fruit entered Central America, Guatemala's government was the region's weakest, most corrupt and most pliable. So we made Guatemala our headquarters." --ThomasMcCann
75 United Fruit's railroad was charging the highest rates in the world.
77-97 United Fruit unleashed lobbyists and publicists, beginning in 1950 when he took office, to persuade the U.S. Government and the American people that Arbenz must be deposed. Zemurray hired Edward Bernays, propaganda master: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country … it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically" --/Propaganda/, 1928.
84-90 Bernays persuaded newspapers to run articles like, "Communism in the Caribbean," 1950, New York Herald Tribune. UFCO gave newsmen royal treatment and wrote its own articles for journalists to publish. Bernays lobbied Congress to overthrow Guatemala. Bernays outmaneuvered, outplanned and outspent Guatemala in his publicity war. Guatemala never organized an effort to present its side of the story in the U.S. press.
90-97 Zemurray hired Thomas Corcoran, one of FDR's original brain trusters, as a lobbyist. Corcoran recruited ex-senator Robert LaFollette to convince Washington liberals that Arbenz was a dangerous radical. UFCO appointed ex-CIA director and Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith to its board of directors. The CIA began planning to overthrow Arbenz for United Fruit. Zemurray hired right-wing-connected lobbyist John Clements after Eisenhower was elected (they already had the liberals on board). Clements sent an anonymous 235-page "report" of "facts" about Guatemala to congressmen and "decision-makers." The Eisenhower administration and CIA ran with it. Clements boosted "liberator" Castillo Armas, who after the coup hired Clements as his U.S. public relations representative at $8,000/month. (When Clements died in 1975, Hearst Corporation executives seized and burned all his files, to protect themselves from lawsuits.) United Fruit with $500,000/year through top public relations operatives, bent the Eisenhower administration to its will. The CIA also persuaded editors to suppress the truth and spread lies (154, 163, 167-170, 184-193). The Catholic Church, including the papal nuncio, also preached anti-Communism and against Arbenz. (155, 192-193). 228 After the coup, Dulles reassigned Guatemalan embassy officials to posts across the globe: so nobody would be there to tell the story.
184 Argentinean physician Che Guevara was in Guatemala in 1954. The coup persuaded him to fight imperialism. He then met and joined Fidel Castro.
198 The relentless attacks by the U.S. and others such as the Catholic Church, finally lost Arbenz the support of all but the poor. But among the poor, the tradition of political passivity always dictated that they sit back and await events rather than try to influence them.
191-200 Arbenz stepped down 1954.06.27. He thought he was turning power over to his friend Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz. Guatemalans didn't know that the Americans would make sure fascist butcher Castillo Armas had control. 207 CIA operatives accosted Díaz and told him he had to go.
202-203 U.S postwar governments propped up fascist dictatorships throughout the global South.
203 If Arbenz had survived his term in office, it would have strengthened democracy in the Americas, and isolated dictator Somoza in Nicaragua. Arbenz' downfall fortified despots and provoked more anti-American future movements.
214, 219-222, 233, 235 Ten years of reformist government were over. The armed forces, the landed aristocracy, the Catholic Church, and, especially, United Fruit Company, were back in control. The peasants were expelled from their new land; UFCo got all expropriated land back; low tax; eradication of labor unions; murder of union leaders; imprisonment of former officials of the Arbenz government and of suspected "Communists," or "sympathizers," few if any of whom knew anything about Communism; disenfranchising three-quarters of the population; outlawing political parties and peasant organizations; press censorship; banishment of critics; burning books; granting petroleum to foreign companies; kleptocracy.
220, 229 Far too late, the U.S. Justice Department concluded United Fruit's banana monopoly was a violation of American antitrust laws. In 1972, United Fruit sold its Guatemalan land to Del Monte.
continued in comment 1
April 23, 2023
Stylistically reminiscent of "All the Shah's Men", Kinzer's work on Guatemala also reads like an outrageously sordid spy thriller of antiheroes. Sadly we hear precious little of direct accounts from victims, which is a typical sad product of the accessibility of official histories relative to their victims. Even so, the atrocities are so starkly outlined in the words of the perpetrators. As Jacobo Arbenz said in spite of his own anti-Marxist, reformist nationalist outlook, "The truth is that the sovereignty of a people cannot be maintained without the material elements to defend it." So, I'm not one to reduce events to personal psychologies, but one can't read the accounts of Dulles brother responses and reactions to events without getting the sense of an institutionalized psychosis of high officials caught up in rhetoric so increasingly fanatical that they begin to believe their own alternate reality. It would be international McCarthyism, except that victims don't even get the pretence of the HUAC.
If the emphasis toward the end is on the all-consuming prioritization of Cold War geopolitics that makes the United Fruit Company simply expedient (in fact a disruptively overzealous and impractical force in State Department plans), Kinzer & Schlesinger still do a fantastic job of detailing the origins and policy capture of the United Fruit Company throughout the 20th-century saga of Guatemala.
To reiterate Arbenz, "The truth is that the sovereignty of a people cannot be maintained without the material elements to defend it." The authors rightly point out that Arbenz failed to heed his own words to some degree in his failure to take seriously enough the impossibility of compromise with imperialism. Yet the tone of the book suggests the polarization as nevertheless something more regrettable than inevitable, and very subtly suggests that intransigence and leaning into a left-nationalism would all but inevitably have meant...fruitless martyrdom. Counter-factuals are difficult and we cannot presume to know, as the authors at various points seem to concede.
If I don't have much to say on the details of the land reform program, that's because it's an old and many-times-repeated story that speaks for itself, and the book is worth a read for the full details. There's nothing anyone unfamiliar with dependency or world systems theory would find unsurprising in the account of the "banana republic", where a state campaign to buy up *uncultivated* foreign corporate-owned land and transport infrastructure in pursuit of nationalist development goals is met with hostile red-baiting by the imperial hegemon. It would be presumptuous to say what the lesson is for modern Latin America in the futility of ostentatious insistence on being reformist but America (or at least capitalist)-friendly...but there's definitely a lesson. Broadly speaking, though, the pragmatist presumption that tempering political aims is even at best a necessary evil should be treated as far from given. Even FDR, whom Arbenz & co. cited early on as an inspiration, saw the consequent threat of blowback when the system tries to survive through compromise.
As a final point I might expand on later, the constant backdrop of Edward Bernays and obsession over narrative control in the imperial core shows the lesson Western publics have since learned many times over: media control does not necessitate outright censorship, and if anything the illusion of arms-length between a state and a corporate press can be more dangerous. No need for an official order of state censorship when the media exec knows whose story will ruffle the wrong feathers and reassigns them on a whim to protect their bottom line.
A few choice quotes:
"Our only crime consisted of decreeing our own laws and applying them to all without exception. Our crime is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected the interests of the United Fruit Company. Our crime is wanting to have our own route to the Atlantic, our own electric power an our own docks and ports. Our crime is our patriotic wish to advance, to progress, to win economic independence to match our political independence. We are condemned because we have given our peasant population land and rights." - President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, June 18, 1954 (p. 19-20)
"The eleven members of the [U.N. Security] Council began their session at three o'clock and spent five hours debating what to do about the troubles along the Honduran-Guatemalan border. [U.S. U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot] Lodge's strategy was to urge that the whole affair be transferred from the U.N. to the OAS, which was dominated by the United States. The U.N. Charter, he argued, gave regional organizations first opportunities to resolve any 'civil war,' as he described the Guatemalan clash. Though Lodge had the votes of the other nine nations on the Council, the Soviet Union, suspecting [rightly] that the 'civil war' was actually an American-backed plot against an uncooperative regime, vetoed Lodge's resolution. Lodge's response was to tongue-lash the Soviets: 'Stay out of this hemisphere! Don't ty to start your plans and conspiracies here.'" (p. 22-23)
"The fiction of a massive rebel army was believed partly because the international press corps reported it...The main source of 'inside' news was the U.S. ambassador, John Peurifoy." (p. 186)
"because he was never more than he seemed to be--a bourgeois reformer whose ideology did not extend beyond basic precepts of nationalism and the stimulation of domestic industry and agriculture--he had been doomed from the moment eleven months earlier when the Dulles brothers told President Eisenhower he had to go." (p. 198)
If the emphasis toward the end is on the all-consuming prioritization of Cold War geopolitics that makes the United Fruit Company simply expedient (in fact a disruptively overzealous and impractical force in State Department plans), Kinzer & Schlesinger still do a fantastic job of detailing the origins and policy capture of the United Fruit Company throughout the 20th-century saga of Guatemala.
To reiterate Arbenz, "The truth is that the sovereignty of a people cannot be maintained without the material elements to defend it." The authors rightly point out that Arbenz failed to heed his own words to some degree in his failure to take seriously enough the impossibility of compromise with imperialism. Yet the tone of the book suggests the polarization as nevertheless something more regrettable than inevitable, and very subtly suggests that intransigence and leaning into a left-nationalism would all but inevitably have meant...fruitless martyrdom. Counter-factuals are difficult and we cannot presume to know, as the authors at various points seem to concede.
If I don't have much to say on the details of the land reform program, that's because it's an old and many-times-repeated story that speaks for itself, and the book is worth a read for the full details. There's nothing anyone unfamiliar with dependency or world systems theory would find unsurprising in the account of the "banana republic", where a state campaign to buy up *uncultivated* foreign corporate-owned land and transport infrastructure in pursuit of nationalist development goals is met with hostile red-baiting by the imperial hegemon. It would be presumptuous to say what the lesson is for modern Latin America in the futility of ostentatious insistence on being reformist but America (or at least capitalist)-friendly...but there's definitely a lesson. Broadly speaking, though, the pragmatist presumption that tempering political aims is even at best a necessary evil should be treated as far from given. Even FDR, whom Arbenz & co. cited early on as an inspiration, saw the consequent threat of blowback when the system tries to survive through compromise.
As a final point I might expand on later, the constant backdrop of Edward Bernays and obsession over narrative control in the imperial core shows the lesson Western publics have since learned many times over: media control does not necessitate outright censorship, and if anything the illusion of arms-length between a state and a corporate press can be more dangerous. No need for an official order of state censorship when the media exec knows whose story will ruffle the wrong feathers and reassigns them on a whim to protect their bottom line.
A few choice quotes:
"Our only crime consisted of decreeing our own laws and applying them to all without exception. Our crime is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected the interests of the United Fruit Company. Our crime is wanting to have our own route to the Atlantic, our own electric power an our own docks and ports. Our crime is our patriotic wish to advance, to progress, to win economic independence to match our political independence. We are condemned because we have given our peasant population land and rights." - President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, June 18, 1954 (p. 19-20)
"The eleven members of the [U.N. Security] Council began their session at three o'clock and spent five hours debating what to do about the troubles along the Honduran-Guatemalan border. [U.S. U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot] Lodge's strategy was to urge that the whole affair be transferred from the U.N. to the OAS, which was dominated by the United States. The U.N. Charter, he argued, gave regional organizations first opportunities to resolve any 'civil war,' as he described the Guatemalan clash. Though Lodge had the votes of the other nine nations on the Council, the Soviet Union, suspecting [rightly] that the 'civil war' was actually an American-backed plot against an uncooperative regime, vetoed Lodge's resolution. Lodge's response was to tongue-lash the Soviets: 'Stay out of this hemisphere! Don't ty to start your plans and conspiracies here.'" (p. 22-23)
"The fiction of a massive rebel army was believed partly because the international press corps reported it...The main source of 'inside' news was the U.S. ambassador, John Peurifoy." (p. 186)
"because he was never more than he seemed to be--a bourgeois reformer whose ideology did not extend beyond basic precepts of nationalism and the stimulation of domestic industry and agriculture--he had been doomed from the moment eleven months earlier when the Dulles brothers told President Eisenhower he had to go." (p. 198)
February 12, 2012
The term banana republic seems odd in the 21st century. They must be small, odd places tucking into strange corners of the world, perhaps something like the republic of Fredonia (Duck Soup) or the Grand Duchy of Fenwick (The Mouse that Roared). Sixty years ago “banana republic” meant most of the countries of Central America and the Caribbean basin; Guatemala was the best/worst example.
Formerly a colony of Spain, Guatemala became the property of the United Fruit Company. In addition to millions of acres of farmland (three-fourths of which were kept fallow) United Fruit owned the only port on Guatemala’s Atlantic coast, every mile of railway in the country and controlled the postal, telephone and telegraph services. The company used the unpaid labor of indigenous people—Indians “owed” large landowners 150 days of debt labor each year in lieu of taxes. A peasant could be jailed if his labor card didn’t show he had contributed the proper amount of days of forced labor to the plantation he was tied to.
The numbers are striking but don’t tell the whole tale. Company policy required “all persons of color to give right of way to whites and to remove their hats when talking to them”. Labor and peasant unions were essentially outlawed; the company decided who would work and for how long—an attempted strike at a company banana plantation when a seven day a week work week was announced was broken up by the national police. Workers were paid in company scrip—indeed, one of the reforms of the 1944 constitution was that workers be paid in legal currency.
The images of democratic states defeating fascism and militarism in World War II resonated throughout Central America and particularly in Guatemala. Juan Jose Arevalo, a philosophy professor returned from exile to great acclaim and was elected president in 1944. The new constitution, which attempted to create the legal structure for capitalist democracy was passed. It was based on Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms and referred specifically to the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the preamble of the Constitution. Arvelo considered himself a “spiritual socialist” with a sense of cooperation and concern for the common welfare as opposed to doctrinaire Marxists who emphasized class war and the triumph of the proletariat. Guatemala had a tiny urban working class and a mass of illiterate, landless peasants ruled by an oligarchy of plantation owners—clearly not a base for a revolution. The planters, particularly United Fruit, felt threatened by the social and economic reforms Arevalo championed—there were several coup attempts during his six years in office.
He was succeeded in 1950 by Jacobo Arbenz Guzman whose land reform plans struck at the very heart of the political and financial power of the elites. Government owned land was ceded in small plots of peasants and land held by the largest landowners that had been fallow was seized. In a sharp piece of economic judo the plantation owners were compensated for the value of the land they had declared for tax purposes, almost always far below its actual value.
“Bitter Fruit” begins with a finely detailed description of the 1954 coup against Arbenz then recounts the history of Guatemala and United Fruit including the corporate history of the company. It is a polemical book, narrowly focused on the role of the CIA and the State Department. The authors have United Fruit at the center of the action, pulling strings with policy makers in Washington (Allen Dulles) and Boston (Henry Cabot Lodge). It is beyond dispute that the elected government of Guatemala was overthrown by a group of military officers that was funded, equipped, encouraged and managed from the United States. American ambassador John Peuifoy was indispensable in Guatemala City keeping Arbenz loyalists off balance while making sure the coup plotters knew they had the support of the United States.
However there was much more involved that the lobbying of United Fruit. It was during the height of the Cold War when it was believed that the Soviet Union, either directly or through front organizations, was behind organized opposition to American corporate interests. The world was divided into good and evil, for us or against us. This attitude made it easy to confuse nationalism with communism and a middle class reformer like Arbenz with a Soviet sponsor revolutionary. A year earlier the CIA's success in toppling the nationalist regime of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran influenced the Eisenhower administration’s approach. "Quick fix crisis management" was the hammer and false analogy the rationale against Arbenz.
This is an important book but its tight focus on United Fruit obscures the greater truth of entire nations that were ancillary casualties of the Cold War.
Formerly a colony of Spain, Guatemala became the property of the United Fruit Company. In addition to millions of acres of farmland (three-fourths of which were kept fallow) United Fruit owned the only port on Guatemala’s Atlantic coast, every mile of railway in the country and controlled the postal, telephone and telegraph services. The company used the unpaid labor of indigenous people—Indians “owed” large landowners 150 days of debt labor each year in lieu of taxes. A peasant could be jailed if his labor card didn’t show he had contributed the proper amount of days of forced labor to the plantation he was tied to.
The numbers are striking but don’t tell the whole tale. Company policy required “all persons of color to give right of way to whites and to remove their hats when talking to them”. Labor and peasant unions were essentially outlawed; the company decided who would work and for how long—an attempted strike at a company banana plantation when a seven day a week work week was announced was broken up by the national police. Workers were paid in company scrip—indeed, one of the reforms of the 1944 constitution was that workers be paid in legal currency.
The images of democratic states defeating fascism and militarism in World War II resonated throughout Central America and particularly in Guatemala. Juan Jose Arevalo, a philosophy professor returned from exile to great acclaim and was elected president in 1944. The new constitution, which attempted to create the legal structure for capitalist democracy was passed. It was based on Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms and referred specifically to the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the preamble of the Constitution. Arvelo considered himself a “spiritual socialist” with a sense of cooperation and concern for the common welfare as opposed to doctrinaire Marxists who emphasized class war and the triumph of the proletariat. Guatemala had a tiny urban working class and a mass of illiterate, landless peasants ruled by an oligarchy of plantation owners—clearly not a base for a revolution. The planters, particularly United Fruit, felt threatened by the social and economic reforms Arevalo championed—there were several coup attempts during his six years in office.
He was succeeded in 1950 by Jacobo Arbenz Guzman whose land reform plans struck at the very heart of the political and financial power of the elites. Government owned land was ceded in small plots of peasants and land held by the largest landowners that had been fallow was seized. In a sharp piece of economic judo the plantation owners were compensated for the value of the land they had declared for tax purposes, almost always far below its actual value.
“Bitter Fruit” begins with a finely detailed description of the 1954 coup against Arbenz then recounts the history of Guatemala and United Fruit including the corporate history of the company. It is a polemical book, narrowly focused on the role of the CIA and the State Department. The authors have United Fruit at the center of the action, pulling strings with policy makers in Washington (Allen Dulles) and Boston (Henry Cabot Lodge). It is beyond dispute that the elected government of Guatemala was overthrown by a group of military officers that was funded, equipped, encouraged and managed from the United States. American ambassador John Peuifoy was indispensable in Guatemala City keeping Arbenz loyalists off balance while making sure the coup plotters knew they had the support of the United States.
However there was much more involved that the lobbying of United Fruit. It was during the height of the Cold War when it was believed that the Soviet Union, either directly or through front organizations, was behind organized opposition to American corporate interests. The world was divided into good and evil, for us or against us. This attitude made it easy to confuse nationalism with communism and a middle class reformer like Arbenz with a Soviet sponsor revolutionary. A year earlier the CIA's success in toppling the nationalist regime of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran influenced the Eisenhower administration’s approach. "Quick fix crisis management" was the hammer and false analogy the rationale against Arbenz.
This is an important book but its tight focus on United Fruit obscures the greater truth of entire nations that were ancillary casualties of the Cold War.
August 4, 2011
MUST READ. I think I've decided I prefer my history written by journalists-- far easier to read. This text reads like a blueprint for current US foreign policy. There's so much here that serves to illustrate US government relationship to corporations and the reality of intervention. In many ways the US orchestrated coup in Guatemala set the stage for future US operations while simultaneously plunging the majority of Central America into thirty years of civil war.
One of my biggest take aways was people's beliefs in media and government. According to the heavily footnoted and archived evidence presented by the authors, the majority of the Guatemalan Left believed the CIA media campaign and gave up. Despite current examples of disinformation (WMDs?!) I still hear overwhelming denial that the US government would lie or be capable of such atrocities. These beliefs often quell urges to resist. As Mumia stated, "It's suicide not to."
One of my biggest take aways was people's beliefs in media and government. According to the heavily footnoted and archived evidence presented by the authors, the majority of the Guatemalan Left believed the CIA media campaign and gave up. Despite current examples of disinformation (WMDs?!) I still hear overwhelming denial that the US government would lie or be capable of such atrocities. These beliefs often quell urges to resist. As Mumia stated, "It's suicide not to."
October 6, 2021
With the end of the Cold War Guatemalans put civilians into political leadership, weakening the military rule.President Clinton apologized for the American actions in Guatemala and vowed it would never happen again. The Historical Commission of Guatemala found that over 200,000 people were killed from the 50’s to 1990, most by the military. Still, the elite own over 75% of the land and pay very little taxes. Criminal gangs(many formed from ex military snd police), illiteracy, high infant mortality and abject poverty continue to plague the country. Guatemalan refugees come here to seek a better life, and we should welcome them after all the horrendous actions our government imposed on the Guatemalan people. Look at history to see tge U S role in creating the immigration problems!
July 27, 2009
The most disturbing book I have ever read, for how much it reveals on American corruption. A necessary read for any American interested in Latin America.
November 4, 2013
Bitter Fruit relates the history of the 1954 CIA-directed coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. Together with the 1953 putsch against Iranian President Mohammed Mossadegh, that gave the CIA two successful knock-outs against democratically-elected governments in two years. Both incidents are notable for the hubris and hypocrisy on the part of the US, as well as the pyrrhic nature of their victories.
Kinzer's book on Nicaragua in the 1980s, Blood of Brothers, is one of the best and most engaging histories I've read in recent years. (Seriously, if you're at all interested in Latin America or US foreign policy, you should pick it up). But where that book was a panoramic look at revolutionary Nicaragua seen through the lens of a reporter's experiences, Bitter Fruit is much narrower in scope, an intensely detailed analysis of a brief period of time in a small country, much of it based on diplomatic cables and internal documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.
The precipitating event for the coup was the agrarian and land reform undertaken by the Arévalo and Arbenz governments, attempting to address the vast social inequalities that had existed in Guatemala since the time of the conquista. In particular, Arbenz sought to take the vast tracts of unused land owned by the Boston-based United Fruit Company and redistribute it to poor farmers. (In an ironic twist, Arbenz offered to pay the greatly undervalued price that UFCo had submitted as its tax evaluation.) The fruit company had enjoyed decades of monopoly, virtually un-taxed profits, unenforced labor laws, compliant governments and full ownership of the country's only Atlantic port and railway. It was practicing capitalism at its most primal, and it had earned an unsavory reputation in most of Central America. Pablo Neruda even wrote a poem about the company's influence.
The authors make the case that Arévalo and Arbenz were not Communists, but rather liberal reformers who admired FDR and wanted to bring the New Deal to Guatemala. Naturally, their reforms were portrayed as a "Soviet beachhead" in the Americas by McCarthy-era Washington, DC. UFCo's lobbying and public relations efforts soon attracted the attention of the incoming Eisenhower administration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA chief Allen Dulles, quickly put together a small-scale but effective operation to isolate, weaken and ultimately knock Arbenz out of power. It's a pretty intriguing story, replete with phony radio broadcasts, disguised arms shipments, chartered Cessnas dropping leaflets and other 1950s-tech spy stuff.
In a way, it is grimly amusing to see how easy it was to show Arbenz the door. The CIA was even (mostly) able to keep their name out of the press accounts, which presented the coup as the work of anti-Communist Guatemalan patriots. Future CIA operations would not be quite so clean. However, the mendacity of this sort of work does take your breath away when you see it spelled out in all its cynical glory. I recall in particular a US attempt to fake a bombing just over the border in Honduras to better portray Guatemala as an aggressive nation who was a danger to its neighbors. Blame your enemies for your own worst sins, I guess.
As the book's final chapter shows, the 40 years following the coup offered neither stability nor democracy. The authoritarian Castillo Armas lasted three years before being assassinated. He was succeeded by a series of military leaders who oversaw the descent of Guatemala into a lawless right-wing state stalked by death squads. Unable to enact even mild reforms, the left and the indigenous groups retreated to the jungle to wage guerrilla warfare, while the generals hunted them down, along with trade unionists, student leaders, dissident priests and anyone who might pose a challenge to their authority. By the time the peace accords were signed in 1996, over 200,000 Guatemalans were dead or disappeared.
All too often US foreign policy has mistaken the legitimate grievances and nationalist ambitions of other nations for communist subversion, and has acted to place US business interests above respect for democracy or human rights. Guatemala is an unusually clear and uncomplicated example of this. In addition to the tragic consequences for those affected, it's not even clear that this strategy succeeds on its own terms. The 1954 coup only looks like a US victory in the very short term. After that it's a bit of a disaster.
Kinzer's book on Nicaragua in the 1980s, Blood of Brothers, is one of the best and most engaging histories I've read in recent years. (Seriously, if you're at all interested in Latin America or US foreign policy, you should pick it up). But where that book was a panoramic look at revolutionary Nicaragua seen through the lens of a reporter's experiences, Bitter Fruit is much narrower in scope, an intensely detailed analysis of a brief period of time in a small country, much of it based on diplomatic cables and internal documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.
The precipitating event for the coup was the agrarian and land reform undertaken by the Arévalo and Arbenz governments, attempting to address the vast social inequalities that had existed in Guatemala since the time of the conquista. In particular, Arbenz sought to take the vast tracts of unused land owned by the Boston-based United Fruit Company and redistribute it to poor farmers. (In an ironic twist, Arbenz offered to pay the greatly undervalued price that UFCo had submitted as its tax evaluation.) The fruit company had enjoyed decades of monopoly, virtually un-taxed profits, unenforced labor laws, compliant governments and full ownership of the country's only Atlantic port and railway. It was practicing capitalism at its most primal, and it had earned an unsavory reputation in most of Central America. Pablo Neruda even wrote a poem about the company's influence.
The authors make the case that Arévalo and Arbenz were not Communists, but rather liberal reformers who admired FDR and wanted to bring the New Deal to Guatemala. Naturally, their reforms were portrayed as a "Soviet beachhead" in the Americas by McCarthy-era Washington, DC. UFCo's lobbying and public relations efforts soon attracted the attention of the incoming Eisenhower administration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA chief Allen Dulles, quickly put together a small-scale but effective operation to isolate, weaken and ultimately knock Arbenz out of power. It's a pretty intriguing story, replete with phony radio broadcasts, disguised arms shipments, chartered Cessnas dropping leaflets and other 1950s-tech spy stuff.
In a way, it is grimly amusing to see how easy it was to show Arbenz the door. The CIA was even (mostly) able to keep their name out of the press accounts, which presented the coup as the work of anti-Communist Guatemalan patriots. Future CIA operations would not be quite so clean. However, the mendacity of this sort of work does take your breath away when you see it spelled out in all its cynical glory. I recall in particular a US attempt to fake a bombing just over the border in Honduras to better portray Guatemala as an aggressive nation who was a danger to its neighbors. Blame your enemies for your own worst sins, I guess.
As the book's final chapter shows, the 40 years following the coup offered neither stability nor democracy. The authoritarian Castillo Armas lasted three years before being assassinated. He was succeeded by a series of military leaders who oversaw the descent of Guatemala into a lawless right-wing state stalked by death squads. Unable to enact even mild reforms, the left and the indigenous groups retreated to the jungle to wage guerrilla warfare, while the generals hunted them down, along with trade unionists, student leaders, dissident priests and anyone who might pose a challenge to their authority. By the time the peace accords were signed in 1996, over 200,000 Guatemalans were dead or disappeared.
All too often US foreign policy has mistaken the legitimate grievances and nationalist ambitions of other nations for communist subversion, and has acted to place US business interests above respect for democracy or human rights. Guatemala is an unusually clear and uncomplicated example of this. In addition to the tragic consequences for those affected, it's not even clear that this strategy succeeds on its own terms. The 1954 coup only looks like a US victory in the very short term. After that it's a bit of a disaster.
December 19, 2021
more soon. For now: I will repeat my belief that everyone should read this book.
back soon
back soon
April 4, 2022
The classic liberal exposé of the US coup in Guatemala. This does a good job relaying the story of the coup, the history leading up to it, and the immediate aftermath. Where it stumbles is it's political analysis, where the authors liberalism really holds it back.
The book's authors point out the differences between the revolutions in Nicaragua and Cuba, that these were actual overturnings of the entire politico economic power structure and an installation of a new one, and the Guatemalan bourgeois democratic "revolution". They show how the refusal to engage fully in working class politics and the strident devotion to liberalism hamstrung Arbenz and led to his downfall. Yet the authors laud him for this, endlessly attacking the "corrupt, authoritarian, unfree" governments in Cuba and Nicaragua for not playing by rules the authors themselves spend 260 pages exhaustively demonstrating are set up to permanently keep the rich in power and aren't even followed by the bourgeoisie. Kinzer has, in recent years, become a leading oped columnist for the Boston Globe, happily doing the US state departments work of demonizing Daniel Ortega as a Latin American Hitler and openly calling for the kind of CIA coup against him that this book spends so much time and effort critiquing.
As a piece of journalism, going through the primary sources and exposing the machinations of US empire, this is a good book. I just wish the authors could have learned from the history they were covering rather than being stuck in their backwards elitist ideology.
The book's authors point out the differences between the revolutions in Nicaragua and Cuba, that these were actual overturnings of the entire politico economic power structure and an installation of a new one, and the Guatemalan bourgeois democratic "revolution". They show how the refusal to engage fully in working class politics and the strident devotion to liberalism hamstrung Arbenz and led to his downfall. Yet the authors laud him for this, endlessly attacking the "corrupt, authoritarian, unfree" governments in Cuba and Nicaragua for not playing by rules the authors themselves spend 260 pages exhaustively demonstrating are set up to permanently keep the rich in power and aren't even followed by the bourgeoisie. Kinzer has, in recent years, become a leading oped columnist for the Boston Globe, happily doing the US state departments work of demonizing Daniel Ortega as a Latin American Hitler and openly calling for the kind of CIA coup against him that this book spends so much time and effort critiquing.
As a piece of journalism, going through the primary sources and exposing the machinations of US empire, this is a good book. I just wish the authors could have learned from the history they were covering rather than being stuck in their backwards elitist ideology.
March 13, 2019
A 2005 expanded and revised edtion of a 1982 expose of the US backed coup in Guatemala. A coup engineered at the behest of United Fruit Company who was upset at the current President for seizing company land and allowing workers to unionize.
Exposes (at that time) the ugly underbelly of U.S. Foreign policy where business interests came before the people and the fear of communism was so great (or feigned to be so great) that US felt it was there right to interfere with any duly elected government.
CIA intervention from 1954 on wards led to the destabilization of an already precarious democracy and led directly or indirectly to 30 years of strife and a death toll of 200,000 people.
Schlesinger and Kinzer layout the story in methodical fashion due to landmark Freedom of Information requests and began to peel back the veil of secrecy over the true activities of the United States abroad and our country's inability to face the demons of its past, while perhaps continuing to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Top notch investigative history.
Exposes (at that time) the ugly underbelly of U.S. Foreign policy where business interests came before the people and the fear of communism was so great (or feigned to be so great) that US felt it was there right to interfere with any duly elected government.
CIA intervention from 1954 on wards led to the destabilization of an already precarious democracy and led directly or indirectly to 30 years of strife and a death toll of 200,000 people.
Schlesinger and Kinzer layout the story in methodical fashion due to landmark Freedom of Information requests and began to peel back the veil of secrecy over the true activities of the United States abroad and our country's inability to face the demons of its past, while perhaps continuing to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Top notch investigative history.
March 13, 2017
This is a horror story, unfortunately a true one. American bureaucrats and businessmen lie and cheat to gain approval to launch a coup to eradicate (non-existent) Soviet-affiliated Communists in Guatemala, all to preserve the right of United Fruit Company to screw the Guatemalan people. I'm saddened by my country's dishonesty and corruption. It ruined Guatemala's chances at a real democracy (ironically, based on the US), set in motion a series of events that have to this day made Guatemala one of the most dangerous and corrupt places on earth.
Interestingly, when I asked my Guatemalan husband who his father favored in this coup, he said it was the puppet supporting by the US. I guess I'm not surprised.
Interestingly, when I asked my Guatemalan husband who his father favored in this coup, he said it was the puppet supporting by the US. I guess I'm not surprised.
April 25, 2022
"Our only crime consisted of decreeing our own laws and applying them to all without exception. Our crime is having enacted an agrarian reform which effected the interests of the United Fruit Company. Our crime is wanting to have our own route to the Atlantic, our own electric power and our own docks and ports. Our crime is our patriotic wish to advance, to progress, to win economic independence to match our political independence. We are condemned because we have given our peasant population land and rights." - Jacobo Árbenz
May 23, 2019
This book published in the early 80s but its still more relevant to the current political climate today- especially when it comes to issues like Venezuela and immigration. I highly recommend this book for those who really want to understand the United States' relationship with Latin America. It's written by academics but it's read as a novel- needless to say it was hard to put it down. Can't recommend this book enough.
January 16, 2009
Believe it or not, Chiquita Banana (then United Fruit) really did orchestrate the overthrow of the government in Guatemala. Yay for imposing dictatorships in foreign nations that are friendly to US corporate interests!
July 31, 2010
Very good book. How did Dulles get an airport named after him?
June 4, 2024
Bitter Fruit tells the story of how United Fruit and its powerful friends in the CIA, State Department and the White House orchestrated a coup that overthrew the democratically elected and socially progressive Arbenz government of Guatemala in 1954 - a horrific and illegal act of foreign intervention and aggression.
In 1944 Guatemala had a revolution that led to the overthrow of the incumbent military dictatorship that primarily served foreign interests (United Fruit) and a small minority of domestic elites and landowners at the expense of the civilian populations. The country’s (and Latin Americas) first democratically elected Government took power led by former schoolteacher Juan Arévalo.
A new constitution was written, freedom to form political parties was allowed, free elections took place, labour laws reformed to improve the lives of Guatemalas vast majority of impoverished peasants and indigenous communities. For 10 years under Arévalo and his successor Árbenz the new fragile democracy looked to improve the life of Guatemalans and cement its democracy much to the chagrin of the foreign interests of landowners and United Fruit.
In 1953/54 Arbenz attempted to enact significant “Land Agrarian” reform that involved expropriating “unused” land from large landowners the biggest being United Fruit. United Fruit was the biggest employer and landowner in Guatemala and 85% of the land it owned was not cultivated. Arbenz wanted to take that land, hand it over to peasants to increase domestic food production as most lived in poverty.
United Fruit fought back and began lobbying senior Government officials in US Congress, the State Department and the White House to ensure this reform would not take place and its Guatemalan business and profits would not be impacted. A dedicated campaign was run and a CIA plan “Operation Success” to overthrow Arbenz and install a puppet military dictator sympathetic to United Fruits interests was planned and eventually successfully completed.
The US reasoning has been that the Arbenz Government was infiltrated by Communists but the author clearly shows how this was not a reality - while there were a few communists within the Arbenz Coalition none were in Cabinet positions and their impact was limited. Arbenz while appreciative of their support in certain areas was a fervent nationalist and had them under control. Communist power in Guatemala was limited.
I found it horrifying that the US overthrew a democratic government for the profits of a powerful corporation - and the international community was powerless to stop them or hold the masterminds like the Dulle brothers responsible. The fact that Guatemala was at war following this coup for another 40 years only adds to the horror of the story and shows how the US used the “threat” of the spread of communism as a cover to pursue their own interests - namely protecting US corporations interests abroad.
In 1944 Guatemala had a revolution that led to the overthrow of the incumbent military dictatorship that primarily served foreign interests (United Fruit) and a small minority of domestic elites and landowners at the expense of the civilian populations. The country’s (and Latin Americas) first democratically elected Government took power led by former schoolteacher Juan Arévalo.
A new constitution was written, freedom to form political parties was allowed, free elections took place, labour laws reformed to improve the lives of Guatemalas vast majority of impoverished peasants and indigenous communities. For 10 years under Arévalo and his successor Árbenz the new fragile democracy looked to improve the life of Guatemalans and cement its democracy much to the chagrin of the foreign interests of landowners and United Fruit.
In 1953/54 Arbenz attempted to enact significant “Land Agrarian” reform that involved expropriating “unused” land from large landowners the biggest being United Fruit. United Fruit was the biggest employer and landowner in Guatemala and 85% of the land it owned was not cultivated. Arbenz wanted to take that land, hand it over to peasants to increase domestic food production as most lived in poverty.
United Fruit fought back and began lobbying senior Government officials in US Congress, the State Department and the White House to ensure this reform would not take place and its Guatemalan business and profits would not be impacted. A dedicated campaign was run and a CIA plan “Operation Success” to overthrow Arbenz and install a puppet military dictator sympathetic to United Fruits interests was planned and eventually successfully completed.
The US reasoning has been that the Arbenz Government was infiltrated by Communists but the author clearly shows how this was not a reality - while there were a few communists within the Arbenz Coalition none were in Cabinet positions and their impact was limited. Arbenz while appreciative of their support in certain areas was a fervent nationalist and had them under control. Communist power in Guatemala was limited.
I found it horrifying that the US overthrew a democratic government for the profits of a powerful corporation - and the international community was powerless to stop them or hold the masterminds like the Dulle brothers responsible. The fact that Guatemala was at war following this coup for another 40 years only adds to the horror of the story and shows how the US used the “threat” of the spread of communism as a cover to pursue their own interests - namely protecting US corporations interests abroad.
January 17, 2023
Schlesinger and Kinzer’s work is a well done account of the 1954 Guatemala coup, though some of its chronology is confusingly organized. Chapters are ordered to some extent by topic, though take on a vague lurch towards the event of Armas’ seizure of power with the backing of the US and United Fruit. Though the foreword and introduction imply this book places greater onus for the event on the United Fruit Company, the blame is split fairly evenly between the US state and its various bumbling departments, United Fruit and local rightist factions such as Armas. The book leans fully into the intrigue angle as well- perhaps unfairly depicting Arbenz as rather naïve in particular. The atmosphere of uncertainty as American bombs drop is fully captured in the last few chapters, and the brutality of demands from American overseers is very clear. The last chapter discusses the aftermath of the coup, as well as the succeeding decades up to the early 80s (the book was originally released then, a time which actually was defined by even greater political violence due to unwavering Reagan support.) Admittedly some of the prose can be awkward, and sometimes certain editorial opinions and choices are clear, though it is to be expected with a topic which requires this many FOIA requests.
May 27, 2021
Mi intención al leer este libro era aprender sobre la historia de Guatemala. Aprendí mucho más que eso. Bitter Fruit no es nada más un libro de divulgación histórica, sino una investigación sobre la democracia en Guatemala que se sostiene fundamentalmente en las comunicaciones internas de la CIA, el State Department de los Estados Unidos y la United Fruit Company, es decir, los directores de orquesta de las dictaduras militares que al momento de publicarse el libro llevaban tres décadas reinando con terror.
El libro también es una historia documentada acerca de cómo la CIA dicen *lo que quiera sobre cualquier cosa*. Es una historia de manipulación masiva, de chantaje, de asesinatos, genocidios, trampas, mentiras, todo en defensa de una clase explotadora y minoritaria. ¡Y todavía hay quienes piensan que hoy son un árbitro de la verdad internacionalmente! Sabemos, por el caso Guatemala y decenas de otros, gracias a documentos oficiales, filtrados y desclasificados, que su trabajo histórico ha sido mentir una y otra vez acerca de los enemigos del imperio para saquear a sus países. El (ultimadamente fallido) golpe de estado en Bolivia, 2019, es uno de los casos más claros para nuestra época. En Venezuela, que apenas sobrevive un estado de sitio internacional desde hace casi una década, la oposición encontró en Juan Guaidó a su propio Gral. Castillo Armas. Se siguen utilizando incluso los mismos órganos denunciantes que en Guatemala hace 70 años. ¿Qué credibilidad se supone que tiene la OEA, incluso ignorando su rol en Guatemala, después de organizar la invasión a la República Dominicana en el '65? Los hemos visto *destruir* democracias una y otra vez, ¿pero ESTA VEZ tenemos que creerles?
La descripción del papel de los medios es donde el libro de Schlesinger y Kinzer de verdad se luce. Guatemala nunca fue infiltrado por comunistas. Arbenz no era ningún cripto-marxista. La Unión Soviética no tuvo *ningún* papel en toda la disputa. No hubo las defecciones en masa contra Arbenz que se reportaban, ni el ejército de Castillo Armas luchó más que un par de batallas ni se acercaba a la capital ni tomó más que un par de pueblos fronterizos, ni eran miles de rebeldes creciendo en masa exponencialmente sino algunos cientos de mercenarios. En el clímax del libro, David Atlee Phillips se sorprende cuando Arbenz anuncia su renuncia en la radio. ¡Estaba seguro de que estaba a punto de anunciar su victoria! ¡La operación había fracasado! Sabemos que la CIA colocó bocinas en la Ciudad de Guatemala para emular el sonido de bombardeos, ¡y funcionó!
Todavía los "politólogos" más patéticos y reaccionarios de nuestra época sostienen este tipo de mitos, pero a falta de una potencia socialista, ahora acusan al "imperialismo cubano" de ser el titiritero de todo el descontento social en nuestro jodido continente. Ténganles miedo. Esa misma mentira fundamental fue la clave del genocidio en Guatemala, en Indonesia, de las dictaduras y matanzas en *todos* los países de América Latina. Cosas malas suceden en todos lados, pero hay una regla muy sencilla que ayuda mucho a discernir la verdad: cuando la única fuente sobre alguna atrocidad en un país enemigo de los Estados Unidos es la CIA, o un órgano de la CIA, la noticia es falsa. En Guatemala se usaron fotos de muertos en Indochina y víctimas del propio Castillo Armas para denunciar a "los crímenes del regimen de Arbenz" al mundo. Hoy en día, cuando Estados Unidos contempla su retirada de Afganistán, fuentes anónimas dentro de la CIA filtran una historia falsa sobre Rusia poniéndole precio a las cabezas de sus soldados, y en seguida se cancelan los planes anteriores. Tiempo después, cuando los reflectores se les quitan de encima, admiten que era una historia sin sustento. Este tipo de cosas no las tenemos que adivinar. Sabemos cómo funcionan, sabemos que no son confiables, sabemos que nos va a llevar la chingada el día que nos pongan el ojo encima.
Léanse el libro, lean las fuentes que cita (muchas veces disponibles en los propios archivos abiertos de la CIA). Sean tantito críticos con los medios que consumen, que no es pedir mucho. Kinzer y Schlesinger son dos liberales de Nueva York con mil conexiones al establishment demócrata, con trabajos cómodos en los periódicos más grandes del mundo... pero el buen periodismo se reconoce por lo que logra, por el trabajo de investigación, no por la mera reputación. El libro da mil ejemplos de Time, Life, el propio New York Times, y los demás gigantes del periodismo mintiendo a favor de una agenda imperialista. Y el que hayan hecho un buen trabajo aquí no los hace infalibles... después de publicar este libro, Kinzer cumplió en Nicaragua el mismo papel que la gente de Bernays tuvo en Guatemala. El gran logro de Bitter Fruit es que ve más allá de los sesgos ideológicos de sus autores para cumplir su labor como reportaje histórico de calidad, comprometido con la verdad.
Y ahora pienses: si Estados Unidos estuvo dispuesto a hacer todo esto por Guatemala, un paisito feudal de mierda que nunca salió de su esfera de influencia, con líderes pequeño-burgueses moldeados por ideales americanos, por unas reformas tibias que no llegaron a dañar a las compañías bananeras tanto como el mismo Departamento de Justicia gringo... ¿qué tanto creen que mienten sobre sus enemigos reales, los que de verdad son o fueron amenazas?
El libro también es una historia documentada acerca de cómo la CIA dicen *lo que quiera sobre cualquier cosa*. Es una historia de manipulación masiva, de chantaje, de asesinatos, genocidios, trampas, mentiras, todo en defensa de una clase explotadora y minoritaria. ¡Y todavía hay quienes piensan que hoy son un árbitro de la verdad internacionalmente! Sabemos, por el caso Guatemala y decenas de otros, gracias a documentos oficiales, filtrados y desclasificados, que su trabajo histórico ha sido mentir una y otra vez acerca de los enemigos del imperio para saquear a sus países. El (ultimadamente fallido) golpe de estado en Bolivia, 2019, es uno de los casos más claros para nuestra época. En Venezuela, que apenas sobrevive un estado de sitio internacional desde hace casi una década, la oposición encontró en Juan Guaidó a su propio Gral. Castillo Armas. Se siguen utilizando incluso los mismos órganos denunciantes que en Guatemala hace 70 años. ¿Qué credibilidad se supone que tiene la OEA, incluso ignorando su rol en Guatemala, después de organizar la invasión a la República Dominicana en el '65? Los hemos visto *destruir* democracias una y otra vez, ¿pero ESTA VEZ tenemos que creerles?
La descripción del papel de los medios es donde el libro de Schlesinger y Kinzer de verdad se luce. Guatemala nunca fue infiltrado por comunistas. Arbenz no era ningún cripto-marxista. La Unión Soviética no tuvo *ningún* papel en toda la disputa. No hubo las defecciones en masa contra Arbenz que se reportaban, ni el ejército de Castillo Armas luchó más que un par de batallas ni se acercaba a la capital ni tomó más que un par de pueblos fronterizos, ni eran miles de rebeldes creciendo en masa exponencialmente sino algunos cientos de mercenarios. En el clímax del libro, David Atlee Phillips se sorprende cuando Arbenz anuncia su renuncia en la radio. ¡Estaba seguro de que estaba a punto de anunciar su victoria! ¡La operación había fracasado! Sabemos que la CIA colocó bocinas en la Ciudad de Guatemala para emular el sonido de bombardeos, ¡y funcionó!
Todavía los "politólogos" más patéticos y reaccionarios de nuestra época sostienen este tipo de mitos, pero a falta de una potencia socialista, ahora acusan al "imperialismo cubano" de ser el titiritero de todo el descontento social en nuestro jodido continente. Ténganles miedo. Esa misma mentira fundamental fue la clave del genocidio en Guatemala, en Indonesia, de las dictaduras y matanzas en *todos* los países de América Latina. Cosas malas suceden en todos lados, pero hay una regla muy sencilla que ayuda mucho a discernir la verdad: cuando la única fuente sobre alguna atrocidad en un país enemigo de los Estados Unidos es la CIA, o un órgano de la CIA, la noticia es falsa. En Guatemala se usaron fotos de muertos en Indochina y víctimas del propio Castillo Armas para denunciar a "los crímenes del regimen de Arbenz" al mundo. Hoy en día, cuando Estados Unidos contempla su retirada de Afganistán, fuentes anónimas dentro de la CIA filtran una historia falsa sobre Rusia poniéndole precio a las cabezas de sus soldados, y en seguida se cancelan los planes anteriores. Tiempo después, cuando los reflectores se les quitan de encima, admiten que era una historia sin sustento. Este tipo de cosas no las tenemos que adivinar. Sabemos cómo funcionan, sabemos que no son confiables, sabemos que nos va a llevar la chingada el día que nos pongan el ojo encima.
Léanse el libro, lean las fuentes que cita (muchas veces disponibles en los propios archivos abiertos de la CIA). Sean tantito críticos con los medios que consumen, que no es pedir mucho. Kinzer y Schlesinger son dos liberales de Nueva York con mil conexiones al establishment demócrata, con trabajos cómodos en los periódicos más grandes del mundo... pero el buen periodismo se reconoce por lo que logra, por el trabajo de investigación, no por la mera reputación. El libro da mil ejemplos de Time, Life, el propio New York Times, y los demás gigantes del periodismo mintiendo a favor de una agenda imperialista. Y el que hayan hecho un buen trabajo aquí no los hace infalibles... después de publicar este libro, Kinzer cumplió en Nicaragua el mismo papel que la gente de Bernays tuvo en Guatemala. El gran logro de Bitter Fruit es que ve más allá de los sesgos ideológicos de sus autores para cumplir su labor como reportaje histórico de calidad, comprometido con la verdad.
Y ahora pienses: si Estados Unidos estuvo dispuesto a hacer todo esto por Guatemala, un paisito feudal de mierda que nunca salió de su esfera de influencia, con líderes pequeño-burgueses moldeados por ideales americanos, por unas reformas tibias que no llegaron a dañar a las compañías bananeras tanto como el mismo Departamento de Justicia gringo... ¿qué tanto creen que mienten sobre sus enemigos reales, los que de verdad son o fueron amenazas?
May 3, 2023
Important read, good starting point. Insightful. Written in a way that is more interesting than most non-fiction/textbook-y books.
April 14, 2016
A great, well-written history of the overthrow of the Arbenz government. The authors tell the story of the coup in a balanced, restrained tone and let the facts tell their own story. The style itself is fast-paced while not oversimplifying things.
The authors do a great job putting the story of the coup in its historical context, and how unfounded US fears of communist influence in Latin America at this time really were. At the same time, they avoid acting as apologists for the Arbenz government and the revolutionaries that preceded it. The authors do treat Arbenz sympathetically if not entirely uncritically.
The book is still a bit short on analysis and not always compelling. At one point the authors write that “Eisenhower’s decision to use the CIA as a blunt instrument of political intervention marked a break from the practices of President Truman, who had used the CIA principally to collect intelligence.” This overlooks the various Truman-era covert actions like Radio Free Europe, the Gehlen organization, the Gladio networks, the Polish WIN, the intervention in Italian elections, and paramilitary operations in the Baltic states and Albania.
Overall, a well-written and readable work.
The authors do a great job putting the story of the coup in its historical context, and how unfounded US fears of communist influence in Latin America at this time really were. At the same time, they avoid acting as apologists for the Arbenz government and the revolutionaries that preceded it. The authors do treat Arbenz sympathetically if not entirely uncritically.
The book is still a bit short on analysis and not always compelling. At one point the authors write that “Eisenhower’s decision to use the CIA as a blunt instrument of political intervention marked a break from the practices of President Truman, who had used the CIA principally to collect intelligence.” This overlooks the various Truman-era covert actions like Radio Free Europe, the Gehlen organization, the Gladio networks, the Polish WIN, the intervention in Italian elections, and paramilitary operations in the Baltic states and Albania.
Overall, a well-written and readable work.
September 21, 2015
Una investigación que relata la cruda realidad de la intervención de la CIA en Guatemala. Nombres, fechas, hechos que van hilvanando la historia de un país que quiso progresar y buscar la independencia económica; pero la ambición de riquezas y poder de una sola Compañía (United Fruit Company) mutiló los ideales de una generación que buscaba justicia para el pueblo. Schlesinger y Kinzer lograron en base a una exhaustiva investigación, revelar la telaraña que tejió la CIA para atacar a un "enemigo" que carecía de la tecnología y los medios para defenderse. Logrando así imponer dictaduras, beneficiando su política de dominio en toda latinoamérica. Dictaduras que dieron como resultado un conflicto armado interno de 36 años que costó la vida a miles de guatemaltecos.
January 10, 2016
Did you know that the American coup in Guatemala in 1954 (land reform, United Fruit Company*, etc.) was what drove Che Guevara to join the Cuban Revolution?
* Fun fact: United Fruit hired a prominent P.R. guy (who wrote a book called Propaganda) to create the impression Guatemala was filled with Communists so that the Eisenhower administration etc. etc.
* Fun fact: United Fruit hired a prominent P.R. guy (who wrote a book called Propaganda) to create the impression Guatemala was filled with Communists so that the Eisenhower administration etc. etc.
June 19, 2012
Really readable and interesting history of the 1954 US-engineered military coup in Guatemala. Great snapshot on how effed up US policy was regarding Latin America in the 20th Century and the Cold War, if you didn't know anything about it. Predominantly focuses on the years immediately preceding and following the coup, but also lightly covers the subsequent 40 years of disaster that followed.
July 4, 2023
Holy shit. The way the rich and powerful play with the lives of others with zero regard to the far reaching outcomes of their selfish and greedy decisions and terribly laid plans (that actually do more harm to themselves in the end).
Every turn in this story was an outrage. United Fruit (later to become Chiquita, btw) and the CIA collude and conspire to topple Guatemalan democracy. Yep-- Guatemala was a free state that shook off years of military dictatorship. By the time their second president was elected, USA decided, nah-- actually, we'd rather you didn't for reasons:
1. The new DEMOCRAICALLY ELECTED government of Guatemala decided the United Fruit Company couldn't go on owning and not using SO MUCH land that they originally got from basically corrupt dealings with previous dictators. They didn't even pay taxes on it-- we are talking pennies to the acre. So these new land reforms came through and said: "Hey, we are going to take some of this land back, that you aren't even using. Don't worry though-- we will pay you for it in the amount you self-declared it was worth on your taxes." Then the U.S. got mad, because United Fruit said the land was worth more... so they called this unfair (no mind the cheating on taxes though, that's totally American, see?)
2. They made up communists. This was amid the big Communist scares and the CIA essentially made up Soviet ties and concocted the threat. Never mind the new government was actually modelled on a lot of FDR's policies...
The coup the CIA funded and for the most part orchestrated AND carried out (the actual fighting forces of the man the CIA found to lead this coup were really small and bad at their jobs) resulted in DECADES of violence in this country. Military dictator after dictator. Political violence was the norm. Threats were eliminated and disappeared.
This is ONE country that the U.S. had to plunger their sticky fingers into and fuck up because in their very short sighted view, it benefitted the U.S. (spoiler: it in fact, did not).
Every turn in this story was an outrage. United Fruit (later to become Chiquita, btw) and the CIA collude and conspire to topple Guatemalan democracy. Yep-- Guatemala was a free state that shook off years of military dictatorship. By the time their second president was elected, USA decided, nah-- actually, we'd rather you didn't for reasons:
1. The new DEMOCRAICALLY ELECTED government of Guatemala decided the United Fruit Company couldn't go on owning and not using SO MUCH land that they originally got from basically corrupt dealings with previous dictators. They didn't even pay taxes on it-- we are talking pennies to the acre. So these new land reforms came through and said: "Hey, we are going to take some of this land back, that you aren't even using. Don't worry though-- we will pay you for it in the amount you self-declared it was worth on your taxes." Then the U.S. got mad, because United Fruit said the land was worth more... so they called this unfair (no mind the cheating on taxes though, that's totally American, see?)
2. They made up communists. This was amid the big Communist scares and the CIA essentially made up Soviet ties and concocted the threat. Never mind the new government was actually modelled on a lot of FDR's policies...
The coup the CIA funded and for the most part orchestrated AND carried out (the actual fighting forces of the man the CIA found to lead this coup were really small and bad at their jobs) resulted in DECADES of violence in this country. Military dictator after dictator. Political violence was the norm. Threats were eliminated and disappeared.
This is ONE country that the U.S. had to plunger their sticky fingers into and fuck up because in their very short sighted view, it benefitted the U.S. (spoiler: it in fact, did not).
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