How Many Cups? #1: The CIA & a Fruit Company Walk Into a Sovereign Nation
I'm trying something new
Primer: I’m still going to be doing my monthly short essays, but perhaps every other week, or when the mood hits, I’ll drop a little history nugget. They’ll range from something dark to something funny to something just bizarre and will be measured by how many cups of coffee you’ll drink while reading it. In other words, they’ll be short!
A half cup should do.
In the early 1900s, the American-owned United Fruit Company (UFCO) rapidly expanded into Guatemala. In short time they possessed up to 42 percent of the country’s land, as well as their “telephone and telegraph system, and almost all of its railroad track.” UFCO’s rise had some help along the way in the form of the U.S backed Jorge Ubico; Guatemala’s dictator known for extinguishing labor rebellions and using vagrancy laws to force local MAyans into working for the company against their will. Quickly, UFCO built a fruit empire at the expense of Ubico’s suspended Constitution and anti-Indian discrimination.
Fast forward to the 1950s. UFCO’s dominance rises hand-in-hand with a surge in anti-Communist Cold War ideology. What’s more, the company has friends in high places. Ed Whitman, whose wife happened to be President Eisenhower’s secretary, produces a film titled Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas, that shows “UFCO fighting on the front line of the Cold War.” The law firm of John Foster Dulles, who was at the time serving as Secretary of State, represents UFCO. His brother, Allen Dulles, owns shares in the company and was once on their board. Oh and did I forget to mention that Allen Dulles happens to be the head of the CIA?
Naturally, UFCO and their American pals grow upset after the dictator’s ousting from power, even though a CIA memo to Allen Dulles notes how Ubico was “responsible for the killing and imprisonment of unnumbered students, workers and other citizens” who plotted his removal and subsequent democratic revolution. There is a choice to be made: support the democratic, albeit socialist revolution in Guatemala, or topple this revolution and implant an unelected yet pro-Capitalism strongman.
UFCO and America went with option B. Why? Guatemala’s democratic, socialist revolution was a not only a major success, but more importantly a threat to UFCO’s incredible revenue stream which projected American Capitalism to the world. After returning from exile, professor Juan José Arévalo became the country’s first democratically-elected president and brought reforms that put UFCO in jeopardy, such as labor rights and government loans for small farmers. Arévalo’s successor, Jacobo Árbenz, took these reforms a step further and sent UFCO and U.S foreign policy over the edge.
Juan Gonzalez of Harvest of Empire fame provided the particulars of Árbenz’s reforms and how they dealt a massive blow to UFCO’s wealth generation.
“The following year, Árbenz got the Guatemalan Congress to pass Decree 900. The new law ordered the expropriation of all property that was larger than six hundred acres and not in cultivation. The confiscated lands were to be divided up among the landless. The owners were to receive compensation based on the land’s assessed tax value and they were to be paid with twenty-five-year government bonds, while the peasants would get low-interest loans from the government to buy their plots. As land reform programs go, it was by no means a radical one, since it only affected large estates. Of 341,000 landowners, only 1,700 holdings came under the provisions. But those holdings represented half the private land in the country. More importantly, it covered the vast holdings of the United Fruit Company, which owned some 600,000 acres-most of it unused.”
Árbenz only hyper focused the target on his back by repossessing and then redistributing a massive amount of UFCO land, despite compensating the corporation with $1.2 million, a figure derived from a land valuation issued by UFCO’s own accountants. Of course, UFCO demanded $16 million in compensation and when this was refused, the US Government decided to get involved.
What happened next? The CIA planned two operations to overthrow Árbenz, PBFortune and PBSuccess. They teamed up with militant right-winger Carlos Castillo Armas, who had once previously attempted to sidestep democracy and take over the country. Helping supply weapons to Armas was the infamously murderous Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.
Historian Gerald K Gaines has documented all the grimy, shameful details of the U.S-supported coup of Árbenz. Eventually, the documents of these operations came to light, forcing the CIA’s hand into employing Gaines to detail what happened. And what happened to these leaders was downright awful.
First, the CIA coordinated with the right-wing insurgency to engage in psychological warfare, sending “mourning cards” and “death letters” to political leaders, as well as “wooden coffins, hangman’s nooses, and phony bombs.” Next, assassination lists and trainings about how to kill those on the list. Due to redacted names, we cannot verify if any of the people on this list were assassinated, but a cynical man may wonder why the names were redacted. Third, the arrests of over 9,000 Árbenz supporters.
For those wanting specifics, documents prove that the U.S provided more than just finances and military training to the cause. They found the person (Armas) his equipment (planes flown by CIA pilots) and his weapons (TNT from said planes.) They engaged in advanced radio propaganda to paint Árbenz as a “witting instrument of the Kremlin” who was “given the presidency” after orchestrating assassination on behalf of the USSR. Below, a joke from the CIA’s radio hour, aimed towards Guatemalan peasants:
One of the unearthed documents was a training manual made by the CIA specifically for any assassinations that might happen in Guatemala. In case you were wondering, they explain how a “hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice. A length of rope or wire or a belt will do if the assassin is strong and agile.” Gory stuff.
But why such extremes? Some historians believe that the CIA believed Árbenz to be a potential puppet and ally to Soviet Russia. After all, Árbenz and the USSR shared a similar ideology. There is much reason, however, to doubt that Árbenz was a Soviet tool and that the CIA believed he was one, starting with the fact that only 4,000 of Guatemala’s 3 million residents were registered communists.
A CIA memo from 1952 suggests that Árbenz was not a Russian ally: “I am quite certain that he (Árbenz) personally does not agree with the economic and political ideas of the Guatemalan or Soviet Communists, and I am equally certain that he is not now in a position where they can force him to make decisions in their favor.” Ironically, this CIA operative would go on to state that Árbenz was most influenced by none other than American hero Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. Moreover, he noted that most landowners in Guatemala found almost no issue with his redistribution reform, claiming their opposition “has been greatly exaggerated.”
Furthermore, Operation Washtub revealed the CIA’s plan to create a fake Russian arms cache in Nicaragua, near Guatemala. Their objective was to have a Nicaraguan “stumble” upon the phony Russian weapons and claim they were supposed to be sent to Árbenz, thereby implementing Árbenz as being aligned with Russia. A worthwhile historian would question exactly why the CIA needed to fabricate evidence of an Árbenz-Soviet alliance? (Psst: there isn’t any credible, overwhelming evidence of an Árbenz-Soviet alliance.)
Indeed, Operation PBHistory - a follow-up mission after Árbenz’s removal which attempted to find proof that he actually was a Russian asset - came up remarkably short. The State Department’s History Office concluded that during PBHistory the CIA reviewed “more than 500,000 documents” and their report “admitted that ‘very few’ ‘Communist damaging’ documents had been found.” Whoops.
Perhaps the U.S Government helped stage the illegal insurrection of a freely elected presidency because a powerful, capitalist corporation wanted to continue profiting from prison labor. I’m not sold. After all, Eisenhower and the Dulles Duo wanted to set an antitrust suit on UFCO because, in the words of Secretary Dulles, many “Central American countries were convinced that the sole objective of United States foreign policy was to protect the fruit company. It might be a good idea to go ahead and show them that this was not the case, by instituting the suit.”
What seems more likely is that the U.S Government used UFCO’s lobbying campaign as an excuse to plot the coup in Guatemala. They manipulated the manipulator. UFCO’s press campaign against Árbenz is well documented, meaning a private company would do the government’s dirty propaganda work for them. It provided the opening necessary for America to get involved in the overthrow of a democracy and served as a trial run of sorts for future anti-Soviet clandestine operations.
The legacy of removing Árbenz and ultimately instituting Carlos Castillo Armas is hard to fathom. Almost instantly Armas became a authoritarian and in addition to arresting thousands of dissidents, he “disfranchised illiterates, cancelled land reforms, outlawed all political parties, labor confederations and peasant organizations. Finally, he decreed a ‘political statute’ that voided the 1945 constitution, giving him complete executive and legislative authority.”
Armas was assassinated in 1957, kicking off an era of political instability which in time led to a civil war so destructive that in 2013 the United Nations started a human rights trial against Guatemalan leaders accused of genocide. It is estimated that during this war hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans went either dead or missing and the indigenous Mayan population was targeted in particular.
Although extrapolating What If scenarios can be intriguing, they are as inconclusive as they are provocative. If Árbenz is never removed by the CIA, what becomes of Guatemala? Nobody knows for certain, but there is one What If moment that I like to indulge in.
The CIA reported that on May 31, 1954, mere days before military action was taken to oust Árbenz, the man himself offered to meet with President Eisenhower. Why? To “reduce tension.” Of course, this meeting was denied. Two leaders of Free World Democratic States could have talked with the dignity of sovereign, elected officials and possibly prevented decades of death, imprisonment and a backslide into brutal totalitarianism. But alas, a war of ideas had to be launched by little men with too much time on their hands and too little respect for those with differing thoughts.
Sources:
National Security Archive: CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents
Office of the Historian: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Guatemala
Baltimore County History Lab: Background on the Guatemalan Coup
Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez (a must read)