Transcript CIA Involvement with Latin America

CIA INVOLVEMENT WITH LATIN AMERICA
MARI BOURBON
TIMELINE: GUATEMALAN COUP
1823
1821
Guatemala becomes
independent
Guatemala becomes
part of the United
Provinces of Central
America
1844-1865
Ruled by Rafael Carrera
TIMELINE: GUATEMALAN COUP
1873-1885
1931
1941
President Justo
Rufino Barrios
President Jorge
Ubico
Declares war on
the Axis powers
TIMELINE: GUATEMALAN COUP
1944
President Juan Jose
Arevalo
1951
Colonel Jacobo
Arbenz becomes
president
1954
Start of the Coup
RAFAEL CARRERA
President/Dictator 1844-1865
Conservative and Catholic
Tyrant who ruled mainly be decree, freedoms
were unknown
PRESIDENT JUSTO RUFINO BARRIOS
• Instituted a number of reforms, including freedom of the press.
• Attacked the Catholic Church, limiting its power and confiscating its property.
• Elected President in May 1873.
• Barrios oversaw cleaning and rebuilding of Guatemala City
• Set up a new and accountable police force.
• Brought the first telegraph lines and railroads to the Republic.
• He established a system of public schools in the country.
• Develops the army and introduces coffee growing.
PRESIDENT JORGE UBICO
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14 February 1931 to 4 July 1944
Guatemala was in a depression
Assumed dictatorial power, considered himself another Napoleon
United fruit Company
Nation led a strike against him and he was forced to resign
Forced the committee to give his position to General Ponce who took orders from Ubico
While Ponce was still giving the orders of Ubico the public had another idea
Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, a teacher who had been fired and then went to El Salvador to
organize and group people to fight against Ubico finally saw his chance
• In return for U.S. support he gave hundreds of thousands of hectares of highly fertile land
to the American United Fruit Company (UFCO)
• October Revolution
PRESIDENT JUAN JOSE AREVALO
Spiritual
Socialism
Social Reform
Policies
Reformist
Labor Law
“Safeguarding the free will
of citizens generates
popular support for
governmental institutions”
New Constitution
Benefits did not spread
equally
Communism
Increase in minimum wage
Unions formed
PRESIDENT JACOBO ARBENZ
• Defense Minister of Guatemala from 1944 to 1951
• President of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954
• The Arévalo government began a highly popular program of social reform, aimed at ending Guatemala's
feudalistic labor system
• The centerpiece of his policy was an Agrarian reform law that granted cultivable land to poverty stricken
peasants in an attempt to end the system of debt peonage
• Despite his policies being relatively moderate he was widely disliked by the United States government
and the United Fruit Company
CODENAME: PBFORTUNE
• The Guatemalan coup d’état began with Operation PBFORTUNE (September 1952), the partly
implemented plan to supply exiled, anti–Árbenz rebels with operational funds and matériel to organize
a counter-revolutionary “army of liberation” to depose the Árbenz Government.
• Sent scouts- found nothing
• Nicaragua offered helped with the Dominican republic
• The CIA asked the Colonel for a plan for the invasion of Guatemala; he planned to launch simultaneous
attacks from Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras
• Col. Castillo Armas requested money and matériel, yet nonetheless told the CIA that his army of
liberation, El ejército de liberación, would invade Guatemala, with or without US support
• In conversation with other Central American heads of state, the indiscreet Nicaraguan President Somoza
García had openly spoken about the CIA’s planned deposition of President Árbenz Guzmán
• Public knowledge of the betrayed secret-intervention would provoke diplomatic problems for the US —
a signatory to the Rio Pact
• The liberation army matériel were stored, and the military caudillo services of Col. Castillo Armas were
retained, for three-thousand weekly dollars, until the US required him to be El Presidente of Guatemala.
CODENAME: PBSUCCESS
• In the geopolitical context of the US–USSR Cold War (1945–1991), the secret intelligence agencies of
the US misinterpreted liberal politics, agrarian reform, and resource nationalization as consequences of
the communist infiltration of a Latin American government
• Started with President Eisenhower
• Had to choose a successor- Col. Castillo
• Used psychological warfare; propaganda, radio, pamphlets, newsletters
• CIA Mercenary Army of about 480 troops compared to 5000 Guatemalan troops
• US stopped selling arms to Guatemala forcing them to but from USSR
• US Navy began air and sea patrols of Guatemala, under the pretexts of intercepting secret shipments of
weapons
• Operation HARDROCK BAKER, a blockade of Guatemala
CIA INVASION
• 8:00 p.m. on 18 June 1954, Col. Castillo's Ejército de liberación invaded Guatemala; in four groups
• Ten saboteurs tasked with helping from the inside
• CIA ordered Col. Castillo to avoid fighting the Guatemalan Army
• Failure- because on foot and could not reach destinations fast enough
• The weakened psychological impact of the initial invasion allowed local Guatemalans to understand that
they were not endangered
• Two out of the four groups were defeated and most soldiers were captured or killed
• The other two groups remained deep in Guatemala waiting
• Arbenz knew of their presence but feared US military intervention more
• 27 June 1954, a CIA Lockheed P-38M Lightning attacked Puerto San José and dropped napalm bombs on
the British cargo ship, SS Springford, on charter to the US company W.R. Grace and Company Line,
which was being loaded with Guatemalan cotton and coffee.
• CIA psychological warfare succeeded, and provoked an officers' revolt
• 21.15 hrs., on 27 June 1954, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán resigned the Presidency of Guatemala, for exile in
Mexico.
PBHISTORY: TOK
UNITED FRUIT COMPANY
• The United Fruit Company was an American corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas)
grown on Central and South American plantations and sold in the United States and Europe.
• In 1871, U.S. railroad entrepreneur Henry Meiggs signed a contract with the government of Costa Rica
to build a railroad connecting the capital city of San José to the port of Limón in the Caribbean.
• When the Costa Rican government defaulted on its payments in 1882, Keith had to borrow £1.2 million
from London banks and from private investors in order to continue the project. In exchange for this and
for renegotiating Costa Rica's own debt, in 1884, the administration of President Próspero Fernández
Oreamuno agreed to give Keith 800,000 acres of tax-free land along the railroad, plus a 99-year lease on
the operation of the train route.
• UFCO claimed that hurricanes, blight and other natural threats required them to hold extra land or
reserve land.
UFCO
• UFCO relied heavily on manipulation of land use rights in order to maintain their market dominance
• For the company to maintain its unequal land holdings it often required government concessions
• The Company built extensive railroads and ports and provided employment, transportation, and created
numerous schools for the people who lived and worked on Company land
• The directors of United Fruit Company had lobbied to convince the Truman and Eisenhower
administrations that Colonel Arbenz intended to align Guatemala with the Soviet Bloc.
• UFCO was being threatened by the Arbenz government’s agrarian reform legislation and new Labor
Code
• UFCO was the largest Guatemalan landowner and employer, and the Arbenz government’s land reform
included the expropriation of 40% of UFCO land
• The relationship between the Eisenhower administration and UFCO demonstrated the influence of
corporate interest on U.S. foreign policy
UFCO
• Many individuals who directly influenced U.S. policy towards Guatemala in the 1950s also had direct
ties to UFCO.
• United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’ law firm Sullivan and Cromwell had represented
United Fruit and his brother Allen Dulles was the director of the CIA, and a board member of United
Fruit.
• The brother of the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs John Moors Cabot had once
been president of United Fruit
• Ed Whitman, who was United Fruit’s principal lobbyist, was married to President Eisenhower's personal
secretary
• The overthrow of Arbenz, however, failed to benefit the Company as they had hoped
• The Eisenhower administration proceeded with antitrust action against the company, which forced it to
divest in 1958. In 1972, the company sold off the last of their Guatemalan holdings after over a decade
of decline.
PRIMARY SOURCE
• http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/docs/doc05.pdf
O- Document by Nicholas Cullather, 1994.
P- The purpose was to analyze the documents of the CIA involvement with the Guatemalan Coup in 1954
V- The value is that he found some discrepancies within the files, such as lies and misconduct
L- The limitation is that they are told from an American point of view which limits the access of knowledge
from only one side and not the whole story
WORKS CITED
• http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/docs/doc05.pdf
• Schlesinger, Stephen C., and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in
Guatemala. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982. Print.