Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán

The colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (September 14th 1913 – January 27th 1971) was president of Guatemala of 1951 to 1954, when it was reversed by a Coup d'etat organized by the CIA, known under the name of code of Opération PBSUCCESS, and was replaced by a military junta, directed by the colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, plunging the country during one long period of violent political instability.

Youth

Born with, he is the son of a Swiss Pharmacien which emigrated with the Guatemala. Its youths were remembered by the suicide of his/her father. Arbenz joined the army, integrating the Guatemalan military academy, and became second lieutenant in 1935. School that it found in 1937 and in which it occupied a post of professor of sciences and history. In 1939, it met his future wife, Maria Cristina Vilanova, who made him discover the socialist ideology. Maria, girl of a rich person landowner El Salvador IEN, had an enormous impact on her life and pushed it to reverse the Guatemalan government. Arbenz joined a group of officers of left and took part in the inversion of the dictator Jorge Ubico (1878-1946) in 1944. Following the coup d'etat against Ubico, Arbenz occupied the post of minister of defense in the new government of Juan Jose Arévalo.

Presidency and inversion

In March 1951, Arbenz became president of the Republic following the first election by the vote for all which the country knew, marking the first peaceful transition from the political power in the Histoire of Guatemala. It made countryside, while being presented in the form of a reformer, and collected 60% of the votes while promising to make economically Guatemala independent and to remove it from dependancy of the United States. Its predecessor, had started, successfully, a series of reforms to allow all the citizens to take part in the political process. The development of the right to vote and the industrial legislation, obtained by Arévalo threatened the power of the traditional elite and involved more than twenty coup attempts of State against him.

Arbenz continued the diary of reforms of Arévalo and, in June 1952, its government initiated a land reform on the model of the Homestead Act promulgated into 1862 with the the United States. The new law allowed the government of exproprier only the parts in Friche of the large plantations. The properties of more than 670 acres (271 hectares) were excluded from it so at least the 2/3 from their surface were cultivated; just as the grounds presenting a declivity higher than 30 degrees (a significant exemption in the mountainous landscape of Guatemala). The ground was then granted to individual families in the intention to create a nation of, landowner, reminiscence of the proper goals of the United States in the years 1800. The owners of the expropriées grounds were compensated on the declared value, by themselves, their grounds during the calculation of the tax in May 1952. The amount being paid in good for one twenty five years duration to the interest rate of 3%. Arbenz itself, landowner by his wife, gave up to 1,700 acres (688 ha) of its own grounds to the program of land reform.

After its taking of, Arbenz met secretly members of (PGT), of obedience Communiste, in order to concretize the program of Land reform. Such a program was proposed by Arbenz like a means of curing a distribution of the extremely unequal ground in the country. It is estimated that in 1945,2% of the population of the country 72% of all the arable lands controlled, but only 12% of those were used. It is a proportion similar to that which one finds in the agriculture of the United States, but without the difference in income nor economic diversity: in the years 1950, in Guatemala, the annual income per capita of the agricultural workers was lower than 100 American dollars and the economy was hardly industrialized, whereas that of the United States was strongly industrialized and diversified.

While the day order suggested by Arbenz was accommodated favorably by the poor peasants who constituted the majority of the Guatemalan population, it caused the anger of the rich person landowners, the powerful commercial interests étasuniens and part of the army, who showed it to yield to the communist influence (the real influence had then the Communists in Guatemala is still warmly discussed today.) This tension will create a great agitation in the country. Carlos Castillo Armed, an officer of the army, rebelled with the airport, was demolishes and cut down, he survived his wounds. Armed spent some time in a Guatemalan prison before escaping and exiling themselves with the Honduras.

The instability, combined with the tolerance of which Arbenz made proof with regard to the PGT and other communist or connected groups, pushed the CIA to study, in 1951, a plan entitled. This one suggested a method of ousting of Arbenz, if it had suddenly been regarded as a communist threat in the hemisphere.

The United Fruit Company, an American multinational, was also threatened by the initiative of land reform. Indeed, it was the great landowner land of Guatemala and, with 85% of its not exploited grounds, likely to fall under the blow from the reform. By calculating the amount of its taxes, United Fruit (and drastiquement) had constantly underestimated the value of its grounds. For the taxes of 1952, she declared a value of 3$ per acre of held surface. When, in agreement with the income tax return written by United Fruit, the Arbenz government proposed to compensate the company to a total value of 3$ the acre of expropriée surface, the company declared that the actual value of the ground was from now on of 75$/acre but refused to explain the sudden increase in its own estimate of the value of the grounds which it had.

United Fruit had some bonds with influential personalities of the government of the United States. The American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and its brother, Allen Dulles, maintained close relations with United Fruit, through their old law firm. The adviser and under-secretary of State of president Eisenhower, Walter Bedell Smith also had close links with it and had previously postulated at a management position in its center. All three were shareholders of the company.

In 1952, it was legalized; the influence, although minority, by the Communists, on the important rural organizations and the Syndicat S increased considerably, but not on the political party then with the government, the PGT gaining only 4 seats out of the 58 which the congress counted. The CIA, having conceived operation PBFORTUNE, was already interested by the potential bonds between Arbenz and the Communists. United Fruit had made pressure at the CIA to draw aside the various reforming governments with the capacity since the Arevalo period, but it was not before the arrival of the administration Eisenhower that these ideas found an attentive ear at the White House. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration was always sure victory since its clandestine operation intended to reverse the government Mossadegh in Iran the previous year. The agent of the CIA, architect of the coup d'etat in Iran, described a meeting with the Secretary of State Dulles: " seemed almost enthusiastic. Its eyes shone; it seemed to hum like a giant cat. Clearly it did not enjoy only what it heard, but my instinct said to me that it planned aussi." In February 1954, the CIA launched the operation WASHTUB, which consisted in installing a false hiding place of Soviet weapons to the Nicaragua, in order to show the bonds between Moscow and Guatemala.

In May 1954, of the Czech armament of manufacture arrived at Guatemala on board Swedish building, the . The United States declared that it was about the final proof of the bonds maintained by Arbenz with the Soviet Union. The partisans of Arbenz, note, nevertheless, that the Guatemalans tried, on several occasions, to buy weapons in Western Europe and turned only to the Czechs in front of impossibility of getting some elsewhere. The Arbenz government was convinced that an invasion supported by the United States was imminent: it had previously revealed a detailed note (called White Papers) concerning operation PBFORTUNE carried out by the CIA and perceived the actions of the United States during the meeting of OAS in Caracas this year like a means of launching an intervention. The administration ordered with the CIA to finance a Coup d'etat, in the name of code Opération PBSUCCESS which reversed the government. Arbenz resigned the June 27th 1954 and was forced to flee, finding refuge near the Mexican embassy.

End of its life

It remained initially with the Mexico, then him and its family left for the Suisse. The Swiss authorities were laid out to accommodate it if this one agree to give up the Guatemalan citizenship. Refusing, Arbenz went to Paris, then with Prague. The Czech authorities were not favorable to its presence, wondering whether it would not require they a compensation for bad quality for the weapons that they had sold to him in 1954. After only three months, he still moved, this time for Moscow. He tried several times to return to Latin America, and was finally authorized to remain in Uruguay in 1957.

In 1960, after the cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro proposed in Arbenz to settle with Cuba, which it accepted immediately. However, it changed opinion on this country, in front of the way in which Fidel Castro accepted it. In 1965, his/her preferred oldest daughter and, Arabella, committed suicide with Bogotá, in Colombia, and Arbenz was deeply affected. It was authorized to go back to Mexico to bury his daughter, then to remain there. The January 27th 1971, Arbenz died in its bathroom, by drowning or burn due to warm water. The circumstances of its death remain very suspect.

Family

See too

History of Guatemala
List of the presidents of Guatemala
Operation PBSUCCESS

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