Word: arbenz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...case of Guatemala illustrates perfectly what befalls a country when its own policies oppose U.S. interests. In 1950, the State Department, beset with Cold War fever, grew frightened at the presence of a small number of Communists in the liberal coalition of popularly elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. After Arbenz under took a program of land reform in a country where two percent of the population owned close to 75 percent of the land, U.S. officials said they sniffed Communist influence. The Guatemalan government's subsequent confiscation of uncultivated land owned by United Fruit Company prompted the U.S. to begin...
...disgrace. For years, whoever happened to be sitting in the Oval Office rubber stamped the blatantly fixed elections of former Nicaraguan dictator Anastassio Somoza. A similar policy has prevailed for dealing with equally corrupt Guatemala since 1954, when a U.S.-instigated coup deposed the democratically elected, but leftist, Arbenz government. And the Reagan Administration points with pride to its role in conducting and monitoring the March 1982 elections in El Salvador certainly not the model of democratic procedure some have claimed they were since the ballots were numbered and the left was precluding from participating by the existence of government...
...involved in two important coups a few years later. In Iran, American influence was solidified by the overthrow of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh's Soviet-supported regime in 1953 and the installation of the Shah. When the Guatemalan government of left-wing President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán threatened to expropriate the property of the United Fruit Co. and other U.S. interests, he was toppled in 1954 and replaced by a pro-American regime. In both cases, the interventions were successful but left a legacy of anti-U.S. bitterness...
Ironically, while the coup achieved its initial goal of ousting Arbenz, it did not keep United Fruit in Guatemala. Plagued by anti-trust suits from the American government of all places--specifically the Justice Department--the Boston-based company gave up its hold...
BITTER FRUIT, an invaluable historical narrative, also sounds a timely warning. The parallels between American perceptions of Arbenz's Guatemala and present day Nicaragua are striking. Only this time, the Administration itself is playing the role of United Fruit. Concerned that the Sandinista are best on exporting revolution to neighboring Central American countries, Washington is apparently considering financing a paramilitary group to destabilize the Nicaraguan regime through economic sabotage--and eventually overthrow it. In charge of the group would be--surprise, surprise...