Word: diaz
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Doublecross. At the beginning of last week. President Jacobo Arbenz,* who had persisted in typical Communist butchery in his last days in office (see below), had stepped down in favor of Colonel Carlos Enrique Diaz, chief of the armed forces. But Castillo Armas, convinced that Diaz was just a front for Arbenz, had said as much by going on with his war, notably by bombing Guatemala City's Matamoros Fort. Peurifoy agreed heartily with Castillo Armas' action. The ambassador had learned that under a cover of vocal antiCommunism, the doublecrossing Diaz was letting Arbenz' Red advisers...
...bombing, meanwhile, had knocked the fight out of Diaz. At 2 a.m. he phoned the ambassador. "Senor Peurifoy," he said, "please come to my house.'' With a .38 Colt in his shoulder holster. Peurifoy drove through the empty, fear-haunted streets to the armed forces headquarters, where Diaz was staying. Diaz brought up a plan to talk peace with Castillo Armas in the neighboring republic of El Salvador. But even as they talked, other officers in the next room were openly grumbling that Diaz ought to be booted for his softness to the Communists. Uneasily aware of this...
Until the diplomatic machinery had time to work, any prospect of speedy peace was left squarely up to Diaz and Castillo Armas, with the U.S.'s Peurifoy to lend his good offices for a ceasefire...
...Diaz and his fellow colonels, in hastening to take an anti-Communist stand, obviously hoped to take a lot of the fire out of the rebels' anti-Red crusade. Diaz announced that the "struggle against the mercenary invaders of Guatemala will not abate," and went on uncrating his new Iron-Curtain shooting irons. But Castillo Armas, after a slow start, had already toppled his major target, and now had momentum as well as his deadly planes...
...radio cried that Diaz was simply the "mask behind which the Communists are now operating." He warned of tougher air raids to come. If the peacemakers failed, the war could yet be bloody...